What are the thresholds for income and/or assets to put someone in the 1%?

[FarCenter]

I'm guessing about $300,000 for income and around $10,000,000 for assets, but a quick search didn't turn up specific values.

The following is a pretty good article, however:
Power in America: Wealth, Income, and Power
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

[Capitalocracy]

1. I'm actually not as mad at the 1%

as I am at the .1%. But that doesn't sound good in a chant.

[FarCenter]

14. OK -- then what are the threshold values for the 0.1%?

If you narrow it down enough, you can easily look up the Forbes 400... From a quick scan, maybe 1/4 of the top 100 are Wall Steeters.

But that kind of misses the point of who runs America. Lloyd Blankfein isn't on the Forbes list.

[Warren Stupidity]

19. exactly right.

[dana_b]

23. WE.. ARE.. THE 99.9%!!!

yeah, you're right.

[leftstreet]

2. What kind of system allows a 1% ?

:shrug:

[idiotgardener]

4. Math allows it.

I know what you mean, but there will always be a 1%. The question is how to make the 1% closer to the 99%.

[leftstreet]

6. The same math that allows billions to live in poverty? Then Math is Evil! Replace Math!!

[idiotgardener]

18. I think you're on to something there!

If we get rid of math, automatically there can't be billions of anything!

[Kennah]

12. Anarcho-capitalism

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. that is chump change to the 1%

[tosh]

5. +1.

[Marrah_G]

7. I found this article with some figures

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-1-percenters/2011/10/06/gIQAn4JDQL_blog.html

"Taken literally, the top 1 percent of American households had a mininum income of $516,633 in 2010 — a figure that includes wages, government transfers and money from capital gains, dividends and other investment income.

That number is down from peak of $646,195 in 2007, before the economic crisis hit, all adjusted to 2011 dollars, according to calculations by the Tax Policy Center. By contrast, the bottom 60 percent earned a maximum of $59,154 in 2010, the bottom 40 percent earned a max of $33,870, while the bottom 20 percent earned just $16,961 at maximum. As Annie Lowrey points out, that gap has grown wider over time: “The top 1 percent of households took a bigger share of overall income in 2007 than they did at any time since 1928.” (And in New York City, it’s even more skewed: the top 1 percent have an average of $3.7 million in income.)

{snip}

By contrast, the poorest households were experiencing declines in net worth even before the recession hit. In 2007, the bottom 20 percent of households had an average (negative!) net worth of –$13,800 in 2007, which fell further to –$27,200 in 2009. Altogether, “average wealth of the bottom 80 percent was just $62,900 in 2009 — a dropoff of $40,900 from 2007,” EPI writes. That means the wealthiest 1 percent held an average of 225 times the wealth of the average median household in 2009 — a ratio that was 125 in 1962. "

"*Update: This post was updated to clarify that the second and third paragraphs describe income floors — the mininum amount at different percentiles — not average income. The average income of the top 1 percent of US households in 2011 is $1,530,773, while the average income of the bottom 20 percent is $9,187, and the median income is $65,357, according to Jim Nunns, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute."

[FarCenter]

20. Thanks, the $516,633 income is the threshold for the top 1% in income

The article you referenced has a link to
(Jun 10, 2011) - T11-0172 - Income Breaks for the 2011 Tax Model (0411 Series), 2004-2022
http://taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=3047
with a lot of income data.

The 2010 income threshold for getting into the top 0.1% is $2,004,818 of cash income in 2011 dollars.

[coalition_unwilling]

8. Good question you ask, although I prefer to think of the '1%' and '99%'

as metaphors for 'have-mores' and 'have-nots'. The article you link to does a good job of breaking out percentages, but does not provide a lot of hard $ amounts (at least on a quick skim read-through). However, one should be able to extrapolate hard $ amounts from their percentages and overall stock market valuations, etc.

[Xithras]

9. It's closer to $400,000 a year.

The top 1% take home around 25% of all U.S. income, and yet lose smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the next 9% below them. A person making $500,000 a year pays proportionately less taxes than someone making $100,000, or $50,000 a year.

[Warpy]

16. The problem with that 1% is the huge range it encompasses

with the bottom half a percent being seen as white trash kinfolks by the top tenth of a percent. The upper reaches of that tenth of a percent are so obscenely wealthy that they bear little resemblance to the merely rich at the bottom of that one percent. The differences between them, percentage wise, is the difference between the average 1% wealth and income to the bottom 10% wealth and income.

However, they share the same entitlement mindset and will fight the rest of us to the death to hang onto what they have and try to grab more.

This is why we need a return not only to a progressive income tax, but to a confiscatory tax above a certain income range. Add that to a transaction tax on stock and commodities trades and the country would remain solvent forever.

[L0oniX]

10. $250,000 a year

[demmiblue]

11. Mother Jones has some good charts:

More: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

[salvorhardin]

13. It depends on filing status

Single: 193,307
Married, Filing Jointly: 761,938
Head of household: 151,849
All tax units: 506,553

Top 1/4 Income Percentiles: http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=2362
Bottom 3/4 Income Percentiles: http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=2363

[Dawson Leery]

15. $20,000,000 in assets

[OswegoAtheist]

17. There is none.

Being in the 1% isn't a matter of dollars and cents, it's having the system rigged in your favour. It's being the tip of the mountain that never has to worry when the floods come, and it's having your congressperson's cell phone on speed dial. It's knowing that when you walk into a bank, you'll never have to prove ten years' worth of prior good decision making, and thirty years of dependability in your future. It's never having to remember your bank balance, and knowing that someone, somewhere, will always cover your costs. It's having important people come to you, seeking you out, asking how they can best help you.

Oswego "not even in the top 65%" Atheist

[SheilaT]

21. There are also some other ways to think about

income and assets, aside from the actual dollar amounts.

A lot or people who earn a six figure income spend every penny of it, have little or no savings, and so don't understand that they have as much as they do. Those are the people who say things like, "I have nothing left over of the $400,000 per year that I take home, not after I pay for the country clubs and the weekends in the Bahamas and the private schools." And they're right. They don't have anything left over because of the choices they make about how to spend their money.

I'm not feeling sorry for those folks. In fact, I'm rather disgusted by that total inability to save anything. The most money my husband and I ever earned would put us just below the median, it looks like, but, BUT, whenever his parents gave us money (and they were quite generous to us that way) we saved it all. It didn't go to buying fancier cars or a bigger house or a country club membership. It got saved. A lot of people could do the same. I'm not talking about the bottom 20 percent, but most of us are not in that bottom portion.

I am still well below the top 1%, but that willingness to not spend everything has been enormously useful.

[Blue_Tires]

22. What do the actual numbers matter?

I don't need the lights on and hear dirty talk to determine whether I'm doing the fucking or getting fucked...

People have a pretty good idea which side they are on, and which side they support...

[FarCenter]

24. In this case you do -- there are a lot of Democrats in the 1%

[Blue_Tires]

25. And? There shouldn't be any huge debate among them on

if they support the movement or the top-heavy status quo...

Unless I'm missing something, there isn't a lot of gray area here...

[Selatius]

26. I know that the top 25 hedge fund managers on Wall Street earned a total of 25.3 BILLION in 2009.

Check out this snippet from the article I found:

But in a startling comeback, top hedge fund managers rode the 2009 stock market rally to record gains, with the highest-paid 25 earning a collective $25.3 billion, according to the survey, beating the old 2007 high by a wide margin.

The minimum individual payout on the list was $350 million in 2009, a sign of how richly compensated top hedge fund managers have remained despite public outrage over the pay packages at big banks and brokerage firms.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01hedge.html

Imagine earning 350,000,000 in a year. The level of wealth is astounding.

[FarCenter]

28. Nice pictures -- meet the hedge fund managers, some of the real wealth on Wall Street

David Tepper, George Soros, James Simons, John Paulson, Steve Cohen, Carl Icahn, Edward Lampert, Kenneth Griffin, John Arnold, Philip Falcone

George Soros made $3.3 billion in 2009. He is famous for "breaking the pound" and costing the English taxpayers 3.4 billion pounds. Beware of wolves in sheeps clothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros

On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros's fund sold short more than $10 billion in pounds,<27> profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.

Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound, earning Soros an estimated $1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England".<32> In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.

[sinkingfeeling]

27. According to Rep. Paul Ryan the top 1%'s income is $460,700 or more.