Cheer up! You're a One-Percenter!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Got the end-of-the-year snowstorm blues? The world treating you like Atlas’ shoulders? Want to feel good about yourself? Let’s have Fun With Numbers!

You’re part of the smartest and hippest. OK, hippest got beaten to death with a youth stick decades ago, so let’s stick with smartest. You think you’re smart: you sure post like you do (even when you’re dead wrong). Maybe you are. No. No maybes about it. You are in the top 1% of the smartest. And I can prove it.

With no good definitions for “smart,” let’s start with a proxy, a college degree. Over 100,000,000 Americans have one. If you’re part of the 1%, then you’re in a group with 1,000,000 others. Look around you. Do you see more than a million people smarter than you in the country? Think about it.

Sure, lots of smart people don’t have college degrees. The U.S. has 266,000,000 adults (over the age of 18). To be in that 1%, you could have 2,599,999 people ahead of you and still slip in.

Believe that’s still too high a bar for you? Reverse Dunning-Kreuger Syndrone: “the tendency of highly skilled people to underestimate their abilities relative to the abilities of others.” Of course those of you in the first percentile of the top 1% are toothpicks compared to the sequoias in the 99th percentile of the top 1%, 10,000 strong. Bet you’ve never met one, though.

I sense resistance from my audience. Let’s lower the bar all the way. The World Population Clock as of December 26, 2025 pulls from its ass a total population of 8,265,136,454. The top 1% therefore tallies 82,651,364 people. That number would populate Germany. Lining them up around the Equator would call for a body every foot-and-a-half. Surely, surely, you can find a way to believe that you belong in that crowd. And, since a circle has no end, no point on it is privileged. You are all one-percenters equally.

Congratulations and have the 2026 you deserve.

2

:scream: o—kay.

Can I be in my foot and a half spot around equator that is not under the ocean. Thanks ahead of time.

You’re a peach.

3

Everyone is special. Some are just more speshul than most others.

4

No probs, Beckerino. I’ll stack them end to end so they go 78,268 miles into space, a third of the way to the moon. I’ll try to put in a good word for you so you get a spot in the atmosphere, but my influence ain’t great.

5

Mathing:

As of 2021, there were over 56 million people in the U.S. with bachelor’s degrees.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/240868/educational-attainment-in-the-us/

6

I’m a 1%-er; I drink lowfat milk all the time.

7

You want to get serious, do you? Let’s do it!

That chart, like many others, breaks out those with just a bachelor’s degree from those with higher-level degrees. But the assumption must be that all people with post-graduate degrees also have a bachelor’s, so the total must be looked at. That would be about 88,000,000 in Statista’s four-year-old chart.

No explanation of what the numbers mean is given. If you search elsewhere, the usual numbers are of people 25 years or older. For example, a recent Census Bureau report says:

In 2024, 42.8% of the population ages 25 to 39, 41.5% ages 40 to 54, and 34.2% age 55 and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher.

That obviously leaves out people who take the standard four years and are 21-24, plus a small number of exceptional one-percenters.

Putting the various stats together gives a nice shiny rounded estimate of 100,000,000. QED

8

John Brunner calculated we could all ‘Stand on Zanzibar’ at the beginning of his novel, but by the end many around the edges would be wading…

9

Not even that, I drink oat milk! Without sugar! Am I a 0.1%er?

10

Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.

11

I’ve read Stand on Zanzibar - an excellent novel by probably the most underrated author in the field - and I got that reference right away.

12

Piker! My wife drinks non-fat! We didn’t have milk in my day; we just put dirt on our cereal and we liked it!

13

You have cereal with your dirt? La-di-da. What matters is how hot @Exapno_Mapcase is.

14

No surprise that xkcd also tackled that: xkcd Everybody Jump.

15

And Buckminster Fuller pointed out that the entire population of the world at the time could fit into the interior spaces in New York City with enough room for everyone to dance the Twist.

16

Hot like I see in the mirror or hot like the 82,651,364 standing on the equator?

17

You’ve got way more than enough to stack up and make a terrific space elevator.

18

Nice thought. I may have to add more people. Rather than end to end, stack them up on each others’ shoulders so their arms are free to pass the goods up and down.

19

Both/and, baby, both/and.