# Does this article destroy the 99% versus the 1%?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [March 31, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991 "2014-03-31T15:37:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/1 "2014-03-31T15:37:21Z")
I saw this story in [The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/how-you-i-and-everyone-got-the-top-1-percent-all-wrong/359862/) today and it makes the case that “The 1%” is not the greedy, money-grubbing group we’ve all been lead to believe. Instead, it’s “The 0.01%” that have seen the most radical change in income and that “The 0.01%” aren’t even a real group as its members change from year-to-year and month-to-month due to fluctuations in the stock market.
Does this put an end to the whole 99% versus the 1% thing?
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### Author:  [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/2 "2014-03-31T15:47:41Z")
Where do those rotating members of the .01% group go when they aren’t in the .01% this time around? All the way back down to the 99%, do you figure?
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### Author:  [@Hank\_Beecher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hank_Beecher)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/3 "2014-03-31T16:22:44Z")
I think the vendetta should be against the 93rd through 99.5th percentiles.
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### Author:  [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/4 "2014-03-31T16:27:19Z")
> [@Hank\_Beecher](#):
>
> I think the vendetta should be against the 93rd through 99.5th percentiles.
I think we should kill all below the 60% mark. Then the rest would all be well above average.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/5 "2014-03-31T16:36:43Z")
It’s a slogan, not a fact. And, sadly, about the only even slightly useful result of OWS.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/6 "2014-03-31T17:48:12Z")
Focus on the “99 versus 1” was always an oversimplification, 99 and 1 being “round numbers.”
It is interesting that the top 1% earn very roughly as much as the rest of the 10% added together do; the top 0.1% as much as the rest of the 1%; the top 0.01% as much as the rest of the top 0.1%; and the top 0.001% as much as the rest of the top 0.01%.
The debate is about whether encouraging income inequality is good or bad for society. To pretend that the 98.8 percentile is being pitted against the 99.2 percentile is a comic-book caricature.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/7 "2014-03-31T18:13:10Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> The debate is about whether encouraging income inequality is good or bad for society.
Just as the abortion debate is about whether young women murdering their fetuses is good or bad etc., and whether people killing each other with handguns is good or bad etc., and so on. (It’s all in the phrasing and focus, here.)
I don’t think there’s the slightest argument, outside of Wall Street clubs, that extreme income inequality is good for anyone. (I also don’t think vague defensive arguments citing a free market and economy and so forth is an argument for the good of inequality; it’s just justification by those who have theirs.)
The debate is about what degree of income variation we can live with, economically, socially and ethically. One of the secondary debates is how we might go about changing the current balance. To allow the discussion to be framed as you put it is to make it self-cancelling from the first exchange… which is pretty much what OWS managed to do.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/8 "2014-03-31T20:51:39Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> [QUOTE=septimus]
> The debate is about whether encouraging income inequality is good or bad for society.
I don’t think there’s the slightest argument, outside of Wall Street clubs, that extreme income inequality is good for anyone.
[/QUOTE]
It’s a leap from my sentence to yours. I’ll demonstrate the debate I posited (by quoting from one prior thread), not the exaggeration.
> [@Is income inequality bad for a society?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-income-inequality-bad-for-a-society/606170/26):
>
> No, income inequality is not bad for society. Anyone can perform unskilled labor, so it pays low wages. Not everyone perform skilled labor so those fields pay better. This is natural, and the way things should be. The way to improve one’s lot in life is to acquire more marketable skills, and there is ample opportunity to do so. There is no guarantee of success.
> [@Is income inequality bad for a society?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-income-inequality-bad-for-a-society/606170/29):
>
> Brainglutton, thank you for not saying anything of relevance or utility to the debate. Adam Smith’s preference for progressive taxation does not say anything about income equality’s good or bad effects. Nor does him pointing to the difficulties of the poor living up to a middle-class lifestyle in any way address the point.
>
> I hear a lot of people say inequality is bad. When critically rpessed, they resort to hemming and hawing and talking about nonsequiturs.
> [@Is income inequality bad for a society?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-income-inequality-bad-for-a-society/606170/54):
>
> Well, all we have to do is determine what that amount is (for the CEO) and we’re set. Piece of cake, right?
Some criticism is more nuanced:
> [@Is income inequality bad for a society?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-income-inequality-bad-for-a-society/606170/33):
>
> My own opinion is not that inequality is per se bad (I think inequality is the inevitable consequence of freedom and meritocracy), but rather that _too much_ inequality, when transmitted through generations, _can_ have bad effects on society - in that it can create a self-perpetuating cycle in which those who ‘have not’ face difficult barriers to social mobility, thus threatening the very freedom and meritocracy that (presumably) gave rise to the inequality in the first place.
> [@Is income inequality bad for a society?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-income-inequality-bad-for-a-society/606170/2):
>
> Inequality of opportunity is bad for society. Inequality of outcomes should be treated as neutral. So, income inequality is not bad if opportunities are equal…
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/9 "2014-03-31T21:01:30Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> It’s a leap from my sentence to yours. I’ll demonstrate the debate I posited (by quoting from one prior thread), not the exaggeration.
Oh. I thought you meant meaningful commentary, not other posters.
There’s a difference between “extreme inequality is bad” and “any inequality is bad”; I think too often there’s a nonsensical extrapolation that begins with rejecting the rather foolish (okay, excessively idealstic) “all inequality is bad” and extends it to the ridiculous “no inequality is bad.”
But then, there’s a whole faction here that thinks any economic disadvantage is the loser’s fault - too damn bad about that free economy thing, eh, buddy? I’d give a lot to be around when the bigger shark bites their ass off and they have to choose between suffering in silence or completely contradicting every smug socioeconomic pronouncement they ever made.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/10 "2014-03-31T22:47:52Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#):
>
> Where do those rotating members of the .01% group go when they aren’t in the .01% this time around? All the way back down to the 99%, do you figure?
The first rule of .01% is you don’t talk about .01% (and where we go when we rotate out.)
But as soon as I rotate out, I’ll let you know. 😉
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### Author:  [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/11 "2014-03-31T23:49:53Z")
> [@Rune](#):
>
> I think we should kill all below the 60% mark. Then the rest would all be well above average.
You don’t understand math very well, do you? If you kill the lowest 60%, then the average just goes up, so 50% is where 80% used to be (roughly, depending on how you calculate it).
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### Author:  [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2014, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/12 "2014-03-31T23:53:44Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#):
>
> You don’t understand math very well, do you? If you kill the lowest 60%, then the average just goes up, so 50% is where 80% used to be (roughly, depending on how you calculate it).
Anyone else hear that train, wooshing by?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/13 "2014-04-01T00:01:06Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> It is interesting that the top 1% earn very roughly as much as the rest of the 10% added together do; the top 0.1% as much as the rest of the 1%; the top 0.01% as much as the rest of the top 0.1%; and the top 0.001% as much as the rest of the top 0.01%.
Only if “interesting” is a euphemism for “obscene.”
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2014, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/14 "2014-04-01T00:06:06Z")
> [@Rune](#):
>
> I think we should kill all below the 60% mark. Then the rest would all be well above average.
Why 60%? If we kill everyone below 99%, we’ve got universal prosperity. Except the people from 99% to 99.5% will start whining that they’re below average . . . so they’ll have to be killed. It’s all about envy.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2014, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/15 "2014-04-01T00:10:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> Only if “interesting” is a euphemism for “obscene.”
Why? What fundamental objection do you have to some people earning more than others, and why?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2014, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/16 "2014-04-01T01:30:00Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Why? What fundamental objection do you have to some people earning more than others, and why?
For one thing, people who have that much more money than others also have that much more **power,** not only economic but political. Plutocracy and democracy are fundamentally incompatible and mutually inimical.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/17 "2014-04-07T20:03:32Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Why? What fundamental objection do you have to some people earning more than others, and why?
“I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. . . . Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.”
– [Thomas Jefferson](http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=41&division=div1)
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/18 "2014-04-07T21:01:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> “I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. . . . Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.”
>
> – [Thomas Jefferson](http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=41&division=div1)
Isn’t it funny how the objection to some people making hundreds of times more than others (or the average) gets turned into an objection that anyone is making more than anyone else.
Little bit of well poisoning, no?
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2014, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/19 "2014-04-07T21:27:21Z")
Ah, yes, argument by Founding Father. An excellent way to avoid the question while wrapping oneself in in an invisibility cloak.
I had a very good friend whose appearance (fat balding guy, not overly tall), nickname (let’s say it was Gomer) and profession (running a wrecking yard) belied his degree from UCLA, four languages and generally being one of the sharpest tools in any shed I’ve set foot in. One of his favorite stories involved a days-long argument with one of his employees, a nascent socialist-communist type of about 20. (It may be irrelevant, but two of “Gomer’s” languages were Russian and Polish.) Making a long story short, G slowly boxed the guy in until he had to admit that anyone making more than him was the greedy capitalist pig he was always railing about.
Making him, in the end, one of the few honest examples of people who argue about “income inequality” in generalities.
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### Author:  [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2014, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-this-article-destroy-the-99-versus-the-1/684991/20 "2014-04-07T21:39:23Z")
I used to argue that those who amass huge fortunes only take a small portion of the capital they cause to move in the economy, so the benefits to society far outweigh any disadvantages there may be to having a few extremely wealthy people.
I’m not sure it happens that way, any more, in the US.
Recently someone (I think on Facebook) posted about how the top 1% “took” wealth from the middle class. He buttressed that with stats that did indeed show that the top earners are doing better and the middle class is doing worse (than some time in the 50’s or 60’s, IIRC). He missed two crucial items.
1. it’s not a zero-sum game
2. the US is not the universe
My guess is that the wealthiest in the US are building their wealth globally, whereas the middle class have to live with a much more national economy, which is shrinking relative to the world economy.
IMHO, the biggest problem isn’t how rich the richest are. The problem is that the purchasing power of the middle and lower middle classes is dwindling. What’s worse, it just might be possible that the wealthiest could stay wealthy without a significant US middle class.
Scientists say two things regarding the human animal’s attachment to status. We tend to be happier if your status is higher than those around you, and you can be happy if your status is increasing. If most people’s status is generally declining, it won’t be pretty.
In my gloomier moments, I see an even darker future. What happens when the vast majority of productivity is not only owned by a small minority, but that small minority doesn’t need any skills from the majority? When most people have little or nothing to add to the economy? This is the setting for Vonnegut’s Player Piano, and I think it’s a real possibility, within our lifetimes (maybe even mine, at age 56).
Of course, in a democracy, the majority won’t stand for it. But what can they possibly do about it? Tax the wealthy and make it illegal for them to leave the country? Gee, what happens after THAT?
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