"The 1%" is a hot-button topic in the United States. The term was first popularized in 2011 during the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in New York and quickly spread worldwide as "Occupy" protests against social and economic inequality worldwide. The vast majority of earners were designated by Occupy as the "99%", whereas the world's wealthy elite were termed "the 1%."
Increasingly today, the top earners in America are found in finance. They earn approximately half of their wages from wages and salaries, a fourth from business income and self-employment, and the rest from rent, dividends, capital gains, and interest. Of the top 1% of earners in the United States, 13.9% are in finance. Furthermore, among the top .1%, financial workers make up an even higher 18%. Corporate lawyers, investment bankers, and hedge fund and private-equity managers have by and large displaced corporate executives as the top earners in the America. And while income inequality has been surging worldwide, the phenomenon is rolling on at a faster pace in the United States -- and the rise of finance is largely to blame. As of 2009, the richest 25 hedge-fund investors earned over $25 billion, which is approximately six times the total earnings of all the S&P 500 stock index CEOs combined.
Yet one of the defining aspects of the American 1% is its exclusivity. Membership is stable. 75% of households in the 1% will remain in the 1% from year to year, and the vast majority will remain in the 1% for decades. Rich parents have rich children, who have access to the best education and resources money can buy. Rich adults then overwhelmingly tend to marry people like themselves: rich adults. Fellow members of the 1% are more likely to identify as Republicans than as Democrats, and share similar political concerns: they are by and large more concerned by the budget deficit, as opposed to the 99% of people's concern with unemployment.
Yet some members of the 1%, contrary to popular belief, are not fans of Wall Street. As business-builders, they see Wall Street as the place where control over one's business is ceded to undesirable outside parties. However, regardless of differences in political opinions, the 1% are as a whole intensely involved in American politics. Nearly 70% make campaign contributions, and approximately half have reached out to members of Congress. 20% have even gone on to solicit contributions on behalf of a candidate. And due in large part to the Citizens United ruling by the United States Supreme Court -- which ruled that campaign spending is a form of free speech -- the top 1% of earners have considerable more political clout than their 99% counterparts.
The two richest people in the United States should come as no surprise: Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Warren Buffet remain on top despite their long records of prodigious financial generosity. Yet tech moguls - such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) - are accumulating billions of dollars in net worth every year as their companies grow. However, despite the prominence of self-made billionaires, inherited wealth continues to keep many of the same families firmly lodged in the 1% across generations, for example the Koch brothers, the heirs to the Mars candy conglomerate, and the Waltons of Walmart (NYSE: WMT). And it is largely this latter faction of inherited wealth that stirs so much animosity when talking about income inequality in the United States - the American Dream of "hard work pays off" cannot help but pale slightly in the presence of those who are guaranteed a fortune by being born into the country's 1%.