crackerjack
Well-known member
In fact, I wonder if there really is a large overlap. To echo Gavin, how does one enter the top 1%?
The hedge funds you manage do well that year.
In fact, I wonder if there really is a large overlap. To echo Gavin, how does one enter the top 1%?
Sure, I'm not standing up for Krugman, I'm just pointing out that to say "over 25 years the make-up of the bottom twenty percent has changed a lot therefore the make-up of the bottom 99% cannot be assumed to be vaguely similar over one year" is at least as spurious as the claims that they are trying to debunk.
The hedge funds you manage do well that year.
Fair enough."Er, that's my fault -- I kind of threaded together a few different arguments in that post, probably not very coherently, in a vain attempt to mush together the reading that I've been doing whilst pretending to work."
If you find out tell me yeah?"There may be a large overlap, but the data doesn't address that. In fact, I wonder if there really is a large overlap. To echo Gavin, how does one enter the top 1%? I need to understand more about this."
It would be interesting to know how much the top 1% changes and, perhaps more importantly, to know how many of those that enter it came from the top 1.1% (ie hedge fund managers or equivalent whose fund did better than the guy above them in the list) - and how many came from the bottom x%.
Which bit? The thing I worked out should be the richest one percent of people shouldn't it?"Two things -- isn't this the top 1% of earners?"
Which speaks about the richest one percent as well so I think the comparison is valid."even if you exclude capital gains from a rising stock market, in 2004 the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans surged by almost 12.5 percent. Meanwhile, the average real income of the bottom 99 percent of the population rose only 1.5 percent. In other words, a relative handful of people received most of the benefits of growth."
I dunno, so what if they did?"And, didn't the top ten hedge fund managers clear in excess of $1bn each?"
Which bit? The thing I worked out should be the richest one percent of people shouldn't it?
I dunno, so what if they did?
Well, it wouldn't be splitting hairs because the crude analysis I just did seemed to suggest that the richest 1% of people are those with a million or more which meant that people guessing that you had to be a billionaire or that it wasn't possible to be there with a salaried position were way off track. Presumably the top 1% of earners would be significantly richer than the top 1% of people and this might no longer be the case."I thought the data refered to thte top 1% of wage earners? Probably I'm just splitting hairs."
Well, it wouldn't be splitting hairs because the crude analysis I just did seemed to suggest that the richest 1% of people are those with a million or more which meant that people guessing that you had to be a billionaire or that it wasn't possible to be there with a salaried position were way off track. Presumably the top 1% of earners would be significantly richer than the top 1% of people and this might no longer be the case.
However the data did refer to the top 1% of earners so you were wrong.
Whoops yeah, I meant people not earners. That didn't help clear anything up, sorry, mea culpa etc.
What I meant to say is, it is important to compare like with like but I think we were so that's ok. The statistics about the rich staying rich in fact appears to apply to people who possess more than a million dollars (excluding the value of their house).
I see what you mean."Did you get that from the Piketty and Saez paper? They say, "we have constructed annual 1927 to 2002 series of top shares of salaries for the top fractiles of the wage income distribution, based on tax returns tabulations by size of salaries compiled by the IRS since 1927", and on that basis I assumed that they were refering to the top 1% of earners."
It looks as though there were "Chinese whispers" between those two things - or else Krugman is using the terms "richest" and "highest earning" interchangeably (and incorrectly so in my opinion)."..even if you exclude capital gains from a rising stock market, in 2004 the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans surged by almost 12.5 percent"
It looks as though there were "Chinese whispers" between those two things - or else Krugman is using the terms "richest" and "highest earning" interchangeably (and incorrectly so in my opinion).
On page 63 of the Piketty thing they list some relevant data. It says that to be in the top 1% of earners (if I'm reading it correctly) you need to be earning more than a threshold of just under $280k a year. I guess that that is what they are working with, and the answer to your question as to what you need to do to break the top 1% - a salary that is well within reach of the average trader, fund-manager or even analyst I would imagine.
Presuming that what they mean by "taxation units" is the number of people, they cite a full population of 133,589,000 and the number of people in the top 1% as 1,335,890 (of course)."Do they say how large in numbers that 1% is at any given point of the sample?"
Presuming that what they mean by "taxation units" is the number of people, they cite a full population of 133,589,000 and the number of people in the top 1% as 1,335,890 (of course).
I guess that the other 170 odd million in the overall population are unemployed, illegal or under or over age.
You may want to check that I'm reading the figures correctly, like I said it's page 63.