Posted on 10/28/2011 12:18:02 PM PDT by NicoleGTalum
Rush: Do you know what it takes to be in the top 1%? Take a stab. What is it? Top 10%: $50,000 a year or more you are in the top 10% of wage earners. Take a stab at the floor, the minimum income that qualifies to be in the top 1%. Brian, what do you think it is? (interruption) You're close. He said, "$500,000." It's $343,000 a year. If you make $343,000 a year, you are in the top 1%.
(Excerpt) Read more at rushlimbaugh.com ...
BUMP.....
I think he... misspoke.
There is no way that $50K, either as a household or as an individual puts one in the top 1%.
According to the World Almanac 2011, in 2009 the average weekly wage in the US was $942. That makes $48,984 for a 52-week year.
Obviously there are a lot of unemployed and under-employed people, as well as retired people, but for the average wage to be just under $50,000 means that making $50,000 puts you in the top 10% of wage earners.
I meant to say that if the average wage is just under $50,000, it can't be true that making $50,000 puts you in the top 10% of wage earners.
“but for the average wage to be just under $50,000 means that making $50,000 puts you in the top 10% of wage earners.”
Ok, I’m confused...
I understand your frustration, but FR has some of the the brightest reseachers on the web. If that were a fact, every military officer or NCO over the rank of E-8 would fit into the top 10%.
Even so, it can’t be correct.
This is going to put a dent in his “correct 99% of the time’ stat that he likes to brag about.
And I mean that with the greatest respect - I’m a huge fan, but there is no way to twist this as being right.
ok! Thanks for the clarification! I was really scratching my head!
I'm in the top 1%? I never knew that. Somehow, it is not very reassuring to know that my income puts me in the top 1%. I always figured I was more like upper middle income. But not the top 1%.
If Rush is right, and I'm in the top 1%, then the country is in bigger trouble than I thought.
That is also 2007 data, probably from raw data 2-3 years prior, too.
I can’t get my head around it. Is the top 10% based on average salary or is it based on population numbers? Is he saying that there is such a disparity in wage/salary now that 50,000 is in the top 10%?
I think I’m confusing myself...
Internal Revenue Service 2010
Top 1%: $380,354
Top 5%: $159,619
Top 10%: $113,799
Top 25%: $67,280
Top 50%: >$33,048
Hey Jake....you should be giving monthly to FR.
Damn! My 'first paycheck' was 26 dollars cash. A twenty, a five and a one. When we got that, the instructor marched our butts over to a little building with a barber pole outside. I had the privilege of getting all my hair skinned off MINUS the dollar bill. Long story short, my base pay 8 years and 5 months later when I finally had enough was exactly $618.90/month. When I got out, I got a job for $150/week and actually got a slight raise over the year.
ISNT IT TIME TO OCCUPY HOLLYWOOD!!!!??!!
You can see a top 10% figure of $52,000 or so, in CONSTANT DOLLARS - so you can't use the figure absolutely, to say "52,000 puts you in the top 10%", rather, you use that table to say "the income level that puts you in the top 10% has not changed significantly in the last 10 years" (interestingly enough, that's true for all of the brackets, except the top .1%, which went DOWN).
If you look at the CURRENT DOLLARS figure, it winds up being around $112,000.
It was about the same when I got in. Check out the military pay rates now. I also remember the $1.00 haircuts at our barber shops.
Ok, the constant dollar figure is the only thing that has made any sense - it just seems odd that Rush would be referring to that (?). But thanks for this info!!
The Congressional Budget Office publishes these numbers.
http://cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/all_tables.pdf
Skip down to the table in the bottom half of page 8: Minimum Adjusted Income (2007 Dollars).
In 2007, the minimum adjusted income for the top 1% was $352,900. So, he was close on that one.
The minimum adjusted income for the top 10% was $102,900. That's about twice his estimate of $50,000.
You have to be careful about how you compare this to your situation. The CBO calculates the minimum adjusted income by dividing household income by the square root of the number of people in the family. See the notes on page 10 for more detail.
For a family of two, the minimum HOUSEHOLD income is $102,900 * 1.414, or $145,523 to be in the top 10%. For a family of 4, the minimum household income is $102,900 * 2, or $205,800.
An adjusted income of $50,000 would put you right at the bottom of the fourth income quintile. In percentile terms, you would be 60th, which means that when combined with another 99 average US households, you would have a higher income than 59 households, and lower than 39 households.
I dunno. I did a quick google search and in 2003 the median household income was $43,000. That means half the households earn less. And that includes 2 income households. There are a lot of $12-15 an hour jobs. $15 an hour comes to about $30,000 a year ($31,500 if you work 52 weeks 8 hours a day 5 days a week which few do). Heck there are a lot of jobs that pay less than that. There are over 50,000 fast food chain restaurants in the USA. He may not be that far off when you consider that half the country doesn’t earn any money (they get SS or they get assistance or live off cash jobs).
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