Rush is stating that anyone making $50,000 a year (and more) is in the top ten percent of wage earners. How is that possible?
There are three kinds of ‘average’, Mean (arithmetical average), Median (midpoint of the distribution of the population) and Mode (most frequently occurring value).
$50,000 by any reasonable reading would seem to me a halfway mark, the middle, half above, half below.
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.