The media and politicians love to talk about the dreaded 1%, the top incomer earners. They use statistics like "the top 1% of earners will earn 20% of all income in a given year", to paint a picture of harsh social stratification. It's used to justify things like punitive tax rates against "the rich", and other such sentiments. But these stats are very deceptive if you just take them at face value. This article sums things up with well cited research, but a couple key points are. 1. People confuse income with wealth. Many people who are wealthy may have years where they don't make much income, and people with high incomes may not necessarily be wealthy. 2. A surprisingly high percentage of people will be in the top 1% of earners for at least 1 year of their lives. This can include income spikes from things like the sale of a home or an inheritance. We tend to be given the impression that the top 1% of earners are mostly the same people every year, when the opposite is true. I don't like a lot of the rhetoric associated with this 1% vs 99% concept, or income inequality rhetoric in general. It gives the impression that there is much less economic mobility than actually is the case. We should stop to consider the question; is income inequality even a bad thing? It seems to me that it's inevitable in a free society where people are in charge of their own destinies. Income inequality and the myth of the 1% and the 99%