Please redo the soundtrack. It refers to the 1 percent as a "tiny majority." You mean "minority."

Using percentages is a little misleading here. $10 from $100 if always going to be a higher percentage than $10 from $1,000.

Lets look at the bit where you say the 1% lost 4% of their earnings and the 99% lost 10%. The 99%'s earnings are going to be much lower, lets say $10K so 10$ of that is $1K. However if the 1%'s earning are $100K then 4% of that is $4K. So they lost four times the amount the poorer 99% did. (Hope you followed that!).

Now I'm not making any comment about whether the 1% being so much richer is right or not but presenting just the percentages like you do implies the rich were getting a better deal when in real money terms they lost far more.

look the Occupy movement is all about the rich paying their fair share of taxation, getting banks and big business out of politics, when we vote for these people, we expect them to look after our areas where we live, not be putting their noses in the banking troughs! the term 1% does represent the money and power in the country.

Slick production, but there are approx 7 MILLION (not thousand) millionaires in the US. Fact-checking, and citing sources would help.

7000 millionaires in the US?

I'd have thought there were more than that in Manhattan.

I say line the super rich up, make them walk the plank, then divy up the spoils. Articles like this bring out the pirate in me. So, pass the rum, raise the Jolly Roger, and let's start thinking of ways to make life better for the 99%!

WSJ wealth report cites 3.1m - less than 7m but still a big difference - two numbers got transposed when we were producing the script. We're just updating it now - thanks for pointing it out.

The 7,000 millionaires are just those who pay no tax.

Ever heard of the term Restorative Justice? Look it up.

IMO, the most significant thing about all of this is that the Youth Movement (and that's what it really is) has, like The Sixties, gone from Page 25 news to Page One news.

The revolution IS being televised. It has moved into everyone's living rooms as much as did the Vietnam protests in 1969.

7,000 millionaires? Shurley some mistake. 7 million may be more accurate.

Hi GiTone - see my response in an earlier comment

I still don't agree that it's 1% vs 99%.

Ok, so 1% of Americans are extremely wealthy. But a banker earning $400K per year would fit into the remaining 99%. I fit into the remaining 99% (well I would if I were American) and I earn pretty well.

Perhaps the Occupy folk should have a slogan which actually focuses on what they want to achieve. Not whether they represent a percentage of the population which is then extremely hard to define.

@NickP, You're right. But in fact, using percentages tends to understate rather than overstate the impact on the poorest Americans. Think about it. If you only had $10,000 to live off of, you're already struggling, and that $1000 is going to be $1000 less food or electricity or rent you can afford. If you have $100,000, and lose four grand, you're probably not going to have to change your lifestyle much, maybe forego a couple luxuries.

Well that just blows your credibility. If there are 3.1 million millionaires in the USA that's 10% of the population. So that blows your 99.99% theory. You'll have to redo the entire film, no?

And of course the vast vast majority of those 'millionaires' pay taxes at work just like PAYE in the UK.

Warren Buffet and the richest 400 may get all or most of their income from dividends but most 'ordinary' millionaires get it at work, taxed at 35% Federal, 10% State and 7% City for a total of 52%.

3.1m is 10%?
i think your calculator is broken

Nice video, let's people know how much rubbish the "rich are taxed too much" line is.

With that low level of income for so much of the US, I fail to see how they will ever mount a serious economic turnaround. If such a high proportion of the population are living in poverty then they are hardly going to suddenly start doing productive, demanding work even if it comes along for them.

Things aren't looking good for the US. I see a socioeconomic future for them that resembles somewhere like Brazil. On the other hand, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway and The Netherlands, with their silly notions of social cohesion and economic planning, are doing quite well for themselves.

Our overlords in Westminster will assure us that we have to copy the US, however.

The extreme inequality in the US is beyond doubt. The Gini index is among the highest for the G-20. The real issue is what to do about it. The best, fastest and easiest way is to tax more of the income of the rich and super rich and use it to offer and expand essential services for the less fortunate. Simply restoring the tax system as it existed under Clinton would be a very easy first step. Then I would advocate special taxes on absurdly large luxurious homes that many super rich own (often more than just one or two) and on their sale and transfer. Usually these homes serve only as status symbols and serve no real need. If the super rich want ridiculous status symbols then let them pay for the privilege. Raising inheritance taxes on inheritances over 5 or ten million would also be a good idea. There are others, but these would be a useful start.

I might add that one of the problems with US inequality is that the 99% has been bamboozled to a large extent by the media that serves the 1%. Fox, Murdoch's propaganda machine, is at the center of this. These media fill the heads of ordinary Americans with diatribes against "big government" (actually US government is small relative to GDP), and stories of "welfare queens" (usually black women receiving benefits) ripping off the system. They are told that people with a billion dollars deserve it "because they earned it" (spare the laughter), and that objecting to extreme wealth is "class warfare" (something worse than WWII apparently). You can see the effects of this in comments on stories about wealth and income inequality in the US where many people with no doubt very modest incomes work very hard to justify the super rich being so super rich.

This is a wake up call to injustice all around the world - not just America or Europe where people can network and are allowed to protest.
Witness the shocking Guardian article on Equatorial Guinea; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/23/equatorial-guinea-africa-corruption-kleptocracy?INTCMP=SRCH
There the big oil companies moved in and bestowed billions on a corrupt and brutal regime. A simple moral sense would have lead the oil firms to assert to the rulers - 'there's gonna have to be justice in your country before we move in'. Or if that is too much to expect from money driven people, then we need international laws that don't allow dictatorships to benefit from exploiting natural wealth, helping them enslave their population through funding their armies and police forces.
It's time for the people to demand sane changes in our world against greed and for sharing. We need our leaders to have an understanding that we are floating in space together; either we all make it work ...or we blow ourselves apart!

What a pointless question. The "1" figure is purely symbolic and intended to be so. Obviously the protesters would also the people in the 98th percentile to pay their share too.

It can't be easy making a video starring numbers gripping but the Guardian succeeded.

Mr. Rogers modestly doesn't mention his contribution, but his name is high on the list of credits at the end for providing the research and data.

Neko99

Do your math again. US total population according to the latest census is 308 million. 1% is 3.1 million. Simon Rogers is correct. His credibility is intact.

We need to look at the big picture. Richest 1% have huge wealth compared to bottom 20%. Even if they lost some in stock market downturn, they have plenty
to splurge on. If poor person lost the job or had the hours cut back, it means
food insecurity and homelessnes and no medical care unless there is
catastrophic illness. 50% Americans don't have dental care. It is mind boggling.
USA has the highest total GDP but the distrbution is so skewed that average person in the bottom 20% to 25% has difficult life. Forbes magazine doesn't publish their list(unlike the list of billionaires) and the media keep them invisible.

CustosC, the question is pointless in politics, yes, but not on "Data Blog", where it's perfectly to the point.

I agree with the vid but whoa was it turgid.

So let me get this straight...

Most people's wealth was based on house prices, which was entirely imaginary, and when people realised that house prices were artificially high, the imaginary wealth disappeared.

The people who have done well invested in real, profit-generating businesses.

Hardly surprising, is it?

Not whether they represent a percentage of the population which is then extremely hard to define.

What is hard to define about 99%? It is quantifiable, descriptive, accurate - is it just your problem about identification?

Yes my brain calculator had a malfunction - that's what comes of still being in the office late.

Still, is the 1% quantified only by those having more than a million? What pay limit do the occupiers set before they want to count you as being represented by them? Once they work that out then they can work out the percentage they claim to represent.

It can't be about the 99% versus the 1% when that 99% is trying to explain their message to the same 99% and oh my god I think my head just exploded.

The video makes sense statistically, but there is a drawback in using such statistics to get people on their side.

To many, if not the majority of, Americans, the fact that there are 3.1m millionnaires living in the country will be simply a source of pride.

The got the American Dream. And even the poorest families bear them no ill-will, because it is ingrained in their psyche that their children could make it too.

That animation was misleading since it spent much of its time talking about the poorest Americans and how they've become poorer in recent years, and identified them with the 99%. What about the statistics for the top 2%? (I seem to remember they have 50% of America's wealth). Or the top 10%? I recently read Raghuram Rajan's book Fault Lines where he notes that extreme wealth accumulating at the very top isn't what causes social trouble due to inequality, for the simple reason that the poor don't encounter many ultra-rich people in their day-to-day lives. What has been much more dramatic over the past few decades is how the richest fifth has outpaced the poorest fifth. But "we are the 20%" doesn't really have the same ring to it. The 99% campaign is an attempt to shift the boundaries of class warfare, but it won't work because the poor are invariably most resentful of the large middle class who have vastly more resources and opportunities than them. It's an excuse for middle class people to participate in class warfare while pretending that they're not taking a huge slice of the pie for themselves because there are people out there even richer than them.

And the fact that America's three richest people could only plug the state funding gap for one year, or pay for one year of the War on Terror, with their combined entire lifetime's worth of accumulated wealth, just shows how little taking their money off them would genuinely achieve.

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"Of every 17 Americans, at least one will be earning below the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. "

Be very, very, careful with minimum wage figures. In fact, you should go and look up the Census figures for who does earn at or below the min wage. The majority (ie, over 50%) are those working in restaurants and hotels: those who receive tips. Their pay may be below minimum wage but their incomes most certainly are not. Decades ago when I was doing the job min wage was $3.35 an hour. My pay was $2.01 an hour. Tips were $50-$100 a shift.

"14.5% of Americans households are defined as "food insecure". That means for every seven households, one will have trouble putting enough food on the table"

No, it doesn't mean that. It means that without any of the various programs to aid people who cannot afford food then they would have trouble putting food on the table. For example, "food insecure" is *before* the impact of food stamps. This is like emasuring poverty in the UK before taking into account benefits.

US poverty figures are really quite strange and you have to be really quite careful in understanding what they're actually saying.

For example:

"Now, one in every seven Americans lives below the poverty line"

That simply isn't true. What is true is that one in seven is defined as being blow the poverty line. But the US measurement is (by and large, it's slightly complicated) a measurement of who is poor before any of the help that is given to the poor. It is not measuring those "living below the poverty line". It is measuring those who would be living below the poverty line if it weren't for food stamps, section 8 housing vouchers, the EITC and so on.

To compare it to UK poverty numbers: imagine measuring UK poverty using only market incomes, the dole and pensions. Do not include tax credits, housing benefit and all the rest of the malarkey. You'd get stunningly horrible figure, wouldn't you?

That's what you get in the US too.

@TimWorstall - great points thank you.

In fact, if you take into account the help that people get, there are actually more Americans living in poverty, according to the latest research from the US Census Bureau. A lot of British inequality experts I've spoken to, such as Danny Dorling, feel that the US poverty numbers are underestimates too - because they are stricter about what is or is not living in poverty.

We debated these issues a lot and in the end went with the US Census Bureau definitions - but if anything that played down the numbers rather than exaggerated them.

Wake up people.
The last thirty years has been one long money grab by the rich.
What is happening now is that people are realising that the left has been MASSIVELY VINDICATED. We were right all along and those that disagreed with us, Thatcher, Reagan, Bush and even Blair and Clinton - they were all wrong.

Unfortunately, being right didn't stop it happening. And we're right about global warming too. Doesn't bode well does it?

Are you a government economic adviser?

neko99
16 November 2011 6:29PM

Response to SimonRogers, 16 November 2011 4:46PM
Well that just blows your credibility. If there are 3.1 million millionaires in the USA that's 10% of the population. So that blows your 99.99% theory. You'll have to redo the entire film, no?

I'm sure someone else has pointed it out but 3.1 million people is 1% of the population of th USA - not 10%.

saagua
16 November 2011 8:07PM

The extreme inequality in the US is beyond doubt. The Gini index is among the highest for the G-20. The real issue is what to do about it. The best, fastest and easiest way is to tax more of the income of the rich and super rich and use it to offer and expand essential services for the less fortunate. Simply restoring the tax system as it existed under Clinton would be a very easy first step. Then I would advocate special taxes on absurdly large luxurious homes that many super rich own (often more than just one or two) and on their sale and transfer. Usually these homes serve only as status symbols and serve no real need. If the super rich want ridiculous status symbols then let them pay for the privilege. Raising inheritance taxes on inheritances over 5 or ten million would also be a good idea. There are others, but these would be a useful start

...and yet the US also has the highest GNP per head of the G20 as well, some connection perhaps?
It's also true that the least rich in the USA are considerably less poor than the least rich in the rest of the G20.

Brilliant graphics, well done!

I propose a consumer strike on BLACK FRIDAY. Perhaps then the shareholders of these companies, and the politicians whom they've bought out, will listen to the 99.99%.

Slick comment, but there are approx THREE million (not seven) millionaires in the US as of 2010.

In fact, if you take into account the help that people get, there are actually more Americans living in poverty, according to the latest research from the US Census Bureau. A lot of British inequality experts I've spoken to, such as Danny Dorling, feel that the US poverty numbers are underestimates too - because they are stricter about what is or is not living in poverty.

Well, sorta, yes but no.

The numbers you are using are a measure of absolute poverty (three times a food budget in 1963 upgraded for general inflation). The new census numbers are measuring relative poverty (it is 30% of median income I think).

We really cannot compare the two numbers because they are measuring very different things: one is the number of people below a certain standard of living, the other is a measure of the inequality of the society.

I agree that if the US used the same poverty measure we do (less than 60% of median equivalised household income after housing costs, after all taxes and benefits) then reported poverty in the US would be higher than it is here or in many other countries: because the US is a more unequal country.

But that doesn't mean that we can compare absolute poverty before benefits with relative poverty after them.

This is really interesting but why did you base it on US numbers rather than UK?

I thought the Guardian was a British paper

This isn't really relevant for many of your readers

Here are my two big gripes.

The less-than-rich complain that the rich aren't paying their fair share. The people to whom this complaint is often directed will generally respond by saying that in real money terms, they're paying a lot more than any of the poor and that they've earned that money for themselves.

My first problem with this is that money, like everything else, is subject to diminishing returns. $100 does not carry the same amount of value to a billionaire as it does to someone below the poverty line. It's easy to say "no, the value is the same - $100 to each person", but you have to realize that money is basically just another commodity, if one whose value lies exclusively in commerce. Bigger numbers when looking at a bank account may feel uncomfortable, but there's a bit of personal perspective lacking there.

My second and rather larger problem with this is that the term "earned" is a very subjective one. If we were to define "earn" as "receive as a result of work done", then sure, you've earned it. But let's try a thought experiment. Company A pays its manager $200,000 for doing X amount of work. Company B pays its manager $400,000 for doing X amount of work. Has Company B's manager truly earned that extra $200,000, even though he's done the same amount of "real" work (which is admittedly difficult to quantify)?

If your answer is "yes", then your definition of "earning" must be very different from mine.

A very, very big chunk of the whole point of these complaints has to do with disproportionate rewards: the amount of people money get does not reflect what they have "earned", at least by a certain definition of the term.

Well yes and no. In fact the new Census report takes the following into account:

• The effect of federal programmes to reduce poverty, such as tax credits or food stamps
• The huge costs of medical care or the cost of transport in getting to and from work
• The changing make-up of families, more single parents and divorced households

Of course, if the whole thing was recorded transparently and internationally comparable, it would make things a little easier...

Yes but don't you think that $1000 is of significantly more value to the 99% than $4000 is to the 1%. The 1% lossing $4k will do not nothing to their day to day activities...they can still buy things they want and cover their needs. $1000 to the 99% would however have a significant impact on their daily needs not to mention their wants.

Please, please make this for the UK too!

@nickp123

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/13308933

To say that the 1% have actually lost more in money terms is both obvious and misses the point entirely.

To give an example. Of course if you are a billionaire and lose 1% that is going to be A LOT of money. No one is denying that. And if you are poor and lose 10% that is not going to be much money in comparison to what the billionaire lost from his 1%.

But anyone with any sense can see that it is much more unfair for the poor person to lose 10%, while the billionaire loses 1%. That 10% to the person person would mean a lot. Plus it is a 10% of what they own. The billionaire has only lost 1% of what they own. And that 1% won't matter much to them. So while yes it is more money being lost, this does not mean it is not more of an injustice for the poor person.

Schoolboy error.

I found the video very unclear