since "the 1%" has emerged in our cultural discourse as a clumsy signifier of the elite, the exceptionally-privileged, exceptionally-influential rich, it has come to feature regularly across the spectrum of public discourse, from moderate reformist rhetoric to extremist screed, frequently appearing -- among the works of the blog and bile class -- in proximity to notions of government malfeasance and invocations of "revolution."
i have issues with "the 1%", that i am not, now, prepared to attempt to exhaustively examine, but i think it is imprecise and, usually, does not describe whom we're attempting, by its use, to indicate -- particularly so when we use ranting against the systemic inequities represented by grotesque concentration of the control of value as a springboard for calls for overthrow of the government, which strikes me as akin to using complaints about the carpenter as a springboard for calls to overthrow the hammer.
unless the revolution being called for is the international revolution of the proletariat against the masters of capital, in which case, well, they seem to have left out several steps and, i would hope, will try to be more clear about that. (but from apparent tea-partiers and apparent occupyists alike it sounds like basic antigovernment cant).
one percent of american natural persons would be about 3.13 million individuals (less almost one-quarter, to exclude persons younger than 18 years). i suspect that a vanishing few civil servants number among the top percentile of american natural persons who control wealth.
a little bit of research on the question led me quickly to jon bajika, adam cole and bradley heim's april 2012 "summary statistics on the occupations of taxpayers in the top percentile of the national income distribution," which shows that taxpayers in occupations categorized as "government, teachers, social services" have made up from five- to nine-tenths of a percent of "primary taxpayers" in the "top one percent of the distribution of income (excluding capital gains)", and six-tenths to one percent of top one percent taxpayers including capital gains, over the period from 1979 to 2005.
for the same period, 4 to 5.7% of "tax units" in the top one percent of distribution of income (excluding capital gains) had spouses in occupations categorized as "government, teachers, social services."
(this washingtonpost blog from 2011 calculates the household annual income of "the 1%" as starting at $645,195 in 2010. certainly there is a great deal of thoughtful research available to the person with the time to search and winnow for it, and great deal more underway. )
i believe that this all addresses the income of natural persons in the united states.
among american natural persons, the overthrow of the government -- "the revolution" -- would directly affect from one to six percent of the people making up that terrible percentile, an insignificant minority. "but capital", "but contracts", you may be saying, "we would disrupt all of finance!", and, yes, maybe the overthrow of the government would be inconvenient, messy or expensive for the remaining 95% of that percentile, who were not directly affected by the coup or whatever, but they'd still have the armed private security staff, the walled compounds, the stocked larders, the gold, the gasoline and the levers of productive industry notwithstanding some short term questions about the valuation of one particular national currency and certain loan guarantees.
but it would be more expensive for most of the actual 99% "we," who would starve and turn on one another long before we could sink our teeth into the soft, succulent flesh of the 1% (& of whom, anyway, there would not be enough to actually feed we, the 99%. . .
(also, i wonder about that guy from the second percentile sitting down next to that guy from the ninety-eighth percentile at the communal table and sharing, in victorious camaraderie, the rack of one-percenter ribs, or, more likely, a share of thin broth,
(and: will people from the ninety-third percentile even come to that barbecue? people from the eighty-seventh? the seventy-ninth percentile?
(would you, dear reader, wherever in that scale you would calculate you place, risk going near that barbecue . . . unless you were very, desperately hungry, or, were, yourself, already a warlord?
(i can totally see the people of the 98th percentile sending their private armies out to jack that feast).
anyway, bajika, cole and heim's income figures are interesting.
total wealth, net wealth of natural persons, in the united states and worldwide, would also be interesting. finally: wealth and income of legal persons -- to expand candidates to include the actual super- or para-human institutions with the rights of persons along with natural persons -- in the u.s. and worldwide.
i think that we would rapidly see that government is not the foremost problem.
government inaction, as in apparently electing to not zealously enforce certain laws at certain times for certain parties, has, admittedly, contributed, and government action has, admittedly, appeared at times to make things worse, or at best no better, but government itself, is not really appropriately signified by "the 1%".
the question of legal persons is addressed, to some degree, in vitali, glattfelder and battiston's excellent and provocative "the network of global corporate control", noting, in passing, that "governments and natural persons are only featured further down the list" of economic actors controlling wealth, than the core of transnational corporations incestuously linked by networks of ownership and (corporate) control that their paper addresses. (and see glattfelder ted talk, which, alas, does not really convey the terror of the paper's analysis, but is a good primer on the theory and method).
also interesting would be a dossier of bios of persons who have had seats on the boards or in the executive management of the firms of the vitali core (and two-degree "contact chaining," to include members of the boards of all the other associations, charities and businesses on which those core persons have served, and members of all other boards, associations and charities of those persons), including each person's percentile for income and wealth in their native jurisdictions and worldwide.
just to get a sense of the lay of the landscape.
i will say this: it seems far easier (to my imagination) to topple a government than to wrest control of wealth from the elite; and easier (though not much) to imagine wresting control of the wealth from the elite with use of a government than without the use of a government. of course, that would, first, call for wresting control of government from the elite (where it now comfortably, securely rests), which is marginally less implausible, or creating some other effective organization in its place.
i also suspect that the contemptible elite span a broader range of percentiles than just that one. and, of course, we, their legion underlings of whatever capacity, are spread normatively across the scale, a spray of insignificant stars.