The majority of capital income flows not to the super-rich, but rather to the pensions of the upper-middle-class.
Also, most income earned by the top 1% of income earners is employment income; many professionals (doctors / dentists / engineers / lawyers / accountants) fall into that top 1% of incomes. The working-age individuals whose income is primarily from capital are generally in the top 0.1%.
> Also, most income earned by the top 1% of income earners is employment income; many professionals (doctors / dentists / engineers / lawyers / accountants) fall into that top 1% of incomes.
I am not American and I don't know if doctors and lawyers are usually considered 1 percenters, but Wikipedia says "Data on the minimum yearly income to be considered among the 1% vary per source, ranging from about $500,000 to $1.3 million."[1] It is my understanding that half a million dollar is not a common engineer or doctor income, I am not sure most income earned by 1 percenters is employment income.
You're right that the majority of capital income does not go to the super-rich, however they do get a very large slice of the pie nonetheless:
> In 2015, according to PSZ, the richest 1% of people in America received 20.2% of all the income in the nation. Ten points of that 20.2% came from equity income, net interest, housing rents, and the capital component of mixed income. Which is to say, 10% of all national income is paid out to the 1% as capital income.
> Even if you exclude the capital component of mixed income (since it is connected to work even if the income is not from labor) and housing rents (since these are imputed to homeowners rather than paid to them as cash), that still means that, from equity income and interest alone, the top 1% receives 7.5% of the national income without having to work for it. Put another way: the average person in the top 1% receives a UBI equal to 7.5 times the average income in the country.
That last line is key. Even if most of the income of the 1% is not passive, they still receive a massive amount of passive income.
I'm pretty sure it's actually a typo. Approximately 30% of income is capital income, but that includes dividends and interest payments, not just capital gains.
