The “Rich Get Richer” Myth

by | Jun 4, 2023

Some 94 percent of Americans who reach “top 1 percent” income status will enjoy it for only a single year. Approximately 99 percent will lose their “top 1 percent” status within a decade.

Now consider the top 400 U.S. income-earners—a far more exclusive club than the top 1 percent. Between 1992 and 2013, 72 percent of the top 400 retained that title for no more than a year. Over 97 percent retained it for no more than a decade.

– Chelsea Follett, High Turnover Among America’s Rich

About Keith Knight

Keith Knight is Managing Editor at the Libertarian Institute, host of the Don't Tread on Anyone podcast and editor of The Voluntaryist Handbook: A Collection of Essays, Excerpts, and Quotes.

Our Books

latest book lineup.

Related Articles

Related

Ban “Ethnic Cleansing”

I propose that we defenders of individual rights stop using the term ethnic cleansing. Why? Because it is the sort of euphemism bad people would use to disguise what they are doing when they expel or annihilate large numbers of people viewed as members of the wrong...

read more

The Eternal Panopticon: The State as Predator

Lizard Farmer did an excellent synopsis of how the state stalks its prey. The observations are older but still germane. If London had this technology in 1770, America would not have been born and Paul Revere, the Committees of Correspondence and his colleagues would...

read more