by James McGirk
When I heard the Federal Bureau of Investigation might have figured out the identity of seventies skyjacker D.B. Cooper I was really upset. Who among us hasn’t felt a smidge of sympathy for the outlaw? Well into my thirties, having finally completed my education and finding myself without short-term goals to strive for, a swelling waistline, and an unremarkable life unspooling before me, I can’t help but feel attracted to a life fueled by passion and brightened with sparks of decisive action, like leaping out the back of a Boeing 727 into a lightning storm.
Actual crime is out of the question. I don’t want to hurt anybody, and my muscles have atrophied to the point were the thought of taking real life action is ludicrous, but as the dudgeon of white-collar work corrodes my body and seeps into my interior life I wonder whether there might be a way to fight back. Could living a life devoted to darkness and negativity act as a tonic, at least until the demon flows of testosterone ebb away?
What pushed me over the edge was reading “An Investment Manager’s View on the Top 1%,” an anonymous and possibly apocryphal investment manager’s account of his wealthy clients, written for the University of California Santa Cruz’s Who Rules America blog. In the United States an increasingly disproportionate fraction of the country’s wealth has accumulated in the richest sectors of society. The disparity itself wasn’t news to me, but I had never really considered what was inside of that top one percent.
Before reading the article, reaching that top percentile seemed like a feasible goal to me. I took it for granted that because I have degrees from snooty schools (granted both are in Writing, but I could always go back for a JD), reaching the highest echelons of society, i.e. making the required annual salary of $300K and accumulating a net worth of $1.2mm, seemed like realistic option to me. With a few years of hard work and a nice suit I thought access to the levers of society could be mine.
Turns out the top percentile is more spike than a plateau. The bottom half “largely include[s] physicians, attorneys, upper middle management, and small business people who have done well,” says the anonymous investment manager. “Most of those in the bottom half…lack power and global flexibility and are essentially well-compensated workhorses for the top 0.5%, just like the bottom 99%.”