John Oliver Mocks Ubertarians
Whenever the smug and privileged gather to congratulate themselves, as they did in San Francisco this week, it’s always fun to see the hired court jester’s barbs land a bit close to home. A few White House Correspondents’ Dinners ago, Stephen Colbert’s tour de force in causing audience discomfort became legendary along these lines.
And so it was Monday night in the epicenter of tech industry wealth and one-percentiness. Pointing out the unlikely feat of gentrifying what had already been a ridiculously expensive city to begin with, Oliver reminded the well-heeled digerati at Tech Crunch’s “Crunchies” awards that they’re no longer the scrappy underdogs, but had instead “pissed off an entire city.” Enjoy.
The income level at the 99th percentile is a bit over $500,000 (or it was 3 years ago, but I don’t know how much it’s gone up since then).
The usual recommendation for housing cost is about 35% of your income. Using the $3,999/month rent example from the story, that means the guy is probably making less than about $133,000/year.
That’s not peanuts, but it “only” puts him in the high-80th percentile or so.
San Francisco technology workers are well paid, but they are not “one percenters,” except, of course, for the heads of the companies that make it big.
The top 1% earns $5,000,000 or more.
However, if you measure the net worth of the top 1% it is $8,400,000.00
At least that was what was written in January 2012. I imagine it’s still larger now.