How could there possibly be so many jobs that offer that kind of income. Or maybe it's that most jobs offering high income have short tenure..
Confiscating the assets of the 1% to create economic prosperity has been tried a few times before, and usually turns out horribly in ten years. You've removed the people who risk their own money from society, and replaced it with only assest allocation by bureaucrats.
Plus, as soon as you removed the one percent, then you have a new one percent.
See Dekulakization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization
As much as many of the 1% don't deserve it... A lot of them have that much money for a reason. The ones I knew, the "new money", were generally extremely intelligent and hard working before they made their millions. A lot of them are on permanent vacation now but if all of us had that much brains, charm, and grit it would be a lot easier to get rich.
Don't forget that sometimes luck is a big part of the reason why some of those people are successful.
With that, you can then reduce the taxes for the lower economic classes, and fund better infrastructure and education.
It looks like this is the source for the claims: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
This is what the paper says: "Total family income is the measuring stick used to determine levels of affluence achieved. This is defined as taxable income of head of household and spouse, taxable income of other family members of the household, and transfer income of head, spouse, and others."
Based on what I know about US tax, you don't have to pay taxes on the first $500k in gains for your primary house (if married), and inheritances usually aren't considered taxable income.
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/capital-gains-and-your... https://www.hrblock.com/get-answers/taxes/income/is-your-inh...