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Comment by eigen | Hacker News Reader

> The top 1% earned an average of $515,371 while the annual income for the average taxpayer was $41,740.

> The minimum net worth of the top 1% was roughly $10.4 million, according to Forbes. The top 10%, on the other hand, has a net worth of about $1.2 million.

[https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...]

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The discrepancy between $10.4 million net worth and $515k income (which I assume includes gains) confused me for a moment, until I realized that the $10.4 million figure likely includes at least one large non-income-producing piece of real-estate.

Most of these estimates exclude primary residence or the primary residence isn't a huge portion anyway.

The top 1% net worth and the top 1% income are different things, and I’m pretty sure the linked source is only talking about the net worth group (though it’s not exactly clear). Net worth is not necessarily linked to your income in any given year, so I don’t think it’s especially surprising that the income for that group averages out to around 5% of their net worth.

> The top 1% net worth and the top 1% income are different things,

Obviously. But if the figure is exclusive of their primary residence their return on investments isn't especially impressive-- e.g. it's sub index fund rates even assuming they have no other income than gains. :)

I would presume this is taxable income, which would be different from gross return on investment in any given year (depending on how you plan your taxable events). The other thing to consider is that index funds are essentially the best performing strategy over any significant period of time. For people who derive a significant portion of their income from investment returns, you’d expect some of them would have their income to trending closer towards the risk free rate than average market returns. Index fund returns would be the upper bound for a lot of people in this group.

For example, I think it contradicts the narrative implied by many complaints about the rules around accredited investors and eligible contract participants and such that "the rich" benefit from important investment opportunities that are denied to less wealthy. It makes a case that joe-everyman can toss money into an index fund and out perform the wealthy.

I wouldn't expect 'given' year effects to be relevant, as it's averaging over a large number of people. Taxable is a better argument, since as you reach the highest marginal tax rates there is a lot of reasons to find ways to indefinitely defer paying taxes (e.g. die with it and pass it with stepped up cost basis).

These numbers loosely correspond with the 4% rule for gains.

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