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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Key phrase: The top-earning 10% of men in the U.S. labor market.

So nowhere near the top 10% of income earners. The real top earners don't do much traditional "work", instead earning money thorough investment and/or family income streams. I would also quibble with the definition of "work", as many activities of top earners would not be considered work by the majority of people. I've been to my fair share of "conferences" that we attendees considered work but looked very much like vacation time to the people serving us drinks at the bar.

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I think the number of top earners that get their money from investments isn’t a very significant number compared to the top earners via labor. They might make a large percentage of the money in that top 10%, but there aren’t nearly as many of them.

Only if you remove real estate income. A great many of the top earners (say 100-200K/year) are pumping their money into property via mortgages on their houses. After say 30 years of work, what percentage of their net wealth will be from salary and how much from property appreciation? Then in their 30+ year retirement, how much will come from investments stemming from that original salary?

100-200k people a year is still a small fraction of top earners. You're looking at millions in the top 10% of earners.

Earned income excludes purely passive investment like capital gains. By defining it that way, you can attack "top earners" like doctors, lawyers, and SWEs without attacking the people who really own the country.

Conferences are a bad sample because they really are vacations. But it's not representative of how a professional works. My buddy is a neurologist who works 70 hours a week at a hospital. 2 times a year he goes on one of those boondoggles, but the other 50 weeks a year he's spending a lot of time in the ICU.

It's hard to lump high earners into one bucket. There are salesmen and some executives who probably work 30 hours a week at worst. And there are lawyers and IBankers who work 60 on a good week.

This is a myth, the 90th percentile income earner for men isn’t that high of a salary (iirc around 135k$) and most successful tech and finance careers would fall into that category.

For better or worse the passively rich now inhabit the 97th+ percentiles (probably worse if you look at the exponential increase in income above 90th)

This is true.

If you earn $85,000 and are 25-30, you're in the top 15% of earners in that age bracket in the U.S., iirc.

Your quibble is addressed via the word “earning.” Money made via investment or inheritance is unearned.

>> Money made via investment or inheritance is unearned.

I think a great many startup founders might feel that their stock-related income is "earned", especially those who don't pay themselves much of a salary in early years. And every actor/singer/songwriter earning passive income from past artistic works. So too every homeowner or pensioner taking money without actually clocking in on a factory floor. I don't have the numbers, but it may be that the majority of income in the US comes from "investment" or other passive not-earned means.

> I don't have the numbers, but it may be that the majority of income in the US comes from "investment" or other passive not-earned means.

I'm curious to see your numbers, because I can't imagine how this could possibly be the case. I think you may be living in a bubble.

I wonder even how many of these top non-income earners get their money from inheritance rather than your examples of startups and artists.

Earnings from inheritance have almost certainly dropped as a percentage of total income. Inheritance is generational. The huge number of millionaires and billionaires created in the last thirty years haven't had time to die and leave that money to their kids. A few million inherited 40 years ago, mostly in family real estate, is now worth 100s of millions. But that new money probably hasn't yet passed to the next generation. All those tech entrepreneurs (Musk, Gates etc) are also still alive, their money not yet fully inherited by anyone.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0dee8dce-en/index.html?i...

Looks like about 60% of wealth in the US is inherited, and the proportion has been climbing.

Do we have to constantly remind people here that wealth != income? Inheritances are wealth. They might have grown in income terms simply because interest rates are on a secular decline (recent short-term raises notwithstanding) and low interest rates boost the value of assets. Comparing wealth stocks and income flows makes little sense in general.

I would say were on a secular decline rather than are. Pre-Covid some yields were nominally negative and approaching real zero. There was very little left for them to fall before hitting the carrying cost of cash.

Inherited wealth is different than income. If I inherit a million dollar house, then sit on it for twenty years until it is a 10-million dollar house, I have 10-milion in inherited wealth but only 1m of "income" (IRS taxable income). The next 9 of income will only come if/when I sell the house. So comparisons between inherited wealth and actual income across decades are very very tricky.

> I think a great many startup founders might feel that their stock-related income is "earned"

Perhaps you know this, but just in case and for others, in the US there is a legal distinction between earned and unearned income in relation to taxes. The post you quoted was using the terms in this sense.

I think the self-employed would not be considered as being part of the employment market. So you could in fact be earning plenty of money through your work without this article applying directly to you.

AFAIK they're considered as part of the employed market as soon as they draw money from their incorporations as income

> High-earning men in the 25-to-39 age range who could be described as “workaholics” were pulling back

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