1: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-ho...
1% is like 80 million people. That could translate to around 10% of the US. And the names of those 10% change as people earn more or less through their lives.
There is a middle ground between people making $20 an hour and business tycoons. Policies that help big business might not trickle down to people stocking shelves, but they often advantage middle class people.
For example, the US is an excellent place for software engineers. There are far more of them and they make far higher salaries than their European counterparts. Is it unreasonable to believe that American policies that empower big tech companies also benefit a developer making $250k at Google, even though he does not own the company?
What if policies that benefit the top 1% did, in fact, trickle down to the top 30% of Americans, at the expense of the bottom 70%? What if this bloc of people was organized enough to win elections and control politics without relying on people delusionally voting against their own interests?
In many cases, this is true. Tesla, for example, paid their early factory workers with stock in the company. As a result, many of the factory workers who worked on the Model 3 assembly line are now millionaires.
The US's relatively lax taxation/regulation on equity compensation is one of the reasons why tech workers in the US get paid so much more. Since they're actually literally part owners of the company, this might explain why they're usually more productive as well.