We are the 99% is a political slogan widely used and coined during the 2011 Occupy movement.

see Occupy movement. "The 1%" redirects here. For other uses, see One percent. We are the 99% is a political slogan widely used and coined during the 2011 Occupy movement. The phrase directly refers to the income and wealth inequality in the United States, with a concentration of wealth among the top-earning 1%. It reflects an opinion that "the 99%" are paying the price for the mistakes of a tiny minority within the upper class.

"We are the 99%" Occupy Wall Street Poster, September 2011

Protesters with the "99%" T-shirts at Occupy Wall Street on November 17, 2011 near the New York City Hall.

99% versus 1% According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of 2019, the average wage of the top 1% was $758,434.[1] However, the 1% is not necessarily a reference to top 1% of wage earners, but a reference to the top 1% of individuals by net worth, whose earned wages are only a fraction of their total sources of wealth.[2]

accounts Edit The slogan "We are the 99%" became a unifying slogan of the Occupy movement in August 2011[3] after a Tumblr blog "wearethe99percent.tumblr.com" was launched in late August 2011 by a 28-year-old New York activist going by the name of "Chris" together with Priscilla Grim.[4][5]

Chris credited an August 2011 flyer for the NYC assembly "We The 99%" for the term.[6][7] A 2011 Rolling Stone article attributed to anthropologist David Graeber the suggestion that the Occupy movement represented the 99%.[8] Graeber was sometimes credited with the slogan "We are the 99%" but attributed the full version to others.[9]

Joseph Stiglitz

Graph by sociologist Lane Kenworthy showing changes in real US incomes in top 1%, middle 60%, and bottom 20% from 1979 through 2007, tracking household income but not individual incomes.[10] Mainstream media sources trace the origin of the phrase to economist Joseph Stiglitz's May 2011 article "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" in Vanity Fair, in which he was criticizing the economic inequality present in the United States.[11]: 241  In the article Stiglitz spoke of the damaging impact of economic inequality involving 1% of the U.S. population owning a large portion of economic wealth in the country, while 99% of the population hold much less economic wealth than the richest 1%:

[I]n our democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income … In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1% control 40% … [as a result] the top 1% have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99% live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1% eventually do learn. Too late.[12] Earlier uses of the term "the one percent" to refer to the wealthiest people in society include the 2006 documentary The One Percent (film) about the growing wealth gap between the wealthy elite compared to the overall population, and a 2001 opinion column in the MIT student newspaper The Tech (newspaper).[13]

Other published accounts Edit More than one publication dates the concept back much further. For instance, Gore Vidal spoke of "the one percent who own the country, whose power is increasing, not decreasing" in a 1987 interview with Playboy.[14] The one percent and the 99 percent were explained in a February 1984 article titled "The USA: Who Owns It? Who Runs It?" in Black Liberation Month News, published in Chicago and available online as of 2020.[15]

Even further back, historian Howard Zinn used this concept in "The Coming Revolt of the Guards", the final chapter in the first edition of his book A People's History of the United States published in 1980.[16] "I am taking the liberty of uniting those 99 percent as 'the people'. I have been writing a history that attempts to represent their submerged, deflected, common interest. To emphasize the commonality of the 99 percent, to declare deep enmity of interest with the 1 percent, is to do exactly what the governments of the United States, and the wealthy elite allied to them—from the Founding Fathers to now—have tried their best to prevent."[17]

The 1960 novel Too Many Clients by Rex Stout, part of the Nero Wolfe mystery series, refers to the top two percent: "I know a chairman of the board of a billion-dollar corporation, one of the 2 per cent, [sic] who never gets his shoes shined and shaves three times a week."[18]

The first mention of the concept may very well be found in a poster (circa 1935) advertising the newspaper created by the populist Louisiana politician Huey Long called The American Progress. The second paragraph mentioned the one percent and the ninety-nine percent: "With 1% of our people owning nearly twice as much as all the other 99%, how is a country ever to have permanent progress unless there is a correction of this evil?"[19]

Variations on the slogan Edit "We are the 1 percent; we stand with the 99 percent": by members of the "one percent" who wish to express their support for higher taxes, such as nonprofit organizations Resource Generation and Wealth for the Common Good.[20][21] "We are the 99.9%": by Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman in an op-ed in The New York Times arguing that the original slogan sets the bar too low when considering recent changes in distribution of income. In particular, Krugman cited a 2005 Congressional Budget Office report indicating that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income for the middle of the income distribution rose 21%, while for the top 0.1% it rose by 400%.[22] "We are the 53%": by conservative RedState blogger Erick Erickson along with Josh Treviño, communications director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and filmmaker Mike Wilson[23] launched in October 2011, in response to the 99% slogan. Erikson referred to the 53% of American workers who pay federal income taxes, and criticizing the 47% of workers who do not pay federal income tax for what Erikson describes as being "subsidized" by those who pay taxes. The Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution both reported that roughly half of the workers who do not pay Federal income tax earn below the tax threshold while the other half pay no income tax due to "provisions that benefit senior citizens and low-income working families with children."[24]

"We are the 48%": by those who supported the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union after the 2016 referendum on membership, highlighting the relatively even split between supporters of remaining in and withdrawing from the EU.[25] "We are the 87%" (German language: "Wir Sind 87 Prozent"): by the German people who did not vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany party in the 2017 German federal election.[26]