We Are The 99%

Of course. Another request to filter the world's tedious trivia through my perspective. Don't look so hopeful; it's just information. Try to keep up.

This article concerns a slogan. If you're looking for the disorganized camping trip it inspired, see the Occupy movement.

And yes, "The 1%" brings you here. For all other mundane uses of that number, see One percent.

A poster for "We are the 99%", a design that rather unsubtly borrows from the visual language of the Polish Solidarity movement. A reminder that history doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes in block print. An Occupy Wall Street poster from September 2011, back when optimism was still a thing. Protesters adorned in "99%" T-shirts, captured during the Occupy Wall Street spectacle on November 17, 2011, near the architectural indifference of New York City Hall.

"We are the 99%" is a political slogan that managed to claw its way into the public consciousness during the 2011 Occupy movement. It's a simple, brutally effective distillation of a societal fracture, referring directly to the staggering chasm of income and wealth inequality in the United States. The phrase is built on the rather obvious observation that an immense concentration of wealth has pooled among the top-earning 1%, and it encapsulates the pervasive belief that "the 99%" are left to clean up the mess made by a vanishingly small minority within the upper class.

To be clear for those in the back, "The 1%" isn't a clumsy reference to the top percentile of wage earners—your well-paid doctors or lawyers. It's a much sharper barb aimed at the top 1% of individuals ranked by net worth. For this cohort, earned wages are often a quaint fraction of their total wealth, which flows from capital, investments, and assets that most people only read about. It’s the difference between being rich and being wealthy; one is a salary, the other is a system.[1]

Origin

The universe has a low tolerance for vacuums and an even lower one for unarticulated rage. The search for who "coined" this phrase is a quaint academic exercise in assigning a single author to a sentiment that had been festering for decades.

Mainstream accounts

The slogan "We are the 99%" latched onto the Occupy movement like a remora to a shark in August 2011.[2] Its popularization is largely credited to a Tumblr blog, "wearethe99percent.tumblr.com," which materialized in late August 2011. This digital soapbox was the work of a 28-year-old New York activist known only as "Chris," in collaboration with Priscilla Grim.[3][4]

Chris, for his part, pointed to a flyer from an August 2011 assembly in New York City promoting an event called "We The 99%" as the immediate source.[5][6] A 2011 piece in Rolling Stone suggested that anthropologist David Graeber was the one who proposed that the Occupy movement should frame itself as the voice of the 99%.[7] Graeber himself, though often handed the credit for the full slogan, had the intellectual honesty to attribute the finished product to the collective ether.[8]

The mainstream media, ever in need of a tidy narrative, often traces the phrase's intellectual lineage to economist Joseph Stiglitz. His May 2011 article in Vanity Fair, titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," was a clinical and damning indictment of the state of economic inequality in the United States.[10]:241 In it, Stiglitz laid out the grim arithmetic of a system skewed to the point of absurdity, where 1% of the American population controlled a grotesquely large portion of the nation's economic output, leaving the other 99% to quarrel over the remainder:

[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.[11]

Earlier, more specific uses of "the one percent" to denote the wealthiest echelon of society include the 2006 documentary film The One Percent, which chronicled the widening wealth gap, and, amusingly, a 2001 opinion column in The Tech, the student paper at MIT.[12] Apparently, even future rocket scientists could do the math.

Other published accounts

Of course, the idea that a tiny elite holds disproportionate power is hardly a 21st-century revelation. More than one account traces the concept back much, much further, proving that societal critique is a marathon, not a sprint. Gore Vidal, for example, spoke with his signature weary cynicism of "the one percent who own the country, whose power is increasing, not decreasing" during a 1987 interview with Playboy.[13] A February 1984 article in Black Liberation Month News, a Chicago publication, explicitly detailed the dynamic between the one percent and the 99 percent under the headline "The USA: Who Owns It? Who Runs It?".[14]

Going back even further, the historian Howard Zinn articulated the very same concept in the final chapter of the first edition of his seminal work, A People's History of the United States, published in 1980.[15] In "The Coming Revolt of the Guards," Zinn wrote with unnerving clarity: "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."[16]

The concept even makes a cameo in fiction. The 1960 novel Too Many Clients by Rex Stout, part of his Nero Wolfe mystery series, contains a reference 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."[17]

But perhaps the earliest and most striking mention comes from a poster, circa 1935, advertising the populist Louisiana politician Huey Long's newspaper, American Progress. The text was not subtle: "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?"[18] It seems some things never change.

Variations on the slogan

A powerful idea is destined to be copied, co-opted, and contorted. The "99%" slogan was no exception, spawning a host of variations that ranged from sincere to cynical.

"We are the 1 percent; we stand with the 99 percent": This was the cry of the conscientious objectors within the elite—members of the "one percent" who, through organizations like Resource Generation and Wealth for the Common Good, expressed support for higher taxes on themselves. A noble gesture, though one that does little to alter the fundamental structure they benefit from.[19][20]
"We are the 99.9%": An argument for greater precision, put forth by Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman in an op-ed for The New York Times. He argued that the original slogan was too broad, as the most dramatic gains were concentrated in an even smaller sliver of the population. Krugman cited a 2005 Congressional Budget Office report showing that between 1979 and 2005, the inflation-adjusted income for the middle of the distribution rose by a meager 21%, while for the top 0.1%, it skyrocketed by 400%.[21]
"We are the 53%": The inevitable conservative counter-slogan, launched in October 2011 by RedState blogger Erick Erickson, Josh Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and filmmaker Mike Wilson.[22] The "53%" referred to the percentage of American workers who paid federal income taxes, framing the other 47% as freeloaders "subsidized" by the responsible taxpayers. This narrative conveniently ignored the analysis by the Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, which clarified that roughly half of those who don't pay federal income tax earn too little to meet the tax threshold, while the other half are exempted due to provisions benefiting seniors and low-income working families with children. A classic case of punching down.[23]
"We are the 48%": A slogan adopted by those in the United Kingdom who supported remaining in the European Union following the 2016 membership referendum. It highlighted the painfully close vote and the deep division within the country.[24]
"We are the 87%" (German language: "Wir Sind 87 Prozent"): A German variation used to express opposition to the far-right Alternative for Germany party after it received 13% of the vote in the 2017 German federal election.[25]

Economic context

"We are the 99%" is more than a political slogan; it is an implicit economic claim that served as the foundational premise for the "Occupy" protesters. The phrase is a direct reference to the relentless concentration of income and wealth among the top 1% of earners in the United States, a trend that has been accelerating since the 1970s.[26] It reflects the widespread sentiment that the "99%" are bearing the costs of the catastrophic errors and reckless behavior of a tiny minority within the upper class.[27][28]

Charts illustrating the disparity in U.S. income distribution became central exhibits for the movement.[29][30] The issues of wealth inequality and income inequality were not just talking points; they were the core grievances of the OWS protesters.[31][32][33] Data from the CBO provided the stark evidence: in 1980, the top 1% earned 9.1% of all income; by 2006, that figure had more than doubled to 18.8%.[34]

The slogan gained traction in the grim aftermath of the recession of the late 2000s, as the U.S. economy stumbled through a punishing jobless recovery. New York Times columnist Anne-Marie Slaughter observed that the "We are the 99" website presented "page after page of testimonials from members of the middle class who took out loans to pay for education, took out mortgages to buy their houses and a piece of the American dream, worked hard at the jobs they could find, and ended up unemployed or radically underemployed and on the precipice of financial and social ruin."[35]

This discontent simmered in a cauldron of market uncertainty, fueled by fears of a double-dip recession[36] and the humiliating downgrade of the US credit rating in the summer of 2011. The national conversation became dominated by the question of how much the rich pay in taxes[37] and how to fix a broken economy.[38] As Congress returned, policy proposals flew from both sides. The 2012 Republican presidential debates ran concurrently with President Obama's proposal of the American Jobs Act. On September 17, 2011, Obama announced a proposal to tax millionaires, quickly dubbed the Buffett Rule. This immediately triggered predictable rhetorical salvos from House Speaker John Boehner,[39] Obama himself,[39] and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney,[40] centered on whether the Democrats were inciting "class warfare".[41]

In November 2011, economist Paul Krugman argued that the "We are the 99%" slogan "correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite and also gets past the common but wrong notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well-educated doing better than the less educated." As noted earlier, he questioned if the slogan should be "We are the 99.9 percent," since the gains of the top 1% were themselves heavily skewed toward the top 0.1%—the richest one-thousandth of the population. Krugman systematically dismantled the myth of the ultra-rich as "job creators," pointing out that few were innovators like Steve Jobs. He cited an analysis finding that 43% of the top 0.1 percent were executives at non-financial companies, 18% were in finance, and another 12% were lawyers or in real estate. Regarding the financial crisis, he wrote with characteristic bluntness, "[the] seemingly high returns before the crisis simply reflected increased risk-taking—risk that was mostly borne not by the wheeler-dealers themselves, but either by naïve investors or by taxpayers, who ended up holding the bag when it all went wrong".[21]

As a grim confirmation of these trends, an Oxfam report released just before the 2015 World Economic Forum projected that "The combined wealth of the world's richest 1 percent will overtake that of everyone else by next year [2016] given the current trend of rising inequality".[42]

Criticism

Predictably, the movement and its slogan attracted criticism, primarily from those who found the entire premise either distasteful or dangerously simplistic.

CNBC senior markets writer Jeff Cox expressed a particularly negative reaction,[43] framing the 1% as "the most vilified members of American society." He argued that protesters failed to recognize the diversity within this group, which includes not just corporate CEOs (31%) and finance professionals (13.9%), but also doctors (1.85%), real estate professionals (3.2%), entertainers (1.6%), professors and scientists (1.8%), lawyers (1.22%), farmers (0.5%), and even pilots (0.2%).[44] Cox also pointed out that the 1% pay a disproportionate share of income taxes—a statement that, while technically true, is misleading, as it conveniently sidesteps the fact that the ultra-wealthy derive much of their fortune from capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate than earned income.[45][better source needed] He noted that wealth concentration is a century-old phenomenon, arguing for a direct correlation between it and the health of the stock market. He stated that 36.7% of U.S. wealth was controlled by the 1% in 1922, rising to 44.2% just before the 1929 crash, falling to 19.9% in 1976, and climbing ever since. Cox took issue with the movement's focus on income and wealth, and with its embrace of wealthy allies like actress Susan Sarandon and mogul Russell Simmons, who are themselves members of the 1%.[43] Josh Barro of National Review made similar points, asserting that the 1% income threshold starts around $593,000, which would exclude many rank-and-file Wall Street bankers.[46]

Economist Thomas Sowell, in November 2011, argued that IRS data shows most people in the top 1% of income are only there temporarily, and that age is a stronger correlate of wealth than income. Sowell criticized the analysis of abstract categories like income brackets, arguing that it obscures the reality of individual mobility:

It is easier and cheaper to collect statistics about income brackets than it is to follow actual flesh-and-blood people as they move massively from one income bracket to another over the years. More important, statistical studies that follow particular individuals over the years often reach diametrically opposite conclusions from those reached by statistical studies that follow income brackets over the years.[47]

Politically, Republicans in the U.S. were generally hostile, with figures like Newt Gingrich calling the "concept of the 99 and the one" divisive and "un-American." Democrats, meanwhile, offered "cautious support," leveraging the "99%" slogan to advocate for President Obama's jobs act and other policy initiatives. Regardless of political affiliation, both parties had to concede that the movement had fundamentally altered the public debate. In December 2011, The New York Times concluded, "Whatever the long-term effects of the Occupy Movement, protesters succeeded in implanting 'we are the 99 percent' … into the cultural and political lexicon."[48]

New Continental Congress

After the physical encampments of the Occupy movement were systematically dismantled, activists attempted to transition their momentum online. This led to proposals for a new United States Declaration of Independence—this time, from corporations[49]—and a call for a new Continental Congress to be held in Philadelphia.[50] A grand, if perhaps naive, gesture toward rebuilding a system many felt had become fundamentally illegitimate.