Blog:

99% in connection with the world wide occupy movement is everywhere on the internet, CNN, Al Jazeera English, bulk emails requesting donations etc. etc. It is about the fact that the 99% majority of the people needs to share only 5% of the wealth in the USA. Consequently the Top 1% elite has 95% of the money in hand. “We are the 99%!” [1] Has become the slogan and the main reason for the occupy movement. I heard it first in the 2009 Michael Moore film Capitalism: A Love Story and consequently I regard that as the origin. [2] It is a classical conspiracy theory and it is mobilizing the masses. I would like to call it the “1% plutonomy” conspiracy, a kind of modern times “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” from the 2^nd world war. As Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, seems to have said: “The bigger the lie the more people will believe it!” [3] Its unclear who concocted this false fact, from what kind of statistical data or media manipulation it originates and who is to blame. I think even an intelligent and creative man like Michael Moore might have been mislead.

It remains a matter of debate whether the (small) difference in the [4][5][6] sources are significant because they render a clear picture. It takes no mathematical genius to figure out that the 1% – 95% cannot be true. It is unfortunate that this casts a blemish on the sometimes educational and certainly amusing film Capitalism: A Love Story. In a recent CNBC interview Michael Moore also said that the 400 richest US-people combined have more wealth than 150 million poorest US-citizens combined. [7] I think that we also have to take this “fact” with a grain of salt, because we do not know from what kind of statistical research it comes from since no scientific reference is given. I am tempted to check this with the Pareto power law [8], feeding it the numbers in this blog, calculate Top 400 and Bottom 150 million wealth, and then check Michael Moore’s claim, but opponents could always say that the "measured" Michael Moore values are an anomaly or a fluke deviation from normal Pareto behavior. To check this properly one would need hard statistical and scientfic data.

By the way: If the 2011 numbers from Wikipedia [6] are correct, and they certainly come from the occupy movement page, which must have made by adepts and followers, than the 99% majority still has a 63% major part of the money and not 5%!

As a matter of fact the 20% – 84% relation is a genuine example of the approximate 20% – 80% rule (of thumb) or in other words Pareto Principle. [9] Which by its universal nature I regard as God given. The spontaneous formation of hierarchies in human communities based on differences in physical and mental capacities will always spontaneously form this more or less 20% – 80% distribution. I personally believe that even in the old communistic USSR: 20% of the people had about 80% of the privileges (i.e. a form of communistic wealth in natura). You feel lucky when your skills brings you to the Top 20% and it feels like injustice when you only have the skills for the Bottom 80%. But this is all in the game and part of the American Dream and the USSR Nightmare.

But make no mistake: After every (bloody) revolution, because of this 20% – 80% inequality, initiated by a conspiracy theory, which by definition and purpose are never true, a new 20% – 80% distribution is formed sooner or later, and at most a hierarchy reset (shuffle around) was achieved. The world will not have become any better or more equal and just!