In mid-2011, UC-Santa Cruz sociology professor G. William Domhoff published a great article by an anonymous investment manager on where his high-net-worth clients got all that money. Spoiler: Wall Street. You can check it out at WhoRulesAmerica.net.
The article on the wealth and income of the 1% has been updated for 2014, and guess what, the news isn't too good ...
The author says:
"Wealth and income are streaming to the very top of the system and, particularly, to those who are direct or indirect beneficiaries of the financial industry. Professionals and workers have slipped further behind."
Together, these two articles illustrate the widening gulf within the 1% between people who derive their income and wealth from non-finance occupations, including the author's many well-to-do physician clients, and those in the financial industry. I found this fact particularly interesting:
"According to the Census Bureau, the official U.S. Gini coefficient — a measure of income inequality — was 46.9 in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available. It rises to 57.4 if capital gains are included, and capital gains primarily boost the incomes of the rich and very rich. Depending upon how income is defined, the US Gini varies from 37.0 (OECD) to 57.4 (Fed data). The CIA Factbook ranks the US as the 42nd most unequal country in the world, with a Gini of 45, and the OECD ranks it the 26th most unequal out of 33 developed countries. ..."
I don't know what including capital gains would do to Gini figures for other countries; still, it seems significant that including them makes such a huge difference in ours.