no, I am not writing about those with incomes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Instead I want to remind people of two other groups of people who represent 1% or less of the population of the United States.
1) those who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since 9-11. As of Veterans Day 2011, according to this ABC news story, that number was 2,333,972. Even with the additional who have served in the 16 months since, that number remains well below 3 million, and thus well below 1% who have borne the direct costs of the stupidity of the Bush administration's military policies
2) those who teach in public k-12 schools, which according to this table from the Census Bureau was in 2009 3,167,000, or just about 1% of our total population.
Two very important roles.
Neither properly respected the way they should be.
I fell in the latter category until I retired.
Make of this what you will. As a teacher I know that 1% of us cannot fix the problems of society with which students arrive at our schools. As a former Marine I know that less than 1% of us should not be required to bear the burdens we imposed through badly executed wars of choice.
Not when the other 1% continues to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and fails to pay appropriately for the support of the governments at all levels which make their wealth possible.