| | Merlin,
Also, if you follow the individuals through time and ask:
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Of the so-called "super-rich", how many unfortunately got their wages cut in half (or by more than half) within just 10 short years?
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The answer is 59% of those who started off at the top 0.01% and 52% of those who started off at the top 0.1%. The quote for this is found directly above Table 5 (which displays the fact):
... 59 percent of taxpayers in the top 0.01 percent experienced declines in real income of at least 50 percent. Similarly, 52% of those in the top 0.1 percent, but below the top 0.01 percent, experienced income declines of at least 50 percent. As you said, historically, the people at the top have kept changing. Of course, this would become less true under the crony-capitalism currently in full practice by Pres. Obama (GE, GM, Solyndra, etc) and formerly in practice, to a somewhat lesser extent, by Pres. GW Bush (Enron, Halliburton, etc). Once a crony, always a crony -- if you toe the party line or continue to "carry the water" for the current administration.
The last 2 presidents, but especially Obama, have done so much to eradicate income mobility in the United States -- making us into some kind of crustified, European-style "stagna-conomy."
Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/19, 1:36pm)
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Despite the rise in the income of the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers as a statistical category, both absolutely and relative to the incomes in other categories, as flesh-and-blood human beings those individuals who were in that category initially had their incomes actually fall by a whopping 50 percent between 1996 and 2005. 
