The share of total income collected by the top 1% of Australia’s income earners has been trending upwards since the 1980s. It is now about 9% of total income. How concerned should we be about this? To some extent it depends on fluidity of membership of the top 1% (which in Australia means earning a pretax income of at least A$246,000). If someone is part of the 1% this year but not last year, this would suggest income inequality is a fact of life but at least we still have social mobility: people have good and bad years, with the top 1% largely comprising people who happen to be having a good year. It won’t bother the other 99% of us so much. But if the top 1% comprises the same people every year, we will be more concerned about an entrenched elite moving ever further away from the rest of us.

Source: Our top 1% of income earners is an increasingly entrenched elite