Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff
New York Times News Service

POINT, New York – Adam Katz is happy to talk to reporters when he is promoting his business, a charter flight company based on Long Island called Talon Air.

But when the subject was his position as one of America’s top earners, he balked. Seated at a desk fashioned from a jet fuel cell, wearing a button-down shirt with the company logo, he considered the public relations benefits and found them lacking: “It’s not very popular to be in the 1 per cent these days, is it?”

A few months ago, Katz was just a successful businessman with five children, an US$8 million home, a family real estate company in Manhattan and his passion, 10-year-old Talon Air.

Now, the colossal gap between the very rich and everyone else – the 1 per cent versus the 99 per cent – has become a rallying point in the United States and abroad, and Katz has found himself on the wrong end of a new paradigm.

As a member of the 1 per cent, he is part of a club whose name conjures images of Wall Street bosses who are chauffeured from manse to Manhattan and fat cats who have armies of lobbyists at the ready.

But in reality it is a far larger and more varied group, one that includes podiatrists and actuaries, executives and entrepreneurs, the self-made and the silver spoon set. They are clustered not just in New York and Los Angeles, but also in Denver and Dallas. The range of wealth in the 1 per cent is vast – from households that bring in US$380,000 a year, according to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates.

The top 1 per cent of earners in a given year receives just under a fifth of the country’s pretax income, about double their share from 30 years ago. They pay just over a fourth of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2007, they accounted for about 30 per cent of philanthropic giving, according to Federal Reserve data. They received 22 per cent of their income from capital gains, compared with 2 per cent for everybody else.

Still, they are not necessarily the idle rich. Katz, who sometimes commutes by amphibious plane and sometimes carries luggage for Talon Air passengers, likes to say he works “26/9.”

Most 1 per centers were born with socioeconomic advantages, which helps explain why the 1 per cent is more likely than other Americans to have jobs, according to census data. They also work longer hours, being three times more likely than the 99 per cent to work more than 50 hours a week, and are far more likely to be self-employed.

Though many of the wealthy lean toward the Republican Party, in interviews, 1 per centers expressed a broad range of views on how to fix the economy. They think that Obama is ruining it, or that Republicans in Congress have gone off the deep end. They favour a flat tax, or they believe the rich should pay a higher marginal rate. Some cheered on Occupy Wall Street, saying it was about time, while others wished the protesters would just get a job or take a bath. Still, others were philosophical, viewing the recession as something that would pass like so many previous ups and downs.

Of the 1 per centers interviewed for this article, almost all said the wealthy could and should shoulder more of the country’s financial burden, and almost all said they viewed the current system as unfair. But they may prefer facing cuts to their own benefits like Social Security than paying more taxes. In one survey of wealthy Chicago families, almost twice as many respondents said they would cut government spending as those who said they would cut spending and raise revenue.

The 1 per cent has a different professional makeup in different cities. Nationally, for example, doctors are more likely than any other profession to be in the 1 per cent – one in five is. But in Macon, Georgia, a surgeon is far more likely to make the local cut than in Manhattan, where financial managers and bankers have crowded doctors off the dance floor.

Still, David Mejias, a divorce and personal injury lawyer who once served as a Democratic legislator for Nassau County, said that the system everywhere was skewed in favour of the self-employed and business owners who could deduct part of the cost of their cars, trips, dinners and even collectibles like art.

“Not only do we make more money, but if you do a lifestyle analysis, we make a lot more money,” he said. “Before we even get paid, most of our life has been paid for already.”