Newest data on the rich

The IRS has released its latest data on individual income taxes, which you can view as an update on Chapter 9: The Rich, Fairness, and Politics in our textbook. You can view a summary of the data here: http://taxfoundation.org/research/show/250.html
There has been only marginal change from the previous year, with the top 1% ($380,000/yr) getting about 20% of the income and paying 38% of the taxes. Note that they pay about as much of the taxes as the bottom 95%. The top 5% ($160,000/yr) earn about 35% of income and pay about 60% of income taxes. To be in the top half of tax filers, you need to make more than $33,000/yr.
Remember that these numbers are by tax filing, and don't differentiate between single filer and joint filers (ie husband and wife). So married doctors could easily be in the top 1% 5 years out of residency with hundreds of thousands of school debt. Note also that this is taxable income. If you assume 25% net federal tax (this can vary a lot due to income mix), 5% state tax and 4% medicare/SS, then you could be in the top 1% and have a net annual income of about $250K/yr.
There is a close correlation between income and wealth. Wealth can be total net worth including house, or liquid assets only. To be in the top 1% of liquid net worth takes about $5 million. Net worth also correlates with age, so we see that high net worth individuals tend to be in their 50-60's. It's a pretty steep curve to make the ranks of these rich. You need six times the wealth to go from the 50th percentile to the 10th percentile and another six times that to get to the top one percentile. Here is a good reference. It's a little dated, but these trends move quite slowly.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/scottburns/alsoonline/wealth_scoreboard.html