NEW DELHI: The “top 1%” is the symbol of wealth and power thanks to a protest movement. Since Occupy Wall Street popularised the term almost a decade ago, inequality has surged, and this exclusive group has only gotten richer and more influential.
Yet the top 1% covers a wide span, from prosperous professionals to billionaires with more wealth than many nations. And the difficulty of making the cut varies greatly depending on where you live.
To join the group in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) requires more than $900,000, or 12 times more income than in India, a developing market so populous that the top 1% includes more than 13 million souls. In much of the developed world, an income of $200,000 to $300,000 gets you in the top 1%.
In the US, the wealthy have been pullin