In the 1700s wealthy British landowners hired poor people to live as “ornamental hermits” in their gardens. These hermits were not allowed to leave and were paid about $100,000 (in today’s dollars) at the end of a seven-year term.

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What Did We Call America’s Elite Before the “1 Percent”?

Astor. Rockefeller. Kennedy. Bezos. In 2011 the Occupy Wall Street protest movement spread the term 1 percent in reference to America’s richest people. At the time, 1 percent of the population controlled about 30 percent of the country’s wealth. But Occupy was no more the origin of American class