HNW’s latest WealthPulse poll is a survey of the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. We think the Occupy Wall Street movement, while making for interesting street theater, is more important as an indication of shifts in attitude and perspective among a sizable portion of the population. How has the conversation about wealth, monetary aspiration and financial services changed? How are the affluent reacting to the protests? How do they feel about the accompanying rhetoric that sometimes demonizes them and the financial institutions they do business with?

This all seemed like relevant points of inquiry, so we polled 100 individuals who belong in the top 1%. The results are surprising. To begin with, only half think they belong in the top 1%, a fact that sparked some heated comments when our survey was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal’s Wealth Report blog.

The profile that emerges from the poll shows that the 1%, while not feeling like members of a financial elite, consider themselves hard-working Americans who earned their wealth through the sweat of their brow, and while they don’t agree with the OWS protestors, and think the wealthy are being unjustly demonized, they agree that those responsible for the Wall Street shenanigans should be prosecuted; more dramatically, a sizable number think corporations are not regulated enough, and that that poses a threat to the U.S.’s economic future.

If you’d like to see the report, you can have it sent to you by clicking here.