Interesting Thought Experiment on Wealth Distribution
http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/
You are asked to imagine what the ideal distribution of wealth would be.
A study was done comparing real to estimated to people's ideal distribution of wealth. The researchers include graphs of the actual distribution--which shocked even me, as much as I write about poverty and class issues, graphs of what different groups of Americans think it is, and graphs of what they'd like to see as an ideal. It turns out different groups of Americans agree more than they think they do based on political or ideological labels or socioeconomic status. (I was shocked that the bottom two categories were so small as to be invisible on the actual graph. Not so on people's estimated or ideal graphs--people thought, as I did, that the percentage of society's pie was quite a bit larger--certainly visible--than it actually was.)
Fascinating! Cue up Pink Floyd's Money.
You are asked to imagine what the ideal distribution of wealth would be.
A study was done comparing real to estimated to people's ideal distribution of wealth. The researchers include graphs of the actual distribution--which shocked even me, as much as I write about poverty and class issues, graphs of what different groups of Americans think it is, and graphs of what they'd like to see as an ideal. It turns out different groups of Americans agree more than they think they do based on political or ideological labels or socioeconomic status. (I was shocked that the bottom two categories were so small as to be invisible on the actual graph. Not so on people's estimated or ideal graphs--people thought, as I did, that the percentage of society's pie was quite a bit larger--certainly visible--than it actually was.)
Fascinating! Cue up Pink Floyd's Money.
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