Headline of the day

My dear friend, Damian (who's a regular reader of "Child of Illusion"), sent me the following with this comment: "Thought you'd be interested in this (shocking and depressing) info..."

Shocking and depressing is so right:

Americans Have No Idea About Wealth Inequality in America

Here's part of what it says:

Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of "regular" Americans into these debates by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to "build a better America" by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality. First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: all demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

If you click through to the article, you will find a very interesting graph illustrating the above point. You will also find some interesting comments (some of which are also shocking and depressing.)
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