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I'd like to see that graph broken down between people who think that wealth is a zero sum thing that can be represented as a pie (as shown) vs those who know it isn't. That is, people who think that if I have a dollar, then they can't also have that same dollar at the same time.
I wouldn't be surprised if most respondents are answering as if the question were about income rather than wealth.
Most people like to spend money now instead of later though, and the charts reflect that. It's as simple as time preference.
You're not needier just because your neighbors are richer than you thought they were.
Poor Americans are simply much, much, much needier than people realize. You're not needier just because your neighbors are richer than you thought they were.
Poor Americans are simply much, much, much needier than people realize. You're not needier just because your neighbors are richer than you thought they were.
I think the idea is that your neighbours are poorer than you thought they were.
I wouldn't be surprised if most respondents are answering as if the question were about income rather than wealth.
What’s interesting here is the extent to which the public vastly overestimates the prosperity of lower-income Americans. I bet this is due in large part to the availability of credit over the last few decades. Credit has allowed lower-income people to "play the part" of the wealthy, giving rise to the distortion. In particular, interest-only, 0% down mortgages, low or no-interest credit cards, and car leases let some…
Of late in Atlanta, one news story about someone unable to pay to heat more than one room had a dramatic photo of her showing her heating bill in her living room - with a 55" HDTV and Xbox360 in the same room.
Problem with that chart is scale: while 20% may have most of the money, the poorest still have enough to live in world-relative luxury.
I wouldn't be surprised if most respondents are answering as if the question were about income rather than wealth.
Exactly, and I can't see why the charts shouldn't look like this. Saving money is a luxury, it's a good thing to do if you can afford it and if you're saving your money for something worthwhile. What's important is that people are living the lives they want to be living, and I'm sure that's possible without lots of savings (although wealth could probably help). Most people like to spend money now instead of later tho…
Facts play a depressingly small part in politics and (perhaps even more depressingly so), studies/surveys and casual observations show that pointing out various facts to people does not actually change their opinions. Try talking about income inequality to a Tea Partier and you'll get the same reaction that an evangelical christian has to evolution. Moreover, this is certainly not an American phenomenon - I see it US…
I wouldn't be surprised if most respondents are answering as if the question were about income rather than wealth.
This is all true of course: except that the worry about an ultra-wealthy minority is not that their quality of life is too high compared to your's (it's not) but rather that their POWER is too extreme, since money is power and speech, and that since power corrupts, they MIGHT ultimately work to reduce further the strength of the lower classes to the point that poverty really does become extreme. - Since as Marx shows this is not really in the interest of the upper classes (that is: tyranny and extreme poverty are precisely what leads to a violent reaction by the down-trodden) it may be that, through the miracle of technology's abundance, we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, but only a smaller and smaller pool of people "own" the production engines.
How a world where a few own all the profits, but the masses have what they need to survive looks, we will soon see: but it certainly feels very Brave New World and is, perhaps, inevitable.