It was in the fall of 2011 when the Occupy Wall Street (O.W.S.) movement raised the topic of economic inequality. It was through O.W.S. that the idea of the one-percent versus the 99-percent came into public discussion.
It was also in 2011 when Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and behavioral economist Dan Ariely asked more than 5,000 Americans how they viewed economic inequality. They wanted to know how well Americans understood the economic structure of the country and how the wealth was distributed.
They also wanted to understand what the ideal income distribution should be. They decided to ask the same people what they felt would be the best way to spread out the wealth in a healthy economy.
The two men released their findings in “Perspectives on Psychological Science.” Their paper had the highly descriptive title “Building a Better America, One Wealth Quintile at a Time.”
Scientific American took a look at the research and summarized the findings. What the two economic researchers found offers validation to the Occupy movement. They found that their respondents believed that the wealthiest one-fifth of the population controls 59-percent of the wealth. They also believed that the poorest 40-percent controls nine-percent of the wealth.
Those figures would be bad enough, right?
The reality was much worse. In fact, the richest one-fifth of our population controls a frightening 84-percent of the wealth.
Awful! An amazing 28-percent of the people own 84-percent of the money.
What’s worse? The poorest 40-percent of the population owns only a tiny nine-percent of the wealth.
Income inequality is far, far worse than the average American believes based on this study.
So what is the distribution that Americans would like to see? The study found that people would like to see the top 20-percent of the population with 32-percent of the wealth. They’d like to see the bottom 40-percent of the people controlling 25-percent of it.
What does all of this mean?
It means that Occupy Wall Street was right. We do live in a time and place with unprecedented income inequality. The United States in now the most income unequal of any Western nation.
Makes me ready to grab my tent and head for Zuccotti Park.
