We're not becoming a plutocracy, we already are one. - Piaw Na

In this page's comments, the paper's author Dan Ariely talks about a significant issue with the "ideal" chart. The question they asked participants was: "imagine that if you joined this [imaginary] nation, you would be randomly assigned to a place in the distribution...". That could strongly skew the answers to a more evenly distribution of wealth since your income will be entirely based on chance, not merit. http://paul.kedrosky.com/archive... - Simon

Another interesting data point mentioned in that discussion: "One thing that we did not include in the original paper is that we also asked professional economists for their estimates of the wealth distribution -- they were more accurate than the general sample of the US population but they too underestimated the inequity of the distribution." - Simon