David Sirota: Economic Inequality is Much Worse Than Most Americans Believe [View all]

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from In These Times:


Economic Inequality is Much Worse Than Most Americans Believe
According to a recent study, most of us severely underestimate just how bad the gap between the rich and the rest of us have gotten.

BY DAVID SIROTA


If critics of income inequality are wondering why the growing gap between rich and poor hasn’t been a more potent political issue in the upcoming elections, a new study offers some answers: Americans grossly underestimate this inequality. That's one of the key findings of a survey showing the gap between CEO and average worker pay in America is more than 10 times larger than the typical American perceives.

In the report, Harvard University and Chulalongkorn University researchers analyzed survey data from 40 countries about perceptions of pay gaps between rich and poor. In every country, respondents underestimated the size of the gap between CEO and average worker pay. In the United States, for example, the researchers found the median American respondent estimated that the ratio of CEO to worker income is about 30-to-1. In reality, the gap is more than 350-to-1.

The study also found the median American respondent said the ideal pay gap is about 7-to-1—a lower ideal than respondents in many industrialized countries. Additionally, no major industrialized country has anywhere close to a 7-to-1 pay gap. That ratio is more than seven times lower than the actual gap in social democratic countries like Denmark and Sweden.

In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, one of the researchers who conducted the study said Americans' inaccurate beliefs about the pay gap may be the reason economic inequality hasn't become more of a political issue. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17217/economic_inequality_is_much_worse_than_most_americans_believe