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Income inequality in America has been growing rapidly, and is expected to increase [PDF]. While the widening wealth gap is a hot topic in the media and on the campaign trail, there's quite a disconnect between the perceptions of economists and those of the general public.
For instance, surveys show people tend to underestimate the income disparity between the top and bottom 20% of Americans, and overestimate the opportunity for poor individuals to climb the social ladder. Additionally, a majority of adults believe that corporations conduct business fairly despite evidence to the contrary and that the government should not act to reduce income inequality.
Even though inequality is increasing, Americans seem to believe that our social and economic systems work exactly as they should. This perspective has intrigued social scientists for decades. My colleague Andrei Cimpian and I have demonstrated in our recent research that these beliefs that our society is fair and just may take root in the first years of life, stemming from our fundamental desire to explain the world around us.
http://theconversation.com/lifes-not-fair-so-why-do-we-assume-it-is-45981
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:20PM
Two reasons:
Humans are innately hopeful about the future [brainpickings.org] - so the under-privileged are naturally inclined to hope they can improve their lot in life.
And on the flip-side people hate to feel guilty. So the over-privileged have lots of incentive to discount their unearned good fortune - just recently there was a poster here going on about how all it takes to be successful is to "think like a winner" completely ignoring the fact that it is so much easier to think like a winner if you've already won.