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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: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 15 2015, @02:49AM
(Re-evaluating previous comments. For the reader of archived threads: there is such a thing as fish husbandry also called fish management [bridgwater.ac.uk]. This is an important technique for the fish-based economy in my expansion of the given-a-man-a-fish analogy. See also Fisheries management [wikipedia.org], which is based in fisheries science. Science!)