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The World Is a Pretty Fair Place, According to Rich People

New York Magazine

How bad a problem is inequality? Are working-class people getting screwed? Should we raise taxes on the rich? Is the United States, in short, a fundamentally unfair place? These are the questions that keep awake policy analysts and fuel endless dinner-party debates. But there's one group that is not losing very much sleep over them: rich folks.

Sean McElwee, a research assistant at the think tank Demos (@seanmcelwee on Twitter), messed around with data from the General Social Survey, a trove of social-trends data that stretches back decades, and produced a graph (his Excel spreadsheet is here) in which he broke down responses to a rather loaded question by the perceived income of the respondents:

So, in short, people who perceive themselves as wealthy also happen to think that everyone in the U.S. gets a fair shake. Surely a coincidence!