Ideal wealth distribution

A remarkable study (Norton & Ariely, 2011) reveals that Americans are united in their vision of what the "ideal" wealth distribution would be, which may come as an even bigger surprise than their shared misinformation on the actual wealth distribution that has been he main focus of research by John Bates Clark Medal winner and MacArthur Fellow , Emmanuel Saez. They said that the ideal wealth distribution would be one in which the top 20% owned between 30 and 40 percent of the privately held wealth, which is a far cry from the 85 percent that the top 20% actually own. They also said that the bottom 40% -- that's 120 million Americans -- should have between 25% and 30%, not the mere 8% to 10% they thought this group had, and far above the 0.3% they actually had. In fact, there's no country in the world that has a wealth distribution close to what Americans think is ideal when it comes to fairness.
So maybe Americans are more sensitive to Income inequality in the United States and are much more egalitarian than most of them realize about each other.
The ideal income distribution has yet to be studied in the same way, although income disparities in the U. S. have grown rapidly in the past two decades (1990 - 2010), especially in the top 0.1 % where the disparities have been driven by increased salaries and business income .

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