Justice

Americans Are Terrible at Estimating Income Inequality

In some surprising ways.
Reuters

Income inequality is an abstract idea, measurable in many ways. And so perhaps it's not surprising that Americans are terrible at estimating the true extent of the problem (or how fast it's grown with time).

The question, after all, requires several mental leaps: from our own income, to a sense of where we fit on the national scale, to an awareness of the outer poles of that distribution. There are some serious math and reasoning skills required here.