The more you earn the less unfair the world seems to you | Torsten Bell

The one thing that upsets everyone is big earnings gaps between people working in the same sector

As a society, we've become much more worried about inequality. But what determines whether individuals see levels of inequality as fair? We think what matters is people's politics: a lefty" will think big gaps between top and bottom unjustified, the right believe the rich are simply being rewarded for hard work. But new research, combining information on what people think with data on what they earn, shows that our social status also matters a lot.

Generally, we have a fairly accurate view of where we sit in the income pecking order, although we assume others are more like us than they are. The rich think everyone is better off than the reality, while the poor underestimate top incomes.

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