Swedish meatballs

A while ago, a friend of mine told me of an anecdote that brought back  memory of the Pomperipossa Effect. In short, back in the 90's my friend had met a Swede who had come to this country to escape income equality, whereby she, a dentist, would be making as much as a bus driver in her native Sweden. My friend inserted this in his argument that there are strong forces that are pushing America toward the Swedish flattening of wealth distribution.

I fi nd this particularly ironic, since it came in the wake of new studies that show how wealth inequality is growing sharper, and we are now being compared to banana republics. On the other hand, this is not surprising at all, given the conservative play to depict any attempt to return to previous taxation as class warfare or income redistribution (as though the current tax policy, which has greatly bene fited the very rich, were not income redistribution ... any tax policy, for that matter, can be regarded as income redistribution).

As it often happens, it boils down to perception, and the "doctors of facts" eventually win the battle of public opinion. Perception of wealth in/equality has been the subject of a recent study of Dan Ariely and Michael Norton The underlying survey demonstrates that Americans deem the current wealth distribution much more equitable than it actually is. Even more surprising are the answers to a second set of questions: the ideal wealth distribution is even flatter than the perceived (let alone the actual) one, and in fact much closer to the wealth distribution of ... Sweden!