Monday, November 15, 2010

The Swedish Way

an article came out in Swedish Press recently that I thought should be reviewed here. "Forget the socialist-bashing rhetoric and reverence for the filthy rich. When it comes to wealth distribution, Americans, even Republicans, would really rather have it the Swedish way. In a blind test, included in a soon to be published study conducted among 5,522 Americans by researchers at Harvard and Duke universities, about 92% of respondents said they preferred a model closer to Sweden's wealth distribution to that in the United States. There was a "surprising level of consensus" among different groups, with 92% of Republican voters and 93.5% of Democratic voters backing the Swedish model, with the richest and poorest also voting along similar lines. This is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that the respondents in the study by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely think US society is much more equal than it really is, believing that the wealthiest quintile (20%) hold about 59% of the wealth when the actual number is closer to 84%, while the top 1% of Americans are estimated to hold around 50% of the nation's wealth." Something to think about!
Peace Skeptical DoDo

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