On Jul 19, 2006, at 9:09 AM, Michael McIntyre wrote:
> A post on the list a few days ago cited a survey showing that an
> extraordinary number of Americans think that they are already in
> the top 1% of the income distribution, or soon will be.
I'm not sure this is true. After the 2000 election, David Brooks circulated this "fact," but I tracked down its origin and it turned out not to be true. Its reality base was a Time poll showing that some large share of the population thought it would benefit from Bush's (then-proposed) tax cuts, which were targeted at the top 1%. Brooks somehow transformed that into "20% of the pop thinks it's in the top 1%." I bet you'd find that a very large share of the top 1% has a preposterously inflated idea of average incomes, though.
Doug