EVEN REPUBLICANS WANT A FAIRER SOCIETY

Back in 2010, I wrote a post about a study of attitudes towards wealth inequality in America and I was pleased to learn that most Americans, even Republicans, would prefer a more equal distribution of wealth:

This graph is from this paper:

Building a better America-one wealth quintile at a time
Author: Norton M.I.; Ariely D.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, v6 n1 (2011 08 23): 9-12

I was a little concerned about the sample because Ariely does a lot of his research online so I went to the paper and found that it isn't problematic:

A nationally representative online sample of respondents (N = 5,522, 51% female, mean age = 44.1), randomly drawn from a panel of more than 1 million Americans, completed the survey in December, 2005.1 Respondents' household income (median = $45,000) was similar to that reported in the 2006 United States census (median = $48,000), and their voting pattern in the 2004 election (50.6% Bush, 46.0% Kerry) was also similar to the actual outcome (50.8% Bush, 48.3% Kerry). In addition, the sample contained respondents from 47 states.