This sounds like a typical power law distribution. Nothing really unusual or unexpected about that.
Consider what most Americans say the "ideal" level of wealth inequality would be: http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ and http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...
Now consider how much wealth inequality there would be in an excessively fair society: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equ...
Clearly, people are determining their "ideal" without doing the math. This makes it hard to take their opposition to "this change in distribution" seriously as well.