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Comment by spuz | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me, or does the article contradict its own conclusion?

> They asked about 55,000 people from 40 countries to estimate how much corporate CEOs and unskilled workers earned ... the patterns were the same for all subgroups, regardless of age, education, political affiliation, or opinion on inequality and pay

> One likely reason for this is identified by a third study, ... that suggests that our indifference lies in a distinctly American cultural optimism

If 55,000 people from 40 countries make the same poor estimate of the reality of inequality then surely the affect of American cultural optimism is insignificant?

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To answer my own question:

The 2014 research of 40 countries actually shows that Americans estimate a relatively high inequality of CEO to unskilled worker pay (a ratio of 29.6 compared to an average estimate of 10.0). However, the actual pay ratio for American CEOs is much much higher than in any other country's (354 - as mentioned in the article. The next highest actual pay ratio is in Switzerland at 150 times while most countries have a ratio below 100). The research states:

"American respondents (n = 1,581) in our data estimated the ratio of estimated incomes of CEOs to unskilled workers to be 29.6, demonstrating that Americans drastically underestimated the gap in actual incomes between CEOs and unskilled workers."

So, yes there is a significance in the figures for America both in terms of estimated inequality and actual inequality that shows that American CEO pay is significantly less egalitarian than other countries and Americans in general significantly less aware of this than other countries.

I think the keyword is "indifference." While everybody miscalculates the CEO - unskilled pay ratio, the article is implying the indifference caused by "American cultural optimism" is what prevents us from changing it.

That may well be true but there is a difference between 'ignorance' and 'indifference'. The former is relatively easy to measure but the second is not. In fact the study on social mobility that supposedly demonstrates this indifference doesn't mention the word. It simply shows ignorance of American's understanding of social mobility but does not compare these findings with populations from other countries.

Let's say that American's perception of social mobility was found to be significantly skewed relative to that of other populations'. Would that show more or less indifference? You could argue that the 'American Dream' cultural thinking leads more Americans to believe that the poor can become rich and at the same time more passionate about ensuring that that is indeed the case. The fact that it blinds them to the reality does not imply that they don't care.

I would love to know why my questions trying to critically analysing the claims made in the article should be downvoted? I've made some pretty un-constructive comments on articles in the past but I don't think this was one of them?

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