I'm not sure Americans are misinformed, per se, but instead I'd sooner say human beings exhibit an equality bias. For example, if you gave a person a choice of

I'm not sure Americans are misinformed, per se, but instead I'd sooner say human beings exhibit an equality bias. For example, if you gave a person a choice of two mutual funds, a low risk and a high risk, most people would put 50% in one and 50% in the other regardless of the actual distribution of risk over the two funds. So if you gave the average person 5 groups of people and told them to ideally distribute the wealth between them, they would probably exhibit this same equality bias on average. As for the estimated case, I'm sure you'd get similarly wrong responses asking the average person basic questions about U.S. history. Or algebra, chemistry, or pretty much any other academic subject. EDIT: Dan Ariely and others frequently cite this kind of bias in the books and talks I've seen. I wonder what Dan would have to say about that considering he collaborated on this paper.