This video, created by YouTube user “Politizane,” aptly demonstrates not only the astonishing wealth inequality in the United States, but the great yawning divide between what Americans believe is the distribution of wealth in this country and what actually exists. Note: the idealized version of the wealth curve is the same across partisan lines. (No socialism here!)

According to Politizane, who created the visualization using data from Mother Jones, Think Progress, CNN, and economist Dan Ariely, the poorest Americans, in our idealized version, would be poor, but wouldn’t suffer unduly. In reality, the poor don’t even register on the wealth scale. The middle class is barely distinguishable from the poor, and even the ...