I had a post earlier this month on a question about whether people can get ahead by hard work. What I originally intended to write about was another question that was contained in one of the surveys: "Do you think that there is too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations in the United States, or don't you think so?" That question had previously been asked (with "rich men" instead of "rich people") in a Gallup Poll from April 1941. A comparison:
Yes (too much power) No
1941 60% 26%
2011 77% 19%
It seems possible that in 1941 the war* had created a sense of national unity (or shifted the focus to ethnic rather than economic divisions), so 60% may have been lower than if the question had been asked a few years before. Still, the shift towards the "cynical" answer is substantial. I wanted to break opinions down by social class, but the two measures in 1941 (occupation and interviewer's estimate of "economic standing") were not in the 2011 survey, and the two in 2011 (income and education) were not in the 1941 survey. So I couldn't do much with the question, but the marginals are still of interest.
*Of course, the United States didn't declare war until December, but people already saw Germany and Japan as threats.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
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