Americans prefer socialism over current US system

92% of them do anyway ...

With numbers like that, it's no wonder Democrats are cautious about being labeled "anti business" or "socialist."

Wait, what?

More interesting than that, the report says, is that the respondents (a randomly selected 5,522-person sample, reflecting the country's ideological, economic and gender demographics, surveyed in December 2005) believed the top 20 percent should own only 32 percent of the wealth. Respondents with incomes over $100,000 per year had similar answers to those making less than $50,000. (The report has helpful, multi-colored charts.)

The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth. Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they'd rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution.

As a reminder, in the US today, 1% of the population owns 24% of the wealth. This is considerably higher than during the Robber Barron years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the richest 1% owned 18% of the wealth.