American dream dying, but many see free market as solution: Poll

The widening income gap between the rich and the poor is killing the American dream, say respondents in a new Bloomberg poll.

And the margin of those thinking that way was nearly two to one, Bloomberg said.

“There’s a lot of policies that make it easier for the right to get richer and the poor to go nowhere,” Ryan Sekac, 26, a mechanical engineer from Rhode Island, told Bloomberg.

The poll, conducted Dec. 6-9 by Selzer & Co., included the participation of 1,004 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The numbers come as notable leaders such as President Obama and Pope Francis have broached the topic of income disparity. The poll found that the richest 10 percent of Americans actually earned more than half of the entire nation’s income — the largest reported share since 1917, Bloomberg reported.

Poll respondents saw differently how to bridge the gap, however. About 45 percent wanted more government intervention and more public policy. Fully 46 percent wanted the free market to make the correction and saw government policy as a hindrance.