Is life fair? One-third of Americans think so

A mobile billboard calling for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy in Washington carrying an image of billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos. Now the world's richest man, Bezos didn't pay a cent in US federal taxes. — AFP

POLLSTERS in search of headlines often ask pointless questions on mundane subjects and then trumpet the meaningless results. The sort that show, for example, that 20% of Americans sleep on their stomachs, or that 33% prefer their salad with ranch dressing rather than blue cheese.

So I was intrigued and suddenly alert when I noticed in the current issue of Harper's magazine that the pollsters at YouGov.com had asked a headline-generating question that went beyond the banal and got straight to the heart of things.