People used to yearn to break into the economic class just above their own. Now we strive to emulate the top 20 percent of income earners, because those are the families we’re watching on TV. Those are the photos we see online and the videos that pop up in our Facebook feeds. Many people around the world are now more knowledgeable about the daily lives of reality TV stars or celebrities than about the lives of other people who live on their block. The more TV you watch, it turns out, the more likely you are to overestimate how much other people make and how many things they own.
