I don't think that's insightful. That's a typical neo conservative argument, repeated over and over for decades. Thatcher is famous for using that argument. The

I don't think that's insightful. That's a typical neo conservative argument, repeated over and over for decades. Thatcher is famous for using that argument. The problem is the if in the ... "what if everyone was better off, yet with more inequality". We're not sure at all about that if. In fact data seems to say, probably no, people aren't better off when there's more inequality. What if, actually, high inequality countries (with no free health care, no free schools, no financial sector regulations, and more tax on the poor than on the rich) shoot themselves in the foot? This is what the data seems to show, if anything. A lot of people agree that a healthy middle class was important for progress in the west. I think they are right. I think the Thatcher argument is going in the wrong direction. Now that doesn't mean you want to waste taxpayer money on random hopeless bullshit. Not all socialist countries spend their money wisely. But taxing and spending wisely, to help the middle class, with schools and hospitals and smart regulations, is probably good for generating innovation and for the economy in the long term. The middle class can be pretty resilient in some countries, with still a lot of resourceful smart people, you can throw a lot at them and they will still survive. But it's probably better to help them a bit. It's probably better, for example, to significantly increase the number of truly smart kids that go to college in a country (there's more poor or low middle class smart kids than rich smart kids, in raw numbers, even if rich kids are more likely to be smart, on average). The Thatcher argument really is a good example of a purely rhetorical argument, not based on any data, that was spread by neo conservatives, media owners in particular, to their strict advantage. It's an O'Reilly-no-spin-zone worthy argument. It's pretty insidious, a masterpiece of a meme. It basically amounts to accusing poor and middle class people of being jealous jerks for wanting free health care, free schools, wall street regulations and less tax on them than on the rich. Of course it seems to make a lot of sense at first sight. That's why the media uses that over and over again. It's like saying "Be happy with what you have, because if we had free health care and free school and wall street regulations and taxes on the rich ... you'd be worse off". Well, that's just not true, according to the data. Countries with high inequality are generally the ones where nothing happens, in innovation or in anything else, there's no middle class, and it's sad. There's nothing worse than dumb people voting against their own interest. That's the recipe for a dictatorship. If you disagree I'll be happy to hear your opinion. I'm ready to change my mind. Thanks!