pg's central argument is that economic inequality in itself is not bad, but it has good causes and bad causes and those should be attacked instead of economic i

pg's central argument is that economic inequality in itself is not bad, but it has good causes and bad causes and those should be attacked instead of economic inequality. I think he's right: it's probably more productive in the near term to attack bad causes of economic inequality. [1] But his first assertion (that inequality is not bad) could still be wrong. I think his essay is built on the assumption that people care more about absolute values of wealth and not relative ones. Psychology indicates that relative measures of wealth more directly map to levels of happiness and unhappiness. People do care about relative levels of income as opposed to absolute levels of income, and social cohesion is affected directly by such resentment, even if there isn't extreme poverty and incomes are rising across the board! In Singapore, where I live, there is relatively strong meritocracy and little extreme poverty. GDP per capita is high, and rising; the government is directly incentivised to create economic growth (their bonuses are pegged to national GDP increases). But ostentatious displays of wealth - made easier, IMO, by social media - have led to rising resentment of the government's policies, as well as resentment against the globalised rich who chose to make Singapore their home. I also think economic literature and history is rich with the negative social effects of economic inequality (even if some of it is conflated with bad causes, as pg describes). Elsewhere in this thread tkiley talks about how economic inequality can be seen as a negative externality, which is a good way of describing it, and is, I think, the attitude economists seem to take. While pg's essay contains a fascinating call: to imagine a world where we have to chose to live with increasing economic inequality, I do not believe such a world would be easy to live in. [1] To paraphrase his argument, progressive taxation might bring down the Gini coefficient but not necessarily do anything to alleviate poverty if the systemic causes of poverty aren't attacked. Better to 'attack poverty and destroy wealth in the process, as opposed to attacking wealth and hoping it destroys poverty as a side effect'.