> in general capitalist prefer people to be rich I'm not convinced that this is true. Poor populations allow for is the cheap accumulation of power - people w

> in general capitalist prefer people to be rich I'm not convinced that this is true. Poor populations allow for is the cheap accumulation of power - people who have less are easier to motivate with an offering of money or support. If you increase the distribution of wealth amongst the population buying that goodwill and loyalty becomes a lot more expensive. This power dynamic can be seen demonstrated in the dissemination of living assistance by profit-motivated groups that wish to accumulate political and social power such as organized crime. UPDATE: I'm leaving the old post as a historical reference but I wanted to take a second swing at explaining my disagreement coherently. The time and efforts of a person is a commodity and the price of that commodity is partially pegged to the accessible wealth of that person. As the average personal wealth of people increases the cost to purchasing their time and efforts increases. There are two ways to increase profit - increase the cost of the product or lower the cost of production. Increased average wealth helps with the former but (depending on how manually intensive your product is) decreased average wealth helps with the latter.