Ted Wilkinson has a data-based TED Talk that goes over some of the negative affects of wealth inequality[0]. I used to assume other people being rich caused no

Ted Wilkinson has a data-based TED Talk that goes over some of the negative affects of wealth inequality[0]. I used to assume other people being rich caused no harm to me, but turns out that on a societal level, there's decent evidence that it does hurt us. It's also worth noting that it would be dishonest to present the options as current system or no distribution vs. total redistribution. The argument is generally for more distribution than we have, but way, way below full redistribution. Full redistribution would be very harmful to society as a whole, but there's evidence for a significant gain to increasing beyond the current level in the US. Wilkinson focuses on the evidence that this is true more than he does the causes (iirc -- it's been a while since I watched his talk), but it's not hard to come up with some possible reasons -- regulatory capture on the high end, dead-weight loss from losing the productivity due to malnorishment, insufficient education, insufficient healthcare on the low end. (Malnorishment and tropical diseases clearly results in productivity loss in poor communities in sub-Saharan Africa, but even in the US, simply providing multivitamins to "working-class" students for three months did very little for most, but for 17% of them boosted the IQ 15 points. What do you think funding that would do to the economy 10-20 years from now?) [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706232 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706232