> Relative wealth buys you status, position > pecking order Some of this can't really be fixed: the top 10% of status only has room for 10% of the people, by d

> Relative wealth buys you status, position > pecking order Some of this can't really be fixed: the top 10% of status only has room for 10% of the people, by definition. The pecking order, by definition, orders people. > and power in society. This seems like a better focus. How much extra power you gain by being on top varies a great deal between different societies (including earlier and later versions of any one country). This seems like the relevant variable. I'm not sure that this inequality of power is very well measured by monetary inequality. There is some correlation, because power can usually be turned into material comfort. But I'm not sure how much higher taxes or whatever remedy like that is proposed for moving money around, will move power around. > the best guarantor of social and political power is to be necessary I hear what you're saying, roughly about changes in the last 50 years in western countries. But it is also easy to think of large classes of absolutely necessary workers who had very little power, in many places and times. So I'm not sure that that's enough.