>Just an observation, but societies with vast disparities of wealth tend to be poorer overall and to have flatter economic growth. I would love some numbers to

>Just an observation, but societies with vast disparities of wealth tend to be poorer overall and to have flatter economic growth. I would love some numbers to back up that claim. I know that poor repressive governments tend to have high income disparity while the Western world tends to have less. However the last time I looked at the numbers I don't think the data showed that income disparity is a major causal factor in making a country poor or rich. It sounds to me like that is the dream of envious leftists, one of many unquestioned assumptions that they like to bring up in every debate. There's a difference between a third-world country where the favored friends of the state are well-off while everybody else starves (see Zimbabwe) and a rich country where everybody is well-off but some are more well-off than others (see Britain). I question the "if you don't give us more money, we'll riot and break stuff" justification for income redistribution in a rich first-world country. Also, third-world countries should be focused on getting rich, not redistributing what little wealth they have. I am highly skeptical of the benefits of income redistribution under any circumstances.