> Living standards of who, exactly? Everyone. There isn't some group we should wish ill on in the abstract. The best way forward is one where everyone is bette

> Living standards of who, exactly? Everyone. There isn't some group we should wish ill on in the abstract. The best way forward is one where everyone is better off. That is how the big leaps forward tend to work - the wealthy get insanely more wealthy, the middle gets more wealthy and the lower end of the wealth spectrum stays where it is but shrinks as a relative share of society [0]. I'd rather that than one of the big equalisation pushes like what we saw in Russia or China last century. The problem with the excessive focus on inequality is it is an easy way to lead people away from approaches where everyone wins. [0] Due to mental health and rare people with unusual personal preferences, the poorest person in society will always have basically nothing. I don't think that is theoretically possible to improve on. And the mechanical reason why I think "reducing inequality" is a really bad idea - the only reliable way to do that is drag people towards being impoverished.