i think what gates is ultimately saying is that "good" wealth (gates's main concern, since he's rather invested in the topic) has a potentially higher multiplie

i think what gates is ultimately saying is that "good" wealth (gates's main concern, since he's rather invested in the topic) has a potentially higher multiplier effect than bad (wealth solely used for consumption). so in his example, investors and philanthropists have more volatility around the potential effects of their wealth, so the multiplier can be >1, <1, or =1, but the key is that it can be >1, which means that it can be value generating. consumers' multipliers are necessarily <= 1. as an aside, i'm also intrigued by the idea of economic velocity as an indicator of economic health (as opposed to the gini coefficient, which is a rather static measure) that's tangentially related to the idea of economic inequality. of course, for capital to have a stabilizing effect on the economy, it needs to have a high dispersion coefficient, but that's another discussion.