I’m not sure if you’re inadvertently or intentionally trying to move the goalposts in our conversation.
There’s no doubt that money has a declining marginal utility. That’s as established an economic fact as they come.
There is still a leap from that fact to concluding that reducing inequality by vaporizing the wealth of five well-known billionaires would improve the economic lives of hundreds of millions of people. I believe it would not.
I do agree that if that were true, it would be strong evidence that inequality standing alone is causally negative (rather than merely a lack of redistribution being the actual negative and inequality being merely a correlated outcome, which is what I think is the case).
I’m sure this is not this simple, and I’m sorry if hinted that it was. Just how rich the richest 5 people in the USA are, is really emblematic of the wealth is distributed, you can’t just take away their wealth and leave it at that, you’ll have to shave off the wealth of the right-hand side of the wealth distribution curve such that the 5 richest people aren’t so filthy and unbelievably wealthy as they currently are. This is how things work in the real world, and what social scientists create their models after, and that is what I’ve been assuming you meant. Not a magic scenario in which the five richest people, and only the five richest people have their wealth erased.
Throughout this thread my goalpost has always been that inequality is in and off it self a detriment to the quality of life for most people. This effect has been measured, thoroughly studied, and is real, we shouldn’t be debating about that, because, if you don’t believe it is real, you’re believe runs counter to the scientific consensus and there is nothing I can say to convince you. However you seem to be in disbelief about how it works, so I’m gonna provide a plausible scenario. Note, I am not a social scientist, and surely there are more informed guesses out there, if you have the time, and are so inclined, you can probably find better sources on the web that explains this better.
In an unequal but wealthy society access to basic needs might be available to all. However access to other things which affects your quality of life is distributed. You might have access to education, but of lesser quality than the richest 10%, this gives you lesser access to better jobs, etc. Healthcare has a similar story, and so does recreation. You might have to settle for a badly moved lawn shared by dozens of people, while in another part of town the rich have a giant polo-field which is hardly ever used. In a more equal society, that polo-field may be repurposed to serve more people, access to health care and education is more equal, and the overall quality of life is improved. This is regardless of how much money is in the hands of the lower classes.
Note that this is just me—not a social scientist—guessing how this works, so take it with a pinch of salt. Other people have done quality research into this, and know it better than me. However, it may very well be that the mere fact that you have people that are this rich, really incentivizes the society around them to accommodate them, and their interest, at the cost of accommodating the rest of society.
In all those stories, it is the redistribution of something better to people originally without it that is the agent of change/improvement.
The analog where inequality alone is a problem is if you take the polo field from the wealthy and make it unusable by everyone. That doesn’t make anyone any better off.
People who talk about inequality are almost always actually seeking redistribution but have the sense to realize that arguing “I want what these other people have without working for it” garners much less sympathy than if they frame it as a global inequality.
There’s no doubt that money has a declining marginal utility. That’s as established an economic fact as they come.
There is still a leap from that fact to concluding that reducing inequality by vaporizing the wealth of five well-known billionaires would improve the economic lives of hundreds of millions of people. I believe it would not.
I do agree that if that were true, it would be strong evidence that inequality standing alone is causally negative (rather than merely a lack of redistribution being the actual negative and inequality being merely a correlated outcome, which is what I think is the case).