How slightly? Do you have a number? Because in certain places lowering the standard may very well people losing access to healthcare and education.
I am afraid that "but inequality!" is today used as an ideological rallying cry used to inflame spirits and create hate against a class of population. It's an old communist tactic, quite effective during the beginning of the Cold War but less now as people have seen the failed societies with their best and brightest massacred under this cry.
I'm purely comparing Australia and the US. As a personal preference if we were given a choice to achieve an average material standard of living equivalent to the US, but the price was its measurably less egalitarian wealth and power distribution I wouldn't take it, even though I'd likely personally financially benefit from it. And yes it's an ideological position, but I don't see why that's a bad thing. If there were persuasive evidence that less equal economies/societies were better functioning and provided more fulfilling life experiences for the population as a whole I'd abandon it.
As it is, statistically the US seems to be somewhat of an outlier in having both a very high GDP per capita and a relatively high GINI coefficient, so there's little reason to suspect Australia would benefit at all from higher inequality.
Geez are you really arguing that the US is somehow a model for access to health care and that it's because of the free-market? Is that why the more economically free (according to the heritage institute) Switzerland has better health care outcomes than the US at a lower cost? If so, how does that explain the access to health care in the dramatically less economically free Cuba? Maybe it's because they both have universal health care? Why does the US has an avoidable mortality rate closer to poor eastern bloc countries than the rest of Europe?
US health care is not a free market, it's heavily regulated.
As a person living in the Eastern Block right now, I'd invite you to use the medical facilities in my town but I am not that cruel.
Luckily free private health care is becoming increasingly good so soon the state-provided horror show will become a distant memory like the communist era that spawned it.
As a non-Swiss-resident who has to use the Swiss health-care system for anything less urgent than emergency services I can report that the private health-care in Switzerland is quite developed and quite expensive.
How slightly? Do you have a number? Because in certain places lowering the standard may very well people losing access to healthcare and education.
I am afraid that "but inequality!" is today used as an ideological rallying cry used to inflame spirits and create hate against a class of population. It's an old communist tactic, quite effective during the beginning of the Cold War but less now as people have seen the failed societies with their best and brightest massacred under this cry.