Money helps with reducing misery. But it helps little to improve happiness. When you can afford warm, dry and comfy shoes, that will take you out of damp misery. But comfy feet won't make you happy day in, day out.

People have subjective views of how they define progress too. For me, splitting the pie equally sounds like retrograde soviet nostalgia. I don't believe equally sharing the pie makes the world any better. Productive people (actually productive) should get bigger piece of the pie than slackers. On top of that, functioning market is important to find ideas that work. Otherwise it's straight to failure of central planning.