If there was a button that I could press that would double the wealth of the 99% of people and quadruple the wealth of the top 1%, I would keep pressing it, even though it technically makes inequality worse and worse every time.
It would be morally reprehensible not to press that button.
EDIT: just be clear, I am talking about real (i.e. inflation adjusted) wealth. I am not talking about how many zeros we add to all dollar amounts.
So I am talking about the number of houses and shoes and cars we have, and the amount of ice cream and education we can enjoy.
Ironically, our society is basically continuously pushing that button today, much to the glee of the 1%.
To be clear: I was talking about real prosperity.
You are talking about nominal prosperity. And I agree: just adding a zero at the end of all dollar amounts wouldn't make anyone better off.
Alas, it's no clear that we have taxation and redistribution in the real world works like this or can even work like this: they typically don't just cleanly transfer wealth, but also destroy a lot of wealth.
To be clear: I don't say that my hypothetical button exists. This was just a Gedankenexperiment to show that increasing inequality by itself isn't all that relevant.
In reality, we observe that more business friendly places like Scandinavia or Singapore or even the US are a lot richer than places that strangle business.
Now this is partially about quantity of taxes, but even more about rules and regulations. Eg Scandinavian countries have fairly high taxes, but they are well run and business friendly.
It’s funny whenever there is a comment like “hey, maybe we shouldn’t let individual people get so rich they can basically become thier own country.” Always get called socialists/communists. You can be capitalist while also having some care and protection for the little people.