[jnbiche]

> Inequality benefits society overall.

The data suggests this is not the case. Particularly, when you look at the correlation between the gini coefficient and just about any measure of societal well-being available (life expectancy, child mortality, maternal mortality, suicide rates, many, many morbidities, WVS for happiness and life satisfaction, etc etc), it's quite clear that high level of inequality is inversely correlated with societal well-being[0].

Your argument about Microsoft is an argument about the benefits of capitalism, which I agree is very beneficial to society when channeled properly. However, capitalism is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

0. Yes, correlation isn't causation, but even if you assume that high inequality isn't the cause of poor societal outcomes, it's at the very least an indicator that something is going wrong and has a fairly high predicative value.

[skookumchuck]

> The data suggests this is not the case.

Au contraire. The US went from a nation of scores of millions with nothing but a suitcase to the wealthiest nation in the world with the tallest, best fed, and healthiest people. All from inequality.

(Of course, since WW2, the US has increasingly turned away from the free market towards socialism, and things have done correspondingly less well.)

[idreyn]

Nothing but a suitcase, centuries of slavery-generated wealth, and a swathe of the world's most resource-rich land ripped from its inhabitants by genocide and forced migration.

[skookumchuck]

Never mind that in the 1800s the northern economy prospered while the southern slave economy stagnated - a proximate cause of the Civil War was the south trying to economically protect itself from the booming north. The War then (literally) burned the slave generated wealth to the ground.

The end of slavery ushered in another great boom in prosperity in the US.

And, of course, attributing US wealth to stealing land from the natives doesn't explain why South America, which did the same thing, failed to prosper and remains a collection of countries people run away from on foot trying to get into the US.