> You mean studies like this one? https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/86/1/1/5026613

No that study explores innovation as a cause of inequality. Which is still bad but not what we're talking about here.

> Your example is poverty, not inequality. This is a trick people play all the time.

Oh so this is your point [1]. No I'm not talking about any inequality, that's a ridiculous strawman (and seemingly wrong, judging by other sources inequality and not poverty is still bad for growth). I'm talking about bonkers levels of inequality causing incomes to stagnate while capital gains skyrocket, leaving tons of money in the investment accounts of the rich and not in the savings accounts of the 99% of the rest of us. Wealthy people by and large don't invest in innovation (look at the share of SV VC money for example), they hoard it, which undermines pretty much all of right-wing economic theory. The only policy measure that will fix this is taxation.

I've done a little [2] token [3] googling [4] for [5] you. This one [6] is a pretty good high level survey if you just want an overview.

> It doesn't matter if Jeff Bezos has 100 trillion dollars, as long as his warehouse workers have a decent life.

Agree; I don't find wealth immoral or unethical on its own. I do find it immoral under capitalism, where by definition profit comes from exploitation (plundering the commons, upselling labor, etc.) And I don't see a better way to provide for Bezos' workers other than by taxing his immense wealth, which he got from their labor besides.

> Slate Star Codex stuff

There's so little money in politics because the wealthy and their corporations are already getting what they want. The false premise of this exposition is that these entities are in competition with each other. They're not, they're colluding. You'll see these numbers spike when big events happen, Deepwater Horizon, etc., and that's to keep the family whole during a troubled time--just like unions during a strike.

> 'Corruption' is sufficiently non-specific to be meaningless. Saying the problem is 'corruption' prescribes nothing at all.

No, when I say corruption I mean a very specific thing: bribing elected officials for special treatment. There's a whole index called the "Corruption Perception Index" to track the public's perception of corruption (which is damaging in and of itself), and there are studies [7] that measure it [8] more fully.

These issues are complex and have deep roots. That's why I've been so tenacious in disagreeing with you about regulations being the cause of our troubles. If we're gonna kill this weed, we've gotta pull it up entirely.

[1]: https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/exploring-...

[2]: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf

[3]: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264246010-6-en.p...

[4]: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3806781?ln=en (Chapter 3 The Impact of Inequality)

[5]: https://voxeu.org/article/effects-income-inequality-economic...

[6]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/06/how-r...

[7]: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/elec...

[8]: https://academic.oup.com/ajae/article-abstract/73/1/11/15924...