Irish people are cute with their money. Unlike in the United States, it’s not the done thing here to flaunt your wealth – but clearly some individuals are sitting on pots of gold.

The number of people in Ireland with wealth of more than $50 million (€46.6m) more than doubled from 655 to 1,435 between 2012 and 2022, according to an Oxfam report last year. Latest Revenue figures show the number of individuals or couples earning more than €150,000 grew from 67,000 in 2018 to more than 146,000 this year.

Should it bother you, however, if you’re not as rich as your neighbour? And from a moral point of view, is economic inequality that big a deal?

This debate has a surprisingly long history, as American political scientist David Lay Williams observes in a new book The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx (Princeton University Press).

Taking inspiration from Williams’s work, today’s Unthinkable looks at five arguments in defence of economic inequality – and why just one partially succeeds.

1. Economic inequality is not morally significant

“With respect to the distribution of economic assets, what is important from the point of view of morality is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough.” So said American........

© The Irish Times