Rising inequality is toxic to growth. High levels of inequality exclude people - both as innovators and customers - diminishing both innovation and demand.
The most powerful forces in economics are not numbers or facts. They are prejudices and preferences. No amount of evidence will ever change the degree to which many of the rich and powerful prefer themselves to be richer and more powerful and others poorer and weaker.
Economics is mostly how humans rationalize who gets what and why. It's how we instantiate our preferences about status, privileges, and power.
You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.
I have, oddly, two ski houses - trying to sell one.
No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.