Impact of Economic Inequality Goes Beyond Money
Thomas Piketty:
Monetary distance is more than just monetary distance. It comes with social distance. … So, if by spending the equivalent of one hour of my income, I can buy your entire year of work, that implies kinds of social distance in human relations that raise very serious concerns and questions. So, the very formation of our ideals about democracy and self-government, which involves not only the formal organization of political campaigns and formal access to news, but also all these more informal relationships in our local community — social relations where people interact with each other, enter into deliberation with each other — is threatened by enormous monetary inequalities (pp. 5f).
Piketty and Sandel, Equality: What it Means and Why it Matters, pp. 5f