I feel like you are mischarecterizing OPs argument. His argument is that rather than focus on inequality we should focus on increasing everyone's standard of living overall.
> > we should focus on increasing everyone's standard of living overall
The most important quality of life metric is mental health.
There is no way around the fact that mental health is heavily impacted by the fact that citizens feel worthless when they assess their social status vis-a-vis the top 1%
And no amount of stuff will solve this problem because social status is a zero-sum game.
It's one of those problems that simply cannot be solved.
i dont think people revolt because they feel bad when they compare themselves to the 1%. People revolt because they have nothing to lose. Their material conditions are the most important thing in this equation. I'm sure that a populace can tolerate inequality to a point (look at the inequality in the US and Europe, for example) but once a large enough slice of the population has nothing to lose then it's choppy boy time.
