Inequality of wealth, or equality of poverty?

"GDP is actually a complex statistic shaped by history strewn with errors, unresolved controversies, and changing methods and definitions. The core problem is that GDP is not a measure of economic welfare, but rather of output," wrote Mark Cliffe. "A related problem is that more money does not always make people happier. In part, this is because people are concerned about their status and may be content with less money so long as they have more than others." The median annual income in the US was $61,372 in 2017 which is just a tad lower than the optimum income for happiness at $75,000 per year. An income of $95,000 was found to be ideal as it took away any anxiety of hardship in case of emergencies, presumably accidents and health problems. Meritocracy makes people unhappy because of the intense competition to prove themselves, said Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits. Does it mean that a genius should pretend to be an idiot to be happy? Would Isaac Newton have been happier had he eaten the apple that fell on his head instead of discovering gravity? Research has shown that teaching mothers of poor families to talk to their babies makes the babies smarter. Parents who are well off talk to their babies much more than poor parents do, but should we stop them to make all babies equally dumb? "OK Boomer" is a phrase that the younger generation uses to show its frustration at a slowing global economy, destruction of environment and climate change. "OK boomer is meant to be cutting and dismissive. It suggests that the conversation around the anxieties and concerns of younger generations has become so exhausting and unproductive that the younger generations are collectively over it." From SAT and College Board data in 2016, 15,000 of the students who scored 750 or above, which is the median for Ivy League colleges, had professional parents, said Markovits. For students whose parents had not graduated from high school the number was just 32. Finland has the most equal education system in the world where rich and poor students attend the same schools and yet not everyone is a billionaire. Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, with Anne Case of Princeton University, researched "widening inequalities between the less and well educated in the US" and found a "growing divergence in wages, labor-force participation, marriage, social isolation, pain, alcoholism, drug deaths and suicides". Surely, Deaton knows it was a Democrat President Bill Clinton who deregulated the financial sector by getting rid of the Glass-Steagall Act and rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which along with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, could have led to the subprime crisis. Finally, in the socialist paradise Venezuela "the IMF estimates that GDP fell by another 35% in 2019, which implies a 65% contraction since 2013. Inflation is currently running at some 200,000%". President Nicolas Maduro is hanging on to power with the support of the army whose officers are terrified of being imprisoned for drug smuggling if he loses power. At least capitalism produces wealth, socialism produces poverty. Is it better if everyone is poor?