Unfortunately, many other philosophers writing about economic inequality also deny that it is bad in and of itself. Instead, they insist that substantial economic inequalities are bad because, and where, they have bad effects.
I believe this view is a mistake.
I believe that substantial economic inequality is intrinsically bad. I believe that the impulse to deny this comes from mischaracterizing, or misunderstanding, the meaning of money, income, and wealth. In a society mediated via money, money is social power. Too large a gap between those who have the most money and those who have the least makes liberal democracy impossible – not because an unequal distribution of money leads to inequalities social power, but because inequalities in money are inequalities in social power.
The obvious problem here is the word 'substantial', which only makes sense if it is contrasted with 'nonsubstantial economic inequality'. That makes a certain amount of sense in itself -- if you all have the same amount of money and then you become a penny richer than everyone else, that's inequality, but not substantial, and it seems pretty hard to have a convincing argument that one person having, by sheer chance, a penny more than everyone else is "intrinsically bad". But if we are distinguishing substantial and nonsubstantial economic equality, only the former of which is bad, then it quite clearly cannot be intrinsically bad: it can only be bad by virtue of those things whereby it is substantial, and economic inequality can only be substantial or nonsubstantial relative to things other than itself. I might, for instance, have 10 million more units than you; but, for all we know from that, the 10 million units might each be one ten-millionths of a haypenny. What makes 10 million units substantial or not is other things entirely -- supply, demand, things that can bought with 10 million units and not with a haypenny, etc. "Too large a gap" necessarily depends on something other than the gap itself; there are no gaps in anything that are "intrinsically too large". It always has to be too large relative to something else. Therefore if any economic inequality is not bad, or is only extrinsically bad, then substantial economic inequality is extrinsically bad, not intrinsically bad.
This seems a common error. The idea is that 'substantial economic inequality' is necessarily bad. But if this is so, it is necessarily bad only because the label includes a reference to bad-making causes that are extrinsic. "Thing that is bad because of extrinsic causes" is necessarily bad; it's obviously not intrinsically bad but bad for extrinsic reasons, as it says on its face. This kind of error ends up being quite common in ethics, and it is potentially dangerous: most of the bad things we do are probably extrinsically bad -- bad due to some particular circumstance (like whether you are the right sort of person to be doing it) or because it is inappropriate for the context. But this doesn't mean that any of this is not really bad; it is bad, just for reasons extrinsic to itself. Most social-power kinds of badness pretty obviously get their badness extrinsically, even if you think that they are necessarily bad in a given society. And this is important, because maintaining something intrinsically bad is usually intrinsically bad; which, if this is the case with "substantial economic inequality" means that Tim Sommers is an unjust person for holding a job that is far, far nicer than most people in the world can have within their reach. I would hate for him to have to quit his job unless we are first really sure that his hard work in contributing to substantial economic inequality really and truly is intrinsically bad.
Sommers may be making the mistake because he clearly takes the opposite of 'intrinsically bad' to be 'bad due to its consequences'; but, while this is a way that something can be extrinsically bad, it is not the only way. Something can be extrinsically bad because it is inappropriate for its context, like some kinds of bad joke, or because it happens in this case to be done by someone who is overstepping appropriate bounds, or because it is not used to get certain consequences.
In any case, the further argument cannot establish intrinsic badness, either; it depends not on the nature of money as such but on "a society mediated via money". Something that gets its badness from how you have set up your society is not intrinsically bad, even if it is necessarily bad in that society. It's entirely the wrong kind of argument for the proposed conclusion.
