Odd, but 20% owning 80% has been the case for a long, long time. Medieval Europe (at least France and England; Switzerland might have been better and in most nations wealth was even more concentrated) had that same ratio, and even ancient Rome was about the same.
Ever studied progress in civilization? When agriculture and/or other food gathering becomes successful enough, specialization begins. That excess wealth produced in food allows others to produce different kinds of wealth. That lifts societies from a subsistence economy to another level; as more wealth is created than is consumed, that wealth is loaned out to people who start new businesses, often manufacturing things not previously made at all, sometimes just manufacturing things more efficiently. If instead that concentration of wealth is artificially removed, then concentration by more capable individuals is replaced by increased consumption by all.
Now, where we can shape our societal rules to spread that wealth over a larger part of the population by creating more wealth, I'm all for it. The problem with the progressive ideology is fourfold. First, that it sees wealth concentration as inherently evil. No wealth concentration means no societal progress. Second, it empowers government as the arbiter of how wealth should be invested, spent, redistributed. Government isn't sentient; it depends on men to make its decisions. There's a very accurate canard that "None of us are as smart as all of us." By empowering government, a comparatively small number of bureaucrats needs must make the decisions that all of us, acting in the market, previously made. Just as almost no funds beat the index, almost no government-directed economy is ever going to match or surpass a free market economy in wealth creation.
Third, by empowering government as the arbiters of wealth distribution, progressives create a disincentive to wealth creation and innovation. If a person looks at a potential gain of $200,000 for a $100,000 investment, he can justify taking a moderate risk with that $100,000. If instead he knows government will take $180,000 of his $200,000 gain, it becomes much less attractive to risk his $100,000 since at best he'll increase it by 20% while at worst he'll lose it all. By such actions are progress and innovation thwarted, which is why highly taxed societies are not typically innovative societies. By decreasing the potential gains, you make most risks not worth taking.
Fourth, and probably worst, by empowering government to seize some portion of a person's wealth, for no better reason than he has it, and by empowering government to decide how much of a person's wealth it deserves, you undercut the very concept of freedom. Instead, you reduce us all to serfs, whose function in the world is to toil for government rather than for ourselves and our own.
Show me a method for increasing our society's wealth - but increasing it most strongly among the middle class or poor - and I'll be all for it. Show me a scheme for artificially redistributing the existing wealth and I'll likely argue that it will end us making our society less wealthy overall. That may suit progressives, but it does not suit me.
I appreciate the response. A couple thoughts.
One is that an inherent assumption in your view is that wealth is a motivator for societal progression. Wealth may be a motivator, but I do not believe it to be the only motivator. Frankly, we've already seen the what happens when uses wealth as a motivator for progress is taken too far: we end up with greed. We have incentivized some truly disgusting behavior that has caused harms to millions. I don't necessarily blame the individual perpetrators, because they are simply the product of a flawed environment where there is no such thing as actual success. When the bar is constantly raised on you and your very way of existence is threatened if you eventually fail (and you will eventually fail if that bar keeps going higher), it opens up a whole can of worms. Ultimately we will do what we need to do to survive.
Secondly, there is little inherent freedom difference between being manipulated by a government and manipulated by a powerful individual or corporation. Lack of freedom is a lack of freedom, they are one in the same. The person being oppressed cares little if his oppressor is the President of the United States or the President of IBM. The typical argument is that a corporation could never accrue as much power as a government can, but I think we can see in our world today that this is simply factually incorrect. Or that a person could simply leave a job where they are being treated poorly, but in this type of economy that isn't the case.
I do hold the belief that wealth concentration is inherently harmful to society. With wealth comes power, and with power comes the ability to control others. Many of us on this board rail against the 2 party system, but the fact is that wealthy interests on both sides keep those parties funded because they are interested in maintaining a status quo. They have successfully convinced the majority of the American people that the only choices are actually two of the same thing: both Democrats and Republicans are on the authoritarian right when compared to politics on a global scale. Each believes government is the way to solve problems, despite what rhetoric we might here from them. For the record, socialism is on the authoritarian left. I'm talking about a something completely different.
In counseling, we are always worried when a client exhibits signs of dichotomous thinking (things are either black or white, good or bad, ect). The same holds true for politics: liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, these are all dichotomies...and they frankly oversimplify what are very complicated issues. These labels also dehumanize people and attempt to lump them together, which is why our political rhetoric is so heated.
The problem is that this causes us to jump to conclusions, and lack of understanding makes it very easy to jump to base human emotions like anger, which is really a surface emotion hiding something deeper (typically, fear, powerlessness, lack of control). It makes discussing a topic like this impossible because people automatically start screaming SOCIALIST!!!11!!1!! when they haven't actually considered that perspective might not actually be about government controlled industry (which is what socialism is.)
That wealth concentration causes a disincentive for the little guy. If the vast majority of money is frozen in the hands of 1 in 5 people, he has extremely limited resources from which he can implement his idea. If he can't convince those "investors" that his idea has some merit, he never gets anywhere. I'm sure this is as just as destructive for societal progress as a government that takes too much in taxes as you suggest.
When I think of wealth concentration, what "makes" sense to me is more a bell curve. Arguing that we have a robust and strong "middle class", when in reality the middle class holds so little wealth as to have no real power. We can vote, but there is a reason our campaigns cost so much money: with the right rhetoric, those votes can be bought...and in reality, most people won't vote anyway, so they capitulate what little power they actually had.
There would still be some extremely wealth people in the ideal situation I foresee, but they as a group would not have a disproportionate amount of power. It's about getting the vast sums (and these numbers are truly vast) of money that sitting idly, collecting interest and dividends, moving in our free market system again. It isn't about a power grab by the government taking it and deciding who gets the benefit the most from that money. I want that no more than you do. Rather, it's about creating policies that unfreeze wealth and keep it moving about the system (i.e., constantly being redistributed)...and ultimately lead to a more robust middle class. It's also about preventing the creation of an "American Aristocracy," which is a very real fear the founders had.
In a capitalist economy there will always be winners and losers. That doesn't mean we have to have accept quite so many losers and quite so few winners. I also completely reject the notion that wealth is the sole motivator for societal progression. Money is important, and to a certain level it can by you security and stability. Past a certain point, it really just doesn't matter anymore. I can tell you I'm surrounded every day by people doing important work who know they aren't going to be rich at the end of their lives. We obtain a different type of satisfaction from what we do.