WRT “declining marginal utility of money”, I think this is over hyped. Rich people don’t consume dramatically more than those in the middle class. To the extent that they spend their “excess” income on charity or investment, the marginal utility of those dollars is possibly higher than giving the same money to a already well-off middle class family.
Utility to whom? The point is that the utility of an extra dollar to an individualdeclines in relation to how much money that individual has already. It’s not aggregate utility, as in utilitarianism. The fact that wealthy people are willing to give their excess money away shows that it doesn’t have that much utility to them, in line with the “declining marginal utility of money” ,andthe fact that doing so increaes overall utility shows that money has more utility to the poor, which is the flipside of the declining marginal utility of money—it has more utility if you have less of it already.
Utility to whom? The point is that the utility of an extra dollar to an individualdeclines in relation to how much money that individual has already. It’s not aggregate utility, as in utilitarianism. The fact that wealthy people are willing to give their excess money away shows that it doesn’t have that much utility to them, in line with the “declining marginal utility of money” ,andthe fact that doing so increaes overall utility shows that money has more utility to the poor, which is the flipside of the declining marginal utility of money—it has more utility if you have less of it already.