Buying power

I asked the following question on my Facebook:

"To all my Occupy-friendly friends, would you rather have less buying power and less income inequality, or more buying power and more income inequality?"

It was meant to be a rhetorical question that might moderate some of the anti-income inequality sentiments ravaging my news feed. After all, if we all had the buying power of billionaires, who would care about income inequality? What was meant to be a rhetorical question was responded to by a stubborn egalitarian who said he would prefer less buying power and less income inequality. I was floored. I needed to double check that he knew what he was saying so I reasked the question in a different way:

You would rather be able to afford fewer goods and services as long as more people would be able to afford fewer goods and services?

 When he responded yes, I half believed that he was trolling me. Such a belief if actually held would prefer Soviet Russia over the US. I fear that the fact that people live in their academic bubble (the respondent was a student) precludes them from seriously considering the implications of what they are saying. I seriously hope that the respondent was not serious, for if he was, either he will be in for a rude awakening when he begins working, or America is about to meet the most idealistically self-destructive generation it has ever had.

Ignoble – mean, base
Ignominious – shameful, degrading