Poll: what percentage of a nation's wealth...

I am a firm believer that the rich can be just as rich as they want to be, as long as their fellow countrymen are taken care of to a basic level. If they are not taken care of then the rich should be smart enough to figure out there is a large opportunity cost to not fixing that, like being forced to live in an expensive area because a poorer area is not just poorer its outright dangerous. Or you feel forced to live in a gated community for security or you have to make certain to avoid large tracts of your city lest you get your cap peeled back for the change in your pocket, or if you double deadlock your front door as the sun goes down not because you fear the undead rising but your fellow man... then something is broken and biting you on the ass big time. If your poor and you put your babies to sleep in a bathtub because it offers better protection from bullets than just a bed.. something is broken.

Anyway, I took your question and broke it down into 5% increments, assuming that 5% represented what the bottom 20% could get by on and not get real mean and nasty (although truth is 5% is a lot more than what my own country manages for its bottom 20%)

What I came up with for the top 20% is 45% of the wealth, 9X as much as the bottom 20%, with the remaining 50% distributed across the middle three tiers. I think a society could manage that and still maintain a healthy middle class and cohesive society structure in general.

Beyond 50%, where four fifths of a society manages on what the top fifth enjoys... I think you begin to see increasing social breakdown, paranoia, greed, fear, lawlessness and obsession with punishment to keep escalating crime in check, separation of 'us' and 'them', pride, disconnection from reality and laser like focus on personal beliefs, stress, insular behaviors, insecurity. Probably lots more things in there I cant think off.