Honest question, but it sounds like you're describing that if ~11% (based on the parent numbers) of people weren't very poor the economic system would fail? Eg inflation would spiral out of control? (i assume spiral since they'd have more money, but money would be worth less, there by making them have less effective spending power - thereby needing them to have more money, etcetc.)

If so, sounds like morally something is fundamentally wrong if we require poor people to function. But i'm not an economist, so i've got zero feedback here.

Inflation and affordability are different concepts. I think affordability is the term I’ll use as it’s best for casual/lay economic discussions.

It would be unstable at first, like how inflation during Covid differed by industry/product type. This is a big shock to the system. But over time as it normalized sure things will have inflated but relative affordability basically will return to what it is now or where it started.

If you make $10 and food is $1, it’s no different than if you make $100 and food is $10. What’s been happening due to wage growth (lack of), is you make $11 and food is $2, next year you make $12 but food is $3, etc. from a relative perspective food cost is growing too fast to keep up. To make people feel wealthier, we need the ratio to move the other way, $15/$2 then $30/$3 or something similar. This is how a middle class would get re-established. It’s a tough thing to accomplish is our complex global economy. Were marching towards a global income equilibrium, which only puts downward pressure on a high labor cost economy like the US/CA/EU.