Given that bien pensant thinking insists that wealth inequality is the very terror of our times this looks like good news:

More than 3.5m people were stripped of their millionaire status last year as soaring inflation and a collapse in global currencies hit the value of private wealth.

The number of people with assets totalling $1m (£790,000) fell from 62.9m to 59.4m during 2022, a report by UBS and Credit Suisse found.

Britain suffered the third largest fall globally, with the number of millionaires dropping by 440,000 to 2.6m.

The decline is the result of global wealth falling for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis.

So society is better off then, isn’t it? That appalling burden that so oppresses all has been lightened and now kittens gambol in sunbeams.

Except, of course, we’ve seen no celebrations. The Guardian’s comment pages have carried nary the one celebratory piece. Which is odd, very odd - for if wealth inequality were the problem those same pages insist then there should be encomiums to the new revelations. Also, life should be markedly better given the claimed problems the former inequality were said to have caused.

It does occur that possibly, just maybe, the effects of this reduction have simply not been noted. Which does rather mean that the wealth inequality isn’t a problem in the first place if a reduction in it makes no difference.

The thought that the whole idea was just tosh cooked up to justify excessive taxation is just too horrible to contemplate of course.