Of course inequality exists, it has always existed – and always will – unless we are taken over by machines.
When the discussion comes up it usually points to the plight of the poor – a legitimate concern, but nothing to do with inequality as a cause.
The poor are unequal to the middle class and upper middle class as well and the upper class unequal to billionaires.
Linking the poor with the multibillionaires and inequality is just political rhetoric playing not on a concern for equality, but on envy.
Addressing the plight of the poor and attempting to correct the basic causes is valid, but creating the impression we can do so by tearing down the wealthy is misguided at best. In fact, many of todays billionaire creators have done more to help lower income people than government.
I used an AI tool to generate the main reasons for poverty and two versions came up with the following.
Inequality: Inequality is a major cause of poverty. When a small number of people control a large share of the wealth, it means that there is less wealth available for everyone else. This can make it difficult for people to escape poverty, even if they work hard and are educated.
What nonsense, blabbering stupidity!
Less wealth available?
There is no limit on available wealth!
Who did Gates, Bezos, Musk, even the Walmarts take wealth from?
They created new wealth, created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and created thousands of other well-off people in the process. In some cases even making life better for lower income people.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Well said! Envying others will never excuse the individual from taking action themselves. Asan individual, It remains within our personal control to take actions to make for a bettertomorrow. Initially, the action might seem to be very small, but as we build on it, the actions can unleash their own “magic,” and we can ALL experience the 8th wonder ofthe world – the Miracle of Compounding Interest. Smith Smallwood
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It’s not inequality, it’s poverty…
It’s semantics. A failure of the free market. Millions of workers who don’t earn enough to survive.
Michael Strain, American Economic Institute:
” … we have to recognize that different agents in society have different responsibilities. Imagine you have workers, firms, and the government. … It it is simply unrealistic to expect that a firm that is ostensibly trying to maximize profits, although perhaps imperfectly, will take someone who can bring in five or seven dollars an hour in revenue and pay them two to three times that amount of money. It will be losing five or ten dollars an hour on every hour that person is working. That is just unrealistic to expect a firm to do in a market economy.
So then the question becomes, who is responsible for making sure that the employees of these organizations have adequate food, adequate shelter, adequate health care and who can meet a baseline level of material standing, especially given that we live in a society where we have a lot of billionaires. And to me, that answer is government through all of society. I don’t want those workers to be poor, and I don’t want those workers to not have enough food, and I don’t want those workers to have to deal with the cognitive load [from being poor].
But I want more than McDonalds and more than Wal-Mart to be responsible for making sure that those outcomes happen. I want the Koch brothers to be responsible. I want the Walton family to be responsible. I want me to be responsible, even though I don’t employ low wage workers. And so the way to do that is to tax people who have a lot of money and to redistribute it to people who are working hard and playing by the rules and who aren’t earning what we deem socially as an adequate standard of living. So you seem to want Wal-Mart and McDonalds to bear the entire brunt of that, and that’s implicit in the argument that somehow the government is subsidizing Wal-Mart and McDonalds, and I just fundamentally disagree with that framing.”
………..
I want me to be responsible…
And tax the people who have a lot of money…
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I certainly am more wealthy today than I would have been had we not had the innovations of Musk, Gates, Bezos, etc. Don’t forget Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Wright brothers, Volta, McCormick, Morse, But, in terms of empirical confirmation, I prefer a Harvard Business Study of innovations, measured by patent applications, during the late 1800’s early 1900’s. That study tracked patents by state and found, totally unsurprisingly, that the states with the greatest innovation and invention had the least wage income inequality.
See: https://hbr.org/2017/03/when-america-was-most-innovative-and-why
A rising tide does, indeed, life all boats.
For all who moan about inequality, take it from a foreign leader, in just a couple minutes, he confirms how inequality and poverty is worsened by government action that triggers inflation – where the government prints money, runs deficits, accumulates debt and someday in the future, will take wealth from you a second time in taxesall as a means to redistribute to others to purchase their votes today.
See: https://twitter.com/i/status/1727914748878971389
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Lift, not Life. Typo, sorry.
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I absolutely agree. The typical retort to the rising tide saying is that “trickle down” economics doesn’t work. I’d say it does and that it’s more than a trickle. The government does not create wealth – it’s a drag on the economy for the most part.
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