I think you are taking these arguments too literally. The issue isn't inequality in itself, it is the degree to which inequality exists. Wealth inequality in the US is at all time highs. Part of this is due to globalization and technology, but a good part of it is also attributable to record low tax rates and business friendly government policy. Meanwhile, tuition at the public university I attended has increased by 400% in the past 10 years.
I don't think anyone cares about rich people driving fancy cars. They can spend their money how they like. Additionally, I don't think we will ever get rid of poverty entirely. The implicit agreement that we have reached as a society is that as long as the government ensures equal opportunity and social mobility, we will tolerate a certain degree of wealth inequality. Unfortunately, that inequality is so extreme that it is negatively impacting opportunity and mobility.
Your comment does exactly what I am describing. Your advocacy assumes all of the following are true without actually offering any evidence for them:
- "too much" wealth inequality is an a priori problem
- "extreme" inequality negatively impacts opportunity and mobility
- the increase in school tuition is somehow a symptom of this
You also said I'm taking things too literally, but is Elon Musk not an example of the "extreme" wealth inequality you are describing?
When people talk about extreme wealth inequality, they aren't talking about the existence of individual outliers from the mean, they are talking about the overall characteristics of the distribution function as shown in measures like the Gini coefficient.
A coherent community smaller than the whole universe of interest that demonstrates the same distributional features can be an example of extreme wealth inequality, an individual cannot -- this is important, because you can have extreme outliers with a relatively flat overall distribution, so its an error to try to say that being against extreme wealth inequality (in the sense that people are usually speaking when complaining about it) means being against any individual extremely wealthy person.
I expect the above was at least partly a joke - inequality is a relation between multiple parties, so not a property of one individual. Obviously, points of reference were implicit.
I don't think anyone cares about rich people driving fancy cars. They can spend their money how they like. Additionally, I don't think we will ever get rid of poverty entirely. The implicit agreement that we have reached as a society is that as long as the government ensures equal opportunity and social mobility, we will tolerate a certain degree of wealth inequality. Unfortunately, that inequality is so extreme that it is negatively impacting opportunity and mobility.