> The billionaires really, really want you to perceive this distinction as a real inequality problem. When people making $30K are resenting/fighting people making $300K, the people making $300M are sitting back and laughing.
But that is inequality, too.
Just as a thought experiment, if you were to take the global GDP and spread it perfectly evenly over every person on the planet, you'd have less than $13k per capita. That's around half of the income per capita in Hammond.
I think there's a perception that there's this massive hoard of wealth at the very top, and if only we could distribute it more fairly, we could solve a bevy of social ills. It's not that simple.
It's absolutely true that there are some unbelievably wealthy people, but they are also small in number. If you were to magically disgorge, say, every American with $50M+ of 90% of their wealth, you'd be lucky to be able to use the proceeds to raise all the Hammonds to the living standards of all the Boca Ratons, which as far as you're concerned here, does not really change their lifestyles.
Honestly I'm much more disgusted that billionaires exist while there are infants dying of malnutrition than I am disgusted that billionaires exist while there's people worried about their kids and their retirement. Those sorts of things are really unavoidable as long as we're grappling with scarcity.