>It could be that "the 1%" are simply creating more than their previous share of wealth.
No, the 1% are generally company executives. The company is indeed creating more wealth but right now executives are taking a very large portion of that created wealth and actual workers are getting a very small (relatively) portion.
>those who get rich by creating wealth
Here you probably have in mind people like Zuckerberg, the google guys, etc., but this is a small minority. Most of the guys getting capturing so much wealth are just executives. They're creating wealth cut are they really creating hundreds or thousands of times more wealth than the people actually doing the work?
>to put it charitably, off the political map.
Anything that would actually help is off the map. People want sound-byte fixes. Something you can describe in one sentence. What is actually needed is a multi-pronged approach to encourage the right kind of change. Personally, I would like to see a law that says companies must disclose full compensation for every employee. They don't need to say who gets what but they would need to list each position and what the total comp was for it (this could be made a bit more generic so it's harder to tie to exactly who gets what). The free market works for buying products because we see what the product costs and we see what everyone else charges. With wages it's hard to pin down exactly what market rates are. If this data were forced to be disclosed I think it would strengthen workers' position in negotiation, hopefully driving labor prices up (and hopefully this combined with market competition would force executive salaries down closer to realistic numbers).
And that's just one thing, we would need a great many changes to encourage markets to correct after years of various interest groups doing what ever they can to distort markets in their favor.