From John Tamny’s Forbes article “Surging Wealth Inequality Is A Happy Sign That Life Is Becoming Much More Convenient“:
The shame of socialism is that the wildly talented are restrained from profitably improving the lives of the people around them, and perhaps continents away. Thinking about life two hundred years ago, distance was a severely limiting factor for the talented when it came to making things better for everyone. No doubt there were people with skills similar to those of the richest Americans today, and some became very well-to-do by early 19th century standards. But they didn’t become staggeringly rich simply because a lack of technology limited the ability of the ‘1 percenters’ of the early 19th century to touch the U.S. (and the world) with their genius. Limited technology has socialistic qualities in the outcome sense for it restraining the brilliant from improving the lives of others while getting rich for doing just that.
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The commercial seers who get the future right will grow stunningly rich for being right. The more convenient life is, the more unequal are the living. But as opposed to a sign of hardship, the happier truth is that life is truly cruel when the talented aren’t getting rich. That’s when we know that no one is devising ways to make our lives easier, cheaper, healthier, more productive, and everything else good. Life without rising inequality is very much like life would be with socialism.