1. When everyone was a farmer, the difference between the best possible farmer and the worst farmer just wasn't that great. Maybe you're 2x faster at picking corn, or 3x better at hunting deer. But a few guys literally built a communication tool (WhatsApp) to be used by billions of people. So maybe in the old world you could pick 2x as much corn, but in today's world you can build 1 billion times the communication tools as someone else.
2. The whole idea of inequality, while potentially useful, kind of assumes a fixed pie. The question is phrased as, "What percent of the total income pie did the 1% take" and not "How much pie did the top 1% of people produce to make the overall pie bigger?". I don't think either mentality is totally correct, but both are vitally important to understand (and the second belief is non-obvious to many). Did Steve Jobs producing the iPhone (and becoming a billionaire) take any of the poor people's money, or did it increase the overall output of the country? Steve jobs making the iPhone certainly made the country more unequal, but it also made the economy bigger and the country better off.
3. Does anyone care about equality, or do people care about poverty? Would a world where 1% of people had 100 yachts but 99% of people each had 1 yacht bother you? Would you rather live in a poor equal country or a rich unequal country?
2. The whole idea of inequality, while potentially useful, kind of assumes a fixed pie. The question is phrased as, "What percent of the total income pie did the 1% take" and not "How much pie did the top 1% of people produce to make the overall pie bigger?". I don't think either mentality is totally correct, but both are vitally important to understand (and the second belief is non-obvious to many). Did Steve Jobs producing the iPhone (and becoming a billionaire) take any of the poor people's money, or did it increase the overall output of the country? Steve jobs making the iPhone certainly made the country more unequal, but it also made the economy bigger and the country better off.
3. Does anyone care about equality, or do people care about poverty? Would a world where 1% of people had 100 yachts but 99% of people each had 1 yacht bother you? Would you rather live in a poor equal country or a rich unequal country?