Inequality by itself is not a bad thing. Let's start from there. If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic.
Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to cement their wealth and power. Those are things Graham is clearly against. But an entrepreneur who gets rich by reducing waste and improving productivity by harnessing technology deserves our praise. They're not causing the "poor to get poorer".
And comparing the wealth distribution of today to that of 1980 is pretty silly. We're in a global economy now, so if you want to be fair, you need to look at it from a global perspective. Almost all Americans are going to fall in the top 10% of earners globally. And global poverty has collapsed since 1980. Yes, you no longer get a comfy middle class life just by virtue of being born in the US (regardless of skills) anymore. I personally don't believe that an unskilled worker in the US deserves to be paid 10X what an equivalent worker in Bangladesh makes just because they were lucky enough to be born here.
Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to cement their wealth and power. Those are things Graham is clearly against. But an entrepreneur who gets rich by reducing waste and improving productivity by harnessing technology deserves our praise. They're not causing the "poor to get poorer".
And comparing the wealth distribution of today to that of 1980 is pretty silly. We're in a global economy now, so if you want to be fair, you need to look at it from a global perspective. Almost all Americans are going to fall in the top 10% of earners globally. And global poverty has collapsed since 1980. Yes, you no longer get a comfy middle class life just by virtue of being born in the US (regardless of skills) anymore. I personally don't believe that an unskilled worker in the US deserves to be paid 10X what an equivalent worker in Bangladesh makes just because they were lucky enough to be born here.