My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that.<p>The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is <i>increasing</i> inequality - not <i>locally</i> increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but <i>globally</i> increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying political influence, monopolistic behaviour, corruption, nepotism, inheritance...<p>Personally, I'm mostly concerned about the last one - inheritance. I don't have a problem with resourceful people being rich. But I see a danger of the wealth being concentrated over generations unless we introduce proper (non-avoidable) inheritance taxes.