&gt; the statement that lots of wealth can only come from not creating real value seems absurd to me.<p>I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s what he said.  He said that inequality  increases when wealth is created for the company&#x27;s owners&#x2F;investors while NOT creating value (or even reducing value) for everyone else (customers, the public, employees).<p>There are lots of examples of huge wealth being created at the expense of others without also creating value - for example: bad mortgages being bundled, obfuscated, and upsold.  Tim actually proposes that bad startups are somewhat analogous to these sorts of financial instruments - i.e. there&#x27;s a sucker at the end holding the bag.