&gt; PG made it sound as if the conversation is about attacking wealth for its own sake, which nobody but the fringe is having<p>Let us test this claim.<p>I Googled &quot;inequality in the us&quot; and clicked the first several results.  If your claim is true, these will only discuss attacking poverty, and not attacking wealth.  (I am assuming that top Google hits do not constitute &quot;the fringe&quot;).<p>The first result is: &quot;20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know from The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.&quot;  (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.stanford.edu&#x2F;group&#x2F;scspi&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;facts.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.stanford.edu&#x2F;group&#x2F;scspi&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;facts.php</a>).  The first two &quot;facts&quot; concern wage inequality and CEO pay, neither of which say anything a priori about poverty.  Many of the other &quot;facts&quot; on the page do address poverty more directly.<p>The Wikipedia page on Income Inequality is next (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Income_inequality_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...</a>).  It primarily discusses actual inequality, mentioning poverty only in one specific section.  One of the policy proposals it describes is one of a maximum wage, which has nothing to do with decreasing poverty.<p>The third result is a Salon.com piece, &quot;35 soul-crushing facts about American income inequality&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;15&#x2F;35_soul_crushing_facts_about_american_income_inequality_partner&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;15&#x2F;35_soul_crushing_facts_about...</a>).  Many of them are again facts that do not say anything about poverty, like &quot;The poorest half of the Earth’s population owns 1% of the Earth’s wealth. The richest 1% of the Earth’s population owns 46% of the Earth’s wealth.&quot;  Facts like these are directly pitting the poor against the rich, without saying anything about whether the lower earners actually have their needs met and&#x2F;or have social mobility.<p>So I disagree that this is a &quot;strawman.&quot;  I think a core part of the conversation about inequality is that is it horrifying how much the rich have compared with everyone else.  That is the attitude that PG is arguing against.