You right, it’s not bunk to say that work, drive, and smarts contribute to success, and successful people will end up with more, no matter how we structure a system.

What I object to is when folks use work and merit to justify extreme inequity. Maybe Jeff Bezos works hard, but a warehouse worker works less hard and isn’t entitled to breaks, or share in the profit of the company they work for? Is profit only for the executive and shareholding class? Worker productivity has skyrocketed, but pay for the bottom 90% has flatlined. I wrote a bit about this here, with some charts.

There are many possible fixes to inequality that will still allow some people to be fabulously wealthy as compared to others and would lift more people up. For example, indexing CEO/executive pay to bottom rung employee, and how about a ratio of saaay… 25:1? Or penalties to companies who generate sizable profit, pay exorbitant executive/boardroom pay & stock options, and issue stock dividends, who also have a sizeable percentage of their workforce accessing public assistance like food stamps. This isn’t individual welfare, but corporate welfare.