People on the spectrums of political thoughts tend to have very strong feelings on financial inequality. Some on the right think that it is never a problem, no matter how much there is of it, and some on the left think it is always a problem, if there is even a little bit of it.

Massive inequality (as we are seeing arise in the world today) is a problem for a variety of reasons. The most important, however, is that money buys power and massive disparities of wealth end up reflected in massive disparities in power. This undermines democracy. In my mind, democractic rule is much more important than the details of the economic system we live under.

But perfect equality is not something we should strive towards either. Some people are materialistic. You could call them "greedy" but it isn't that they want to take from others. They just like things for themselves. That's their right. If they want to work harder to make extra money for more stuff, who am I to stand in their way? Others prefer to take work easy and make do with less money. Once again, why should I condemn their choice?

I believe that we need a market system so that people can make these choices for themselves. We also need limits on the market system to prevent an untouchable "upper class" from arising. That upper class would be the social equivalent of a monopoly. The rest of us would be unable to compete with them because we have no connections, we have no politicians in our pockets, we don't have startup capital etc. The rapidly diverging wealth figures I see suggest that this is becoming a real possibility!

Straight-forward wealth redistribution is not the solution. Redistribution is appropriate to maintain a certain minimum quality of life for everybody, but that is not an overall solution to inequality. The other part of the solution is to tax the rich and use some of the proceeds to build the infrastucture that will help the poor compete effectively: schools, networks, roads, hospitals and employment agencies.