Bob starts with 11 units of utility. Fred starts with 2. It costs 1 unit of utility to exist. Each of Bob and Fred invest their remaining utility in the utility market, which grows at 10% per year regardless of what either of them do. 25 years later, Bob has 109 units of utility, and Fred has roughly 12 units of utility. At the beginning of this thought experiment, Bob had 5.5x the utility units of Fred. At the end, he had more than 9x.

This is a simple thought experiment that I hope illuminates something important: in an economy where there is year over year growth, inequality grows by default as a function of exposure to the market. Here, Bob starts with more and can be more exposed to the market. In this example, Bob started with 5.5x more assets - but in America today, the top 10% of households have a median net worth of $1.6m, and the 40th-60th percentile of households have a median net worth of $88k, a multiplier of 18x (note: this data is from 2016).

Most Americans have little to no exposure to the market, while the richest 10% own 84% of stocks. There are many factors driving inequality, and I don’t think anyone would argue that some people are more economically productive than others. But it’s not the case that inequality in the United States is purely a function of hard work by talented people - there are very significant structural factors.