Inequality is key to innovation, which solves the worst impacts of inequality

In the first place, growing inequality is most frequently the flip side of growing, not shrinking opportunity. In fact, inequality is the mechanism through which the market generates and spreads innovation, which in turn generates opportunities for millions of individuals. Every innovation has initially generated inequality in incomes, as their inventors exploit it commercially. The inequality, in turn, attracts new innovators, as well as imitators, rapidly spreading the initial innovation and improvements on it. In the process, they generate many new opportunities.

For example, Steve Jobs and Thomas Alva Edison actually created new inventions and enterprises for the sake of putting themselves on the best side of inequality—to make large amounts of money that would increase their income over that of the rest of the population. By being successful, they created inequality not just in their immediate neighborhood but also in the whole country. They became billionaires. Many of their colleagues in Apple and all the Edison companies (General Electric, Consolidated Edison, Commonwealth Edison) also became billionaires in the midst of a society in which just a few people are billionaires. By improving the productivity of others, however, their innovations created millions of new opportunities across nations and continents. Even people who suffer when seeing that others get rich have to recognize that seeing Jobs and Edison becoming billionaires was a small price to pay for the enormous opportunities they created in the whole world.