1. He says I say economic inequality is "a good thing." I didn't say that. What I said is that it has multiple causes, some bad (lack of social mobility) and so

1. He says I say economic inequality is "a good thing." I didn't say that. What I said is that it has multiple causes, some bad (lack of social mobility) and some good (Larry and Sergey starting Google). It's interesting and probably important that he doesn't actually come out and say whether or not he believes economic inequality to be a bad thing, either. There is significant evidence that a high level or economic inequality has bad consequences for people - it can literally be bad for your health, via psychological mechanisms. This is important since if inequality is bad in itself, then you might want to eliminate some of the ostensibly good reasons as well, after having eliminated the bad reasons. So instead of taking a stance on the badness of economic inequality (yay or nay), he bangs on the drum that one should first go after the bad causes of economic inequality. I doubt anybody else in the discussion would disagree with that, which makes the whole first point rather pointless. On point 2, "So you could for example have no poverty and perfect social mobility, and still have great economic inequality." Does pg realize that perhaps somebody might not agree with that? This seeming lack of understanding makes the second point rather pointless as well. On point 3, "I called out lack of social mobility as one of the worst problems contributing to economic inequality" Is he aware of the argument that economic inequality can reduce social mobility? Since I doubt that pg is wilfully ignorant of the potential subtext that goes on in the heads of the people he responds to, I can't help but have the impression that people are talking past each other. I guess part of the problem is that the people he responds to aren't making their arguments very well (at least from the perspective of a highly technical mind), and another part of the problem is that pg seems to be insufficiently aware of the large body of work on the topic in disciplines outside his "home turf".