Obviously the quoted author has never lived an upper-class American life. Context is important when speaking about America. We have the third-largest population

Obviously the quoted author has never lived an upper-class American life. Context is important when speaking about America. We have the third-largest population in the world and a larger degree in inequality than most of the countries in our GDP-bracket. There is no better place to live in the world if you are intelligent, determined, healthy, and ideally, rich and well-connected. As for the justice of such a situation, well, this is the perennial American debate: is inequality actually a good thing, or are we in a zero-sum game where wealth is a pie that never grows? See Paul Graham’s essays, as always.