"Probability of becoming rich" is a weird thing to optimize for. If a rich person being rich costs you a fixed and relatively small amount - say $1,000 - every

"Probability of becoming rich" is a weird thing to optimize for. If a rich person being rich costs you a fixed and relatively small amount - say $1,000 - every year, that wouldn't materially affect your chances of becoming rich, but it would still be reasonable to be unhappy about it. Lots of government spending creates value in proportion to wealth. The military is a good example of this - if the US had no military, Americans would likely buy insurance against acts of war, and the premium for that insurance would be proportional to wealth (or, more precisely, to the value of real assets owned directly plus real assets supporting the value of directly owned financial assets). So the financial value that the military creates is allocated roughly in proportion to wealth - but it's mostly paid for by taxes on income, so the net effect is to create a transfer from labor to capital.