You could equally well argue that South Africa with a Gini of 63 is enormously economically empowered... I'm arguing only that inequality is orthogonal to what

You could equally well argue that South Africa with a Gini of 63 is enormously economically empowered... I'm arguing only that inequality is orthogonal to what we really care about: standard of living. But discussing standard of living is a political loser - poor Americans have a very high standard of living, and the historical story is one of more or less consistent improvements. (If you disagree, try this thought experiment: name a good or service people at the bottom lack.) As for political reality you are correct. The fact that a few million rich Americans are jealous of their richer neighbors will always seem more important to politicians than hundreds of millions of truly poor people who can't vote for them.