>Yet the solution to income inequality is to increase government control of the means of production via confiscatory taxes and redistribution?

There does seem to be an issue where the government having more power results in things going even worse when the government gets corrupted.

Is it better to have the FDA/DEA approve what drugs are legal which allows them to be abused by outlawing competitors, or is it better to not have the FDA/DEA able to ban drugs, which let's meth be sold freely where ever a business chooses to do so? Most everyone I've seen discuss this issue gets caught up in the trap of wishing for a happy medium that won't last. They want a government that does good but won't be corrupted to do bad.

>So some advocate increasing government's ability to take money from you a gunpoint through taxes in order to prevent the government from being able to control people?

In the end, we will always threaten each other with violence. I've yet to see an alternative, as even extreme libertarian solutions just give way to fertile ground for governments to rise anew.

No matter what you do, a group of people which binds together will have more power than the strongest person who doesn't, and part of that power will be dedicated to keeping the group bound together (as groups that don't will eventually fall apart).

>worldwide absolute poverty has dramatically dropped

Looking world wide isn't really relevant when people make decisions based off of local ideals. Countries where poverty is going down will likely not have issues, and countries where wealth for the lower class stagnates or even reversed will.

>This whole "income inequality" cause is little more than Marxist class warfare rhetoric

And you have to fight class warfare with class warfare. Consider those who supported a culture where sharing one's salary is taboo, while businesses share the salaries of their employees quite openly (at least to other businesses on the inside).

>However, the industrial revolution started a low time before that. Apparently the climate change wasn't a catastrophic threat until someone wrote a book about it being a catastrophic threat? Were scientists simply sleeping for the past 100 years until some far-left journalist wrote a book about it?

Well look at how child abuse wasn't a significant problem up until the 1900s either. I wouldn't consider that evidence that child abuse isn't actually a significant problem.

>And there are 2 billion people living in extreme poverty, that gives each of them about $500. But that's it.

What is $500 in terms of their actual income? I'm not advocating seizing the wealth of the wealthiest, but to think that for the world's poorest $500 is the same as $500 is to even a poor American isn't quite right.

What I will say is that rights and morals and laws are all social constructs, and the true reality is we have never left the jungle. People will continue playing at society as long as certain conditions are met, and one of them is for things to be continually improving over the long term. If that doesn't happen, people will use what ever power they have to change the system, often to the detriment of those at the top. This isn't right or wrong, this isn't moral or immoral, this isn't legal or illegal.