> The second point is actually my point, and while I'd like them to cite something (there are weird strategic cites throughout), I'll take it. But I'd like to reemphasize this real quick: "poverty may rise as wealth inequality rises, such as when crony capitalists gain preferences that distort the economy and reduce growth". That's the whole ballgame right there, crony capitalism increases wealth inequality and reduces growth.

No. You are twisting the discussion here. Inequality is not the problem. It is a problem when crony capitalism is the source of inequality, on that you, I, and the cato institute agree. Inequality can be a symptom of a broken system, but it is not necessarily a symptom of a broken system. And so inequality is not the measure you should be looking at. What you should care about is the source of that inequality.

> The consensus is that Wal-Mart being good or bad is irrelevant, whatever it is is a function of capitalism. That's pretty bleak. Wal-Mart's also a terrible example because of the labor and health care costs it farms off onto the federal government. When we defend their actions and their effect on the economy as capitalism working as intended, "entity that's demonstratively destructive to local businesses and wages, hugely burdensome to the welfare state, but uniquely enriching to its owners" says it all.

Walmart doesn't farm labor and healthcare costs off to the government. Walmart is not responsible for the wellbeing of its employees, it is not their parents. Society has decided it wants to institute certain minimum standards of living for people, and we enact those standards through the proper channels: government. Walmart is then free to hire those people. That does not mean Walmart has accepted responsibility for their well-being.

> That's because using them in that way leads to a correlation/causation fallacy. If you want better information on this, look at life expectancy and education outcomes by income. You probably don't need to though, because you can guess they decline as income declines.

You're saying a lot of stuff here without really supporting it. You don't get to cherry pick which correlations you like and which you don't. If you want to say that inequality causes these things, prove it. But the fact of the matter is that inequality and innovation correlate strongly across countries, which pretty soundly refutes your original point: that inequality stifles innovation. Now, there may be more to that story, like reverse causality, or other confounding factors. We certainly haven't proven that inequality causes innovation. But we have established pretty well that causality does not flow in the other direction, which was was your original point.

> I could go on. But in short, this presentation isn't a good faith argument. It uses multiple fallacies and cherry-picks data to further its political agenda. It's not unique to that section, or that presentation. It's what The Cato Institute does.

I didn't provide the link, you did. I have no vested interest in that particular source. I'm just telling you what your own source says.

> I think that the labor market is fundamentally coercive and exploitative, yes. When one party needs shelter, food, and medicine and the other just needs a warm body to drive a truck, those parties are not on equal footing and the relationship is coercive. That's why businesses are against things like social welfare programs, Medicare for all, labor standards, and collective bargaining and for things like right to work, independent contracting, and arbitration. Even companies that hire highly skilled workers like SWEs collude to suppress wages (Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel). Look at the list of things businesses are against and for, which are the ones we have? I wonder why that is.

If you want to enjoy the fruits of society, it seems reasonable to ask you to contribute to it. If you want to go and live in a cave and forage for food in the forest, that seems fine too. But if you want to live in a home built by other humans, and eat food farmed and transported to you by other humans, you are placing demands on the labor of others. What entitles you to that labor if not the exchange of your own? Of course, that then raises the simple question: how much of the labor of others should you get in exchange for yours? Well, we've come up with a whole system for answering that question, one that works pretty well and has elegant answers to that question. I don't doubt that there are others, but it's probably a good idea to fully understand why the one we have works before trying to tear it down.