If this were a research paper it would be rejected for not citing any sources. There should be a footnote marker every two sentences in this story if we were to hold it to academic standards. There is no easy way to verify anything he is saying. That's not to say it's wrong. But I like to see primary sources.

With that said, I know our industry (high tech) would be very different if people weren't allowed to keep and invest their unearned income. He holds up Wallstreet as an example of greed (as one does) but ignores that other industries have created massive upwards mobility because people were able to keep their money and were incentivized to re-invest it (to make more "unearned" money).

In the US our entire retirement system is based on saving several million dollars and living off unearned returns on that money.

Now one could argue that the state could support retirees but I don't personally see that happening.

I for one am frightened by these articles... I don't have a lot of unearned income right now but I am working my ass off every day on new companies and ideas in the hopes that someday I will have unearned income and be able to retire at a normal age with the same (or better) quality of life I have now. If I knew that earning more just meant I got to keep less, I probably wouldn't be working as hard as I am now and taking risks. And less people taking risks is bad for innovation. And innovation is a job creator.

This sort of analysis, where you look at each country as if it is an independent economy leads to erroneous conclusions. It's like confusing independent and dependent events. A country can't be analyzed as if it is a closed system.

Statements like "inequality is now rising rapidly" are not meaningful from the global perspectives, and lead him to say nonsensical things like there is no explanation for the change in ratios of pay, when the global labor force is the obvious explanation. The repeated attempt to look for other causes is fruitless and just an excuse to list out things he doesn't like.

Statements like "Resources given to the rich" are also somewhat ludicrous, as he implies it is the same mechanism as "give more money to those at the bottom". "Give" is a very deceptive verb to use.

While institutions certainly matter, when he finally gets around to discussing the effects of the global labor force (after ignoring it for most of the piece so he can draw incorrect conclusions), he decries the asymmetric freedom of movement for capital and labor. His presumption is that if one billion Chinese workers had moved to the US then we would have less inequality (because unions would have signed them up and kept wages high by establishing monopolies on labor supply). This idea, that you can build high wage castles and put moats around them that keep the rest of the world poor is sadly among the bad economic ideas popular on the Left these days. The idea that it reduces inequality to have poor immigrants is just silly, as people that come in with little wealth increase measures of inequality. (This is not to admit that inequality is bad, the Great Depressions reduced inequality measures, but just that his own recommendations are ridiculous ways of reducing it)

I also find it interesting that he claims, "there is a growing global consensus that GDP does not provide a good measure of overall economic performance. What matters is whether growth is sustainable, and whether most citizens see their living standards rising year after year." By most measures of living standards, such as economic quantities of goods consumed, amount of living space per person, calories consumed, etc. things have clearly improved. I am curious which measures he is using that have not improved.