You basically told the previous poster that he is an idiot. That's arrogance in my view especially since you are only stating things with nothing to back them up or any coherent thought besides that you are right and everyone else is stupid and not even worth discussing with.
The idea that two different things are in fact different does not require "back up". Wealth inequality and poverty are not interchangeable concepts, but wonderwonder was treating them like they were by appealing to everyone's innate sense that poverty is bad and then conflating that with wealth inequality.
This isn't up for debate. The two things are, by definition, not the same. You may think they are related, but that burden is wonderwonder's (and perhaps yours) to prove, not mine. Two separate concepts are not correlated, causal, or interchangeable until they have been shown to be. Not the other way 'round.
I don't think everyone else is stupid. But people that conflate those two things are either missing something or doing it deliberately (knowing full well they are wrong). Telling someone this is not arrogance, and my comment was perfectly coherent to a great many people if upvotes are any indication. If you want an example of incoherence, look no further than the comment which talked about "driving past food banks" as if that was some sort of "gotcha" about wealth inequality. I think it was lost on wonderwonder that food banks themselves are a great example of wealth not being a zero sum game.
Your starting point was that wealth is not a zero sum game. I replied that it is. If you do some arithmetic and look at growth rates you will see quickly that the economy never has grown beyond certain rates. That means if someone or a whole industry or population group accumulated wealth at a higher rate then the money had to come from someone else. It wasn't "created" out of thin air.
You really should work on your debating style. Phrases like "this is not up for debate" are just bullying to stop a debate you don't want to have. If you are the same at work I feel for the people who have to put up with this.
I’ve dealt with enough people who willfully conflate different topics to know that it is not worth my time to engage on that level and be forced to show repeatedly that two things are different, only to have the other person continue to conflate them. It is not up for debate because it needs to first be shown that there is some relation in order for it to be debated. This is neither arrogance or bullying: it is pragmatism.
Now, as to your comment (which was never the topic of discussion in this part of the thread): if the entire economy grows at 2%, and 0.1% of people’s wealth grows at 10%, the growth of the entire economy can absolutely account for that subset’s gain in wealth. It depends entirely on how big those respective groups are, not purely on “this % is larger than that %”. The money is not necessarily coming from someone else. The growth of the economy is not a fixed rate — if more people produce more good work, the economy will grow more. You also might be forgetting globalism and the fact that the "1%"’s wealth is not necessarily coming from
One Place™. For example, Jeff Bezos is wealthy because of AMZN. AMZN operates in many countries all over the world. Therefore, saying “the US is growing at X rate, so Jeff Bezos’ wealth growth rate is too high!” is misguided at best. This is true for many of the "1%" -- they are creating value all over the world, not just in their home country, so it follows that the growth of their wealth is not tied to the growth rate of their home country.
I hope making calculations is not part of your job, because if so I feel for the people that are forced to rely on them.
