An important quote outlining the central flaw of socialism and statism in general.

Propaganda and ideology is just hot air, what matters is the system in place, and a system which centralizes economic power into a giant bureaucracy is going to be a disaster even if it is democratic.

Piketty's findings were actually due to rising real estate which represents only one sector of capitalism and one with a lot of government intervention. The blame lies mainly with domestic corruption rather than foreign tyrannical regimes.

http://i.imgur.com/B0fR8Yb.png

Ayn Rand's comments were made when a lot of people remembered ww2 and dictatorships were the standard in most of the world.

inequality was not a product of free market interactions, but of the socialization in the observed countries.

Inequality can be caused by many things. It could be due to a thug extorting or defrauding someone, or it could be one person deciding they want to worker harder and smarter and make more money than their peers. The problem is when people assume all inequality is immoral just because some thugs obtained their wealth immorally, some people actually believe this, others just use it as an excuse.

"That guy doesn't want to spend all his free time on weed, drinking and bitches, what a loser, he doesn't deserve his wealth, not like cool people like us. Let's vote to raise taxes nice and high on people like him and get bigger welfare checks for ourselves"

This is what we're up against. They absolutely hate our guts just because we're different and don't want to have to put up with their BS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

Just some thoughts.