Some people are contributing to making that pie bigger and a lot of people aren’t. Why should the people whose contribution is steady or negative get a fixed fraction of the pie? What’s fair about that exactly?

What's fair about Zuckerberg becoming billionaire by basically pure luck? There are millions of people more hard working and more intelligent than him but they were unlucky. If not Zuckerberg then someone else would create Facebook, he was surprised by how successful FB was. Calculus was discovered independently in the late 17th century by two mathematicians and it would be discovered if they both would die before doing it. It's all statistics, you can have the best idea in the world but be in a wrong place at the wrong time and you will fail.

Seems like a straw man, it's like asking - I'm not husband of this woman but I could, so should she split this kid with me if I want to? This is different to sharing wealth, we already tax people so we share their wealth with the rest of the society but we don't share other people kids, wives or Air Force One.

You want more of the other guy’s wealth but you don’t want to give more of what you have to the many many in the world that have a lot less than you.

I get it. I just don’t respect it.

No, it's the rich who want our money. And they were getting better at taking it. With the labor shortage working class folks are starting to realize no one gets rich if there are no workers and people are demanding better pay. Good for them.

That's a different topic. We are talking about the middle class getting less than they did in the past, and that extra money going to the rich.

It’s the same topic. Lots of middle class professionals have essentially the same output as their forebears did 40 years ago. They are not expanding the pie. They are nonetheless richer in absolute terms, but have pulled away in relative terms from those that are much more productive than their fore-bearers. This is perfectly fine but for envy.

> Lots of middle class professionals have essentially the same output as their forebears did 40 years ago.

No, they have much higher output.

> They are not expanding the pie.

They are.

> They are nonetheless richer in absolute terms

They are not. It takes two incomes to do what one income used to pay for. Lots of middle class people cannot afford to even buy a house. Something most of their parents managed to do at a young age.

> but have pulled away in relative terms

Yes, this has also happened.

> those that are much more productive than their fore-bearers.

Much more productive? That's also not true.

> This is perfectly fine but for envy.

If it were envy, the middle class wouldn't be asking for better wages. They would be asking to become rich. It's not envy.

“Lots of middle class people cannot afford to even buy a house. Something most of their parents managed to do at a young age.”

This one thing seems to be something of an obsession. How much did it cost their parents to have a child at 40? Or to cure prostate cancer?

Owning a house is not an obsession. Shelter is a basic human need and people across many cultures own houses.

And no, it's not one thing, it's just one example. People aren't getting paid as fairly as they used to.

Yes quality of medical care has improved. That's not the discussion. We're talking about fair pay.

You made this up. Average labor productivity has steadily increased over this time.