The thesis of the article seems to be that wealth inequality, even if accompanied by a total wealth increase (and perhaps even if accompanied by a wealth increase for every single person, although that's not made explicit), is still "unfair" and therefore worth combating.
But I'm confused when the article shifts between talking about what "is really unfair" and what "feels really unfair" (i.e. normative vs. descriptive fairness). I would have preferred a more consistent foundation for the thesis. Either argue why the normative view is valid, or demonstrate that a large portion of people do think wealth inequality is unfair. I think the latter is a more potent argument, especially paired with the claim that "the traditional endings to extreme wealth inequality in a society are never good."
The article is vague on the "is" versus "feels", but keep in mind that there is no objective notion of fairness.
Every discussion of fairness or - on this topic - distributive justice must acknowledge the different starting points / moral axioms that people might bring to the table. There are the egalitarians, often of a Rawls-type background, there are the procedural justice people (most internet libertarians, though usually not consistently so), there are just deserts (also typically applied inconsistently) and probably more that I am missing right now.
Let's say a large portion of people do think that it is unfair that they do not have the same amount of wealth as other, smaller group of people. Would you consider it to be acceptable for the larger group to appropriate smaller group's wealth using that premise?
False frame. Wealth--meaning a state-granted monopoly to some amount of capital, and a government promise to perform violence on anyone who disregards that monopoly--is a social contract. People are only talking about renegotiating the exact terms of that contract.
It definitely can and should, but it looks very different from the way it looks with a government present to perform violence on violators. And even what counts as a violation is very different with a government than without. That's the point--and if it didn't, there'd be no reason to add in the extra administrative costs of government to get the same results.
And to be clear: government enforcement of property through violence provides plenty of social value, but those reformulated property rights are socially defined and subject to change, and not natural in any sense.
But I'm confused when the article shifts between talking about what "is really unfair" and what "feels really unfair" (i.e. normative vs. descriptive fairness). I would have preferred a more consistent foundation for the thesis. Either argue why the normative view is valid, or demonstrate that a large portion of people do think wealth inequality is unfair. I think the latter is a more potent argument, especially paired with the claim that "the traditional endings to extreme wealth inequality in a society are never good."