Those who experience wealth inequality or are otherwise economically disadvantaged in their own country may view national economic activity in the same way they view the stock market: with apathy. Having a job at all is the priority for many.
GDP is not a proxy for wealth inequality. For instance, Canada has much lower inequality than the US [1] (0.32 vs 0.47) and saw a much greater percentage of its country materialize through immigration, but still saw a greater increase in GDP over the same time period.
Wealth inequality is a symptom of government policy, nothing more.
That's a straw man, nobody asked that inequality should go completely away.
The question is rather what is a healthy level of inequality and should the government work on increasing inequality.
Most people under estimate the amount of inequality in the US, this [1] is an awesome video illustrating it.
Also there is some interesting research on modelling inequality as a phase change process and that there exist some point of no return after which inequality only increases towards a oligarchy/plutogarchy without a revolution type event [2]
Sure, the Soviet Union. A government literally made inequality go away with the stroke of a pen. Ideal, of course not. Recommended? Definitely not. However, it's clear and self-evident that the US government allows wealthy people to keep their wealth. A wealth tax would solve that problem, for instance. Again, without advocating, I'm just saying that wealth and wealth inequality exist at the whim of the ruling class. I'm not sure I could come up with a counter-example that didn't involve a contrived crypto-ancap utopia.
The fact that income and wealth inequality are different in different countries is proof in and of itself.
Why would that be rose-tinted? I believe in the value of inequality, to a point. Where I disagree with the status quo is I don't think the top end should be effectively unlimited, and I think the bottom end should be a lot higher.
However to say that government policy can't substantially reduce inequality is patently absurd. The government has the power to take things from people, every year, in taxes.
