Situation 1, Year 1: Rich person has 100, the one hundred poor people have 1.

Situation 1, Year 2: Rich person has 150, the one hundred poor people have 1.2

Situation 2, Year 1: Rich person has 100, the one hundred poor people have 1.

Situation 2, Year 2: Rich person has 150, the one hundred poor people have 0.8

Both situations show increasing wealth inequality, but only one shows wealth redistribution up the ladder.

Other dynamics, like inflation and gentrification to name a couple, can make Situation 1 basically the same in practice to Situation 2. It just makes it more difficult to point out because "everyone's money number has gone up, so the system works!"

I agree, the difference isn't large. But my parent was asking for the difference, and I think that is the difference.

If inequality was the problem, redistribution could fix it. If redistribution is the problem, simply doing more redistributing won't fix anything.

No amount of redistribution from the bottom to the top will correct inequality.