I don't think pg would disagree that the politicians that discuss this want to allocate more resources to labor. But what he takes exception with specifically is the rhetoric used to justify this "reallocation." AOC's claim:

> “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned,” she said. “You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.”

You can produce a motte-and-bailey-type argument where the "get market power" and "pay people less than their worth" are doing all the heavy lifting in that statement. But I think we can agree that she is very much tying the accrual of wealth to various kinds of villainy. That is what pg is taking on. And that matters because the common person would agree with the statement that you should be rewarded for what you create - if wealth accrual is all theft, that perception would make a much stronger argument for the reallocation of resources.

One can agree that they would rather see wealth more equitably distributed while also admitting that the current system of private property and capitalism is the most effective at broadly generating wealth.

You could say that, but you also don't have to concede it.

In fact, my argument would be that the more regulated, industrial-policy-driven economies of the recent past were better at generating wealth and improving society.

For the most part, the real conflict that we're having around these topics is about the reorganization of the economy that happened starting in the mid-1970s.

This change shifted the focus of the US economy to financial extraction and away from industrial policies, a role that we sold out to China for the benefit of our elite classes and the severe detriment of our working class.