The rapid economic advance that we have come to expect seems in a large measure to be the result of this inequality and to be impossible without it. Progress at such a fast rate cannot proceed on a uniform front but must take place in echelon fashion…
At any stage of this process there will always be many things we already know how to produce but which are still too expensive to provide for more than a few…

 

All the conveniences of a comfortable home, of our means of transportation and communication, of entertainment and enjoyment, we could produce at first only in limited quantities; but it was in doing this that we gradually learned to make them or similar things at a much smaller outlay of resources and thus became able to supply them to the great majority.

 

A large part of the expenditure of the rich, though not intended for that end, thus serves to defray the cost of the experimentation with the new things that, as a result, can later be made available to the poor.

 

– Friedrich A. Hayek, Ph.D., The Constitution of Liberty (1978 [2011], University of Chicago Press), pp. 96–97.

Not to mention political inequality always exists; how many Americans are as powerful and influential as AOC? Or Joe Biden? Or Nancy Pelosi?