The rich are getting richer

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If we stick with the 2 party system we will be in hell forever.

Let's give Bill Gates a tax break so the economy can be stimulated.

I really don't understand the concept of wealth distribution. It seems like a way of punishing people for being successful while rewarding incompetency. Seems as though it would encourage the productive to become lazy and the lazy to become lazier still.

You rarely get wealthy working for someone else unless you have a job in which your performance can be directly measured and you can be held accountable for it. A CEO tends to be well paid because his or her performance can be measured by company performance and he or she is held accountable for everything that takes place within the company. The person hires the executive staff, which is instrumental in setting up each area of the company and shape company police and are held directly accountable for it.

The main chunk of such salaries are similar to the incentive given to an entrepreneur though since it tends to directly relate to company performance in the form of stock options. This is an incentive for a person to increase the per share value of the company and thus shareholder value, and when this is done well over a period of time the person gets a further reward. With stock options, the CEO goes from being a pure employee to an employee/owner of the business, so in a sense he/she is both working for somebody else and him/herself.

Wealth in the form of land or capital, is the result of someone postponing gratification (saving capital) and investing it in land. The fact that it can be passed on is what opens the door for multi-generation wealth generation. Think about it like if your grandfather had invested $40 in Coca Cola for 1 piece of stock when it was made public in 1919, and that the 5 million that was worth in roughly 2006 had been sold by you and then reinvested in Apple during the financial crisis, which would have yielded 100% return by now making your 5 million, 10 million for your to pass on at some time in the future.

The reason owners are the ones who earn the most, is that owners are taking a risk. In the case of an entrepreneur they may think as follows "I'm currently being paid $X in hour for writing software code, the company can therefore charge X + Other overheads + Profit, for my time. Therefore, I could charge $Y per hour if I worked for myself". They are giving up a safe salary, for a chance at a bigger salary.

An entrepreneur decides that they have a skill they can sell. A skill is a function of talent + time + effort. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, there are limits to what skills one may focus on, as Warren Buffett put it "I'm lucky to have been born in the United States of America, where allocating capital is a highly valued skill".

Mark Cuban when speaking of his pre-rich days mentions that when he came home, regardless of how tired or drunk he was, he'd read a little bit before going to bed every night about things that were relevant to his business.

There is a reason why there are quite a few highly paid aspies out there, because their special interest happened to be one that is highly valued. Michael Burry for instance made his money because of an obsession with the stock market, which he studied and blogged about while in med school.

People elect to spend their time differently and unfortunately for some all time-expenditures aren't valued equally. Getting a law degree part time and watching law and order are valued differently.