What few people understand is the variability of human abilities. The top earners are hundreds of times smarter than the average person.
In previous centuries, brilliant men could not use their abilities to make huge fortunes. Today, they can.
Some are smarter than your average person — I defy that anyone on earth is “100 times smarter” than average. Luck plays a significant role as well. The more resources you start with, the easier it is. In the financial district of Boston I see guys in their early 20s in designer suits driving super cars all the time. Do you really think they’re 100 times smarter than the rest of us, or maybe a lot of them had daddy pay for them to attend an outrageously extensive university, and then had one of his buddies hire them. With the education and resources and connections they have they can probably maintain their family wealth but many of them never would have made it from scratch.
The other issue is the refrain “it’s government”. That’s true, but the mega-wealthy use their resources to control government for their own benefit and rearrange economic systems at the expense of many others (open borders and HB1 for example, cheap labor for the wealthy, less opportunity for working Americans.
The need for a strong back and such has been replaced in many areas. That I think, has driven away the social 'need' for men in many forms. That is a destructive force. The rise in male suicide is a blow back in many ways.
It's really difficult to quantify "intelligence." Viz.: Is someone with an I.Q. of 120 twenty percent smarter than someone with an I.Q. of 100? Perhaps the scale is logarithmic.
In a "winner-take-all" system, it is sufficient to be only slightly smarter (or more handsome, or stronger - depending upon the given competition) to win the race and "take all."
Regards,