It's about Warren's conversion from being a free markets person as a young academic.
"Her conversion was ideological before it turned partisan. The first shift came in the mid-’80s, as she traveled to bankruptcy courts across the country to review thousands of individual cases—a departure from the more theoretical academic approach—and saw that Americans filing for bankruptcy more closely resembled her own family, who struggled financially, rather than the irresponsible deadbeats she had expected."
That's one of the ones that changed me. The realisation that luck plays such a large role in economic outcomes.
The usual GOP attitude is that poor people are poor because they are lazy. But my experience is that rich people are often rich not simply because they are hard working. Often, it is because they have caught a break at some point. And the set of poor people includes large numbers of unlucky people. As well as some lazy people.
If a person's wealth is as much about good fortune as anything, I don't see that the wealth market delivers virtuous or even efficient outcomes. So it is worth attempting a certain amount of the sharing of good fortune via human wisdom. Or the tax code, as folks call it. That's to say, reversing gross inequality seems reasonable to me.
I think hard work should be rewarded. But good fortune should be spread about as best as possible.
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