I think part of the problem is the notion that people "create" wealth. Most of the really rich people create wealth in the same way that a magnet "creates" iron filings, or Genghis Khan "created" land.
At the bottom layer there's stuff you grow or raise, stuff you dig up or extract from the atmosphere. Then processing and making goods, transport, storage etc. Hospitality, care, cleaning, grooming(even the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers mocked by Douglas Adams add some value). Fixing stuff, recycling stuff, blah blah blah, all in no particular order of merit. All these people and more could be said to add to the wealth of a country, or indeed our planet, and forgive me if I've missed out whatever worthy thing you happen to do or have done.
Then we have the Duke of Westminster, options and future traders, hedge fund managers, investment bankers, the other Jacob etc. These people don't create wealth, they gather up the wealth that already exists into small or large piles.
The red end of the spectrum is probably unsustainable, because we need some motivation to achieve, and the blue end is also unsustainable because we'd need constant infinite growth, which is also problematical, otherwise we could all become fabulously rich by simply starting chain letters. What we seem to do is to steer a drunken zigzag walk that keeps us somewhere in the middle by lurching alternately left and right. It's how two party politics works, apparently. The problem now is that we have almost zero politicians on either side who have any principles or beliefs beyond catching votes at the next election.
I think we're screwed, basically.
