The Growing Wealth Gap

I came upon this series of charts on reader today about the growing wealth gap in the United States.  Some of the figures are shocking: the richest 1% control 33% of America's wealth and 50% of its capital markets.

My first gut reaction was that this is unfair, inequitable and all around terrible; what kind of society are we turning into?  But I struggled to find a unemotional rationale to this reaction.  Do we instinctively want to even things out?  How is that equality?  And is a wealth gap really a problem if no one is suffering?  Maybe we are just uncomfortable with skewed distributions.

Let's imagine a state where everyone is provided for, with a job, a home, ample food, security, good education, and all the rest, but the richest 1% control 90% of the wealth.  Why is so wrong on the face of it?

At the risk of sounding Randian: maybe so long as everyone has sustenance, basic rights and opportunity, the way wealth distributes itself isn't an issue we should be worried about (ignoring socialist  ideologic arguments).

Maybe the state's role should be to simply first, provide for these basic rights and sustenance, and second, to be a guardian for opportunity and oppression.  So long as the rich are not able to oppress, exploit, or unfairly compete with the rest using that wealth, what economic rationale is there to create taxation transfers?  Everyone benefits if that wealth is pumped into creating jobs, opening opportunities, funding research. Why should we fight against aggregations of wealth?

Of course, this is assuming everyone is provided for on a basic level.