steepholm

I suspect that you can't, in fact, eliminate poverty without eliminating wealth - especially, as you say, if you define poverty relatively. The difference between your two hypotheticals is that one of them admits this (though I note that he - it is a he, isn't it? - is hypothetically talking about wage differentials, so as not to alert the very very rich, who don't have anything as petty as wages!).

On a national scale I am perfectly comfortable with this; start thinking worldwide, and I become more defensive...