Ah, okay, yes then I agree with you. Sorry for assuming you were talking about me. I also agree with the article that people want fairness more than literal equality, but my reaction is that literal equality is more than just strawman, it's an odd premise to start from. I'm sure there are some people who do propose literal equality, but I don't think that the general argument against inequality is one in favor of literal equality, by and large.

My takeaway from my experiences reading and talking about this is that when people talk about equality, they are talking about equality of opportunity. The idea being that things would be better if everyone had a basic level of needs covered, things like food, shelter, education and health care.

It is possible to be in favor of equality increasing measures and still not have the long term goal of equal sized piles of money. What we have right now is both really unfair and really unequal. And it's getting worse, not better. So equality metrics may be the simplest way to measure whether things are improving (they're not). That doesn't automatically mean that getting everyone to balance out is the ideal, right? Perhaps it's a blunt metric precisely because anything else is more subtle and leads to nuanced debate that most people won't bother with?