From Human Action — surrounding passage

The more openhanded these laws are, the more punctilious must their application become. The discretion of bureaucrats is substituted for the discretion of people whom an inner voice drives to acts of charity. Whether this change renders the lot of those incapacitated any easier, is hard to say. 3. Inequality The inequality of incomes and wealth is an inherent feature of the market economy. Its elimination would entirely destroy the market economy. 2

“What those people who ask for equality have in mind is always an increase in their own power to consume.”

In endorsing the principle of equality as a political postulate nobody wants to share his own income with those who have less. When the American wage earner refers to equality, he means that the dividends of the stockholders should be given to him. He does not suggest a curtailment of his own income for the benefit of those 95 per cent of the earth's population whose income is lower than his.