Ironically, the OP has not provided any evidence for his extremely vague generalization.
I have never seen any respectable thinker on the American Left call for the equal distribution of wealth. This sounds like talk radio nonsense.
Here is what I have seen: a desire to return to a system where the compensation of workers is tied to economic growth. This desire is based largely on a recognition that economy requires a certain level of middle class demand, i.e., the middle class is too big to fail.
Some history: Starting with Reagan, middle class earning power stagnated, while the gains on top exploded to unprecedented levels. The mechanisms that tied worker compensation (wages and benefits) to worker productivity (economic growth) had been destroyed. The belief was that if the wealthy accumulated even more wealth, there would be a magical multiplier effect of jobs and middle class benefits ("trickle down economics"). When this failed to happen -- when the jobs started to flow not down but to China and India -- the American system faced a structural flaw, that is, the economy required massive amounts of middle class consumption ("demand"), but it no longer had the fundamentals (solid wages and benefits) to drive consumption. The money that used to go to the middle class during the postwar years was now going upward in the form of cheaper operation costs (aka cheaper labor).
How did our legislators respond to this collapse of middle class demand? Answer: they created the largest credit economy in history. Starting in the late 80s, Americans received a tsunami of credit offers. The middle class would, for the next 30 years, keep the economy afloat with an endless array of gimmicky financing options. This strategy worked for a while. But it has one central flaw. You can't borrow forever.
Anybody calling for equal distribution doesn't understand the degree to which an efficient, productive economy requires proper incentives. If you pay people not to work, they won't. If you reward people for not working hard, they won't work hard. However, if your distribution system awards billions to hedge fund managers, while not paying hard factory and retail workers enough to survive and consume, your economy (which depends on consumption) will eventually die . . . when the credit runs out. This is why FDR created mechanisms which assured that worker compensation was tied to economic growth, so that workers were compensated enough to drive the economy with their consumption. And what happens when the middle class has money to spend? Capital is forced to add even more jobs in order to capture that demand. (See the 50s and 60s, when the New Deal reached its apex and America saw its greatest economic growth. Under progressive policies, the American middle class became the most powerful consumption engine in world history)
What the talk radio Right doesn't understand is this: if the money doesn't trickle down -- if economic growth and prosperity only goes to the few -- than the disparity in wealth distribution is a problem. -not because of fairness or justice (which is a Marxian pipe dream), but because they economy dies when the middle class cannot afford to buy what they make. The economy dies when the upper class has more money than Wall Street can handle, leading to the invention of crazy Hedge Funds and ponzi Derivatives schemes. America has become Rome. The wealth on top has corrupted and destroyed the political system, which is bombarded with billions of lobbying dollars every year. 2008 was the symbolic end of this great nation. It was looted beyond repair.
