A important aspect that I think is overlooked is that democratized access to exponential growth (like an index fund or buying a house) mathematically creates a growing wealth gap.

E.g. if 2 people equally start with $100 and grow their money at 7% per year, the difference in wealth is:

100 * 1.07 ^ 10 - 100 * 1.07 ^ 5

This function is still an exponential function.

So even though the second person is always 5 years behind in wealth, the absolute wealth gap will grow exponentially and cut the latter off from being able to compete on anything that they both want access to within the same timeframe. E