>an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars… What she meant was that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way.

This assumption is depressing. That the only alternative to "earn" is "cheat".

A system of diminishing work (i.e. where money makes money), especially combined with inheritance, means every dollar is arguably less earned than the last. That system is fine and actually very useful, but that diminishment becomes a big problem at large enough scales. We've been operating at that scale for many decades.