Surely countries such as those in Scandinavia are proving that a free-market system is not better at reducing inequality?

Well, there’s far less unemployment in the US, especially among young people. America is an unbelievably diverse and complex society and the problems that they face are massive compared to the problems the relatively homogeneous Scandinavian countries face.

Scandinavian countries are still free market countries. And it is a valid point that their homogeneity has been a major factor. As this changes, they may also.

The Marxist types like to lay inequality at the feet of capitalism and the free market. But there isn’t a system of governance that human beings have ever invented, on the left or the right, that fails to produce inequality. Scheidel did an empirical analysis trying to determine whether governments on the right or left produce more inequality. The hypothesis he was testing was that left-wing governments would produce less inequality. He found absolutely no evidence for that.

Which is why the focus should be equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.