Wow! Progressive thinking on display. "Inequality of Outcome" is an essential component of meritocracy. It motivates achievement and efficiency. But the progressive dogma won't allow it.

Not really. One of the key components of progressive economic thought is pointing out that outcomes don't entirely depend on merit. Two people can be just as smart, and work just as hard - but one can have much better outcomes than the other for reasons that have nothing to do with merit.

Put those reasons into two big buckets. One is just blind chance. Two people can have the same business plan, the same level of business skill, and the same level of hard work - but one might succeed dramatically and the other might fail through nothing under their control. Farmer A has good weather, Farmer B gets a drought. Retail Shopkeeper X gets an unexpected boon when a major attraction opens up near their store, while Retail Shopkeeper Y goes out of business because they were further away. Restauranteur Alpha builds a huge successful following; Restauranteur Omega manifests a genetically-caused illness that keeps them from working. Etc. Success and failure are sometimes - frequently in the telling of progressives - due to luck completely outside of "merit." As Warren Buffett has pointed out, if he had been born in rural China instead of the U.S., all of his skills and capabilities at efficiently allocating capital would have been useless - there is a component of initial luck in everything he has achieved in his life.

The second is structural and societal. Two kids can be just as smart and hardworking and "meritorious" - but the one who has parents that went to college is far, far more likely to themselves go to college than the one who didn't. They have far, far different life outcomes not because of merit, but because society is structured in a certain way. Racism, sexism, prejudice against various religious or sexual minorities. Even your accent can shape what happens to you in life, whether you have success or not regardless of how hard you try and how good you are.

Reasonable minds disagree on how much society can or should respond to these things. Progressives, save for the most hardcore Marxists, do not insist that everyone's outcome should be exactly the same in every situation. They do, however, advocate for a greater response to the inequalities of outcome that arise from fickle fortune and existing unfairness in the system.