This chapter offers a brief historical overview and outlines key preliminary considerations regarding distributive justice. It emphasizes how notions of acceptable inequality are shaped by varying socioeconomic and cultural contexts, thereby rendering consensus on the concept particularly elusive. While some debates around justice date back millennia, modern understandings of economic inequality only began to take shape a few centuries ago. A key clarification is that no theory of distributive justice assigns intrinsic value to material well-being. This may seem redundant, yet frameworks that treat material resources merely as means to higher order ends are often paradoxically criticized for their materialism. At the same time, normative discourse and some literature tend to overemphasize economic growth as the primary driver of well-being. The ongoing debate around moving “beyond GDP” illustrates this tension.