The article is vague on the "is" versus "feels", but keep in mind that there is no objective notion of fairness.

Every discussion of fairness or - on this topic - distributive justice must acknowledge the different starting points / moral axioms that people might bring to the table. There are the egalitarians, often of a Rawls-type background, there are the procedural justice people (most internet libertarians, though usually not consistently so), there are just deserts (also typically applied inconsistently) and probably more that I am missing right now.