Nassim Taleb uses the Florence example to make the argument that Europe has more economic inequality compared to the US. He makes an interesting point that static measures of inequality like 'top 1% of population have xx% of the wealth' aren't that useful, a better indicator would be a dynamic measure that shows economic mobility, people going both up (new money) and down the ladder (bankruptcy). It looks like in Florence, families that climbed the ladder centuries ago never came down.

Taleb's essay on inequality: https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...