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Comment by ameister14 | Hacker News Reader

>An accelerating and historically high broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time.

You're completely correct here. Unfortunately, neither the current levels of income inequality nor the acceleration of said inequality is unique or historically high. It's not even unique in the last hundred years.

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I'm talking about measures like these, which granted, are only recorded back 100 years or so: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/demo/gini... https://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e201a5... https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mark-abdelnour/issues/abd-s-...

But in those times, relatively rich Americans were selling to extremely poor Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Inequality overall has gotten better, just the geography has shifted substantially so that previously homogeneously equitable places now have a more representative share of world inequality.

So increased inequality on a local level is good as long as the global average goes down? I thought the idea was to make _everyone's_ lives better.

Well yes decreased inequality globally does make life better, it's just that those who've gained the most (the ones that used to be poorer than the American poor) arent part of your in group

> neither the current levels of income inequality nor the acceleration of said inequality is unique or historically high

I'm not sure what you're saying, as these statements are unqualified:

"current levels of income inequality"?

"acceleration of said inequality"?

"historically high"?

I'm saying that by most measurements income inequality is roughly the same as it was in the early twentieth century and the rate at which the inequality increased and the acceleration of that rate is less than it was in the early part of the 20th century.

Are you saying that I need to break down what measurements I'm talking about? I can agree with that but we're on a forum and I was responding to a person who I assume, based on how they wrote, shares a general knowledge base upon which we can have a conversation.

Exactly so. For evidence and details there is the weighty and data packed book "Capital in the Twenty-First_Century" by Thomas Piketty

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