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Comment by rovolo | Hacker News Reader

> At the time of the Gilded Age,

[1] starts at 1947; [2] starts at 1979; [3] starts at 1964. None of your sources show that poverty was less of a problem during the Gilded Age (1877 to 1896). I find it very hard to believe the Gilded Age handled poverty better since it predates Social Security and the Great Depression.

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You're right that data is poor for the 19th century. The point I wanted to draw with my more recent sources is that there seems to be little empirical evidence to show that increased redistribution via taxation and expanded government social programs actually alleviate poverty, compared to the evidence for rising living standards via technological advances and fierce capitalistic competition that lowers costs.

Across OECD countries, there appears to be at least a passing correlation between countries that have a higher ratio of government expenditure to GDP (and are at least commonly perceived to have generous government-provided social benefits) and lack of real wage growth over the past two decades[0].

[0]: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=AV_AN_WAGE

Aren’t wealth impacts of “technological advances” significantly skewed by a supply chain designed around cheap labor abroad?

The thing is that the use of "cheaper labor abroad" makes said labor less and less cheap, because the economies develop where production is very active, and life standards improve. Right now labor on Chinese high-tech factories is already not cheap enough for many Western customers, and they set sights on countries like Vietnam.

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