Wealth Inequality in America Has Never Been Worse [video]

I found the original video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM) incredibly eye-opening. But now, another person has updated it. Definitely worth a watch if you're interested in how wealth distribution has changed over time.

It's a very short video to present the information which I like because when things like this get overly wordy it's just filler words. I do have a couple of problems with it first there's some language in it that is designed to bias the viewer instead of just presenting information. I'm sure the author is intending to bias the viewer toward their point of view. Obviously the data is the data but the biasing language means that this is automatically and unhealthy thing and that this proposed "ideal" is somehow better. There is no data behind supporting if this ideal is better or not and if the ideal was magically achieved tomorrow how many years would it be until we're back in the same situation? There is no attempt made to even briefly mention or understand why wealth is distributed this way.

The other problem is, something I didn't hear in the video but may have missed, is the title that we have here. That wealth inequality in America has never been worse. That is absolutely false when you take a comprehensive look at history of the USA and of the Americas or the world as a whole. Well the distribution now while still being unequal, has been far worse in the history of the USA and across the world as a whole.

We seem to forget that there was a time where in nearly everyone lived in abject poverty by today's standards. This includes Kings and conquerors even people like Alexander the Great who conquered and ruled the known world. The kings of Persia from ancient times lived in a standard of poverty compared to what the poorest people in the United States live at. They actually lived in poverty compared to many of the poor people around the world today when you look at what the standard of living is and the things that are available to them.

Yet in their own time they lived so far above the commoners that there was no such thing as a middle class. The middle class is we know it is a recent invention within the last hundred years or less. Before the middle class became a thing you had the wealthy and then you had those impoverished and nothing in the middle and that gap between them was massive. The wealthy could do things that the impoverished couldn't even imagine in the day.

Yes we still have this gap between the super wealthy and what they're able to do and what the poor are able to do but they can imagine it and they can do many things that are quite similar. a super wealthy person can take their own private jet and fly around the world and enjoy the beaches in some exotic land and dine at the finest restaurants there and do all kinds of crazy fun things. But someone who is in the middle class could easily budget to take a a commercial plane fly to that same destination stay in a moderate hotel eat moderate food and enjoy much of the same things just at a different scale. This was completely impossible before.

So while there still is a wealth inequality and without examining the reasons why wealth inequality develops we shouldn't attempt to abolish it willy-nilly the actual inequality in wealth is so much smaller than it ever has been in history. When you live in a first world country the ability to move between wealth classes is available to you in a way that has never been available throughout history.

So I take big exceptions with things like this espousing the view that things are worse than they have ever been through all of history because that's just hypersensational language. It creates a false narrative that will result in people making false actions based upon this language.