Hacker News Reader

This is the key question for me too.

Nowadays a blue collar worker (at least here in EU) has better living conditions than the wealthiest and more powerful mere hundred years ago.

Nowadays nobody has to die because of bad teeth and everybody has access to cheap and effective education and through that to other means of production.

The poor generally have none of:

* dental insurance * effective inexpensive dental care * effective education * access to effective education * a pathway to 'other means of production' * better living conditions than the wealthiest of a mere 100 years ago (the second industrial revolution and the gilded age, where the rich were incredibly rich, and the poor were utterly wretched)

In many countries exerting influence in the democratic process is heavily tied to the monetary resources of the person doing the influencing. Given that mechanism it might be easier to remove the wealth inequality than to dismantle the inequality in the democratic process directly.

Because they buy laws that favour them and increase that inequality.

Because human happiness and value are not measured in absolute terms.