Re:20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘tr...
by dredmorbius on Wednesday December 08, 2021 @10:55AM
(#29486265)
This is covered well in Gregory Clark's book A Farewell to Alms.
Increased wealth through technological means has had two effects.
1. It's raised the maximum possible wealth ceiling. That is, the wealthiest people who've ever lived, are alive today.
2. It's lowered the minimum survivable poverty floor. That is, it's possible to survive being poorer than at any previous point in history.
As Clark puts it in his introduction, "There walk the earth now both the richest people who ever lived and the poorest."
Sample chapter online: http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8461.pdf
https://archive.org/details/farewelltoalmsbr00clar/page/n9/m...
How so? Why would you assume that the distribution of wealth is correlated to the total stock? In reality this actually doesn't have to be the case at all. Aside from direct means of wealth redistribution, the are ways of setting up an economic system such that wealth inequality is reduced.
> Many or most people have no wealth, depending on your semantics of "wealth."
Again, this is not a fact of nature. It's not in the biological nature of most people to be poor. Poverty is a result of a badly functioning society and can be alleviated.