Ruler said:
Now you try to damage controll with something irrelevant and ignore inflation. 10,000 gbp could buy you everything this is correct but compare the same amount of money what you could buy today with the same money, 10k british pounds wont buy you even a mordern car these day. Back then 10k pounds would buy you probably an entire factory or mid size company. The inequality has increased this is a fact. Back then 10% of the world population owned the same amount like 50%, today its 1% from i can remember. |
I didn't ignore inflation, it isn't relevant to the argument I made besides showing you that the nominal value in the mid 1800's for the poverty rate was much lower than $2. You were saying $2 /day was poverty in the 1800's, not today. Which is not true. $2/day in the early 1800's was a decent wage, and in the late 1800's a livable one. Since the $2 /day is adjusted for inflation, what is meant is that it is $2 in today's money that is the poverty level of both time periods. This is a measure of absolute, not relative poverty.
But if you care so much, 10,000 GBP in 1850 is only equal to around 964,400 GBP today, and that was what the richest people in the world had. Considering the richest people in Britain have on the order of billions GBP, that is a measly amount, still.
The top might not have owned as much, but the lowest bottom 10% had a much lower share of the world's wealth than today. I'd call that less equal.
The following is for the 20th century, but it illustrates the point quite well. Income inequality right after the Gilded Age was higher than today in Anglo-Saxon countries.
