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Comment by ComradeTaco | Hacker News Reader

The US has allowed complete unbridled capitalism during the gilded age. Quoting Wikpedia "From 1860 to 1900, the wealthiest 2% of American households owned more than a third of the nation's wealth, while the top 10% owned roughly three fourths of it.[61] The bottom 40% had no wealth at all.[59] In terms of property, the wealthiest 1% owned 51%, while the bottom 44% claimed 1.1%"

So pure, unregulated capitalism, lead to wealth inequality far, far more extreme than our current situation.

58 Peter R. Shergold (1982). Working-Class Life: The "American Standard" in Comparative Perspective, 1899–1913. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 5–7, 222, 224. ISBN 978-0822976981.

59 Steve Fraser (2015). The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. Little, Brown and Company. p. 66. ISBN 0316185434.

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And yet there was explosive growth in the middle class in that era, the poor moving up into the middle class, and the US moving into a superpower economy. The standard of living went up, way up.

I would argue that is a "despite the greediest Robber Barons that ever Robbed, wealth was created by the industrial age on such a scale that some escaped and was shared more equally"

IIRC, before the industrial revolution, wealth inequality was much much worse, with a majority living on subsistence farming.

Wealth inequality is misleading as it doesn't represent standard of living very well. Income inequality is better in that regard.

Just remember that inequality per se is not a bad thing. Capitalism seems to me to be the only way to get people out of poverty, which is, of course, what we want.

Right, inequality isn't inherently a bad thing, its when it get so extreme that it impedes class mobility and shrinks the middle class. We have to strike a really careful of regulations and freedom to create a desirable society.

I think it is impossible to ever reach consensus on what is the right balance between freedom and regulation, especially because regulation is not decided upon with that goal in mind. Whatever gets votes or whoever has the most lobbying power will decide what is regulated.

With regard to class mobility, can we say at what level it gets too extreme or conversely at what level it is just perfect? A country such as Albania has a lower Gini coefficient than the US but is much, much poorer, but as such has less income inequality. I don’t believe that social mobility is much better there (I happen to have a good friend that lives in Tirana).

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