Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by webmaven 1915 days ago
> Continues? The world is more equal than it ever has been, at least since the invention of agriculture.

Sure, globally. But that's as a result of a rising floor beneath extreme poverty, ie. the percentage of people subsisting on less than $1.90 per day has been dropping.

Sure, that's only a part of the story, and a growing global middle class is nothing to sneeze at, but the reduction in poverty is projected to slow considerably over the next decade, with half a billion remaining in extreme poverty in 2030, 87% of whom will be concentrated in sub-saharan Africa.

Meanwhile, social mobility up and out of the middle class is also slowing considerably in the various advanced economies, as is downward mobility from the upper class into the middle class, while downward mobility from middle to working class is growing.

I don't mean to diminish the progress that has been made so far, but it is starting to look likely that these successes are stagnating.