A great deal of nonsense is talked about the supposed growing inequality in the modern world. The spectacular economic growth of Third World countries, especially in Asia, over the past 50 years is clear evidence of this. The reality is that absolute poverty, where people are deprived of the most basic elements of life, survives in only a few places today. It is worst in Africa. But in developed countries, even the poor enjoy a standard of living that Africans would consider wealth.
Relative poverty is another matter.
It makes some sense in a society, where just about everybody has television sets, refrigerators and several pairs of shoes, to talk of the relative poverty of someone who has none, even if well fed and sheltered. In terms of the article by Mark Buchanan in The New Scientist , the very nature of random action in markets and individual choice must produce inequality, regardless of differences in initial ability, wealth or skills. The explan- ation of this follows from a mathematical principle developed for dealing with condensed matter. But what follows is extremely important. It is that there may be ways of lessening the degree of inequality to some extent.