I think you are right that there are still disadvantages to within-country inequality, but I strongly disagree with the dismissal you seem to be making of the m

I think you are right that there are still disadvantages to within-country inequality, but I strongly disagree with the dismissal you seem to be making of the massive reduction in country-level inequality and accompanying massive reduction of extreme poverty, which has plunged from ~40% of the world population in the 1980's to <20% now. > it's the inequality within each area that one would expect to have the harmful or beneficial effects on democracy, civil society and so-forth. You seem to be implying that extreme poverty does not also cause adverse effects on democracy, civil society, and so forth. My guess is that having massive populations of people living at or below subsistence is also harmful to democracy and civil society. If you look at the kind of problems they have in relatively equal [1] Sudan (mass malnutrition, militias literally raping and pillaging) to relatively unequal [1] United States (police violence, poor health care provision), I hope we can acknowledge the problems in the US without denying that they are orders of magnitude less severe. The difference is in the amount of absolute extreme poverty, not the inequality. BTW if you click on the images in the links you can access the high res versions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...