This is a silly distinction. All things being equal most would probably prefer the poverty in modern day America to the "Equal" poverty of preindustrial experie

This is a silly distinction. All things being equal most would probably prefer the poverty in modern day America to the "Equal" poverty of preindustrial experience. The real reason people get upset about modern poverty is because it's an example of inequality. So sure, let's try to ameliorate and address inequality where possible. But under no circumstances should we try to do so by reducing total progress and wealth on the planet. Preindustrial poverty is just as much a problem of financial mobility as poverty now is. In fact it's even more a case of that since your immobility is caused by the lack of a position to even move to.u It's a fundamental element of progress that it will be distributed unequally. I have seen no evidence that you can bypass that. You could eliminate all inequality by reducing everyone to extreme poverty but literally no one actually want's that. You can't eliminate inequality by elevating everyone to extreme wealth, however, because there isn't enough wealth to do so. This leaves eliminating inequality by reducing everyone to some definition of just well-off enough with no option to reach slightly more well-off than that since it would mean they were now unequal. The most effective solution to poverty is to continue to raise the lower bound as much as you can which alleviates suffering and to remove barriers to forward progress for the individual as that increases everyone's chance to improve themselves and their society a little more.