The counter argument to this is that their representation is arguably higher now than any other time in history, so more representation (falsely) equates to less wealth by your supposition.
It would be more interesting to look at their wealth as a percentage of the world's wealth. We have greater output per capita (GDP) today than back then so while the nominal wealth amount may be considered low it's quite possible it was a higher percentage of the world's wealth back then than it is today.
Just because they are better off now in relative terms, it doesn't justify how much more of the share in terms of land, resources and overall wealth the rich and and elite are taking for themselves.
There definitely is a limited number of millionaires that an economy/population can support. Also, comparing across time is rather deceptive. The north korean military is much more powerfully compared to khan or alexander's armies. The comparison is pointless considering the north korean military isn't traveling back in time to fight the mongols or the greeks. Saying middle class americans are rich compared to romans, persians or carolingians is just as meaningless. You could argue that a homeless man with a smartphone is "richer" than napoleon since the homeless man has access to more computing power, better medicine, better everything. But that's meaningless and no solace to the homeless man since he isn't traveling back to the early 1800s with current technology in his pocket. If we follow your logic, a north korean starving in a political camp is wealthier than Caesar. I guess that could be true, but meaningless and empty.
It's also a deceptive tactic people use to compare apples to oranges. We have to compare today with today and even more importantly, we have to frame money within the zero-sum context of power. Money and power are interchangeable and viewed in this context, wealth is a zero sum game.
It sounds to me like you do agree with them. The OP wasn't saying Americans feel wealthier, but rather that the quality of life relative to the past is higher.
It's important to remember that those numbers only count taxable income, and don't include welfare and other government services. If the world today seems and indeed is meaningfully less unequal than the world of Downton Abbey its partly because of those things.
And also because more of the income of the super rich these days goes into bidding up the price of positional goods[1] rather than having the biggest possible house or the most possible servants.
> More wealth, more wealth disparity... almost universally.
That is a stark claim with little empirical evidence. If you look at the world, you will find that Europe, one of the most affluent parts of the world has the lowest wealth inequality. While wealth inequality is very high in Africa, one of the poorer regions of the world.
Wealth inequality is far more likely to be the outcome of policies. Europe has been dominated more by various social democratic parties which have actively worked to reduce inequality. While areas such as North American with high levels of inequality has been dominated by parties pushing neoliberal economic policies.
They have lots more money. Which probably originates to climatic and geographic reasons, but more recently due to the _massive_ destruction of wealth in the world wars. It's very hard to build up a wealthy middle class when every few decades millions die on the battlefield.
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