DOC The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) by Walter Scheidel in History

Review

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful. Humans are much better at sharing the poverty than sharing the wealthBy Greg GWalter Scheidel tackles a very ambitious project here. He attempts nothing less than a one volume account of economic inequality throughout all of human history. In my opinion he succeeds brilliantly.This is a book of impressive scholarship. It is rare that someone is motivated to study this topic without an obvious political and policy agenda. Even after finishing the book I still could not tell you what Professor Scheidel’s political views are. The book is descriptive not prescriptive.The thesis of the book is that; throughout all of human history; only violent cataclysms and plagues have produced significant and long standing reductions in economic inequality. Peace and prosperity always tend to lead to increasing inequality over the long term. With the benefit of hindsight; this is less surprising than it first appears. The overwhelming majority of humans have always lived with little or no economic savings or financial net worth. That is the constant.Peace and prosperity necessarily change the net worth and income of the richest more than the poorest because the economic situation of the poorest just can’t get a lot worse. The effect of compounding earnings is very powerful and not intuitively well understood by most people. This effect is even more dramatic when it spans several generations in a family. Increasing (or at least high and stable) inequality has been the default tendency throughout all of human history.Scheidel cites what he calls the Four Horsemen of economic leveling: mass mobilization warfare; transformative revolution; state collapse and plagues as the only forces that have consistently led to major economic leveling. It is important to note that only mass mobilization warfare has this effect. Ordinary warfare tends to shift fortunes between victor and vanquished without overall leveling.The period of the 20th Century that included the two World Wars and the communist revolutions represented one of the great economic levelings in all of human history. Those of us who grew up just after those events consequently have a somewhat distorted view of what is a typical historical level of economic inequality. Before reading this book I felt that there was something abnormal about he increasing degree of economic inequality we see around us. After reading it I feel like I knew all along this was inevitable. It is a rare book that can change your perspective like that.Scheidel is not arguing that economic inequality is good. He is well aware of the role of plunder and cronyism in contributing to it. He realizes that economic inequality is problematic for a number of reasons including the possibility that it may contain the seeds of the next cataclysm. He is just giving the history here not making any argument about the appropriate policy response.It’s not that the cataclysms that produce leveling don’t also hurt the poor. They always do. It’s just that the rich have a lot more to lose when a lot of people lose everything. Scheidel closes with this: “All of us who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions; it was only ever brought forth in sorrow. Be careful what you wish for.”To put it another way; and to put it in the words of Woody Allen; after the next great leveling we may well look back on the previous period of inequality and think “We were happy then but we didn’t know it."27 of 28 people found the following review helpful. Inequality that would make robber barons blushBy PumpjackWalter Scheidel; author of The Great Leveler; provides a scientifically rigorous; excruciatingly detailed and politically agnostic survey of wealth inequality from pre-history to the present. The focus is on factors that reduce; or level; that inequality and the core message is disheartening.Given the far-reaching scope; in both time and geography; finding reliable and comparable data related to wealth requires making some assumptions — actually; a LOT of assumptions. But he’s very straightforward about that; explaining each at length including; for example; how burial practices might indicate wealth; how measures of wheat could be stand in for wages and — at least in the modern world — how reported income may not accurately reflect hidden assets.He relies heavily on one metric especially; the Gini coefficient; which attempts to capture wealth inequality in a closed system (say; a country) in which zero represents full wealth and resource equality for all members (everyone has as much as everyone else) and 1 equaling maximum inequality; in which one person possesses all the wealth.It’s a thorough and far-reaching study leading to a disheartening and inescapable conclusion: wealth and resource inequality (which is maximized by the compounding advantages of wealth; access to political influence and the narrowing effects of inheritance) — has always been part of the human experience.In his view; only four things have ever leveled inequality in any significant way — mass mobilization warfare (WWI and WWII; for example); pandemics (the Plague); transformative revolutions (as in; the communist variety) and state collapse.He walks readers through many; many explorations of each of the four examples; studying before and after wealth and resource distribution from countries around the globe and throughout recorded history (and even a bit before).The research brings to life a troubling trend — a gulf of wealth inequality that continually increases; putting the capital and resources into the hands of a small (and shrinking) wealthy elite while extracting them from basically everyone else (especially the working- and lower-classes). Then one of the four levelers unwinds and the rich — who have the most to lose — slip down the social scale and working poor (who suddenly have a resource that’s in demand — their labor) are able to charge more and live more cheaply; and so move up the scale.Then it all starts over again.His research skills are incredible; so perhaps it’s no surprise the writing is solid but never lofty or in the slightest bit lyrical; but still is a punch in the gut.For example: “…in eleven of the twenty-one countries with published top incomes shares; the portion of all income obtained by the “1 percent” rose between 50 percent and more than 100 percent between 1980 and 2010. In 2012; inequality in the United States even set several records: in that year; top 1 percent income shares (both with and without capital gains) and the share of private wealth owned by the richest 0.01 percent of households for the first time exceeded the high water mark of 1929.”In other words; congratulation America; the chasm of inequality is now greater than during the era of the robber barons.The question the book raises; and one he frames specifically; is — given that inequality in the U.S. is at near historic levels (or beyond) — are there any leveling events that could close the gap; even briefly; and are there in ways we could use policy to reduce inequality. The answers; it seems; are no (short of a far-reaching nuclear conflagration; which he deems unlikely); and also no; given the lack of political will needed to redistribute wealth away from the controlling elite (even though there are scads of ways — dozens of which he lists — to at least nibble around the edges without actually leveling).It’s an important work that is; at times; mind-numbingly boring and at times pants-wettingly frightening; and almost always disheartening. I found myself almost rooting for a return of the plague; if only to knock the elites temporarily out of their golden towers and close the wealth gap just a tiny bit to the good old days of 1935.32 of 35 people found the following review helpful. Humanity Is Not DoomedBy Jason GalbraithReading "The Great Leveler" is almost enough to make one a fiscal conservative. Scheidel's argument is that only massive loss of life can make a society substantially more equal. This loss of life comes through four primary sources: 1) mass mobilization warfare such as the Second World War; 2) communist revolution such as in Russia and China; 3) state and systems collapse; such as that of the Roman Empire in the 5th century; or 4) pandemics such as the Black Death in 14th century Eurasia. I wonder if this is what I instinctively sensed when as a teenager I longed for another big war or some other flame that could purify our society. It certainly contributed to my obsession with nuclear weapons during that period. It is certainly the impulse behind most apocalyptic fiction; which usually culminates with the surviving protagonists building a society with some promise of being better than the one which came before.This masterly work will contribute to debates in many fields. In politics; Scheidel's debate is with aspiring social democrats such as Evo Morales; who argued when he became president of Bolivia; "If you combine intellectual and professional capacity with a social conscience; you can change things." To which Scheidel would say; not really. However; his own data point to at least two exceptions to this rule in the modern era: Latin America in the first decade of the 2000s and Sweden; Norway and possibly Germany in the last years before World War I. The first would be greatly illuminated by an in-person debate between Scheidel and Morales; while Bolivians are still allowed to visit the United States. As for the second; if inequality really was on the decline in Wilhelmine Germany even before the Great War started; it really demonstrates that as with the Napoleonic Wars; the United States intervened in that conflict on the wrong side. I would like to see more research done on the last few pre-war years in northern Europe; combining economic data with political and cultural anecdotes. If a commenter can steer me to a good overview of that subject I would be much obliged.The data and trends laid out by Scheidel culminate in his sixteenth chapter; "What Does the Future Hold?" in which he explains why inequality will probably continue to increase in most societies; and his appendix on the limits of inequality; which explains why most people in highly unequal societies are not in fact starving. Despite the appendix a future in which; at least during recessions; 10% of the US population is homeless is entirely conceivable. My ability to imagine such a society keeps me from entirely giving up on trying to ameliorate income inequality.One of the most valuable aspects of this book is its bibliography. I have already read three of the books in Scheidel's bibliography: Eric Cline's "1177 BC;" Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century;" and Stephen Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined." The bibliography contains several other books I think I should read; such as Francis Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order" but most especially Anthony Atkinson's "Inequality: what can be done?" which reflects the modern British Labour Party's thinking on the issue.Scheidel dismisses most of Atkinson's suggestions as politically infeasible but I suspect all sorts of things may become politically feasible in the wake of the Trump presidency when one major party and indeed a global movement; authoritarian populism; scorns reality in most fields. Massive redistribution of income (and possibly wealth) is the only way to preserve democracy from authoritarian populism; itself an understandable response to the immiseration of the worldwide working class over a period of decades.