Inequality has increased in most Western countries since the early 1980s. In a recent report, the international non-governmental organization Oxfam noted that the twenty-six richest people in the world own as much wealth as the poorest fifty per cent of the world's population. Discontent with the growing disparities in wealth and income has soared in recent years, especially in the wake of the 2007/2008 financial crisis and the “Great Recession” that followed. The Occupy movement protested against the greed of the “one per cent”, referring to the highly skewed income distribution in the US. Former US president Barack Obama proclaimed the growth of within-country economic inequality as “the defining challenge of our time”. Yet, he enacted few policies that reduced inequality during his two terms in office; the Gini coefficient in the US actually increased slightly between 2007 and 2016. His successor, whose election has often been explained as a consequence of these high levels of inequality, has slashed taxes for the wealthy, probably causing further rises in inequality in the future. In this essay, I will review two recent economic history books that examine the historical roots of within-country inequality on a global scale: Branko Milanovic'sGlobal Inequality(2016) and Walter Scheidel'sThe Great Leveler(2017). Formerly a lead economist at the World Bank, Milanovic is a well-known scholar working in the field of economic inequality, while Scheidel has a background as a specialist in the economic, social, and demographic history of antiquity.

中文翻译：

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不平等的全球历史

自 1980 年代初以来，大多数西方国家的不平等现象有所增加。国际非政府组织乐施会在最近的一份报告中指出，世界上最富有的 26 人拥有的财富与世界上最贫穷的 50% 的人口一样多。近年来，对财富和收入差距日益扩大的不满情绪飙升，尤其是在 2007/2008 年金融危机和随之而来的“大衰退”之后。占领运动抗议“百分之一”的贪婪，指的是美国高度倾斜的收入分配。美国前总统巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）宣称国内经济不平等的加剧是“我们这个时代的决定性挑战”。然而，在他的两个任期内，他几乎没有制定减少不平等的政策。美国的基尼系数实际上在 2007 年至 2016 年期间略有上升。他的继任者经常被解释为高度不平等的结果，他的继任者削减了富人的税收，这可能会导致未来的不平等进一步加剧。在这篇文章中，我将回顾最近两本经济史书籍，它们在全球范围内探讨了国内不平等的历史根源：布兰科·米拉诺维奇（Branko Milanovic）的全球不平等(2016) 和 Walter Scheidel 的伟大的矫平机（2017）。曾任世界银行首席经济学家的米拉诺维奇是研究经济不平等领域的知名学者，而沙伊德尔则拥有古代经济、社会和人口史专家的背景。