Wealth inequality: the past, and the future

Part one of a multi-part series.

This is the first of a multipart series on wealth inequality.

In the wake of the Black Death good help was hard to find. The plague had wiped out anywhere from a third to half of the population, decimating the serfdom so thoroughly that demand for labor soared. The survivors expected higher wages from a desperate aristocracy, and Europe’s wealthiest fami…