Comment by throwaway2037

Regarding French Revolution times, I found a good source to confirm your assertion: "Is Wealth Inequality Today as Bad as in Pre-Revolutionary France?"[1] That blog post uses various peer-reviewed academic sources from researchers that calculated pre-industrial (historical) Gini coefficient for different nations.

From that same blog post, they mentioned an excellent data source: "The World Inequality Database". Check this link[2] to compare historical "Top 1% net personal wealth share" for USA vs France vs UK. Hint: After the page loads, you need to drag the green slider at the bottom of the chart to the far left. Then you can see back to 1800. It is wild how unequal Victorian Britan was compared to anything today: Top 1% owned 68% of wealth!

[1] https://populareconomics.substack.com/p/is-wealth-inequality...

[2] https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p99p100_z/US;FR;WO-PPP;GB/la...