Forbes never seems to do right. This article sounds reasonable but it's not. It's wonderful to see a plutocrat publication both praise Wikipedia and say the US needs a more progressive taxation and, gasp, "redistribution" but the overall thrust of this article is to downplay the problem.

If we actually compare like with like we get a Gini after taxes and benefits for the US of around 0.38. Yes, this is still higher than most advanced nations but only by a bit. It puts the US at one end of the spectrum, not wildly out of place as having Third World levels of inequality. Once we know all of this we can also work out why the US has such high levels of inequality

Actually, you will find third world conditions in some places and people are going hungry in the US. East Carroll Parish in Louisiana is not too different from other places in Louisiana and the deep south. Public services in those places really is a bad joke. People really do live in shacks without running water and recent cutbacks on benefits programs really do endanger their children. Run away pollution is also a terrible problem that haunts poverty lines, much as it does in the third world.

If the point of the article is to downplay the problem, we have to conclude that the publisher wants people to be less urgent about fixing things. So goes, Forbes, the voice of the rich and powerful.

This author has a history of publishing insulting article, as well as belittling antitrust and FOSS.