Ms. McArdle notes that King Tut is now thought to have died from malnutrition. The richest man in the kingdom died of something that people in modern Western civilizations have to work to incur.
You always need to factor in things like this when you talk about changes in living standards over time. All the positive changes in society mean that the absolute difference between the income of Bill Gates and the man who valets his car is larger than it has ever been in history. But the actual difference in comfort between the two of them is probably much smaller than the difference between JP Morgan and his stableboy. And both Gates and the valet are almost immeasurably better off than their predecessors.
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