What would rising levels of being lifted out of poverty suggest? The equality gap doesn’t count for much if you starve or freeze to death, and poverty is declining world wide.

The worst way to measure it is inequality. How the top person is doing relative to the bottom person isn't important. How the bottom person is doing now compared to the bottom person 100 years ago is.

Yeah, keep changing the measure until Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos etc are below poverty line.

sorry, i don't believe inequality is rising, at least in ways that matter. in the last 50 years, a substantial number of people were pulled out of poverty.

Obviously this would mean that countries that previously relied on subsidised labour from those third world countries would have to start paying up. I'm not suggesting that it is a zero sum game however.