Thanks for your thoughtful reply. You make good points; I think my overlong comment mentioning so many subjects did not bring clarity to our discussion. You asked about inequality. Can we return to that subject? I've tried to explain why I don't think inequality is worth worrying about. I am concerned about poverty, but I don't see who is harmed by inequality. To use an imperfect analogy, there is some NBA team whose players have the greatest inequality of height. This doesn't mean anyone on that team is suffering from a lack of height. It's an entirely relative measure. When Albania and Norway get similar scores on inequality, or Spain and Romania, or the United States and Cameroon, I conclude that inequality doesn't tell us anything meaningful about quality of life. But some say inequality is the defining issue of our time. What am I missing?