Earlier quoted context omitted.
> globally increasing inequality At a global level, inequality has not been increasing. Globalization has been a huge win for developing nations in this regard (and the people who have paid the price are low-wage workers in developed nations like the US). This is not to say that we have to conclude that globalization has been a good thing overall for developing nations - there are lots of problems it has caused for t…
According to this UN report: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_bg_pa... global inequality has been increasing despite convergence of inter-national mean incomes. The rich have been getting richer faster than the poor have been catching up.
This is a misuse of terminology. Generally when people talk about "global inequality" they are speaking either of median (not mean) incomes or median standard of living, (which is most accurately tracked by median PPP-adjusted incomes). The latter is more common in political and non-academic circles, because standard-of-living is largely what people actually care about at the end of the day.
I didn't say that inequality within individual countries hasn't been increasing - and in fact, one of the major criticisms of globalization is linked to the divergence of opportunities within developing countries. But it's undeniable that globalization has caused median standard-of-living to converge globally and median standard-of-living to increase in developing countries, and the convergence of mean incomes globally between countries provides rough evidence of this..