I am doing my level best but don't follow your side. The patronizing tone doesn't help; can we focus on the subject instead of my rhetorical skills?

When Piketty writes "The poorer half of the population are as poor today as they were in the past" I think a typical reader would get the impression that the material welfare of the poor has not improved.

But I agree with you, based on my reading of that chapter Piketty is not measuring material welfare. He is interested in share of total wealth. And he uses a moving yardstick, comparing the poor of the past to the rich of that era, and today's poor with today's rich.

The article points out that, despite this description of static share of wealth (which I do not see disputed) there are good reasons to celebrate improvement in material welfare, like highways and ambulances and A/C and penicillin, and also cable TV and Facebook.

rd95 summed up this list as merely "convenience in entertainment and leisure," in my view, a clear instance of straw man. I didn't want to irritate him by citing logical fallacies; bringing "ad hominem" and the rest never helps a discussion. But, regrettably, he seems disgruntled anyway. I would love to investigate all the issues he mentions, "privacy, clean water, working plumbing and electricity, fair rent rates, safe neighborhoods, and on and on and on" and see what the data show the trends are. We might start with the photo in the article depicting the family of 13 living in a converted chicken coop. I expect that the trends are generally positive and beneficial to people at all income levels.

Piketty might agree with all this, I don't know. If it's true that many poor are materially better off now than before, by absolute measures, I think we should celebrate that and look for ways to continue and expand the trend, and not worry so much about relative measures.