In his second and third essays, Milanovic switches to his obvious passion: inequality around the world. These sections encourage readers to better appreciate their own living standards and to think more skeptically about who is responsible for their success.

As Milanovic notes, an astounding 60 percent of a person’s income is determined merely by where she was born (and an additional 20 percent is dictated by how rich her parents were). He also makes interesting international comparisons. The typical person in the top 5 percent of the Indian population, for example, makes the same as or less than the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American population. That’s right: America’s poorest are, on average, richer than India’s richest — extravagant Mumbai mansions notwithstanding.

It is no wonder then, Milanovic says, that so many from the third world risk life and limb to sneak into the first. A recent World Bank survey suggested that “countries that have done economically poorly would, if free migration were allowed, remain perhaps without half or more of their populations.” Mass-migration attempts are met with sealed borders in the developed world, which then results in the deaths of thousands of anonymous indigents journeying to promised lands only to be swallowed up by the Mediterranean or charred in the Arizona desert.

But while Milanovic demonstrates that inequality between countries is unquestionably toxic, he is less persuasive about the effects of inequality within countries. He frequently assumes that this kind of inequality is by its very nature problematic, but provides scant historical evidence about why, particularly if mobility is ­possible.