Are we really suffering from inequality?

Will Wilkinson argues

...nominal inequality is confused with material inequality—differences in material living conditions. But while nominal inequality is increasing, material inequality continues to decrease. As market competition pushes prices down, goods at the bottom of the price range more and more closely approximate goods at the top of the price range. (Which is why efficiency and equality are complements.) Food is probably the most striking example of material equalization. If you compare the diets of the top and bottom quintiles 100 years ago with the diets of the top and bottom quintiles now, you’ll see that we have become immensely more equal, not less. My favorite pair of jeans, which I bought at Wal-Mart for $16, is a close substitute for jeans that cost 5 times more.

The trend toward material equality in market societies helps explain several trends, such as the increasing value of good design. Substantive equality leads us to value aesthetic differentiation ever more highly. But even good design trickles down. Which is one reason why material equalization makes it ever harder to signal status and why the materially status-conscious (many of them ideological egalitarians!) are willing to pay an increasing premium to claim inherently scarce and strongly status-signaling positional goods, like spots at Ivy League schools, apartments with Central Park views, or what have you. The feverishness with which high school kids (and their parents) compete for scarce Ivy League slots is an indication of the drive to have something everyone can’t have in an egalitarian world where even the modestly remunerated can have most everything.

For my part, I think there's too much focus on economic equality.