It is worth pausing a moment to discuss some methodological and historical issues concerning the
statistical measurement of inequality. In Chapter 7, I discussed the Italian statistician Corrado Gini
and his famous coefficient. Although the Gini coefficient was intended to sum up inequality in a single
number, it actually gives a simplistic, overly optimistic, and difficult-to-interpret picture of what is
really going on. A more interesting case is that of Gini’s compatriot Vilfredo Pareto, whose major
works, including a discussion of the famous “Pareto law,” were published between 1890 and 1910. In
the interwar years, the Italian Fascists adopted Pareto as one of their own and promoted his theory of
elites. Although they were no doubt seeking to capitalize on his prestige, it is nevertheless true that
Pareto, shortly before his death in 1923, hailed Mussolini’s accession to power. Of course the
Fascists would naturally have been attracted to Pareto’s theory of stable inequality and the
pointlessness of trying to change it