This course introduces students to the causes of wealth inequality in the broadest possible variety of well-documented societies throughout world history, especially how capitalism causes and increases the gap between rich and poor. Ancient Greece, Rome, and China will be studied in depth, culminating in Industrial Capitalism from nineteenth-century Britain to twenty-first century US. State solutions to recurring patterns of free market profit-maximization (debt forgiveness, taxation, wealth distribution) are explored from ancient Mesopotamia to today. Cannot earn credit if credit received for HIST 690 "Rich vs. Poor: Class Welfare in World History".