the difference in monetary wealth is greater now, unless I have been mislead.
That is true, but in the end, it's largely irrelevant. The incidence of poverty matters infinitely more than how large the gap is between the wealthiest and everyone else.
If hypothetically, not one person in the US was pulling down a penny less than $75k/year, that'd mean no one's broke, right? And yet the size of the wealth gap would basically be identical, because the difference between $0 and $75,000 is nothing compared to the difference between $0 or $75,000, and hundreds of billions.
Over the past 100 years, the number of (inflation-adjusted, of course) billionaires per capita in the US increased by a whopping 7x. And yet, poverty was MUCH worse in 1925 than it is in 2025. Also, iirc, there is a positive correlation between average standard of living, and billionaires per capita, in a given country.
Eradicating poverty is the thing to aim for, but directly. And, despite the very common misconception, reducing the wealth of the wealthiest people (especially considering that the majority of that wealth is newly-created valuation, not actual money) will not move the needle toward that goal, at all. Too many people think wealth is a zero-sum thing, and assume the gap being wider than ever must mean that those not at the top have less than ever—that's simply not true.