Oxfam gets a lot of mileage out of its global inequality statistics. Back in 2014, we were told that the world's top 85 wealthiest people owned as much as the bottom half, 3.5bn.
Now we
Oxfam gets a lot of mileage out of its global inequality statistics. Back in 2014, we were told that the world's top 85 wealthiest people owned as much as the bottom half, 3.5bn.
Now we’re told 62 own as much as the other half—you could fit them all on a coach, the Oxfam chief executive helpfully told us in a piece for the Independent.
Each time they release the new number there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but their numbers are nonsense, and on top of that they tell the wrong story.
Oxfam uses net wealth figures—assets minus liabilities—which can be very useful but also suffers two key flaws.
Firstly, adding up negative numbers gives some paradoxical results. For example, as far in debt as the most indebted person is (i.e. the poorest person by Oxfam’s measure) they are still richer than the next two billion people all put together, b