I got an email from Oxfam the other day. \u00a0You probably did too.<\/p>\n
Its subject line said: \"8 billionaires have the same wealth as half the planet<\/strong><\/em>.\" \u00a0Shocking, of course, if true. \u00a0And of course, it is. \u00a0Well, it is if you make certain decisions during your calculations that help you get an\u00a0answer that's good for marketing.<\/p>\n What Oxfam did, it seems, was to base its calculations\u00a0on net wealth, not actual wealth. \u00a0That is, assets minus debts. \u00a0It follows from this that some of the poorest people in the world are in the USA; that is, those with $zillions of debt. \u00a0Those getting by on \u00a31.90 a day (but with no debts) are rich by comparison.<\/p>\n For the distasteful\u00a0details go this Reuters'\u00a0blog<\/a>. \u00a0There's a nice graph which shows the problem with the Oxfam metrics. \u00a0And\u00a0here is Ben Southwood<\/a> on the issue:<\/p>\n Oxfam is once again misleading everyone with its punchy wealth inequality stats. \u00a0By Oxfam's measures, the poorest people in the world are recent Harvard graduates with student debt piles. \u00a0The bottom 2bn don't have zero wealth, but rather about $500bn of negative wealth. \u00a0The poorest person in the world is richer than the next 30% put together. \u00a0Having negative wealth may actually be a sign of prosperity, since only people with prospects can secure loans. \u00a0But there is a bigger issue with the narrative: more meaningful measures show greater equality. \u00a0Those in the middle and bottom of the world income distribution have all got pay rises of around 40% between 1988-2008. \u00a0Global inequality of life expectancy and height are narrowing too\u2014showing better nutrition and better healthcare where it matters most. \u00a0What we should care about is the welfare of the poor, not the wealth of the rich.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got an email from Oxfam the other day. \u00a0You probably did too. Its subject line said: \"8 billionaires have the same wealth as half the planet.\" \u00a0Shocking, of course, if true. \u00a0And of course, it is. \u00a0Well, it is...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}