Oxfam's Hypocrisy on Private Wealth

Mateusz MachajMateusz Benedyk

Earlier this week, the Oxfam organization published a “report” about global inequality. It’s not really a report, since most of it consists of babble-economics with little empirical foundation, and the hard data that it includes comes from an external source: the Credit Suisse Report. In any case, this data indicates that there is a lot of poverty in the world, whereas in some other places there is relatively much more wealth. This has led to loudly shouted statements in the media of how 8 people in the world have more wealth than half of the world population combined.

Data vs. Data Interpretation

If we look at the data (Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2016, pp. 112–115) we see that any person living in OECD country is likely to be relatively much richer than the rest of the world population. If you own just 30 dollars, you are already richer than 10% of the poorest people. If you own 250 dollars, you leave 20% of world population behind. If you own slightly more than 2200 dollars, you are already richer than half of the global population.......Read more