I haven't paid too much attention to the Oxfam claims about wealth distribution (you know, that 8 men control the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the world), but
Peter Whiteford has looked at the criticisms of the methodology and notes this:
Critics
of these figures point to two main issues. Firstly, the Credit Suisse
figures calculate wealth as assets minus debts, so the bottom 1 per cent
of the world wealth distribution actually have a negative net worth.
But
people with negative net worth can include students, with student debts
but who are about to enter a high paying job and people who have just
purchased a house and whose equity is less than the mortgage
outstanding. Should these people be counted as impoverished?
Oxfam directly addresses
this issue, pointing out that if you take out net debt then the wealth
of the bottom 50 per cent rises from around US$400 billion to US$1.5
trillion. This means the wealth of the bottom half is roughly equal to
the richest 56 individuals in the world.
While this figure is not
as dramatic as focusing only on the richest eight people, it still shows
enormous disparities in wealth.
Update: The Onion makes this contribution to the story:
No comments:
Post a Comment