More on the Oxfam stupidity
There is so much critical comment on the rubbish from Oxfam on wealth inequality, it is hard to know where to start.
Let us start with Fusion:
The result is that if you use Oxfam’s methodology, my niece, with 50 cents in pocket money, has more wealth than the bottom 40% of the world’s population combined. As do I, and as do you, most likely, assuming your net worth is positive. You don’t need to find eight super-wealthy billionaires to arrive at a shocking wealth statistic; you can take just about anybody.
Obviously the niece must have her 50 cents taken off her and redistributed.
Consider this: Would you rather have $75,000 in the bank and no debt and no degree, or $75,000 in the bank and $75,000 in student loans and a four-year college degree? As far as the Oxfam methodology is concerned, the difference is enormous: The person with $75,000 and no debt is in the top 10% of the world’s wealth distribution, while the person with the college degree is in the bottom 10%. And yet there’s a right answer to the question: You’re much better off with $75,000 in debt and a college degree than you are with no debt at all.
Oxfam would count a 24 year old Harvard medical graduate as being in the bottom 10% with negative net wealth. However the intangible asset of his or her degree will allow them to earn millions of dollars.
Stats Chat comments:
These are graduates from the Keck School of Medicine, at the University of Southern California, who owe an average of over US$200,000 in student loans. By the Credit Suisse definition of wealth inequality they have less wealth than people living in poorly-maintained state housing in south Auckland. They have less wealth than immigrant agricultural workers in southern California. They have less wealth than subsistence farmers in Chad.
So a subsistence farmer in Chad has more wealth by this definition.
Danyl McL also works out a flaw:
Won’t the country’s poorest people be heavily indebted, and basically anyone with positive equity own more than all of them put together?
Yep.
Eric Crampton also has a blog on the Oxfam nonsense.