Global capitalism has eradicated poverty and generated prosperity in the developing world at an unprecedented rate. You might imagine that a global anti-poverty charity, such as ‘Oxfam’, would celebrate this fact. But no – today Oxfam is making the headlines instead because it is worried about global wealth inequality. In particular, that ‘the wealthiest 1 per cent will soon own more than the rest of the world population combined’.
Oxfam has been pushing this sort of meme for a while. Last year, it made the startling claim that ‘the world’s 85 richest people own the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion combined’. It was shown at the time, not least by Reuter’s Felix Salmon, that this statistic was bogus. And there’s nothing new to see today, just a slight re-hashing of this factoid.
Oxfam’s claim that the richest 1 per cent own 48 per cent of the world’s wealth (and will soon own more than half) rests on Credit Suisse data.
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