
World's 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam - onetimemanytime
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/21/world-26-richest-people-own-as-much-as-poorest-50-per-cent-oxfam-report
======
maratc
A reminder: it's usually not a good idea to sum up the net worth of the poor,
as many people who are net-negative (have debt) will bring down a couple
thousand of actually poor people.

The poorest person in the world by net worth is Jérôme Kerviel [0], the Paris
banker, who is worth about -5 billion euros. You can add the entire net worth
of all the population of a couple of African countries to get to total net
worth of 0.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jérôme_Kerviel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jérôme_Kerviel)

Edit: Rebuttal for their previous report: [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-
salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-
salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-the-poor/)

~~~
rabidrat
> In March 2014, a French high court upheld Kerviel's prison sentence but
> ruled he would not have to repay €4.9bn.[36]

I was hoping he was actually billions in the hole, but no, he's out of prison
and working and not responsible for repaying any amount of the debt.

~~~
lmilcin
It would actually be impossible for him to do this. Nobody will let him
anywhere near a job that would let him earn any sum of money that could make a
difference on a 4th or 5th digit of that sum even if he worked for the rest of
his life for this.

~~~
neuronic
You could really argue in all directions here. If he remained in prison all
that he would do is to accumulate even more cost. But if not, he might become
a welfare case (is he?) unless he lowers himself to do some honest work.

~~~
lmilcin
Actually, you could not argue. I'm Polish, so I may not know local law very
well, but at least here the theory is that a punishment must, amongst others,
allow the person to have a hope to come back to society, to remake themselves.
This of course unless it is decided the person is unredeemable. So no, you
can't argue in both directions. The judge has to pass a judgement that will
take this into the account. Having a person be left with billions of dollars
in debt that he has no hope to repay in a hundred lifetimes is not acceptable
judgement, at least here.

------
altvali
"World's 8 richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%" \- Oxfam, 2017
"World's 26 richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%" \- Oxfam, 2019

Not exactly the most convincing proof of "the widening gap". I'm not saying
that the inequality hasn't increased, just that you need a different metric
for showing it.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Poorest 50% probably have close to zero networth. Maybe some may have some
sort of "house," or property, but that's about it.

Another good point they make: VAT (sales tax in USA) is over 20% in a lot of
countries. That's in addition to income tax, pension (SS) contributions etc
etc. Basically, you pay at least 20% tax virtually on everything. The
governments usually collect that at the customs point of entry, and then it is
passed down to the ultimate buyers.

~~~
vidarh
> Basically, you pay at least 20% tax virtually on everything.

This is misleading. Firstly, in most countries with VAT, goods considered
basic necessities, like food, tends to be zero rated or have lower VAT rates.
Secondly, VAT is only paid on goods and often services you buy, not on e.g.
mortgage payments or other debt, or rent (most places).

As an example, though at an income well above average, last time I checked VAT
raised my effective tax rate by ~4 percentage points, despite the 20% UK
headline VAT rate.

Very low earners also tends to pay relatively little VAT, as a much larger
proportion of their income tends to go to rent or things that are exempt. As a
result most poor people pay those 20% (or whatever local rate) at only a small
proportion of their overall income.

VAT is still a problematic tax, as it has a disproportionately negative effect
for poor people once they do earn a bit extra and want to spend it on
something not considered a basic necessity (and the categories that are exempt
do tend to be quite narrow). It can certainly drive their effective tax rate
up well above the headline income tax rate for their income level even with
very small proportions of income spent on full rated things. It also causes a
"bulge" effect, where low to middle earners sees the largest effect (as high
earners tends to invest and save a large proportion of their income; and in
the UK and many other places are also more likely to afford to take advantage
of a lot of other tax breaks)

------
cperciva
If this is the same methodology as they've used in the past, I personally own
as much as the poorest 30% of the world. (And so do you.)

Aggregating wealth gets weird when you look at debt and measure _net_ wealth.

~~~
kamaal
I think the point is also about access to a certain degree of privilege.
Merely being born in what is considered currently the _western civilization or
hemisphere_ \- Basically Europe, US, Canada and Australia- Gives you access to
a lot of economic and social opportunity. Which includes things like free
primary and secondary education, heath care, pensions, social security, food
stamps/security, infrastructure, easy mobility etc etc.

Your average US citizen has more to their disposal(in terms of any metric you
can possibly measure) than people in South Asia or Africa.

------
marcoperaza
This is really misleading, as most people have very small or negative net
worths. A homeless guy with a few bucks in his pocket has a higher net worth
than most young doctors or lawyers.

The statistic as presented could make one think that you could just rob these
26 people and solve world poverty with their money. That’s just not true. What
makes the world go round is not the stored up wealth of the ultra rich, but
the much much greater sum of total output produced by the economy every year.

------
lanevorockz
Inequality is irrelevant, the trick is to make poverty non desirable but at
the same time comfortable. It would give them basic decency to not be
exploited. Education resources (books/online courses) should also be provided
for free.

~~~
eponeponepon
Comfort is exactly what people seek. You can't make something both comfortable
and undesirable.

If you're prepared to countenance a world where all people live a comfortable
life, then you're implicitly countenancing a world where all people have equal
worth - monetarily and otherwise.

~~~
james_s_tayler
I think the baseline of comfort that we're aiming for is beyond what most of
us in the West have. I think the late Hans Rosling's "level 3" probably isn't
much less well off in terms of emotional well-being than level 4. And level 3
is significantly cheaper than level 4, so it's not unimaginable that
eventually everyone gets at least there over a few hundred more years.

------
piokoch
Pretty interesting. One thing that bothers me is "The way our economies are
organised means wealth is increasingly and unfairly concentrated among a
privileged few while millions of people are barely subsisting".

I don't fully understand "unfairly" in this context. According to the
thefreedictionary this word means:

1\. Contrary to justice or a sense of fairness 2\. Contrary to laws or
conventions, especially in commerce; unethical: unfair dealing. 3\. Not kind
or considerate: It was unfair of me to laugh when he felt so sad.

I am not sure I understand which of those description of unfairness applies
to, say, Jeff Bezof (mentioned in the article). I have only limited knowledge
about him, but I haven't heard that he had done anything that could be
described as "unfair". One might even argue the opposite - he enabled many
people to but cheaper goods in an easier way and he also enabled many people
to sell goods efficiently and earn good money in this way.

~~~
lesdeuxmagots
You're interpreting this incorrectly. It is not that any individual's
accumulation of wealth is specifically unfair, it might not be, but rather the
system itself that is perceived to be unfair.

Society has been structured so that increasingly few people accumulate most of
the wealth. To many, it has reached a degree that is unethical, unjust,
unkind, particularly because those who are not along the privileged are
suffering as a result, therefore the scale of human suffering increases over
time, while wealth concentration continues to increase. You may not agree that
the degree of wealth disparity is worthy of such descriptions yet, but that is
just a matter of where to draw the line, not whether it is an understandable
thing to draw a line on. After all, if in say a few hundred years,
unrealistically and strictly as a thought experiment, the current system has
lead to a single individual accumulating as much wealth as every other
individual in the world combined, and having done so in an above board way,
while every other person in the world lives in abject poverty, would this be
unfair to you? If so, then we only disagree about the degree of wealth
inequity that informs our belief on the fairness of our economic and societal
systems.

~~~
tomp
> if in say a few hundred years, unrealistically and strictly as a thought
> experiment, the current system has lead to a single individual accumulating
> as much wealth as every other individual in the world combined, and having
> done so in an above board way, while every other person in the world lives
> in abject poverty

How likely do you think that is, and why do you think it's getting more and
more likely? If anything, the wealth and power these days is way _more_
dispersed than a couple hunderd years ago when a few royalty held most of
wealth/power/property. Like there's untold numbers of billionaires in
China/Africa/Saudi Arabia/UAE/Europe/USA etc, and there's more on their way.
In addition, the "turnover" of wealth seems to be faster and faster, and self-
made billionaires dominate most rich-people lists (which however ignore most
Arab dictators). Sure, it's possible that technology fundamentally changes
that dynamic (e.g. by making 100% surveillance and oppression possible) in the
future but that's not where the world is at right now.

------
porjo
It's a great temptation to point the finger at 'those filthy rich people over
there' but to someone else you and I are those filthy rich people. Let's all
have an attitude of gratitude, and not forget that wealth isn't a zero sum
game. Make the most of what you've been given, and leave the world a better
place.

~~~
xg15
Explain to me how certain relevant aspects of wealth such as food, housing,
energy or not wrecking the planet are not a zero sum game.

~~~
oblio
Well, this game can be played cooperatively or adversarially. For the latter
approach, everything is a zero sum game.

Getting back to your points:

> food

We already (can) produce way more food than we consume. The main problem is
distributing it and the lack of economic incentives to make this distribution
global and fair.

> housing

We have the tech and resources to provide everyone adequate non-slum housing.
It's again a problem of global and fair distribution. More than that, more
people need to accept that we need more high density urban environments. This
point will come back later :)

> energy

From an energy point of view, we're kind of at the "food" point. The real
challenge is converting energy production to renewables. Which brings us to...

> not wrecking the planet

We absolutely have all the tech and know-how to not wreck the planet. But it's
a tragedy of the commons.

Not wrecking the planet is the final end game, the ultimate cooperative move.
Heck, it's the final anti-zero sum game move.

------
mruts
Wealth inquality (up to a point, of course) is, in general, actually a good
thing. The more concentrated wealth is, the more easily and more cheaply it
can leveraged to affect change. A good example might be the Gates Foundation.
Through Bill Gates’ concentration of wealth, he can allocate money to help the
world with very little friction and overhead

Other examples include VC or hedge funds. While they don’t own the money
themselves (they merely aggregate and invest it on the behalf of others), the
reason this happens is because it’s much more profitable and efficient to
invest one large pot of cash vs many small pots of cash.

PS: If someone wants to bring up that index funds are better, it’s still the
same principle at work. The expense ratio of a S&P 500 index fund are much
smaller than what most individuals could manage themselves.

~~~
casual_slacker
It's an interesting point seldom discussed: governments use money in boring
safe ways, eccentric rich people "waste" money in unique and unpredictable
ways. Both seem essential to the equation of production, just maybe not in the
current proportions.

~~~
crc32
> governments use money in boring safe ways, eccentric rich people "waste"
> money in unique and unpredictable ways.

I think many would dispute this point, at least in a general sense; although
personally I might agree that current governments seem a bit paralysed in the
face of some of global society's larger problems.

It does seem like we are living in an almost Victorian era age of high profile
philanthropy/industrial barons.

------
poilcn
~34% of world population are children and teenagers. Of course they own
nothing. Then there are young adults who just entered labor market and they
don't have anything as well. So, it's roughly 40% of the world population.
Plus debts mentioned by others.

------
ak39
26 (left most) = 3'500'000'000 (right most)

That is one staggering statistic.

If I were one of those 26 people, I'd consider myself a superhero. Wake up
every morning knowing that I am capable of saving and improving lives of an
entire (small) country!

~~~
sgjohnson
But please tell me how. Providing them all with clothing, housing, food and
healthcare wouldn't solve anything. As a matter of fact, it would only make
matters worse. It'll lead to a increase in birth rates without actually
addressing the problem at the core. They have to be taught trade, not provided
for.

A healthy capitalist economy must be created in those places. It's giving the
man a fish vs teaching the man how to fish.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Increasing peoples' standing in life _decreases_ the birth rate.

And no, there is no such thing as a "healthy capitalist economy", capitalism
is by definition based on exploitation of the less fortunate. Saying such
things is obviously heresy to the Silicon Valley set and capitalists in
general, but it's the uncomfortable truth.

~~~
sgjohnson
Capitalism by definition is private property rights and voluntary exchanges
between individuals/businesses. It's the very antithesis to exploitation.

You might say that it's immoral to pay $1 an hour to people Africa to produce
Nike shoes for the US market, except it isn't. It's simply the market rate.
Could they afford to pay more? Yes. But it's in no means exploitation. That $1
an hour they make boosts the local economy, driving the quality of life up.
Make it $10/h, and nobody would work for local companies there anymore.

And do you have any metric that proves that peoples' standing in life
decreases the birth rate?

For example, there hasn't been a noticable decrease in Nigeria.
[https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-
popul...](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/)
[https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gdp-
growth](https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gdp-growth)

~~~
vidarh
> It's the very antithesis to exploitation.

Only if you believe in the fantasy of an equal exchange between people with
vastly different economic positions. This is such a fantasy that hardly a
country in the world does not confer additional legal protections to the
worker to try to at least to some extent level the playing-field.

Historically, it took people dying to secure even basic protections, Like
example stopping employers from _locking people in_ , like what caused 146
deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It took nearly a century, and
dozens of people killed in demonstrations and strikes to get reasonably
widespread application of the 8 hour working day. When people worldwide march
on May 1st, they do so in part in memory of the Haymarket Massacre [2] and the
AFL's subsequent move to resume the fight for the 8 hour day.

Nothing in the history of the labor movement suggests there is anything like
an equal exchange for most people. Some of us are privileged enough to be in
positions where we have something resembling an equal exchange that is truly
voluntary in am meaningful way, but for most their economic position is weak
enough that the employer always has more power.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair)

------
grondilu
Isn't there a law about networks or something that explains these kinds of
things? Basically, "money goes to money"?

Is so, does the discrepancy described in this article fit within this
theoretical framework?

------
guykdm
When you're very poor almost all of your assets are your earning capacity
which isn't counted. So a top notch MIT graduate who participated with say 5$
in the cost of his education and can now earn a lot (which can be seen as a
yielding asset) is now counted as 5$ poorer. Human capital isn't counted.

------
randyrand
Imagine there was another planet in another galaxy that had 100x the wealth as
earth. Would it even matter?

Sometimes I think these global comparisons are like comparing different
planets. Who really cares? It's our immediate surroundings that matter.

~~~
dannyw
Less wealth at the top, means more wealth all around.

Your analogy is flawed, unless you think things like progressive taxation,
social support / transfer payments, and closing rich’s tax havens and
loopholed are equivalent to a galaxy far far away.

~~~
manigandham
Wealth is not zero sum.

~~~
dannyw
The distribution of finite resources on this planet is a near zero sum
question.

------
mrleiter
Capital accrues capital faster than income ever can. This gap is one of the
reasons why we have right wing populists. They offer easy answers to a complex
problem - namely low income growth, jobs and immigration.

------
nootropicat
This is a bad comparison not only because of debt, but because that is a
valuation of productive capital they own. Nobody can eat shares. The only
thing that would happen after a 'fair redistribution' is that party's
bureucrats would replace current managers in their former companies.

The fate of PDVSA shows the ultimate result.

What the ultra-rich actually consume is a tiny fraction of their net worth.

~~~
lostmsu
The same goes the other way too though. Nobody can consume 1,000,000,000 loafs
of bread.

------
yason
The inequality of assets and income is an unfixable problem, but that is not
the problem.

There are people who are really good at starting and growing businesses,
investing, taking risks, and thus accumulating wealth. Then there are people,
some of who are really bad at that but mostly some of who aren't just that
much interested and driven by that. Then there are people who are really good
at effectively getting rid of any wealth they manage to obtain. Let's call
this being good at money.

There is nothing wrong with that. Programmers are like that. There are some
who are really, really good at it. Then many who are pretty decent, then a lot
who are mediocre but still not negative, and then there are programmers whose
output is outright negative.

Education helps a little: it can help with the constant factor but those who
are good they really are good regardless or despite the education. So
similarly to as you can't expect to train the whole humankind to become decent
programmers I'm pessimistic about being able to educate the whole humankind
out of poverty.

If we redistributed the world's wealth equally to all people on the planet the
distribution would revert back to what the shape it has now in a matter of
years or decades. Surely, there would be previously poor people with a knack
for money who would be wealthy and there would be previously wealthy people
who could not recreate the wealth they obtained by luck or by inheritance. But
we would eventually recreate the situation where few people hold most of the
assets. The peak of the distribution would just amplify over time as having
wealth makes it easier to make more wealth, so the rich get richer and the
poor get only fractional improvements.

There is a problem if the poor people can't make a living even if they are
willing to put in the effort on their part. The systemic inefficiencies to
lock a person's position in permanent poverty, the high fixed costs of living
that prevent accumulating savings, lack of food, roof or medical support
rendering people incapable to restart or begin a financially sustainable life,
or money being able to buy justice or privileges that trump other people's
rights. _These are the problems_ and not the fact that one person has a
billion times more assets than some other person.

There are solutions we've tried and mostly failed. We can try to transfer
wealth back from the rich to subsidise the poor. But poverty is often also
about the mindset, and it is well known you can't refill a well merely by
carrying water into it. The water just flows back to where it came from. We
can try to make living not so dependent on one's income and assets but that
means disrupting the natural markets for both jobs and goods, which not only
accumulates inefficiencies due the diminished effect of businesses' healthy
deaths but generates a reflecting black market that has no regulation. We can
try to create more jobs as historically work has been a good medium to
redistribute wealth but it seems that jobs are becoming less like that. There
are very high-paying jobs for a small group of people and very poorly paid
work or no work for lots of people.

Trying to fix the inequality of wealth distribution in order to combat poverty
is, in my opinion, fixing the symptom and not the cause.

~~~
crc32
> We can try to transfer wealth back from the rich to subsidise the poor. But
> poverty is often also about the mindset, and it is well known you can't
> refill a well merely by carrying water into it

Are you saying that poor people are poor because of their own ignorance or
poor behaviours? And therefore if you give them money they'll just piss it
away?

~~~
yason
Nope but because they're subjected to an environment that only operates in
terms of poverty.

Living in poverty is likely to develop a mindset, in order to survive, that
won't scale pulling you back out of poverty. That is, where you never start
making smart financial decisions or plan ahead because, you know, the life is
a mess enough because of various factors due to having little or no money or
peers telling you to act otherwise.

There have been a number of discussions and even anecdotal comments on HN to
probe into this. For example, feeling lucky at Google gave me this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461773)

~~~
crc32
In your original comment you said "If we redistributed the world's wealth
equally to all people on the planet the distribution would revert back to what
the shape it has now in a matter of years or decades" \- so it sounded to me
as though you were against this, on the basis that it would not solve the
problem.

> Nope but because they're subjected to an environment that only operates in
> terms of poverty.

So let's say you have now identified a root cause, and assuming we're looking
for a solution - how do we fix this without a redistribution of wealth?

------
matthewfelgate
Who cares?

This focus on rich people is a distraction from eliminating poverty. It's a
stupid and simplistic solution just to take money from rich people. I wish
Oxfam would stop stoking these silly socialist fires.

~~~
eponeponepon
How do you propose that poverty be eliminated without some people holding
proportionally less of the world's money?

~~~
james_s_tayler
The don't need to hold proportionally less. It's a red herring.

The focus rather should be on health/nutrition outcomes, education outcomes,
physical safety, quality of housing.

And this question is... is it getting better?

Factfulness says yes. Slowly, but surely, yes.

------
15characterslon
Also the world's richest 50% own more than the poorest 50%.

------
skilled
I wonder why so many of these people are choosing to spend time in their
office 'cubicles' rather than travel the world and do good things. Like
seriously, what is the barrier/problem here? Even if I had only a million
dollars to freely spend, I would still choose to travel and make an impact
where it counts.

We in the West love to complain about our 'problems' but a lot of us honestly
don't have a clue what's happening elsewhere on the planet. And, of course, I
am not talking just about the helping aspect of it, but also the opportunity
to be exposed to some of the planets hidden beauty, places that only a handful
of people will ever get to see.

Maybe it's because I am so free-spirited, and don't really value my own life
as above anyone else's. Although 7.5B people sounds a lot, this Earth is
nothing more than a planetarium. The grip that the Human Ego has on
materialistic identity so absolutely bizarre.

I'm not saying every giga-rich person is like this, certainly, some are
contributing to philanthropy and other projects, and perhaps I am myself
mixing together two issues here, but this kind of philosophy interests me a
lot.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Even if I had only a million dollars to freely spend, I would still choose
> to travel and make an impact where it counts_

Travelling to remote places and doing things that feel impactful is generally
an inefficient way to do good. I’m not criticising it _per se_. For edge-case
problems, it’s the only solution. But if you want to enact change at scale,
you’ll be doing it from the same places other human institutions enacting
change at scale are.

