So what if 62 people are rich? Inequality is falling | Ben Southwood writes for City AM
Head of research at the ASI, Ben Southwood, has writen for City AM on the misleading nature of Oxfam's inequality statistics:
Each time they release the new number there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but their numbers are nonsense, and on top of that they tell the wrong story.Firstly, adding up negative numbers gives some paradoxical results. For example, as far in debt as the most indebted person is (i.e. the poorest person by Oxfam’s measure) they are still richer than the next two billion people all put together, because all of those people have small negative net wealth.
Secondly, and more importantly, it cannot measure human capital. For most people, their most valuable assets are their talents and skills.