More on the Oxfam stupidity

There is so much critical comment on the rubbish from Oxfam on inequality, it is hard to know where to start.

Let 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 , 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 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 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.

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