According to Oxfam, the crater between the wealthiest people in the world and the poorest people in the world has gotten to comically surreal levels. The “eight richest individuals” have as much wealth as the 3,600,000,000 people who make up the poorer half of the earth’s entire population. Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs and Ben Southwood of the Adam Smith Institute both said that people should not pay attention to that and instead pretend that isn’t happening while talking about how to help poor people.
"As an 'anti-poverty' charity, Oxfam seems to be strangely preoccupied with the rich," said the director-general of the free market think tank.
For those concerned with "eradicating absolute poverty completely", the focus should be on measures that encourage economic growth, he added.
Ben Southwood, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute, said it was not the wealth of the world's rich that mattered, but the welfare of the world's poor, which was improving every year.
"Each year we are misled by Oxfam's wealth statistics. The data is fine - it comes from Credit Suisse - but the interpretation is not."
They’re half right. The issue in the end is that we live and have been promoting a dream that cannot possibly include even a sizable minority of the world’s population. Every time one of these economists, “liberal” or otherwise, explain how we need to worry about making the world economy larger, which will trickle all of that gold all over the poor, that never seems to happen. In fact, it seems to mean less and less people get to be a part of this “growing world economy.”
The eight richest billionaires (excluding Vladimir Putin whose exact wealth has been hard to verify and usually is left off such lists) are:
1. Bill Gates (US): co-founder of Microsoft (net worth $75bn)
2. Amancio Ortega (Spain): founder of Zara owner Inditex (net worth $67bn)
3. Warren Buffett (US): largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (net worth $60.8bn)
4. Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico): owner of Grupo Carso (net worth $50bn)
5. Jeff Bezos (US): founder and chief executive of Amazon (net worth $45.2bn)
6. Mark Zuckerberg (US): co-founder and chief executive of Facebook (net worth $44.6bn)
7. Larry Ellison (US): co-founder and chief executive of Oracle (net worth $43.6bn)
8. Michael Bloomberg (US): owner of Bloomberg LP (net worth $40bn)
USA! USA! USA!