{"id":3477,"date":"2016-01-23T19:23:53","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T19:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2016-01-23T19:23:53","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T19:23:53","slug":"stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-the-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/23\/stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-the-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop adding up the wealth of the poor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/proxy.jpg?ssl=1\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3478\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3478\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/proxy-1.jpg?resize=620%2C446&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"proxy\" width=\"620\" height=\"446\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s the meme that refuses to die. It started, back in 2011, with the Waltons: six members of the family, we were repeatedly told, were worth as much as the bottom 30% of all Americans combined. I <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/felix-salmon\/2011\/12\/13\/how-alice-walton-has-improved-america\/\">tried<\/a> to address this silly stat back then, but now it\u2019s gone global: back in January, Oxfam <a href=\"http:\/\/policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk\/publications\/working-for-the-few-political-capture-and-economic-inequality-311312\">announced<\/a> that the world\u2019s 85 richest people had the same wealth as the bottom half of the global population. And now Forbes has come along to say that, actually, it\u2019s not 85 people \u2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesinsights\/2014\/03\/25\/the-67-people-as-wealthy-as-the-worlds-poorest-3-5-billion\/\">it\u2019s a mere 67<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Oxfam does a pretty bad job of footnoting its <a href=\"http:\/\/oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com\/oxfam\/bitstream\/10546\/311312\/19\/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf\">report<\/a>, but I did manage to finally track down how it arrived at this conclusion. The 85 (or 67) number is easy: you just start at the top of the Forbes billionaires list, and start counting up the combined wealth until you reach $1.7 trillion. The harder question is: where does the $1.7 trillion number come from?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/felix-salmon\/2014\/04\/04\/stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-the-poor\/\">Stop adding up the wealth of the poor<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s the meme that refuses to die. It started, back in 2011, with the Waltons: six members of the family, we were repeatedly told, were worth as much as the bottom 30% of all Americans combined. I tried to address this silly stat back then, but now it\u2019s gone global: back in January, Oxfam announced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-U5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3480,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions\/3480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}