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> According to Oxfam someone in the "bottom 10% on < $2 per day" might very well be wealthier than a recently graduated US doctor from a top medical school if h

by dpwm 9y ago

> According to Oxfam someone in the "bottom 10% on < $2 per day" might very well be wealthier than a recently graduated US doctor from a top medical school if he's taken on student debt. And if that's the case then you have a bad measurement of wealth. Would income be a better metric? If so, you're not going to see something like (the income of the top n) == (the income of the bottom m %) because it's very hard to quantify the incomes of the poor. And in many ways that is misleading, because you can be on a low income but managing fine and on a high income and not managing at all, just depending on where you live. > Oxfam is doing the whole inequality debate a great disservice by putting out misleading and underhand data that takes the focus away from the real debate. They use the term wealth. They're not saying income. On seeing the headline I never had any doubt that wealth was assets less liabilities, because that seems to be the main measure of wealth that is thrown around. Should they instead remain silent on this?

dagw 9y ago
Would income be a better metric? Lots of things would be a better metric. Purchasing power (as you mentioned in your original reply) would be a much better metric (but obviously harder to measure). Someone who's got salary of $200k a year, a house, two cars and a net wealth of negative $100k should not rank below someone making $2 a day and lives in a shack in any valid metric. Should they instead remain silent on this? Absolutely not, they should do the exact opposite. Publish reports with meaningful numbers that have real relevance to the underlying problem at hand. All they're doing now is generating headline grabbing, easy to ignore, clickbait. I mean I get why Oxfam is doing it (sexy headlines get likes of Facebook), but I feel it cheapens the very serious underlying issue they're trying to talk about.

by dpwm 9y ago

dagw 9y ago

Would income be a better metric? Lots of things would be a better metric. Purchasing power (as you mentioned in your original reply) would be a much better metric (but obviously harder to measure). Someone who's got salary of $200k a year, a house, two cars and a net wealth of negative $100k should not rank below someone making $2 a day and lives in a shack in any valid metric. Should they instead remain silent on this? Absolutely not, they should do the exact opposite. Publish reports with meaningful numbers that have real relevance to the underlying problem at hand. All they're doing now is generating headline grabbing, easy to ignore, clickbait. I mean I get why Oxfam is doing it (sexy headlines get likes of Facebook), but I feel it cheapens the very serious underlying issue they're trying to talk about.