In January, Oxfam International published a briefing paper, “Working for the few”, which estimates that the world’s richest 85 people own more than the combined wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion.
The figure is nothing short of staggering. New analysis by Forbes Insights editorial director Kasia Moreno also shows that it is off the mark. Inequality is even worse than Oxfam’s original estimates.
It’s not that the NGO got it wrong. “Oxfam’s calculations of the richest individuals are based on the 2013 Forbes Billionaires list”, wrote Moreno in a March post at Forbes.com. “I decided to take a closer look at this group of 85 ... That’s when I realised that they are by now a much wealthier group. The rich got richer. And it was quite fast and dramatic. For example, while last year it took US$23 billion to be in the top 20 of the world’s billionaires, this year it took $31 billion.
“As a result, by the time Forbes published its 2014 Billionaires List in early March, it took only 67 of the richest peoples’ wealth to match the poorer half of the world.
“Each of the 67 is on average worth the same as 52 million people from the bottom of the world’s wealth pyramid. Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $76 billion, is worth the same as 156 million people from the bottom.”
This gross inequality has been growing not just recently. Historian and theorist Chris Harman wrote in 1999 that, “At the end of the 1960s, the gap between the richest and poorest fifths of the world’s population stood at 30 to one, in 1990 at 60 to one, and in 1998 at 74 to one ...
“By the late 1990s some 348 billionaires enjoyed a total wealth equal to the income of half of humanity.”
From 348 to 85 to 67. How long before one person controls half the world?
