Democracy Has Prevailed.

January 25, 2014

Oh, The Stuff They Leave Out

Check this out from this Sunday's Sunday Pops:
The Los Angeles Times reported that the 85 richest people on Earth own nearly half of all global wealth. Sorry but no. As it was forced to later concede, the globe's 85 richest people own about 0.7 percent of the world's wealth. Whoopsieday. [Bolding in original}
Aren't they missing something?

Let's go to the LATimes to see the actual correction:
Updated 7:55 a.m. PST, Jan. 20: A previous version of this post said the 85 richest people owned nearly half of global wealth and the same amount as the bottom half of the population. The 85 richest people are a small part of the wealthiest 1%, which owns 46% of the world's wealth. The 85 richest people own about 0.7% of the world's wealth, which is the same as the bottom half of the population. [Bolding in original.]
Ok so what they're missing are the bullet points from the Oxfam report that the LATimes was referencing:
  • Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.
  • The wealth of the one percent richest peopl e in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
  • The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.
  • Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.
  • The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.
  • In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post - financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.
Whoopsie.

No comments: