So I assume everyone downloaded the PDF AND the excel? Good, so lets get to the numbers:<p>My problems:<p>1. Percentages: the article talks in percentages, as if something tangible was lost from 50-45%. Here is the table of wealth by year in total vs the bottom 50%:<p>year Total($bil) 50% ($bn)<p>2000 $117,052.00 $702.31<p>2001 $113,390.00 $793.73<p>2002 $122,757.00 $859.30<p>2003 $147,566.00 $1,032.96<p>2004 $166,018.00 $1,162.13<p>2005 $171,182.00 $1,198.27<p>2006 $195,941.00 $1,763.47<p>2007 $220,043.00 $2,200.43<p>2008 $189,877.00 $1,708.89<p>2009 $205,656.00 $1,850.90<p>2010 $216,084.00 $2,593.01<p>2011 $224,382.00 $2,243.82<p>2012 $238,089.00 $2,142.80<p>2013 $255,620.00 $1,789.34<p>2014 $263,242.00 $1,842.69<p><pre><code> +224.89% +262.38%
</code></pre>
The wealth of the bottom 50% had tripled by 2010, even 2012, and has fallen off in the years since 2010. Taking the 2014 reduced numbers, that is still a 262% increase in 14 years. In contrast, the TOTAL economy has grown 224.89% since 2000. Why is THAT not the story? "Global share of bottom 50% growing faster than the world economy" doesn't fit the narrative perchance?<p>Besides which, isn't that F^$%^&$ing amazing! That the bottom 50% areover 2 and a half times richer. That is world changing for the people it affects, surely? Yet the story is the rich have more. Really, "Rich have more" is the story? I can't wait for "water is wet" as installment 2.<p>More importantly, why is the story not the drop from 2010 to 2014? What was that?<p>So I sought out the source: <a href="https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=60931FDE-A2D2-F568-B041B58C5EA591A4" rel="nofollow">https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...</a> and it appears that the wealth in the bottom 50% is made up mostly of mostly of two things (see figure 8, page 12):
1. Poor nations - e.g. Africa and, largest of all, India which accounts "... for over a quarter of people in the bottom half of the distribution".
2. Ruch Americans in debt - the tail seems skewed that way, to me at least.<p>If we take just India, they had a massive currency exchange problem vs the USD since 2010. In 2010, it was 46.21 rupee to the dollar, in December 2014 it was 62.8 (<a href="http://www.x-rates.com/average/?from=USD&to=INR&amount=1&year=2014" rel="nofollow">http://www.x-rates.com/average/?from=USD&to=INR&amount=1&yea...</a>). That is a drop of about a third in value. That is likely at least part of the reason for the wealth drop.<p>2. The percentage projection carries on from what looks like an historical anomaly between 2010 and 2014. If the currency exchange reverses course, and India claws back even 10% of the gap, the percentage to the 1% will likely reverse to some degree.<p>3. The data set for the rich changes dramatically. The minimum to be top 80 in 2014, would be top 15 in 2004. Zuckerberg appears out of nowhere in 2011, adding a few billion (his wealth versus the 81st position) to the total from nowhere. If Wallmart's founder had survived, we'd have a top 80 with 4 more billionaires in it, making it an even larger a total. That's not really indicative of anything (other than rich people can die too).<p>Look, I get Oxfam's political agenda, but I think a +262.38% increase in wealth for the bottom 50% - even after what looks like a currency disaster since 2010 - is amazing in and of itself, and any comparison to an arbitrary set of extremely wealthy is just political machinations.