2. Oxfam or Oxscam? Inequality Leon Louw What is it? Is it increasing?
Is it unjust?
Is it excessive?
How fare the poor? South Africa?
Leon Louw

3. DisClaimer Personal view: Oxfam = Oxscam Oxscam flimflam
Dictionary definitions of ‘flimflam’:
trick or deception .. swindle or confidence game .. skillful persuasion or clever manipulation of the victim
deceptive nonsense; twaddle; fraud
Oxscam’s track record:
Dodgy data
Dodgy staff
I care about the poor, not the rich

4. DisClaimer I’M NOT DENYING INEQUALITY AND POVERTY
I’M EXCITED ABOUT HUMANITY’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT
I CARE ABOUT THE POOR, NOT THE RICH
DECENT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT THE POOR,
NOT THE RICH
OXSCAM IS OBSESSED WITH THE RICH (EXCEPT THEMSELVES) AT THE EXPENSE OF THE POOR

5. Inequality hysteria
The world is the grip of an inequality feeding frenzy fueled by extreme claims
News-hungry media soak inequality propaganda uncritically
Power- and wealth-hungry politicians love it
Inequality propagandists advance vested interests:
Lavish jobs and lifestyles
Status and power
Oxscam flimflam

6. Oxscam ethics
Oxscam's ‘deputy chief executive quits .. over prostitution scandal’
Oxscam officials ‘brushed off allegations of child abuse’
Crime authorities ‘have been warning since 1999 that predatory paedophiles .. gain access to .. children’
Oxscam admits it ‘failed to adequately act (on) behaviour of staff’
Head of counter-fraud unit jailed for R1m fraud (£65k; Edward McKenzie-Green)

7. Oxscam salaries (Daily Mail)
Oxfam spends 25% .. on wages and running costs .. R11.6m (£700k) on .. 7 top staff.
Only R5bn (£300m) from its R6.6bn (£400m) .. was used for ‘charitable expenditure’.
Oxfam rewards executives with banker-sized salaries and benefits (including) school fees for executives' children.
Oxfam is under intense pressure over questionable fundraising practices.

8. Oxscam salaries CEO: R2.1m (£130k) + expenses R2.3m (+£12,000)
Dep CEO: R1.6m (£100k)
‘.. staff .. earning more than R1.6m doubled in 7 years’
‘.. Staff with .. More than R1m.. tripled’ to 100 (£60k)
‘.. Wage bill increased 48% to R2bn last year’ (£122m)
Gender advisor: R1m ($80k)
Gifts officer: R900,000 ($75k)
Shop manager: R600,000 (€40k)
SA intern: R100,000

9. Oxscam’s essence Characterised by
Obsession with wealth; hatred prosperity
Disinterest in and disregard for the poor
Portrays the opposite of reality
Readily available facts denied or ignored: equality and prosperity denialism
Extreme sensationalism
Designed to deceive – smoke and mirrors
Shifting and contradictory assertions
Failed ideology propaganda - propose policies that maximize poverty and inequality
No interest in what minimizes them

10. Oxscam’s vested interest
Maximum poverty
Minimum prosperity
Maximum government
Minimum enterprise

11. Oxscams 8 richest are ‘wealthier’ than poorest 50% Reality:
8 richest combined wealth: $440bn (Forbes)
It’s ‘peanuts’! (World’s nuts are worth $440bn pa) (World’s 42m mt peanuts worth $365bn-Sainsbury
World wealth: $300tr (Credit Suisse by narrow definition)
8 richest have 1/600th of world income
8 richest have 1/600,000th of world assets
Richest 1% ‘bagged’ 82% of 2017 wealth and poorest 50% ‘got nothing’
Reality: Assertion fabricated; CS data misinterpresented

12. Oxscams
2017: 8 own same as poorest 50% 2018: 42 own same as the poorest 50%.
Which is it?
‘Recalculated’ 8 to 61
If 8 to 42 more got rich If 61 to 42 there’s more equality (the rich good poorer)
Billionaires number rose at ‘unprecedented rate’ (1 every 2 days)
Reality:
Previous alarm was that the number is declining; new alarm that it’s rising
The Oxscam is that rising and falling are bad

13. Oxscams
2016: 62 own as much as the poorest 50% 2017: 8 (or 61) own as much as poorest 50% 2018: 42 own as much as the poorest 50%
Yet the number of billionaires is increasing
Wealth of the poorest 50% has fallen by 38%
Reality:
In 1 year!
Obvious sensational nonsense

14. Oxscams Richest 1% own more wealth than the rest (99%) Reality:
‘The rest’ includes governments, institutions, middle class, land owners, etc
‘The rest’ own everything the 1% paid to employ them, and earned by selling to them
Incomes of the poorest 10% increased less than $3 pa between 1988 and 2011
Incomes of the 10% to 50% increased spectacularly where economies liberalised
Why does Oxscam ignore success?

15. Oxscams 1% of humanity controls as much wealth as the bottom 99%
UNICEF says richest 20% has 83% of global income; 1% for poorest 20%.
Reality:
What does ‘control’ mean
Does the 1% include:
Politicians?
Workers (through funds)?
Welfare recipients?
Voters?

16. Oxscams Oxscam methodology shows more poverty in the USA than China
IEA called Oxscam data ‘bogus’ because ‘adding assets and subtracting debts to estimate net wealth’ implies that rich credit-worthy people with debt are poor
ASI called Oxscam data ‘misleading’ because ‘meaningful measures show greater equality’

17. Oxscams 1 CEO earns what 10,000 Bangladesh garment workers earn
Reality:
Disingenuous to compare world’s richest person with world’s poorest workers
1 CEO earns what 1,000 CEOs earn
1 Oxscam CEO earns what 1,000 workers
Milkman has more that 100m poorest
Richest Vietnam man earns daily day what poorest earns annually
Why? So what? Spurious nonsense

18. Oxscam agenda Maximise poverty Promote envy, suspicion and conflict
Popularise and legitimize disinformation
Pull down the rich without lifting the poor
End ‘extreme wealth’, yet no suggestion that:
The poor are harmed by it
The poor will benefit from ending it
‘extreme wealth’ is gained immorally
The rich serve humanity
Advance failed ideologies

19. World’s 8 richest people
Bill Gates (ICT-Microsoft) $75 bn
Amancio Ortega (fashion-Zara) $67 bn
Warren Buffett (investment-Berkshire) $60 bn
Carlos Slim Helu (ICT-Grupo Carso) $50 bn
Jeff Bezos (ICT-Amazon) $45 bn
Mark Zuckerberg (ICT-Facebook) $44 bn
Larry Ellison (ICT-Oracle) $43 bn
Michael Bloomberg (media-Bloomberg) $40 bn
Total $440 bn

20. Reality vs Oxscam By all criteria:
Extreme poverty virtually eliminated
Things have never better for nearly everyone nearly everywhere
Life expectancy from 30 to 65
Literacy from 10% to 90%
Global wealth $300tr

21. The real world MGDs exceeded
80% reduction in world ‘poverty’ in only 36 years, from 27% to below 5%
Welfare spending in market economies far exceeds non-market economies, up from 1% (1900) to 20%
Child labour down to zero in rich countries
The poor risk and lose lives to go to where the richest people are – why?
Life expectancy up from 30 to 65
Illiteracy down to zero in rich countries
etc

22. Quality of life equality
75 years ago the poor had few or no ‘amenities’:
Healthcare
Motorised transport
Services
Housing and appliances
Education
Entertainment
Communications (phones):
Calls, mail and texts
Information
‘Internet of everything’

23. ‘Inequality’? What is ‘wealth’? Capital? Personal or household?
Intellectual capital (skills, qualifications)?
Public capital (hospitals, roads, schools etc)?
Jobs?
Assets (disposable)?
House?
Savings?
Furniture?
Car?
Valuables (eg art, jewelry, rugs)?

24. ‘Inequality’? What is ‘wealth’? Possessions (non-disposable)?
Personal (appliances, TV, fridges, microwaves, phones, clothes etc)?
Household?
Businesses (big, small, micro, agriculture)
Incomes:
Pre or post tax?
Personal or household?
Salaries & wages, return on savings or investment, welfare?

25. ‘Inequality’? What is ‘wealth’? Welfare & government?
The paradox of socialism: Socialists (like Oxscam) get bigger government and more welfare, yet value it at zero
Pensions, healthcare, education, infrastructure, SOEs, housing, policing, transport, services etc amount to massive wealth owned by the poor

26. ‘Inequality’? Other criteria: Rights (equality at law) Endowments Age
Skills
Health
Support (family, community)
Genes:
Gender
Race
Appearance
Intelligence/drive/energy/aspirations

27. ‘Inequality’? Under what conditions would they be ‘equal’?
Beautiful healthy brilliant young woman vs
Ugly old sickly retarded man
Real world ‘equality’
Cannot even be conceived, ley alone defined
(except equality at law)

28. What would make them ‘equal’?

29. Causes of inequality Causes of inequality:
Government (laws and policies)
Effort and skill
Inheritance and luck
Savings and investment
Immorality and crime
Value to society
Judges
Entertainers
Entrepreneurs
Beggars
etc

30. What’s the problem? Spectacular rise of billions from destitution
The rich getting richer in return for saving, investing, employing, supplying
The poor getting richer faster than the rich

31. Sources Human Progress (www.humanprogress.org) Johan Norberg
Steven Pinker
Matt Ridley
Cato Institute
Every index!

32. end Oxfam or Oxscam? Contact: jboccaleone@gmail.com +27 82 904 3616

33. Gini indices since WW2

34. Gini indices since WW2
Depiction can mislead