You misquote the OXFAM claim. They actually say:

The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.[1](p2 bottom)

See the difference? The richest 85 people have about $1.7 trillion in wealth[2]. To put that in perspective the world stock market capitalization is $63 trillion[3], world bond market capitalization is around $100 trillion[4], world investment grade real estate $26 trillion[5]. That already $189 trillion of world wealth and ignores most real estate, commodities, durables, government owned assets, etc. So the richest 85 people actually own much less than 1% of the world's wealth. The problem is that the bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth.

You will have a very hard time solving the world's problems if you can't even get basic facts straight. Gates, the world's second richest man, could give his entire fortune away to the bottom 50% and they would only get $19.00 each (=$67B/3.5B). Of course he would then have to shut down the Gates Foundation.

[1] http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-fo...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/wfe-world-stock-market-capita...

[4] http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1212h.pdf

[5] http://www.investmentmanagement.prudential.com/documents/pim...

Agreed, I made a mistake. But I appreciate that you agree that we have failed miserable at distribution of wealth and I quote you "The problem is that the bottom 50% also own much less than 1% of the world's wealth."

The distribution of wealth is a symptom of a problem not the problem itself. We haven't failed at distributing wealth: poor people are not poor because somebody didn't distribute wealth to them.

Most poor people are poor because they don't have paying work (i.e. a job or business). In the poorest countries unemployment rates are always very high (50%+) and even if rich countries the poorest are usually unemployed. Without any income basic survival is difficult and it is almost impossible to save and accumulate wealth.

As I pointed out above you could take all of Bill Gates wealth away and only have $19 for each of the 3.5 billion in the bottom 50%. While this might help some in the short run because Bill Gates would have to stop his aid activities many would be worse off in the long run. But more importantly it does not solve the problem.

The only solution is to get the unemployed into paying jobs or businesses. Even the lowest paying jobs on earth, such as Bangladesh garment jobs, pay twice what redistributing Bill Gates fortune would - not just once but EVERY MONTH. Unfortunately making this possible is a lot more complex than writing a check but it certainly helps to better understand what needs to change.

1. I never said we should redistribute the wealth. I believe that will only create more problems.

2. I never suggested Bill Gates should give away his wealth.

3. All I am saying is whatever caused this (85 richest human have wealth equal to 3,500,000,000 poorest humans) extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor. For example - In India corruption in government is making problem of inequality worst. If you spend sometime trying to understand the corruption problem of India you will be surprised to see it's extend and scale. Therefore if we agree that we have a problem we may find the cause and finally remedies.

I apologize if I misunderstood you - so much simplistic inequality talk lately.

I completely agree that government corruption (and simple incompetence) are a big part of the reason the poor are poor and many of the super rich are super rich (e.g. Carlos Slim and Latin American telephone monopolies). However these are two separate thing. If having a few super rich was the price of elevating tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty, I would be very happy. This is what has happened in China. If we could encourage this in Congo, it would be a big win.

Other than what is already being done by people like Gates the only idea I like is having government focus on things it can do well and avoid doing harm. But I think everyone knows this already and it must be almost impossible to do.

Note that a newly graduated doctor from Harvard Medical School most likely has sufficient debt to put her very deeply in that bottom 50%, but she's still in an extremely enviable position.

Current wealth isn't nearly as important as potential future earnings.

> this extreme inequality is blocking the progress of poor

How so?

Lets say we distribute this wealth in a more equitable way. That will mean a little more dollars in the hand of poor and a little less in the hand of super rich. Now if we assume(reasonable as far as I can see) that if you are feed and have home you will spend next dollars into healthcare and education. So poor people with little more dollars would attract more workforce towards providing education and healthcare to their kids (instead of writing code for Bill Gates and make him rich) and thus making this world more peaceful and beautiful for all.

Every action has a reaction, while redistributing wealth seems like it would create a utopian world there are consequences and problems it would also create. These billions of dollars aren't simply sitting around in bank accounts doing nothing, they're being invested in companies which are (should be) providing some form of value to the world thus increasing the wealth of the world as a whole. If that money was taken and given to those less well off it could be squandered and then we're in a worse off position than now.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it seems fantastic, but there are always consequences and the reason we have capitalism is because so far it's proven itself as the best method of improving the wealth of everyone (through technology and cheaper goods.

> I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it seems fantastic, but there are always consequences and the reason we have capitalism is because so far it's proven itself as the best method of improving the wealth of everyone

That's not the reason we have capitalism, since we, generally, don't -- the places that had the system for which the label "capitalism" was created have all since adopted a substantial portion of the redistributive program of some of that systems most strident opponents (such as Marx and Engels) to create the modern dominant "mixed economy", for the precise reason that capitalism was an incredibly bad system and improving conditions for anyone but a very narrow class.

And when we do take steps back toward capitalism, we see that what aggregate gains there are get more narrowly concentrated, and the system gets worse at "improving the wealth of everyone".

That's not what that article says. It says that those 85 people own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people. The article and accompanying paper say that the world's richest one percent own 46% of the world's wealth - the 71M people who make more than $35K or so.

Agreed, I made a mistake and misunderstood the fact but my point that we have failed miserably at distribution of wealth remains.