Capitalism, not Oxfam, is defeating poverty

Stolen entire from The Telegraph

Telegraph View 19 Jan 2016: The charity appears to have forgotten that its job is to help the poor, not attack wealth 

Every year it is the same story: in early January, Oxfam releases a report stating that a handful of people are, collectively, as wealthy as the planet’s poorest 50 per cent. Only the number of this gilded elite changes. In 2010 it was the richest 388 who possessed the same as all those benighted billions at the bottom. By last year that had fallen to 80. Now, Oxfam informs us with appalled incredulity, the figure is 62. 

One may ask why the charity, which is committed to reducing poverty, is so interested in billionaires. Surely it is the fate of those living on next to nothing that it should be concerned with, not playboys with fleets of superyachts and private jets. Unfortunately, that would present a problem: for when Oxfam concentrates on statistics not politics, it concedes that “extreme poverty has halved in just 15 years”. 

The reality is that Oxfam is not campaigning against poverty any more. It is campaigning against wealth, as if the global economy were a zero sum game, with a finite amount of cash to be divided among the citizens of the Earth. Yet that is patently not true. 

Capitalism generates wealth. Currently its fruits are lifting people out of extreme poverty at unprecedented rates. To everybody but Oxfam, this represents extremely good news. The charity, however, gives the impression that it would be happier if everyone were poorer, as long as we were all equally poor. 

Oxfam’s annual report is designed to make us all blush. We are supposed to feel ashamed that we can live in a world of such manifest, astonishing inequality. But it is outcomes that matter, not equality. To pretend otherwise really is shameless.

Oxfam is a big, fat English charity outfit.

Via Marcel