So I assume everyone downloaded the PDF AND the excel? Good, so lets get to the numbers:

My problems:

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%:

year Total($bil) 50% ($bn)

2000 $117,052.00 $702.31

2001 $113,390.00 $793.73

2002 $122,757.00 $859.30

2003 $147,566.00 $1,032.96

2004 $166,018.00 $1,162.13

2005 $171,182.00 $1,198.27

2006 $195,941.00 $1,763.47

2007 $220,043.00 $2,200.43

2008 $189,877.00 $1,708.89

2009 $205,656.00 $1,850.90

2010 $216,084.00 $2,593.01

2011 $224,382.00 $2,243.82

2012 $238,089.00 $2,142.80

2013 $255,620.00 $1,789.34

2014 $263,242.00 $1,842.69

+224.89% +262.38%

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?

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.

More importantly, why is the story not the drop from 2010 to 2014? What was that?

So I sought out the source: https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi... 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.

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 (http://www.x-rates.com/average/?from=USD&to=INR&amount=1&yea...). That is a drop of about a third in value. That is likely at least part of the reason for the wealth drop.

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.

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).

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.