In what has become a tradition, Oxfam issued a report at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, complaining about “growing and extreme inequality.” The report states that “The world’s five richest men have seen their fortunes more than double since 2020, while in the same period five billion people have become poorer.”
There is just one problem: those figures don’t add up. Swedish researcher Johan Norberg has explained that the UBS “Global Wealth Report,” which is “the main source for Oxfam’s wealth calculations,” reveals that, “For the world as a whole, these annual shifts have roughly cancelled out, leaving global wealth inequality back at the level prevailing when the pandemic began.” Norberg adds that, “For most inequality indicators, [this] was the lowest level recorded this century.”
Looking only at the five people who did the best in a given period will always give the impression Oxfam wants to create. In doing so, the NGO—which has an obsession with the so-called Gini index, an inequality comparison method invented by an Italian fascist—ignores the 24 rich people who disappeared from the Forbes list after losing $43 billion in one year.
Norberg adds that the Gini coefficient has fallen since 2000, from 92 to 88, with the share in global wealth of the 1% richest also dropping from 49 to 44.5%. Daniel Waldenström, co-author of the Global Wealth Report, observes that, “Global wealth inequality has declined by all standard measurements.” Since 1900, the share of the wealthiest 1% in global wealth has fallen in all European countries, from 50-70% then, to 20-23% in 2017. Only in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Britain, can one observe a trend towards a new concentration of wealth; but even then, it is still to a much lesser extent than in the years 1900-1950.
In the 20th century, nowhere was as unequal as the Soviet Union, with its class of communist regime faithful who possessed all sorts of privileges. By contrast, global capitalism is causing inequality to fall. If inequality were the result of governments granting special privileges only to some favoured group of people, it would obviously be right to protest against it. In doing so, one could denounce the expansionary monetary policy in the West over the past 40 years. After all, this has favoured the wealthy, because the more capital someone has, the less risky it becomes to protect against inflation by buying hard assets, such as real estate, shares, or gold. However, that is clearly not what Oxfam is doing. In its communications, Oxfam focuses on the foundation of our current standard of living: the capitalist system. It ignores the socialist aspects of our system, such as expansionary monetary financing, which is meant to fund the social-democratic welfare state.
Disinformation
This is not the first time that Oxfam has presented disinformation. In November, at the start of the UN’s annual COP28 climate conference, Oxfam launched yet another attack on the “super-rich” in a report that portrayed them as “ultra-polluters.” The NGO added, critiquing the “super-rich” in strident terms, that they “plunder and pollute the planet to the point of destruction, suffocating humanity with extreme heat, floods and drought.”
In that report, Oxfam also claimed that the richest 1% of the world’s population “produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 as the five billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds of humanity.” This claim, too, was factually incorrect, because in its calculation Oxfam took into account not only the lifestyle of the richest, but also the emissions of the companies of which they are shareholders. Perhaps it was less juicy to portray the millions of people associated with these companies—shareholders, staff, and ordinary consumers—as “looters and polluters.”
In all of this, ‘climate change’ seems little more than a pretext. If Oxfam really cared about reducing CO2 emissions, combined with maintaining our standard of living, the NGO would be fully committed to nuclear power. After all, other energy sources that do not involve high CO2 emissions, such as wind and solar power, are not yet sufficiently reliable. However, that is not Oxfam’s position. In 2022, despite the looming energy crisis, Oxfam France’s director-general, Cécile Duflot, openly spoke out against nuclear power. Instead, she favoured “radical solutions,” by which she meant taxes and regulation.
This kind of central planning is not only economic nonsense, it also does not serve the purpose of reducing CO2 emissions. This is clear when we look at Germany, which, by phasing out nuclear power plants, has become more dependent on CO2-emitting energy sources. A new model is needed, one which encourages entrepreneurs and innovation in order to solve environmental problems.
Alternatives
Such an alternative is being promoted by members of the “Climate & Freedom International Coalition,” a group of academics and policymakers who have developed a draft international treaty based on the premise of relying on free markets to come up with carbon-neutral solutions. Countries signing such a treaty, which would be a free-market alternative to the collectivist “Paris Agreement,” would enjoy trade advantages if they adopt climate-friendly free-market policies.
Signatories thereby agree to open up their markets to trade, with one proposal being that entrepreneurs and financiers in the treaty states are incentivized to make investments in “property, plant, and equipment (PP&E)”—assets that are important to companies in the long term—via tax-exempt “CoVictory bonds,” loans, and savings funds. The aim is thereby to lower the cost of borrowing by at least 30%, which in turn encourages investment in newer, cleaner technologies.
Other suggestions include encouraging targeted tax cuts (Clean Tax Cuts, CTCs), specifically in the four sectors that account for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions—transport, energy and electricity, industry, and real estate—as well as tax cuts aimed at demonopolisation. The latter involves eliminating profit taxes for investors buying up monopoly companies and state-owned enterprises, all with the aim of encouraging energy market liberalisation among treaty parties. Further recommendations include “Game Changer Tax Cuts,” which would reward firms that achieve difficult breakthrough innovations of the sort that eliminate a large share of greenhouse gas emissions, offering 15 years of tax exemption on such profits.
In sum, the core of this alternative model boils down to the idea of simply ending large-scale government intervention in the energy sector, and thereby also abolishing all conventional energy subsidies, in order to stimulate environmentally friendly innovation. Is Oxfam open to such an alternative? Or would it rather give in to its “degrowth” instincts? Unfortunately, it seems like the latter is the case.
Oxfam’s Disinformation Agenda
In what has become a tradition, Oxfam issued a report at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, complaining about “growing and extreme inequality.” The report states that “The world’s five richest men have seen their fortunes more than double since 2020, while in the same period five billion people have become poorer.”
There is just one problem: those figures don’t add up. Swedish researcher Johan Norberg has explained that the UBS “Global Wealth Report,” which is “the main source for Oxfam’s wealth calculations,” reveals that, “For the world as a whole, these annual shifts have roughly cancelled out, leaving global wealth inequality back at the level prevailing when the pandemic began.” Norberg adds that, “For most inequality indicators, [this] was the lowest level recorded this century.”
Looking only at the five people who did the best in a given period will always give the impression Oxfam wants to create. In doing so, the NGO—which has an obsession with the so-called Gini index, an inequality comparison method invented by an Italian fascist—ignores the 24 rich people who disappeared from the Forbes list after losing $43 billion in one year.
Norberg adds that the Gini coefficient has fallen since 2000, from 92 to 88, with the share in global wealth of the 1% richest also dropping from 49 to 44.5%. Daniel Waldenström, co-author of the Global Wealth Report, observes that, “Global wealth inequality has declined by all standard measurements.” Since 1900, the share of the wealthiest 1% in global wealth has fallen in all European countries, from 50-70% then, to 20-23% in 2017. Only in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Britain, can one observe a trend towards a new concentration of wealth; but even then, it is still to a much lesser extent than in the years 1900-1950.
In the 20th century, nowhere was as unequal as the Soviet Union, with its class of communist regime faithful who possessed all sorts of privileges. By contrast, global capitalism is causing inequality to fall. If inequality were the result of governments granting special privileges only to some favoured group of people, it would obviously be right to protest against it. In doing so, one could denounce the expansionary monetary policy in the West over the past 40 years. After all, this has favoured the wealthy, because the more capital someone has, the less risky it becomes to protect against inflation by buying hard assets, such as real estate, shares, or gold. However, that is clearly not what Oxfam is doing. In its communications, Oxfam focuses on the foundation of our current standard of living: the capitalist system. It ignores the socialist aspects of our system, such as expansionary monetary financing, which is meant to fund the social-democratic welfare state.
Disinformation
This is not the first time that Oxfam has presented disinformation. In November, at the start of the UN’s annual COP28 climate conference, Oxfam launched yet another attack on the “super-rich” in a report that portrayed them as “ultra-polluters.” The NGO added, critiquing the “super-rich” in strident terms, that they “plunder and pollute the planet to the point of destruction, suffocating humanity with extreme heat, floods and drought.”
In that report, Oxfam also claimed that the richest 1% of the world’s population “produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 as the five billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds of humanity.” This claim, too, was factually incorrect, because in its calculation Oxfam took into account not only the lifestyle of the richest, but also the emissions of the companies of which they are shareholders. Perhaps it was less juicy to portray the millions of people associated with these companies—shareholders, staff, and ordinary consumers—as “looters and polluters.”
In all of this, ‘climate change’ seems little more than a pretext. If Oxfam really cared about reducing CO2 emissions, combined with maintaining our standard of living, the NGO would be fully committed to nuclear power. After all, other energy sources that do not involve high CO2 emissions, such as wind and solar power, are not yet sufficiently reliable. However, that is not Oxfam’s position. In 2022, despite the looming energy crisis, Oxfam France’s director-general, Cécile Duflot, openly spoke out against nuclear power. Instead, she favoured “radical solutions,” by which she meant taxes and regulation.
This kind of central planning is not only economic nonsense, it also does not serve the purpose of reducing CO2 emissions. This is clear when we look at Germany, which, by phasing out nuclear power plants, has become more dependent on CO2-emitting energy sources. A new model is needed, one which encourages entrepreneurs and innovation in order to solve environmental problems.
Alternatives
Such an alternative is being promoted by members of the “Climate & Freedom International Coalition,” a group of academics and policymakers who have developed a draft international treaty based on the premise of relying on free markets to come up with carbon-neutral solutions. Countries signing such a treaty, which would be a free-market alternative to the collectivist “Paris Agreement,” would enjoy trade advantages if they adopt climate-friendly free-market policies.
Signatories thereby agree to open up their markets to trade, with one proposal being that entrepreneurs and financiers in the treaty states are incentivized to make investments in “property, plant, and equipment (PP&E)”—assets that are important to companies in the long term—via tax-exempt “CoVictory bonds,” loans, and savings funds. The aim is thereby to lower the cost of borrowing by at least 30%, which in turn encourages investment in newer, cleaner technologies.
Other suggestions include encouraging targeted tax cuts (Clean Tax Cuts, CTCs), specifically in the four sectors that account for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions—transport, energy and electricity, industry, and real estate—as well as tax cuts aimed at demonopolisation. The latter involves eliminating profit taxes for investors buying up monopoly companies and state-owned enterprises, all with the aim of encouraging energy market liberalisation among treaty parties. Further recommendations include “Game Changer Tax Cuts,” which would reward firms that achieve difficult breakthrough innovations of the sort that eliminate a large share of greenhouse gas emissions, offering 15 years of tax exemption on such profits.
In sum, the core of this alternative model boils down to the idea of simply ending large-scale government intervention in the energy sector, and thereby also abolishing all conventional energy subsidies, in order to stimulate environmentally friendly innovation. Is Oxfam open to such an alternative? Or would it rather give in to its “degrowth” instincts? Unfortunately, it seems like the latter is the case.
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