As I have noted before, Oxfam, a charity that likes to cover up for peadophiles, does not care about the truth when it comes to getting money to build up its empire. For when tapping up gullible old Guardian reading fools like my Dad, Oxfam repeatedly insists that poverty around the world is increasing. You do want to fight poverty don't you Dr Winnifrith, you bleeding heart liberal, so get your cheque book out! How can the old man argue with that?
Of course you, and I know that Oxfam employs more than 11 staffers earning £100,000 at its Head Office so not all of my Dad's cash goes to help poor folks out in Bongo Bongo land. But there is a bigger problem with the Oxfam thesis. It defines poverty as relative poverty so the number of folk earning less than a set proportion of the global average wage. In other words it focusses in on income inequality. That is an abstract concept only rich folk can afford to consider. Poor folk fear absolute poverty - not having enough cash to feed your kids etc.
And so while global income inequality has been increasing steadily since the 1970s ( having fallen for several hundred years before that), so increasing relative poverty, absolute poverty has fallen sharply during my lifetime. One measure of that, and a very accurate one, is child mortatlity.
The graph below tells its own story. If Africa could avoid wars it would do even better but what is important is the trend. It is dramatic and shows a key indicator of how global poverty has been reduced massively in absolute terms with a direct inverse correlation to Oxfam's ever more shrill and hysterical bleatings about how poverty is increasing.
Greed is good. Capitalism works. It keeps kids alive. Or you can follow the policies Oxfam advocates to "tackle poverty" and you will end up in Venezuela.
