Last week, I wrote a quick post about the annual Oxfam International name-and-shame of the richest people in the world: “Inequality Obscenity: 8 men own as much as half the world.” And if you read that, you know I have some questions about that tagline.

Here’s Visual Capitalist‘s infographic response to that same tagline:

Of course, this is much sexier than me going on about:

1. The data being questionable;
2. That wealth being intangible – most of it is in a share price, and you can’t just liquidate that;
3. The fact that the poor half don’t live in the developed world, where all the rich people are – and as far as I know, we don’t do global wealth transfers from rich countries to poor countries, so…

And even if the logical conclusion that you’re being forced to take here is “oh, well, if the poor half would only receive a once-off payment of $118.39, best we leave it with those 8 rich boys…” – it’s no less bizarre than getting angry with 8 people for having started massively-successful companies and owning shares that other people really want.

But I also always like this kind of thing (also cribbed from that Visual Capitalist post, and twitterite Johan Norberg):

After all, not all the news is bad.

For more good news: “Progress: things are really not that bad”

Rolling Alpha posts opinions on finance, economics, and the corporate life in general. Follow me on Twitter @RollingAlpha, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rollingalpha.