42 Equals Half of the World

It turns out Oxfam needed to revise last year's figure of eight to 61. But the new figure is 42.

The world saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history in the year prior to March 2017, with a new one added every two days .... The world now has 2,043 billionaires, and nine of every 10 are men.

How well have they done?

In 12 months, the wealth of this elite group of 2,043 has increased by $762 billion — enough to end extreme poverty seven times over.

Jeff Bezos is the world's richest man with $106 billion--he gained $6 billion in the first ten days of this year.

Update (January 25):  Andrew Hwang shows what it's like to live on a billionaire's budget.

Let’s call $4,000 one “Joe buck,” or J$1. Joe Billionaire’s annual income is J$50,000. Thus, a $2,000-vacation package costs J$0.50, proportional to a half-dollar from a middle-class income.

Update (July 5):  Johnny Miller has a project called Unequal Scenes that uses aerial photographs from a drone to illustrate stark contrasts in human geography.

Update (January 20, 2019):  Oxfam's new number is 26.

[T]he wealth of billionaires has increased by $900 billion in the last year, or $2.5 billion a day. This bonanza has not been felt by the poorest half of the world, which saw its wealth decline by 11 percent.

Update (January 21, 2019):  Turns out the billionaires are 12 percent wealthier while the poor are 11 percent poorer.

Update (January 19, 2020):  This year's number is 162. So, progress?

[W]hile huge numbers of people have been pulled from extreme poverty over the last few decades, 735 million people still live in extreme poverty ― meaning they survive on $1.90 or less a day ― and nearly half of the world (3.4 billion people) live on less than $5.50 a day.