Math is Hard: Al Jazeera Reports $20 Per Person Could End Poverty

Do you have an extra $20? You could end poverty for one person according to a new report by international rights group and charity Oxfam. On Jan. 20, Al Jazeera cheered about this new study. Both Oxfam and al Jazeera failed to actually work out the math of this new claim to realize how ridiculous this “study” actually was.

Al Jazeera claimed that with the income of the world’s 100 richest billionaires, it would be enough to “end world extreme poverty four times over.” So let’s do the math, since Al Jazeera and Oxfam refused to do it for themselves.

According to Oxfam’s study, the 100 richest people made $240 billion last year. This could solve world poverty four times over, so that means only $60 billion is needed to solve world poverty once.

As of Jan. 7, 2013, GlobalIssues.org estimated about 3 billion people who make less that $2.50 a day. So with the $60 billion needed to end world poverty, that means each person would get an extra $20 … or eight days salary at their poverty wages.

Really?

An extra eight days salary, a meager $20 per person, is all it takes to end world poverty?

Al Jazeera quoted Oxfam Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs calling for a “a global new deal" to address what the site called “income inequality.”

Al Jazeera is making bigger news in the United States now that it has purchased Al Gore’s Current TV. The Qatar-based al Jazeera is a purveyor of propaganda, consistently toeing the anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Islamist line at a time when America has been threatened by Islamic terrorists and has gone to war against them.