Economic Myths: Fungible funding

Oxfam is getting all hot under the collar about the fact that the world's eight richest men own as much wealth as the poorest half of the population of the World.

Apart from appealing to the Envious, it is hard to see what they hope to gain by pushing this statistic. If those eight men all died intestate and their wealth was subsumed into their countries' national debt, hence effectively ceasing to exist, the world would be a more equal place, but how would that benefit the poor half of the population? For that matter, if their wealth was shared out equally between the entire richer half of the world's population, the world would be an even more equal place, but the poorer half would still be no better off.

What Oxfam are trying to suggest is that if these rich eight didn't have so much, the poor half would have more, but this is really just another example of the Myth of Fungible Funding, which is that if money is not spent on something of which I disapprove, it will automatically be spent on something of which I approve. (e.g. if the government weren't spending so much on Trident, they could spend more on the NHS and variants ad nauseam.)

If I was a supporter of Oxfam, I'd suggest that they get on and do something more useful with my money, but I'm not.