Discussing about the Oxfam thing, Alexandre Delaigue made a very interesting point (see Inégalités mondiales : les absurdes statistiques d'Oxfam). In short (and if you don't read French), here is the idea:

Using Net Wealth - that is the estimated value of all assets minus debts - as a measure of how wealthy people are one would conclude that a freshly graduated Havard student who borrowed the money to pay for tuition fees is much poorer than a Syrian refugee striving to survive in the mountains of Lebanon.

It sounds like a paradox doesn't it?

To be sure, some people might think this is actually an accurate description of reality. I won't discuss that and I will assume that most of us - like me - think that there must be something wrong with that conclusion. As far as I can see, there are only two ways to solve the paradox.

Sure, you might conclude that Net Wealth isn't an appropriate metric; which basically means that we shouldn't subtract debts from total assets. That's a possibility but if think about it, you'll probably end up with conclusions that sounds even more bizarre than the original paradox. I'll leave that to your imagination.

Now there is another way to think about it: maybe we've forgot to value some assets; maybe our Harvard student owns something we didn't take into account; something that is worth much more than the money he owes to the bank so that his Net Worth is, in fact, positive.

Yup, I'm talking about human capital.

Me, incorporated

Last time I've checked, Apple (AAPL) was trading at almost 6 times its book value. Book value - or Shareholders' Equity - is a measure of Net Worth; the total value of assets minus liabilities. In theory, assuming both assets and liabilities are valued at their market value [...]