There are two ways to close the gap [between rich and poor]. The first is to concentrate on making the poor better off. Mostly that has happened, thanks to liberalized international trade and reduced costs for shipping goods. Just as Walmart and Amazon have cut costs for Americans, the introduction of container shipping crushed transportation costs for the world. The second way to reduce inequality is to make the rich worse off. Any guess which method Oxfam’s report emphasizes? “Governments should use regulation and taxation to radically reduce levels of extreme wealth,” the authors conclude.

This is from David R. Henderson, “A War on the Rich Won’t Help the Poor,” Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2018 (electronic) and February 9, 2018 (print.)

In the piece, I point out how huge a budget Oxfam has–over $1 billion annually, almost half of which is financed by governments (if you include the UN as a government)–and how far it has strayed from being a group that favored free trade to help starving people in Nazi-occupied Greece during World War II.

Under my contract with the Journal, the above paragraph is about all I can quote, but I can reproduce the whole thing on March 11.