Independent confuses wealth and economic activity

"The richest people in Britain are better off than ever before with the top 1,000 individuals owning a third of the nation's wealth."

So said the Independent yesterday, going on to explain it had calculated this by comparing an estimate of the group's wealth - over £500 billion - to Britain's GDP, which stood at £1.5 trillion in 2013.

But wealth and GDP aren't the same thing. GDP is a measure of economic activity for a specific period, while wealth is the sum total of what someone owns, often accumulated over several years.

Treating them as though they're comparable doesn't make much sense; it's a bit like saying that someone who has no income but owns a £50,000 house is equally wealthy as someone who has an annual salary of £50,000.

The most recent figures from the ONS show that the wealth of all private households in the UK was £9.5 trillion, and the wealthiest 10% of households (around 2.6 million) owned 44% of the total.