This pic is making its way around Facebook again. It’s not a new meme. See here. And here. And here.

Sometimes people post this kind of thing just because they think it’s amazing. (Though, as I’ll explain below, it’s not quite right.) Sometimes, though, it’s posted to complain about wealth inequality. And there’s a problem with that, too.

First, it’s a mistake to compare Gates’s total wealth to countries’ GDP. That would be like comparing Gates’s total wealth to Warren Buffet’s income this year. The relevant comparison is Gates’s total wealth to various countries’ total wealth (however you want to measure that).

Second, the pic means Gates compared to nations one-by-one, not as a collective.

Third, when it comes to complaining about wealth inequality, what is this meant to prove? There are questions about whether Gates earned some of his money wrongly, by violating the standards of business ethics. But, for the sake of argument, assume he did not. What then? Does this show that the world is in some way deeply unfair. Maybe.

But there’s another take on it: the fact that one dude has more wealth than many fairly large countries produce in a single year is evidence that these countries have really bad institutions and should change. Seriously, Ecuador, get your shit together.