Drunkenomics.

You want to know how bad the current situation is, in the world? You want to know why we’re fucked?

I say “we”, and you could be forgiven for thinking I meant my generation — millennials, just about. But no. By “we,” I mean we. The entire human race.

There’s a scene in Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22” in which the nominal hero, Yossarian, a bomber pilot in the Mediterranean theatre during World War Two, complains to his superior that he doesn’t want to fly any more missions. Every time he flies a bombing mission, people he’s never met try to kill him.

It’s a war, Yossarian is told. Those people are trying to kill everybody. Yossarian argues that they might be trying to kill everybody, but “everybody” includes him and that’s what he’s concerned about. So, when I talk about the problems facing the world, consider it a form of Yossarian liberalism. It’s not that I give a fuck if politicians ignore climate change in order to kill themselves, so much that it will kill everyone. Including me.

Anyway, part of the reason the world is heading for disaster is that we still listen to people like Jeremy Vine.

Mr. Vine, who hosts a call-in show on BBC Radio Two every weekday afternoon and also serves as the BBC’s election night presenter. That second fact is the problem.

Today, Mr. Vine had a brief damascene flash when he saw a chart which showed the discrepancy between rich and poor. Vine was floored. This man, who frequently hosts a phone in show in which angry middle class baby boomers call in to discuss how we should be allowed to shoot teenagers for skateboarding and the like, was astonishing to learn the truth about the state of financial disparity in the UK.

But don’t worry. He was quickly shown other statistics, which allayed his fears. Except that they were broadly unrelated.

If you can hold two ideas in your head at the same time (and if not: Thanks for reading, Mr. Vine!) you’ll notice that the initial graph showed the difference between the richest and poorest regions in the UK. The second graph shows the difference between the richest against the average GDP per person.

If you need these differences explained: One compares GDP to GDP, like comparing apples to apples. The second compares GDP of region to average GDP per person.

I’ll break it down further. Let’s pretend that the first chart examined the average height of people across the country. The difference between the tallest and the shortest would be pretty broad, right?

The second chart shows the difference between the tallest and the average height. Suddenly, it’s a much shorter gap (pun intended) and Jeremy Vine can relax, because the country isn’t fucked at all.

Except it is, he’s absolutely justified in being shocked by the first graph (because it’s accurate) and I can explain this whole thing after half a bottle of Wild Turkey. We don’t need to be worried about the difference between the tallest and the average. We need to be worried about the difference from the first image — between the tallest (richest) and the shortest (poorest.) Because that gap is huge.

And THAT, folks, is why the world is fucked. Because the man we all listen to for election night statistics is less capable of understanding actual statistics than someone who only got a high school education and has just downed half a bottle of strong whiskey. Good luck out there.