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Donald Trump and Angela Merkel will join 2,500 world leaders, business executives and charity bosses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland which kicks off on 23 January. High on the agenda once again will be the topic of inequality, and how to reduce the widening gap between the rich and the rest around the world.
The WEF recently warned that the global economy is at risk of another crisis, and that automation and digitalisation are likely to suppress employment and wages for most while boosting wealth at the very top.
But what ideas should the great and good gathered in the Swiss Alps be putting into action? We'd like to know what single step you think governments should prioritise in order to best address the problem of rising inequality. Below we've outlined seven proposals that are most often championed as necessary to tackle the issue – but which of them is most important to you?
- Provide free and high quality education
- Raise the minimum wage
- Raise taxes on the rich
- Fight corruption
- Provide more social protection for the poor
- Stop the influence of the rich on politicians
- Provide jobs for the unemployed
Do you think these ideas are enough, or are there any better ideas to close this wealth gap ? You too can participate and vote for the idea that, you think, works best.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:58PM (2 children)
Yep, that's a well established aspect of human nature. Even many entertainers who "earned" their millions seem to have a perpetual problem with spending it all. A factory I had a summer job in used to pay weekly, on Tuesday, because they knew that people tended to blow their paycheck on Friday night, so giving the money on Tuesday at least let them pay their bills before succumbing to impulse.
On thing that I think modern technology could improve with respect to this problem in human nature is: instead of transacting recurring payments in weekly, monthly, or annual cycles, move to real micropayments. $60,000/yr income wouldn't be paid at $5,000 per month, but instead at 1929 micro-dollars per second. A $1800 per month mortgage payment would instead deduct at 694 µD/s, a $400 car payment at 154 µD/s, internet service at 25 µD/s etc. and usage based utilities would be even better, you could see in real-time how consumption translates to tangible money, perhaps the electric bill might peak at 200 µD/s while you are charging your car, and settle down to 10 µD/s when most major appliances are shut down.
Discrete purchases could still be in discrete dollars, for people who live with a positive balance in their savings account, or for those who live on credit, things could be spread out over the next 30 days, and credit could stop when the current positive cash-flow on an account drops below ~140 µD/s per person that account provides for - effectively saving enough money for food, transportation, and normal life expenses. So, if a family of 4 has 2500 µD/s income, and 1200 µD/s established recurring expenses (including income taxes), that leaves 640 µD/s for discretionary purchases... a $150 night on the town could be financed for 30 days (almost like credit cards do), for 58 µD/s - do that 4 times a month and you'll see the 640 µD/s discretionary cash flow diminish down to ~408, and slowly recover as each 30 day payoff happens. Creditors might even give discounts for heavy front-end payback, that same 58 µD/s meal might be discounted to an average of 55 µD/s if the payer agrees to a 30 day term that starts at 110 µD/s and linearly decreases to 0. Even saving 10% of income for retirement would require setting aside 250 µD/s, but you can easily see there are still 390 µD/s left over for discretionary expenditures, over and above basic food, etc.
I think this kind of system would be much easier for most people to grasp and manage than the current: big insurance bill coming up once every 6 months, taxes once a year, paycheck bi-weekly, mortgage and utilities monthly, etc. etc. I would still prefer to run a positive balance in a savings account (preferably one that pays meaningful interest, meaningfully increasing as the balance increases), but it is clear that many (most?) people would tend to run on the debit side of the scale, and that's O.K. - a $12K Caribbean vacation, financed for 12 months is only 386 uD/s, and the family's entire recurring financial picture would be easily summed up by a single number that could continuously update on a cellphone app.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday January 21 2018, @02:18AM (1 child)
I believe that with this creeping system of income and expenses it is much harder to understand what's going on. Instead of a clear sum twice a year you are dealing with deductions that are hard to measure. This will lead to the situation when services will be just charging what they want.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 21 2018, @03:57AM
Well, the system we have works well enough for me, and presumably for you, so any change is likely going to be more confusing than helpful, at least at first. However, GP's suggestion of "giving every person on the planet $5M tomorrow" has a well known flaw that would clearly be addressed by instead giving every person on the planet 1584 μD/s for the next 100 years.
I do think that shifting everything to a common time scale, and having that time scale be as small as possible, would make the relationships more intuitive, not less, after getting used to the initial change. With income expressed per year, paid bi-weekly, and various bills coming at all different intervals, it's much harder to get a grasp of how the various services relate. At present, my internet service is increasing from $55 per month to $65 per month, and it pisses me off because that's inflating much faster than everything else in my life - while the service provided is not improving at all. If that internet service bill were on the same time-scale as all the other regularly recurring credits and debits in the account, it would seem to be easier to compare with them, not harder.
🌻🌻 [google.com]