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Project Davos: What's the Single Best Way to Close the World's Wealth Gap?

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:26PM   
from the eat-the-rich dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/19/project-davos-whats-the-single-best-way-to-close-the-worlds-wealth-gap

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.

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Original Submission

• Re:No thanks. We like winning bigly. Re:No thanks. We like winning bigly. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:11AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:11AM (#625576)

  My brother is into teaching. Science.

  I thought it was bad in Aerospace when the Executive/Management layer seemed to completely disconnect with physics.

  The same lunacy runs through teaching as well. Teacher gets all set up, often teaching from a basic science book for a few years. After several runs of students, he learns exactly where all the misprints, and misleading statements are in the book, after having previous generations of students stumble in it.

  Now, his latest crop of students finally benefit from the experience garnered from their predecessors, just as an audience benefits from several rehearsals...

  So, what does the tie-guys do? Change the book! Same friggen stuff! But different. Did the basic science change? No... someone is gonna get paid because everyone has to go out and BUY a NEW book. Hands emerge from suit jackets, extend, and are shaken, and students and school systems are shackled with yet another expense for something they did not need.

  The school system refuses to calculate the Total Cost of Ownership of hiring their leadership layer. Even though the cost of his salary is astronomical compared to those doing the work, the cost of his handshakes is even worse.

  I wonder how much more efficient the school would work, if the handshaker was removed, kinda like wondering how much efficient my radiator would work if I removed all the dead bugs.

  Parent

• ''teaching from a basic science book'' (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @10:21AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @10:21AM (#625592)

  So, what does the tie-guys do? Change the book! [after all the mistakes have been identified in the old book]

  Richard Feynman was once on a committee that judged/recommended textbook.
  In his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", he adds another piece of the puzzle.
  From pages 294-295: [textbookleague.org]

  they asked me what I thought about [a certain book].

  I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."

  Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"

  "I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."

  The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."

  It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

  I believe the reason for all this is that the system works this way: When you give books all over the place to people, they're busy; they're careless; they think, "Well, a lot of people are reading this book, so it doesn't make any difference." And they put in some kind of number -- some of them, at least; not all of them, but some of them. Then when you receive your reports, you don't know why this particular book has fewer reports than the other books -- that is, perhaps one book has ten, and this one only has six people reporting -- so you average the rating of those who reported; you don't average the ones who didn't report, so you get a reasonable number. This process of averaging all the time misses the fact that there is absolutely nothing between the covers of the book!

  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  Parent