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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: 1) by sonamchauhan on Sunday January 21 2018, @12:53PM (1 child)
Remember when the Apple app store first came out? It was all the rage - every developer wanted in. And why not -- there was a fortune to be had making fart apps, bird games and enterprise apps. Or so it seemed. Millions of iOS developers registered in the hope of striking it big (contributing billions to Apple in fees and revenue). Of course, cold hard reality later set in -- developers collectively made only around $70 billion (around $500 per developer). But first, there was euphoria. And that's a point worth considering -- why were developers so excited?
I think I understand why. The App Store gave ordinary programmers an option they didn't really have before. They became owners. No longer was a programmer merely a work for hire labourer (whether at $5/hour, or $5000). He now became the owner of his application -- a full-on, rent-seeking capitalist pig! He wrote the app, Apple took care of compatibility, branding, distribution and payment. If a billion people bought his $.99 app, why, he'd be a billionaire! (Actually, a '$700-millionaire' after Apple's cut, before taxes.)
So why is this pertinent? Because that's similar to what needs doing. We must somehow translate people from raw-material to owners of means of production that have virtually limitless scale. People intuitively understand a job has limited upside. You are raw-material that your employer uses to turn a dime. His profits can multiply a million-fold, but his costs don't have to. In particular, you don't have to be paid a dime more. There's a reason Bezos and Gates get to be the world's richest people, while the janitors in their warehouses get paid the same (or not at all [bizjournals.com]).
In the past, farming was entrepreneurship. If you owned land, capital was effectively free -- seeds from last season, labor from family, sun, air, rain. With hard work and good fortune, your raw-material replicated many times over. When we took on jobs, we became raw material for someone else's business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:20PM
When we took on jobs, we became raw material for someone else's business.
Well said.
They even call the department in charge of that disposable commodity "Human Resources".
We old farts remember when it was at least called "Personnel".
.
In Italy, since 1985, they've had a mechanism that helps The Workers, who have been idled by boom-and-bust Capitalists, in forming their own worker-owned cooperatives.
The Marcora Law [google.com]
It's been very popular and very successful.
If you haven't heard of it where you are, blame the lousy Lamestream Media and their collusion with The Elites.
...and do work on getting some better sources of information.
N.B. The Progressive gov't *shock* of the capital city of Mississippi *shock* has gotten behind the co-op thing. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]