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<font face="Verdana">Maybe the following is something to ponder upon
.. <br>
<br>
Not only is the inequality at an unacceptable level, the pace of
its growth in unthinkably high, coinciding with a period when
Internet is transforming every social structure and system. <br>
<br>
Is the IG civil society contributing to the problem or solving it
- or has it even seen the problem in the right manner, beyond what
is presented by those who gain the most from current Internet
power configurations.....<br>
<br>
But then perhaps one may want to ignore this as not an IG
issue.... parminder<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/davos-world-economic-forum/article6812228.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/davos-world-economic-forum/article6812228.ece</a><br>
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<h1 class="entry-title">In Davos, worrying about inequality</h1>
<ul class="entry-meta">
<li class="byline author vcard"> by <span class="fn">Seumas
Milne</span> </li>
<li> <time class="updated" datetime="2015-01-23T00:00:00"
pubdate=""> Jan. 23, 2015 </time> </li>
<li> <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/davos-world-economic-forum/article6812228.ece"
data-stat="rv-banner-meta-original"> original </a> </li>
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<p class="body">
The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this
week are getting worried about inequality. It might be hard to
stomach that the overlords of a system that has delivered the
widest global economic gulf in human history should be
hand-wringing about the consequences of their own actions.
</p>
<p class="body">
But even the architects of the crisis-ridden international
economic order are starting to see the dangers. It’s not just the
maverick hedge-funder George Soros, who likes to describe himself
as a class traitor. Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, frets
about the “capitalist threat to capitalism.” Christine Lagarde,
the IMF managing director, fears capitalism might indeed carry
Marx’s “seeds of its own destruction” and warns that something
needs to be done.
</p>
<p class="body">
The scale of the crisis has been laid out for them by the charity
Oxfam. Just 80 individuals now have the same net wealth as 3.5
billion people — half the entire global population. Last year, the
best-off one per cent owned 48 per cent of the world’s wealth, up
from 44 per cent five years ago. On current trends, the richest
one per cent will have pocketed more than the other 99 per cent
put together next year. The 0.1 per cent has been doing even
better, quadrupling their share of U.S. income since the 1980s.
</p>
<p class="body">
This is wealth grab on a grotesque scale. For 30 years, under the
rule of “market fundamentalism,” inequality in income and wealth
has ballooned, both between and within the large majority of
countries. In Africa, the absolute number living on less than $2 a
day has doubled since 1981.
</p>
<p class="body">
In most of the world, labour’s share of national income has fallen
continuously and wages have stagnated under this regime of
privatisation, deregulation and low taxes on the rich. At the same
time finance has sucked wealth from the public realm into the
hands of a small minority, even as it has laid waste the rest of
the economy. Now the evidence has piled up that not only is such
appropriation of wealth a moral and social outrage, but it is
fuelling social and climate conflict, wars, mass migration and
political corruption, stunting health and life chances and
increasing poverty. </p>
<p class="body">
Escalating inequality has also been a crucial factor in the
economic crisis of the past seven years, squeezing demand and
fuelling the credit boom. We don’t just know that from the
research of the French economist Thomas Piketty or the British
authors of the social study The Spirit Level. After years of
promoting Washington orthodoxy, even the western-dominated OECD
and IMF argue that the widening income gap has been key to the
slow growth of the past two neoliberal decades. The British
economy would have been almost 10 per cent larger if inequality
hadn’t mushroomed. </p>
<p class="body">
<b>The big exception</b><br>
<br>
The big exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has
been Latin America. Progressive governments across the region
turned their back on a disastrous economic model, took back
resources from corporate control and slashed inequality. The
numbers living on less than $2 a day have fallen from 108 million
to 53 million in little over a decade. China, which also rejected
much of the neoliberal catechism, has seen sharply rising
inequality at home but also lifted more people out of poverty than
the rest of the world combined, offsetting the growing global
income gap.
</p>
<p class="body">
These two cases underline that increasing inequality and poverty
are very far from inevitable. They’re the result of political and
economic decisions. The thinking person’s Davos oligarch realises
that allowing things to carry on as they are is dangerous. So,
some want a more “inclusive capitalism” — including more
progressive taxes — to save the system from itself.
</p>
<p class="body">
But it certainly won’t come about as a result of Swiss mountain
musings or anxious Guildhall lunches. Whatever the feelings of
some corporate barons, vested corporate and elite interests
including the organisations they run and the political structures
they have colonised have shown they will fight even modest reforms
tooth and nail. To get the idea, you only have to listen to the
squeals of protest, including from some in his own party, at Ed
Miliband’s plans to tax homes worth over £2m to fund the health
service, or the demand from the one-time reformist Fabian Society
that the Labour leader be more pro-business, or the wall of
congressional resistance to Barack Obama’s mild redistributive
taxation proposals.
</p>
<p class="body">
Perhaps a section of the worried elite might be prepared to pay a
bit more tax. What they won’t accept is any change in the balance
of social power — which is why, in one country after another, they
resist any attempt to strengthen trade unions.
</p>
<p class="body">
It’s only through a challenge to the entrenched interests that
have dined off a dysfunctional economic order that the tide of
inequality will be reversed. The anti-austerity Syriza party,
favourite to win the Greek elections this weekend, is attempting
to do just that — as the Latin American left has succeeded in
doing over the past decade and a half. Even to get to that point
demands stronger social and political movements to break down or
bypass the blockage in a colonised political mainstream. Crocodile
tears about inequality are a symptom of a fearful elite. But
change will only come from unrelenting social pressure and
political challenge. </p>
<p class="body">
— <b>© Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015 </b>
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