The rich are getting richer, businesses are thriving, but it’s hard not to notice that discontent is growing among the expanding poor and middle class and could soon pose a threat to the well-to-do.
At the exclusive World Economic Forum, an annual event held in Davos, Switzerland, income inequality was the talk among many corporate leaders, and the good jobs being lost to trade and automation.
“We’re living in a Gilded Age,” said Scott Minerd, chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, which manages more than $265 billion in assets. “I think, in America, the aristocrats are out of touch. They don’t understand the issues around the common man.”
In fact, a new Global Risks Report declares that humanity is “sleepwalking its way to catastrophe,” referring to extreme weather and failure to act on climate change, among other threats.
For the jobless poor, a new buzzword, “upskilling,” was bandied about. Training could help people obtain better jobs in the digital economy, some assert.
Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone, doubled down on the need for digital education, which would lessen the inequalities that exist in terms of job opportunities.
It’s “up to the grown-ups” to make digital upskilling happen in K-12 schools, said Schwarzman, whose net worth is estimated at $13 billion.
But what most of the elites are uniformly against is a solution to be found in taxing wealth.
Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, couldn’t disagree more. “We’re in a world where governments do not tax wealth enough, do not tax the rich enough.”
Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.5 billion daily, according to Oxfam in a new report, while the share of wealth among the 3.8 billion of the world’s poorest decreases by $500 million a day.
