Blog #5 Davos: At World Economic Forum, Income Inequality A Major Concern

Income inequality is becoming a major concern.  In the Swiss Alps, the wealth gap has been identified as a source of misery and unrest.  World-wide income inequality has been cited as a problem that needs immediate attention in the annual World Economic Form summit in Davos, Switzerland.  Some of the wealthiest Davos attendees said the current lopsided distribution of wealth is unsustainable, the “global social-economic order will chance, if we want it to or not”.  The forums Global Risk report said “severe income disparity” is the most likely problem to affect the world over the next 10 years.  The Davos summit has come only after nearly a year of international protests for a lack of economic opportunities.  1 percent of the world’s family’s control 40 percent of the wealth and one third of the world’s workers (1.1 Billion people) are unemployed of impoverished.  Protesters are spending this week in igloos and staging demonstrations outside the conference center all part of the occupy movement. 

The issue of Global inequality has been identified as a social issue and there are groups of people getting together to make change.  I feel eventually there will be policies made to help redistribute wealth from the riches 1 percent to impoverished people of the world.  These changes are not going to be easy especially because the riches 1 percent holds so much power in the political seen today.  The capitalist market has definitely contributed to the inequality, and will continue to as long as the corporate owners keep trying to cut cost by reducing pay or moving jobs to counties that allow extremely low wage rates.