Ways to narrow rich - poor gap

Across much of the world, the share of national income flowing to labor has fallen over the past 40 years. Taxing the rich in order to fund spending on the poor is a straightforward solution to inequality problem. But the well-heeled are adept at squeezing through tax loopholes, and at marshaling the political clout needed to chip away at high tax rates. Income inequality is the result of bad policies that favor the rich and leave everyone else struggling. A social wealth fund could narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

• People don't realize how wide the gap between rich and poor has become. Credit masks poverty. We tend to see and associate with people who are like us, economically.
• There's no surer ticket out of poverty than a solid education. But that education has to be affordable and it has to be equally distributed. Poorer students are years behind their richer peers. Richer kids go to a private schools. Poorer students go to a government schools that does not perform well. Education should be a great equalizer, not a source of division. 
• A hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. It's impossible to live on today's minimum wages, which are essentially poverty wages. Decent minimum wages (for 8 hours/day, 6 days/week work) must cover home rent, utility bills, groceries, basic health care expenses, children education and some savings, for a family of 2+2. Today's minimum wages or poverty wages that covers food expenses only, for a family of 2+2. They must be at least be double or treble.
• It's convenient for employers to argue they can't pay higher wages. Their profits indicate otherwise. The reality today is that people who are working full-time are unable meet their family(2+2)'s basic necessities.
• Tax rates on the very rich are so low. While middle class salaried person on an average pays income tax at more than 20% on gross real income, the rich pays lesser than 10% of his gross real income. The rich must be taxed at least 40-50% of gross real income and this additional amount must be spent for better education and health care of lower income groups. Without good education and sound health, one can't work hard to prosperity.
• Give workers a voice in their companies. Worker union's role is is declining since 40 years and their voice shrank to a whisper. Meanwhile, the economy is pushing a greater share of money to the top management. While half of the people view worker unions in a favorable light, the other half continue to see unions as inefficient or annoying, but there are other ways to give workers a voice, such as supporting employee-owned companies.
• Ban political donations by businesses and industry. Let politics get funded by people (individuals only) and government. Compel politicians keep away from influential rich industrialists.
• Give money to the poor -- maybe at random. Randomly giving poorer people cash may not be such a bad idea. A nonprofit organisation which is experimenting with the concept is seeing promising results. The point is not exactly how a program like this should work but that when we trust people -- when we see them as equals -- they can succeed.
• We see rich and poor differently. We assume that these divisions are inevitable. They don't have to be.
• Investing in women (family-friendly work policies, paid parental leave, allowing kids in the workplace etc), agriculture (providing farmers with access to seeds, plant nutrients and production practices, risk mitigation, weather insurance etc) and reforming workplace laws (raising minimum wages and universal basic income etc).

Let us not forget history. The Roman Empire was one of the richest on the planet, with wealth concentrated in the hands of a few senatorial elite and the rest were utterly poor. Warning signs of inequality were ignored and it resulted in civil war and the entire empire collapsed. Do we want that again? Let us collectively work towards making an equitable world.

Inequality

What political parties are fighting about, is how to achieve a more egalitarian society, where everyone has an equal opportunity of reaching the top. There are too many children without equal opportunities for success. World inequality continues to grow. In  the past three decades, 28% of the increase in real incomes in North America and Western Europe was captured by the top 1% of earners. The top 1% of India's population holds nearly three quarters of the nation's wealth.

• The majority view seems broadly to want to tax earners and owners more heavily; to take away from some so others can have more. It’s easy to convince people that this is the quickest, actually the only way.
• Inequality is not in itself unfair. We all know that rare skills possessed should be rewarded better. Building assets for poor people is extremely important. 
• The surest and quickest way to ameliorate inequality and diminish poverty is radical economic transformation at all levels of government, the entire bureaucracy and the state-owned companies, so that it would spend every single available rupee of taxpayer money on development and upliftment; that state organs’ efficiency and productivity are increased radically; and that corruption is eradicated.
• The middle class wealth reached its peak in the mid-1980s. But it’s been ravaged by stagnant incomes, unstable property & investment markets and growing consumer debt. 
• Many developing nations have targeted poverty alleviation. While China has achieved poverty alleviation on an historic scale, the obstacles - bureaucratic inefficiency and failed policy implementation remain. India has made progress in alleviating poverty, although it lags significantly behind China. 
• Inequality hampers growth by leaving human potential unrealised. The middle class provides market for consumer goods and services, which in turn creates jobs. The cycle is interrupted when profits are excessively retained, rather than reinvested into further capacity – such as health and education sectors. 
• More than 20% of  Indians are poor. India saw the fastest rise in inequality between 1980 and 2016, and 55% of the country’s income share is in the hands of the wealthiest 10%. Across the developing world, blunt policies are not only proving ineffective at reducing poverty, but also widening the wealth gap. 
• Most national level policies are either ham-fisted or intentionally ineffective. They tinker at the margins with transfer payments and social programmes, while failing to address structural causes such as gaps in educational achievement and public health. 
• Failure to improve basic services is one of the most glaring gaps in inequality policy. Private sector and philanthropic intervention, while helpful, is no substitute for equal access. India spends only 1% of GDP on health services, compared with the world average of 6%. 
• The policy ineptitude by the governments in the US and India are in thrall to discredited claims about “trickle-down economics” and have passed sweeping tax reforms that substantially favour corporations. 

The twin reforms of demonetization and a goods and services tax may have also stunted job growth by crippling the construction and informal sectors, that employs most migrant workers. Political will  is inexcusably weak. Both the economics and the ethics of inequality demand transformational thinking. But the voice of the poor continues to be drowned out by a global minority enjoying elite status and by the many who aspire to such status.

Meritocracy is myth

Merit is simply a good quality or feature that deserves to be praised. Merit and justice play a crucial role in ethical theory and political philosophy. Some view justice as allocation according to merit. Others view justice as based on criteria of its own, and take merit and justice as two independent values. Merit and justice are strongly linked in the human perception of social order. Spoils system, also called patronage system, is a practice in which the political party winning an election rewards its campaign workers and other active supporters by appointment to government posts and by other favors. A change in party control of government necessarily brings new officials to high positions carrying political responsibility, but the spoils system extends personnel turnover down to routine or subordinate governmental positions. Although spoils system is an American political term, it is common in many other countries as well.

• The merit of all things lies in their difficulty. Everyone agrees that justice must be in accordance with some kind of merit.
• Meritocracy has been presented as a means of breaking down established hierarchies of privilege.
• Merit systems is an uniform and impersonal employment and advancement policy based on evaluation of abilities and achievements, instead of on favoritism or politics.
• It is not hard to see why people find the idea of meritocracy appealing. It carries with it the idea of moving beyond where you start in life, of creative flourishing and fairness. But all the evidence shows it is a smokescreen for inequality. 
• The fact is, meritocracy is a myth. Social systems that reward through wealth, and which increase inequality, don’t aid social mobility, and people pass on their privilege to their children.
• Meritocracy contradicts the principle of equality, no less than any other oligarchy. Meritocracy is the great delusion that ingrains inequality.
• Our leaders sell meritocracy as a utopian system of fairness, but merit has been manipulated to privilege the wealthy. Merit is a malleable and easily manipulated term. 
• Meritocracy was a term of abuse, describing a ludicrously unequal state that surely no one would want to live in. Why would you want to give more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted? Instead we should think about how to give those doing difficult or unattractive jobs more leisure time, and share out wealth more equitably so that we all have a better quality of life and a happier society. 

It is better to be an eminent person than to be a prominent person.

Unequal growth is a threat to democracy. Meritocracy that promotes unequal growth and is also in conflict with the 'Preamble to the Constitution of India' which confers and guarantees equality of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all. The sooner we disband this myth called 'meritocracy' and replace with widely acceptable, efficient and equitable criterion for distribution of scarce resources and facilities, it is better.

Why do we need economic growth?

Most things don’t grow forever. If a person grew at the same rate for his whole life, he’d become gigantic. Yet most economists are united around the idea that the economy needs to grow, always. And at a high rate, for the good of the country and its people.

• Economic growth is the increase in the goods and services produced by an economy, typically a nation, over a long period of time. It is measured as percentage increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) which is gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted for inflation. The economic growth every year is essential to a country’s stability and prosperity. But some economists argue that it makes more sense to focus on measures of well-being than growth.
• Maximizing growth doesn’t necessarily help people, but also that rapid growth can itself come at a cost, such as when the pursuit of growth is used to push through policies that are expected increase the GDP but may have negative consequences for millions.The pursuit of growth can be quite dangerous. The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.
• For a developing economy where the basic need isn’t met and growth is necessary for more food. Economic growth in a developing economy can go a long way to improving living standards. When people are living in poverty, they experience a deprivation of basic human needs, such as food, shelter, education, basic health care. Economic growth can enable many of these basic needs to be met and this economic growth can radically increase living standards among those countries.
• It's an election winner. Politicians see growth as very important. Elections are won or lost on the state of the economy. Look what happens if growth disappears and recession looms. People get very concerned about falling incomes and rising unemployment. 
• If poverty is to be relieved and the rich are not to be made poorer, then growth is necessary. Making the poor richer is not easy and there are many political obstacles in the way. But at least growth makes it easier.
• When real incomes are already quite high, economic growth can have a marginal impact on living standards. There is a strong diminishing marginal utility to extra income. 
• Economic growth is driven by technological improvements, which reduce the costs of production and enable more to be produced. This technological progress in many ways feels an inevitability. How could you stop this technological progress? Technological improvements have particularly improved the productivity of agriculture and manufacturing. This means we can support ourselves with a smaller % of the workforce on agriculture and manufacturing. Many of new jobs are in service sector.
• In theory, economic growth should enable people to work less, enjoy more leisure time and would enable to retire earlier, if they are able and willing.
• Increased GDP offers the potential for higher living standards but certainly doesn’t guarantee it because of uneven distribution and how it is used. GDP measures activity in the economy, but there’s no way to know whether that activity is actually good for society. The BP oil-rig explosion, which killed 11, and the subsequent spill, which leaked 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, actually lifted GDP because of the amount of money spent cleaning it up.
• Economists often say that without growth it will be impossible to address income inequality. But even with growth, there’s no guarantee that inequality will decrease. The economy’s current trajectory is of increasing inequality. Economic growth leads to the depletion of resources - a problem that's likely to get worse as world population and world consumption grows.
• One of the biggest sources of rising expenditure in western economies is health care. There are simply more things that can be treated. Also, there is the irony of having to treat diseases of affluence (such as obesity, heart attacks, cancer etc).
• Economic growth will not solve the fundamental problems of human psychology / behaviour. It can increase sense of inequality. Growth will not reduce the incentives to cheat and steal. It does not make people more charitable and good-natured.
• Environmental problems facing humanity, economic growth could exacerbate these issues and reduce living standards.
• Some of the most content people in the history of the world got by on a lot less. Some saints have argued they were much happier when they forsook their wealth.
• Rather than worrying about increasing real GDP, we could spend time promoting greater social harmony.
• The point is that life is a struggle for most people in developed economies, and technology and increased efficiency has not done much to fix that over the last 40 years. No doubt there are a few that have enjoyed increased leisure time, but at the expense of the masses.

Do we need economic growth? Not really. But, if managed well, it doesn’t have to do any harm and gives the potential to make improvements in our material well-being. Needless to say, economic growth is far from the panacea to make society better. It is a neutral component of human well-being. There’s nothing wrong with targeting economic growth as long as you are aware of its imitations. Governments and society need to be judged on so much more than simply whether their economies are growing.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve 

wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. 

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of 

knowledge, experience, and ability ... Henry Ford

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point ... Bill Gates

For India with large number of unemployed youth, economic growth is the only way to create enough jobs and security. The present phenomenon of jobless growth is unsustainable. The current trends of economic growth are also associated with increased pollution, over exploitation of non-replenishable natural resources, destruction of ecology etc is a destructive growth. Additional wealth created is grabbed by top 10% wealthiest people. The disparity between rich and poor is widening. This kind of growth is absurd. In an ideally developed world all people should be equal, even though perfection is unachievable. We need to grow to accommodate ever rising population.

Reward work, not wealth

Deccan Chronicle | Jan 23, 2018

The year 2017 saw the billionaires increase their wealth by $762bn. There are now 2,043 dollar billionaires worldwide. Nine out of 10 are men. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% saw no increase at all. Poorly paid work for the many is supporting extreme wealth for the few. Women are in the worst work, and almost all the super-rich are men. Governments must create a more equal society by prioritizing ordinary workers and small-scale food producers instead of the rich and powerful.

• We have an economy that serves the interests of the 1%. If we want to heal our fractured and unstable world, we need to change course fast.
• In 2016, annual share dividends received by super rich are several billions of dollars. Whereas Anju works sewing clothes in Bangladesh for export. She often works 12 hours a day and has to skip meals because she has not earned enough money. She earns just over $900 dollars a year.
• Inequality crisis is real. In many countries wage inequality has increased and the share of labour compensation in GDP has declined and profits have increased more rapidly. 
• Even in emerging countries with rapid economic growth, many workers, including a disproportionately large share of women, remain trapped in low pay and poverty wages.
• This is in contradiction to goal 10 of UN 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals that calls to ‘reduce inequality within and among countries’ and Goal 8 calls for inclusive economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. The key to reducing inequality is ‘well paid, decent work'.
• The super-rich call this ‘stoking class warfare’ but the truth is that in many societies the super rich have in effect declared war on the poor. The urgent need is to rebalance the tables, defend the rights of the poor, and re-establish fair societies that meet the needs of all.
• The recipe for reducing inequality is simple. A minimum wage on which you can live, social protection and companies’ compliance with human and labour rights. Freedom of association and collective bargaining rights are fundamental enablers. Governments must act. Companies must face up to their responsibilities. The global economy will falter with too many billionaires. An economy for working people, not wealthy owners will end the inequality crisis.
• Brazen corporate tax evasion, privatization, service cuts and decades of stagnating wages have not happened by accident. Radical action is needed to fund universal public services, decent work and redistribute wealth to avoid continued rise of populism and racism of the far right.
• People need wages that they can live on with dignity. But uncontrolled corporate greed is accelerating inequality and insecurity. More widespread collective bargaining would re-balance the global economy so it works for everyone, not just the 1%. It’s time for governments to act.
• The current levels of extreme inequality far exceed what can be justified by talent, effort and risk-taking. Instead they are more often the product of inheritance, monopoly or crony connections to government.
• Monopolies fuel excessive returns to owners and shareholders at the expense of the rest of the economy. 
• Approximately two-thirds of billionaire wealth is the product of inheritance, monopoly and cronyism. Despite hard work, it is difficult or impossible for ordinary people to increase the money they have.
• Ever-increasing amounts are being returned to wealthy shareholders, fueling a relentless squeeze on workers.
• The fortunes of the richest are often boosted by tax dodging by rich individuals and by the corporations of which they are owners or shareholders. Using a global network of tax havens the super-rich are hiding at least $7.6 trillion from the tax authorities. This means the top 1% is evading an estimated $200bn in tax.
• Billionaires who have made their fortunes in competitive markets are often doing so by driving down the wages and conditions of workers, forcing countries into a suicidal race to the bottom on wages, labour rights and tax giveaways.
• The poorest children, and especially the poorest girls are condemned to die poor, as opportunities go to the children of richer families.
• Between 1990 and 2010, the number of people living in extreme poverty halved, and has continued to decline since then. This tremendous achievement is something of which the world should be proud. Yet had inequality within countries not grown during that period, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty. Unless we close the gap between rich and poor, we will miss the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by a wide margin. Even if the target of reducing poverty to 3% is achieved, around 200 million would still be living on $1.90 a day in 2030.
• Those who have been lifted out of extreme poverty often remain very poor, in debt and struggling to feed their families. Many may be only one step away from slipping back. More than half of the world’s population lives on between $2 and $10 a day.
• This is a deeply inefficient way to eliminate poverty, with just 13 cents in each dollar of global income growth going to the bottom 50%, and 42 cents going to the top 10%. At this level of inequality, the global economy would have to be 175 times bigger just to push everyone above $5 a day, which would be environmentally catastrophic.
• Globally, more men than women own land, shares and other capital assets. Men are paid more for doing the same roles as women, and men are concentrated in higher paid, higher status jobs. It is no coincidence that women are vastly over-represented in so many of the poorest paid and least secure jobs. Social norms, attitudes and beliefs devalue the status and abilities of women, justify violence and discrimination against them, and dictate which jobs they can and cannot expect to hold.
• Gender inequality is neither an accident nor new. Our economies have been built by rich and powerful men for their own sake. The neoliberal economic model has made this worse – reductions in public services, cuts to taxes for the richest, and a race to the bottom on wages and labour rights have all hurt women more than men. 
• Our economic prosperity is also dependent upon the huge but unrecognized contribution made by women through unpaid care work. It could be 20% of GDP. Poor women have to do more unpaid care work than richer women.
• To secure equality between women and men, we must radically reduce economic inequality. We must define a vision for a new human economy, one that is created by women and men together, for the benefit of everyone.
• For many of the poorest, income is from small-scale food production. For many others, it is from wages. 
• Almost one in three workers in emerging and developing countries live in poverty, and this is increasing.
• The most shocking element of the global labour market today is modern slavery. About 40 million people were enslaved in 2016, 25 million of them in forced labour. Illegal profits from forced labour amounts to more than $44bn. Forced labour has broader social and economic costs, in terms of impeding economic development and perpetuating poverty.
• Almost 43% of the global youth labour force is still either unemployed, or working but living in poverty. More than 500 million young people are surviving on less than $2 a day.
• Four million of those in slave labour are children. There are more than 150 million children aged 5 to 17 undertaking some form of child labour, nearly one in 10. 
• Between 1995 and 2014, in 91 of the 133 rich and developing countries wages had failed to keep pace with increased productivity and economic growth.
• In many countries no minimum wage or collective bargaining and most minimum wages are significantly lower than what is needed to survive. Minimum wages are also poorly enforced, and the enforcement is worse for women than for men.
• Temporary is the norm in developing countries, and is on the rise in rich nations. Temporary employees have lower wages, fewer rights and less access to social protection. Women and young people are more likely to be in these jobs. 
• For many, their work is dangerous and harmful to their health. More than 2.78 million workers die every year because of occupational accidents or work-related diseases – one every 11 seconds.
• ‘Sexual harassment is very common in this kind of work. At least 90% of women workers are harassed by both the customer and the owners. Justice is on the side of companies.’ – Eulogia Familia, a union leader representing hotel workers in Dominican Republic.
• Organized workers form a counterbalance to the power of wealth and have been central to the creation of more equal and more democratic societies. Trade unions increase wages, rights and protections, not just for their members but also for workers throughout society. Unfortunately, a downward trend is observed in trade union density rates all over the world since 2000. This is linked  to increasing inequality. It has been compounded by the rise in use of outsourcing and temporary, short-term contracts to undermine labour rights. 
• Attacks on union members were recorded in 59 countries. Over three-quarters of countries deny some or all workers the right to strike. 
• The worst jobs predominate in the informal sector of the economy, which goes largely unregulated. Women and young people are over-represented in the informal sector. Large multinationals reduces costs by outsourcing production to smaller businesses that employ informal labour, that pay workers lower wages, and provide less secure work enabling multinationals to circumvent labour and social protection legislation. 
• A perfect storm of related factors is combining to simultaneously drive up the bargaining power of those at the top, and drive down the bargaining power of those at the bottom. 
• At the bottom, workers have seen rights eroded, and trade unions undermined, reducing their bargaining power. Corporations are consolidating more and more, and are under huge pressure to deliver ever greater returns to wealthy shareholders. These returns often come at the cost of workers and tax dodging. Corporations use the mobility of their investments to force the race to the bottom between countries on tax and on wages. The threat of greater automation also puts more power in the hands of wealthy owners, and more pressure on workers.
• The economy not need be the way it is. We can create a more human economy that puts the interests of ordinary workers and small-scale food producers first, not the highly paid and the owners of wealth that could end extreme inequality. 
• We must reject dogmatic adherence to neoliberal economics and the unacceptable influence of elites on our governments. The economy should be  more equal from the start, and use taxation and public spending to redistribute and create greater fairness. 
• Studies show that employee-owned companies generate more employment growth and higher pay for their employees. Decision making is democratic, job security is promoted and the highest paid earns no more than nine times the lowest. Our economies could be built with these progressive structures if political leaders prioritize policies that finance, support and foster such models. 

WHAT HAS TO BE DONE

• Stop talking and give people what they want. A more equal world.
• Clamp down on inequality not democracy.
• To tackle extreme economic inequality, we must end extreme wealth and gender inequality. 
• Increase access to decent work.
• Regulation can be used to ensure that workers have more bargaining power; that we end tax havens; that monopolies are broken up; and that the financial sector and technological progress benefit the majority. 
• Governments and businesses can both act to ensure that poverty wages, slavery and precarious and dangerous work are seen as morally unacceptable. 
• Trade and investment can spread opportunity, products, services and prosperity far and wide.
• Government must provide education, healthcare and social protection for all, and pay for this by ensuring rich individuals and corporations pay their fair share of tax. 
• Government's investment in healthcare, education and social protection reduces inequality. 
• Quality public services benefit women, as they reduce the need for unpaid care and redress inequalities in access to education and health services. 
• Both rich individuals and rich corporations should pay more in taxation, and avoid paying the tax that they owe. 
• We need to see an end to tax havens and the global web of secrecy that enables rich corporations and individuals to avoid paying their fair share of tax. 
• The global race to the bottom on tax for corporations and the rich needs to be reversed. Governments should follow the lead of Chile and South Africa, which have both increased taxes on rich corporations and individuals. 
• Governments should aim for the collective income of the top 10% to be no more than the income of the bottom 40%.
• To end extreme poverty, we must also end extreme wealth. Governments should use regulation and taxation to radically reduce levels of extreme wealth, as well as limit the influence of wealthy individuals and groups over policy making. 
• Every country should aim to produce data on the wealth and income of everyone in society annually, especially the top 10% and the top 1%. 
• Implement policies to tackle all forms of gender discrimination, promote positive attitudes towards women and women's work, and rebalance power dynamics at the household, local, national and international levels.
• Recognize and protect the rights of citizens and their organizations to freedom of speech and association.
• Incentivize business models that prioritize fairer returns, cooperatives and employee participation in company governance and supply chains. 
• Require all multinational corporations to conduct mandatory due diligence on their full supply chains to ensure that all workers are paid a living wage.
• Limit returns to shareholders and top executives pay is no more than 10 times their median employees’ pay. 
• Eliminate the gender pay gap and ensure the rights of women workers are fully realized.
• Eliminate slave labour and poverty pay. 
• Promote the organization of workers and protect the rights of workers to unionize and strike, and rescind all laws that go against these rights.
• Eliminate precarious work and ensure all new forms of employment respect workers’ rights. Ensure the rights of domestic workers, migrant workers and the informally employed. 
• Publicly commit to achieving universal free public services and a universal social protection floor.
• Refrain from directing public funding to incentives and subsidies for healthcare and education provision by for-profit private sector companies and expand public sector delivery of essential services. 
• Strictly regulate private facilities for safety and quality, and prevent them from excluding those who cannot pay. 
• Use tax to reduce extreme wealth.
• Call for a new generation of international tax reforms to end the race to the bottom on tax. Tax rates should be set at a level that is fair, progressive and contributes to reducing inequality.
• Eradicate the use of tax havens and increase transparency, by blacklisting tax havens and automatic sanctions against the corporations and rich people that use them.
• No dividends or paying bonuses or buybacks to executives if no living wage for workers or producers in their key supply chains. 
• Companies should ensure worker representation on boards and remuneration committees to include the voice of other stakeholders, like workers in supply chains and local communities, into decision making processes.
• Support transformational change in supply chains.
• Share profits with the poorest workers.
• Support gender equality in the workplace.
• Reduce pay ratios. Publish the company’s pay ratio between CEO and median pay, and reduce this ratio to no more than 20:1.

Support collective bargaining. Remove barriers to women workers participating in unions and leadership positions, and promote women workers raise their voices safely and effectively. We must redesign our economies to reward ordinary workers and small-scale producers. We must stop excessively rewarding the super-rich. It is what people want. It is what our leaders have promised. Together we can end the inequality crisis. We can build a more human economy and more equal world for our children. 

Read the source report at www.oxfam.org

We can have democracy in this country, 

or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, 

but we can't have both ... Justice Louis Brandeis, US Supreme Court

The global economy on a wildly unequal trajectory is absurd and unsustainable. For getting everyone above poverty line (> $5 per day) would take 100 years, require $1m GDP per person and per capita income about $100,000. As a result, ending poverty under the current model is slow, inefficient and runs into planetary problems. Already the present global economy is in ecological overshoot. A radical shift in distribution to favour the poorest is the only way to reconcile the twin challenges of halting catastrophic climatic change and ending poverty.