World Economic Forum says capitalism needs urgent change

[Che]

World Economic Forum says capitalism needs urgent change

 

LONDON — Reforming the very nature of capitalism will be needed to combat the growing appeal of populist political movements around the world, the World Economic Forum said Wednesday.

 

Getting higher economic growth, it added, is necessary but insufficient to heal the fractures in society that were evident in the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and Britain's vote to leave the European Union.

 

In a wide-ranging report from the organizer of the annual gathering of political and business leaders in the Swiss resort of Davos, the WEF identified "rising income and wealth disparity" as potentially the biggest driver in global affairs over the next ten years.

 

 

As an example of this growing inequality, the WEF highlighted the massive increases in CEO pay at a time when many people in advanced economies have struggled to make ends meet following the global financial crisis.

 

"This points to the need for reviving economic growth, but the growing mood of anti-establishment populism suggests we may have passed the stage where this alone would remedy fractures in society: reforming market capitalism must also be added to the agenda," it said in its latest Global Risks Report.

 

"The combination of economic inequality and political polarization threatens to amplify global risks, fraying the social solidarity on which the legitimacy of our economic and political systems rests," it added.

 

That's some conclusion from an organization that's sought to play a central role in the globalization process of the past couple of decades and that is closely identified with some of the world's richest people.

 

 

As well as getting growth higher, the WEF identified four areas that need to be addressed urgently: the need for long-term thinking in capitalism; a recognition of the importance of identity and inclusiveness in political communities; mitigating the risks and exploiting the opportunities of new technologies such as driverless cars; and strengthening global cooperation.

 

It added that a failure to address the underlying causes of the populist tide poses a threat to mainstream politicians and raises the risk that the globalization trend will go into reverse.

 

"Some people question whether the West has reached a tipping point and might now embark on a period of de-globalization," it said.

 

Although anti-establishment politics have tended to blame globalization for the loss of traditional jobs, the WEF said rapidly changing technologies have had more of an impact on labor markets.

 

"It is no coincidence that challenges to social cohesion and policymakers' legitimacy are coinciding with a highly disruptive phase of technological change," the WEF said.

 

 

Other key drivers identified in the survey of global risks related to climate change, rising cyber dependency and an aging population.

 

The 2017 report, the 12th annual report, is based on an assessment of 30 global risks by 750 experts from a variety of backgrounds, including business, academia and non-governmental organizations.

 

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

Source

 

Rising inequality threatens world economy, says WEF

Income gap was behind Brexit vote and Donald Trump's victory, says World Economic Forum risk report

 

 

Rising income inequality and the polarisation of societies pose a risk to the global economy in 2017 and could result in the rolling back of globalisation unless urgent action is taken, according to the World Economic Forum.

 

Before its annual meeting in Davos next week, the WEF said the gap between rich and poor had been behind the UK's Brexit vote and Donald Trump's election victory in the US.

 

And it warned that there were new threats to social cohesion from the robotics and artificial intelligence revolution. The organisation said fundamental reform of capitalism may be needed to tackle public anger.

 

The WEF's annual global risks report – culled from 700 experts – found that rising income and wealth disparity, and increasing polarisation of sectors of society, were ranked first and third among the underlying trends that will determine the shape of the world in the next decade.

 

 

Climate change was considered the second most important underlying trend, with the WEF noting that environmental concerns were more prominent in the report than ever before.

 

Trump's inauguration on 20 January coincides with next week's Davos meeting and the founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, said 2017 would be a pivotal moment for the global community.

 

"The threat of a less cooperative, more inward-looking world also creates the opportunity to address global risks and the trends that drive them," he said.

 

The WEF said the growing mood of anti-establishment populism meant economic growth was no longer enough to mend fractured societies and that "fundamental reforms of market capitalism" would now be needed.

 

 

The global risks report said Brexit, the US presidential election result and the referendum defeat suffered by former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi last month meant some people were now questioning whether "the west has reached a tipping point and might now embark on a period of deglobalisation".

 

The US economist Dani Rodrik has coined the phrase "the globalisation trilemma" to capture the idea that countries cannot have democracy, national sovereignty and globalisation; they can only ever have two out of the three.

 

The WEF said recent events in Europe and the US suggested an "appetite for rebalancing towards democracy and national sovereignty".

 

The WEF said it had been pointing out the dangers of rising inequality and political polarisation for more than a decade, but that the slow pace of recovery from the deep recession of 2008 had intensified income gaps within countries.

 

 

Emergency measures such as quantitative easing – the creation of money by central banks – had become permanent features of economic policy, and had exacerbated inequality by boosting the returns of those holding financial assets.

 

It added that the trends of recent years had come into sharp focus in 2016 with rising discontent and disaffection evident in the UK referendum and in the US with Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton.

 

"Urgent action is needed … to overcome political or ideological differences and work together to solve critical challenges," said Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, head of global competitiveness and risks at the WEF.

 

 

"The momentum of 2016 towards addressing climate change shows this is possible and offers hope that collective action at the international level aimed at resetting other risks could also be achieved."

 

The report warned that society was not keeping pace with technological change. It found that of 12 emerging technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics had the greatest potential benefits but also contained the greatest negative threats.

 

"Technology has always created jobs as well as destroying them, but there is evidence that the engine of technological job creation is sputtering," the report said, citing evidence that only 0.5% of the current US workforce was employed in sectors created since 2000 compared with approximately 8% in industries created in the 1980s.

 

"Technological change is shifting the distribution of income from labour to capital: according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, up to 80% of the decline in labour's share of national income between 1980 and 2007 was the result of the impact of technology."

 

 

The WEF's top five risks to the global economy for 2017:

1 Rising income and wealth disparity

 

Since the 1980s, the share of income going to the top 1% wealthiest citizens has increased in the UK, the US, Canada, Ireland and Australia – though not Germany, France, Japan or Sweden – says the WEF.

 

This group has shielded itself from austerity and the worst of the post-financial crash recession. Investments in new technology put a premium on workers with higher education and better skills, leaving the unskilled to languish on low pay, while globalisation has raised the incomes of the world's poorer workers at the expense of those in the west.

 

The discontent this brings about "has now become an election-winning proposition" that demands action, says the WEF.

 

 

2 Changing climate

Climate change is ranked as the second biggest risk for this year, due in part to the increasingly frequent extreme weather that it heralds. While the end of the cyclical global weather phenomenon El Niño means 2017 is unlikely to top 2016 as the hottest on record, the Met Office forecasts it will still globally be one of the warmest ever.

 

The heat is also likely to be cooler in political circles after last year, which saw the Paris climate agreement ratified at breakneck speed and several other climate deals agreed.

 

This year governments must get on with actually delivering the carbon curbs they promised at Paris – as the WEF points out, the pace at which emissions are being cut is not yet fast enough to avoid dangerous global warming.

 

 

3 Increasing polarisation in societies

The WEF is concerned that democracy itself is in crisis. Policymakers and managers of public and private institutions have become divorced from their electorates both in terms of their cultural backgrounds and their pay and benefits.

 

Post-truth news media is undermining trust in pillars of the constitution, such as the judiciary. Austerity is hacking back at welfare provision for the vulnerable in society. And multiculturalism is under pressure from nationalism.

 

"This could be a pivotal moment in political history," the WEF said, "and it requires courageous new thinking about how best to manage the relationship between citizens and their elected representatives."

 

4 Rising cyber dependency

Amazon Echo's virtual assistant Alexa adding unwanted items including doll's houses to shopping lists is just one example of the problems arising from an ever more interconnected world.

 

An increasing amount of critical infrastructure relies, not just on information technology in general, but on the open internet in particular. This has brought great benefits but it also provides more opportunity for anyone hoping to wreak havoc through hacking attacks.

 

Beyond critical infrastructure, the developed world relies on the open net for a large proportion of economic activity. An estimated 10% of British GDP comes from the "internet economy".

 

 

5 Ageing population

A quarter of Japan's population is aged over 65, and the proportion is on track to reach 40%. Japanese people younger than 19 comprised 40% of the population in 1960, but are projected to make up just 13% of the population in 2060. The rest of the developed world, and much of the developing world, is heading in the same direction.

 

To fund welfare programmes, including a long-term care insurance begun in 2000 that ranks as one of the most generous in the world, Tokyo has run up a debt to GDP ratio of 240%.

 

This culminated in a plea for the fit elderly to look after the unfit, the disabled and ill. It could be argued that Britain's current healthcare crisis is largely due to successive governments ignoring the lessons from Japan.

 

China is getting old at the point it gets rich, forcing it to address care and healthcare issues decades before western countries at a similar stage of development.

 

Source

 

 

Poderão ser necessárias mais reformas ao capitalismo de mercado para atacar, em particular, a aparente falta de solidariedade entre os que estão no topo da distribuição de património e de rendimentos e os que estão mais na base.

GLOBAL RISKS REPORT 2017, FÓRUM ECONÓMICO MUNDIAL

Fonte

Editado 13 Janeiro 2017 por Che

[Descartes]

O fórum passou de repente a bilingue e ninguém me avisou?

 

Vou já tratar da minha inscrição no Cambridge para não perder pitada do que aqui se discute...

[Che]

O fórum passou de repente a bilingue e ninguém me avisou?

 

Vou já tratar da minha inscrição no Cambridge para não perder pitada do que aqui se discute...

The Guardian

 

Adicionei uma fonte em português para que consigas perceber. :)

Editado 13 Janeiro 2017 por Che

[Enzo Dios Perez]

I agree with almost everything.

[Su1]

O fórum passou de repente a bilingue e ninguém me avisou?

 

Vou já tratar da minha inscrição no Cambridge para não perder pitada do que aqui se discute...

Concordo. O Che devia ter traduzido os artigos. :D

[UnReal]

underwear é quando estás debaixo mas não sabes onde

[Jamarcus]

O fórum passou de repente a bilingue e ninguém me avisou?

 

Vou já tratar da minha inscrição no Cambridge para não perder pitada do que aqui se discute...

Ya

[nathanwilliams]

Não é preciso ser um grande entendido na matéria para perceber isto, digo eu. Não estou é a ver ninguém abdicar da sua riqueza e da sua possibilidade de fazer mais riqueza em detrimento de uma maior igualdade.

[Vaart10]

Doce, falta a palavra da praxe. Expropriar :mrgreen:

[Lip McBoatface]

Estranho que eles não dêem mais importância ao que é a predominância de automação (então com a robótica será ainda maior) na indústria sem "compensar" os trabalhadores pela poupança de postos de trabalho que isso representa. Por essa mesma razão o capitalismo torna-se uma má solução para essa 4ª revolução tecnológica que supostamente já chegou. É a partir daí incompatível sem haver novos critérios de partilha de dinheiro pela sociedade.

 

Faz sentido porque se chegou a este ponto: ganância e corrupção que rapidamente meteu os seus tentáculos nos sectores legislativos e judicial. A questão do Trump do Brexit e Trump e populismo ser a principal razão nem faz grande sentido ser a prioridade principal já que duvido que se fechem assim tanto a nível económica (que o possam fazer).

 

nathan: A maneira mais óbvia de se tentar fazer é aquela que se tem conseguido fazer a nível ambiental: LEGISLAÇÃO (e vamos admitir, ser agora rentável economicamente o fazer). Algo que afecta todos igualmente e que é punível por lei. Verdade seja dita, se fores a uma boa parte das empresas bem organizadas, falar-se-á das restrições ambientais e dos seus benefícios económicos como parte integrante das estratégias da empresa.

Editado 15 Janeiro 2017 por Lip Iverson

[Che]

Não é preciso ser um grande entendido na matéria para perceber isto, digo eu. Não estou é a ver ninguém abdicar da sua riqueza e da sua possibilidade de fazer mais riqueza em detrimento de uma maior igualdade.

Quem tem dinheiro não está em maioria, o que em democracia é óptimo. A desigualdade pode ser combatida.

 

O capitalismo é um sistema que se pode adaptar às mais diversas condicionantes. Se de hoje para amanhã colocasses restrições ambientais e forçasses todas as empresas a tornarem-se democráticas ao invés de serem autoritárias, o capitalismo continuaria a funcionar. Se o capitalismo continua a funcionar, as premissas do 'bater punho', 'trabalhar muito', e etc, também continuarão a funcionar.

 

Quem poderá sair a perder já acumulou o suficiente para se adaptar às mudanças quantitativas que melhoram a vida da maioria. Se uma Microsoft ou uma Apple forem democratizadas de hoje para amanhã, o Bill Gates e o Tim Cook teriam dinheiro suficiente para se adaptarem às mudanças. Todos os outros iriam-se adaptar porque a democracia iria mudar radicalmente a vida dos trabalhadores para melhor.

[Joao Pereira]

underwear é quando estás debaixo mas não sabes onde

epa f*da-se lol

[Scirea]

O grande problema, parece-me, é que é demasiado fácil para quem tem dinheiro de fugir com ele enquanto que os que não podem fugir vão empobrecendo. Os outros que podem, pagam o mínimo possível de impostos se é que os pagam sequer, sobre os milhões que ganham (todos, não apenas parte) enquanto o pobre que ganha 500€ leva uma ripada todos os meses nas migalhas que lhe dão ao fim do mês. Os estados vão ficando mais pobres porque não há forma de verem a cor ao dinheiro dos impostos que constantemente é alocado para paraísos fiscais, empresas fachada e tantas outras engenhocas para limpar o dinheiro e a disparidade acentua-se ainda mais porque tirar 25% de 500€ não é o mesmo que tirar 25% de 1 milhão para quem recebe o dinheiro.

[Che]

A melhor forma de se corrigir essa falha seria transitar para o sistema de vouchers, abandonando o dinheiro.

 

Os vouchers apenas são usados uma vez, não podem ser cedidos, não acumulam. São perfeitos.

[Lip McBoatface]

Nada é perfeito.

[Che]

Expropriar é perfeito.