Davos Makes Inequality Its Business as Political Backlash Seen - Bloomberg
Reducing inequality is usually the business of protesters at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This year, it’s the buzzword for the business elite worried about their bottom lines.
As widening income disparity becomes a dominant theme at the annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort, business and financial leaders are making the case that a reversal of that multi-decade trend is needed as much for business and economic interests as for social and moral reasons.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-23/davos-makes-inequality-its-business-as-political-backlash-seen.html
The richest 10 percent of Americans earned a larger share of income in 2012 than at any time since 1917, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. Those in the top one-tenth of income distribution earned at least $146,000 in 2012, almost 12 times what those in the bottom tenth made, Census Bureau data show.
The U.S. isn’t alone among rich nations. A study by UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, found last month that Gini coefficients, a popular measure of inequality, had also increased in the U.K., Japan and France since 2005.
The Geneva-based World Economic Forum set up the debate last week by identifying income inequality as the most likely of 31 potential risks to threaten global prosperity in the coming decade. The disparity risks fomenting poverty and social disorder, it said.
