We are living in a world which encourages productivity and efficiency in the name of economic growth. But on the back-end, our economic system also often encourages profit over life quality. With the recent World Economic Forum discussing the fourth industrial revolution, and with the future prediction that robots will be taking over millions of jobs with the aim of increasing productivity, we have to ask ourselves one question: Is the Economy working for Us, or are We working for the Economy?
A really informative and eye-opening article was recently published by Oxfam. It talks about the fact that we have built an economy that works only for the 1%. In 2015, 62 individuals (the number of people that can comfortable fit in a bus) had the same wealth as the bottom half of humanity. One percent of the global population have now accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together. The wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 44% since 2010, and the wealth of the bottom half fell by 41%. Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the population has received only 1% of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that increase has gone to the top 1%. With this in mind, as well as the breakdowns of planetary boundaries (i.e. breakdowns of systems we need to ensure our survival) due to our current economic model, we really need to rethink the status quo. The report can be found here. It gives a really good critique of our current economic system, and how things can be changed.
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