Chicago Tribune (July 19)
“When the race for coronavirus vaccines started, health officials knew the competition between rich and poor countries would be lopsided. But few expected poor countries to be at the mercy of donations from the rich, or that the inequity would be bad for so long. Poor countries have vaccinated 1% of their population, compared with 55% in the U.S. and about 25% globally.”
Tags: Competition, Coronavirus, Donations, Health officials, Inequity, Lopsided, Mercy, Poor, Race, Rich, Vaccines
New York Times (January 27)
“For months now, wealthy countries have been clearing the world’s shelves of coronavirus vaccines, leaving poorer nations with little hope of exiting the pandemic in 2021. But a fresh skirmish this week has pitted the rich against the rich — Britain versus the European Union — in the scramble for vials, opening a new and unabashedly nationalist competition that could poison relations and set back collective efforts to end the pandemic.”
Tags: Collective efforts, Competition, Coronavirus, EU, Nationalist, Nations, Pandemic, Poison, Poor, Relations, Rich, Skirmish, UK, Vaccines, Wealthy
Wall Street Journal (November 28)
“American voters, beware. Politicians promising that Medicare for All and a Green New Deal can be financed by the rich are lying to you. The middle class will pay because that’s where the real money is.”
Tags: Beware, Green New Deal, Lying, Medicare, Middle class, Money, Politicians, Rich, U.S., Voters
Bloomberg (April 10)
“India has so far been spared the kind of populist revolt that’s testing many rich Western democracies. It’s far from immune, however.” Whoever wins the upcoming election should “recognize that many of the conditions for a similar upheaval are in place — and that the best way to avoid it is to promote growth and opportunity through economic reform.”
Tags: Election, Growth, India, Populist revolt, Rich, Upheaval, Western democracies
New York Times (February 3)
In recent decades, per capita GDP has doubled in the U.S., but “the bulk of the bounty has flowed to the very rich. The middle class has received relative crumbs. If middle-class pay had increased as fast as the economic growth, the average middle-class family would today earn about $15,000 a year more than it does, after taxes and benefits.”
Tags: Benefits, Bounty, Economic growth, GDP, Income inequality, Middle class, Rich, Taxes, U.S.
Fortune (January 28)
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, died at 91. With an estimated net worth of $58.7 billion, he was the world’s eighth-richest person. Renowned for living miserly, he created a revolution in furnishings. In 2005, he was named “the most influential taste-maker in the world” by the U.K. style magazine Icon, which wrote, “‘if it wasn’t for Ikea, most people would have no access to affordable contemporary design. The company has done more to bring about an acceptance of domestic modernity than the rest of the design world combined.’”
Tags: Affordable, Contemporary, Design, Icon, Ikea, Influential, Kamprad, Miserly, Net worth, Rich, Taste-maker, U.K.
New York Times (April 27)
President Trump’s tax plan can hardly be called a plan, but it certainly takes the cake… and serves it up to the rich. “The skimpy one-page tax proposal his administration released on Wednesday is, by any historical standard, a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the country’s future.”
Economist (October 1)
“Globalisation’s critics say it benefits only the elite. In fact, a less open world would hurt the poor most of all…. There is a world of difference between improving globalisation and reversing it. The idea that globalisation is a scam that benefits only corporations and the rich could scarcely be more wrong.”
Tags: Benefits, Corporations, Critics, Elite, Globalization, Poor, Rich, Scam
New York Times (April 6)
“The first reaction to the leaked documents dubbed the Panama Papers is simply awe at the scope of the trove” that includes some 11.5 million documents illustrating “how offshore bank accounts and tax havens are used by the world’s rich and powerful to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.” That reaction quickly gives way to disgust and questions: “How did all these politicians, dictators, criminals, billionaires and celebrities amass vast wealth and then benefit from elaborate webs of shell companies to disguise their identities and their assets? Would there have been no reckoning had the leak not occurred?”
Tags: Assets, Bank accounts, Disgust, Offshore, Panama Papers, Powerful, Reaction. Leak, Rich, Shell companies, Tax havens
Bloomberg (September 20)
There has been “a huge and very worrying change in Japanese education policy….Essentially, Japan’s government just ordered all of the country’s public universities to end education in the social sciences, the humanities and law” with a non-binding order from Hakubun Shimomura, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. This is “a terrible direction for Japan to be going.” To succeed as a rich country in a service economy, Japan will need more conceptual thinkers who can communicate, rather than more engineers. “Japan needs to keep educating students in the social sciences and humanities. It needs to avoid a doomed attempt to return to a developing-country model of growth.”
Tags: Communicate, Conceptual thinkers, Education policy, Engineers Developing country, Government, Humanities, Japan, Law, MEXT, Rich, Service economy, Shimomura, Social sciences, Universities
