Saturday, February 03, 2018

Asian Inequality

Asia is a region of extremes.

China is now home to two companies (Alibaba and Tencent) which, between them, are valued at more than $1 trillion

In Vietnam, the country’s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in a decade.

Indonesia’s four richest men have more wealth than 100 million of the country's poorest people. 

Max Lawson, one of the chief authors of Oxfam’s inequality report, explained, “What we’re saying in the report is that corporations shouldn’t be paying out massive dividends until they can show that everyone in their supply chain is getting a living wage. We shouldn’t have a situation where countries and companies are able to reduce their margins by employing slave labor.” Lawson adds, “You may have a negative trend where the impact of automation won’t be to eliminate jobs but to drive down wages even lower in the short term as countries try to out-compete the robots, which is a deeply concerning trend”.

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