PARIS – The economic inequality seen in recent years will only get worse over the coming decades as highly skilled workers reap bigger gains from technological advances, the OECD said on Wednesday.
Governments need to invest more in education and build more progressive tax systems, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation said in the latest of a series of reports on long-term economic trends.
The debate over inequality has grown more heated since the success of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” a best-selling book by French economist Thomas Piketty. His work shows the gap in wealth between the rich and the rest of the populace is returning to levels last seen before World War One.
Wages of the top earners in the OECD grew an average 0.6 percent a year faster than the wages of those at the bottom of the income ladder over the two decades leading up to the financial crisis, the 34-nation group said.
If nothing is done, inequality will keep growing at that rate over the coming 50 years, although real earnings are expected to keep rising across the income spectrum.
At that rate, the average gross earnings inequality in the OECD would by 2060 reach that of the United States, whose income gap is one of the largest in the group.
After Israel, the United States would remain the country with the greatest earnings inequality, according to the OECD’s projections.
Nearly all of the growing gap would be between high and middle-income earners. That was in line with recent evidence, the OECD said, suggesting that technology is replacing jobs requiring only mid-level skills.
“We expect the best qualified to benefit from technological progress,” said Jean-Luc Schneider, the deputy head of the OECD’s economics department.
Against that backdrop, the OECD recommended better targeting of tax and benefit systems on the needy. At the same time, the burden of taxation should shift more towards property and raw materials, it said.
But ultimately the remedy is more and better education, to help people climb higher up the skills ladder, the OECD said. –Reuters
World Day for Safety and Health at Work
“Safety and health at work every day!”
Invoke Article 33 of the ILO constitution
against the military junta in Myanmar to carry out the 2021 ILO Commission of Inquiry recommendations against serious violations of Forced Labour and Freedom of Association protocols.
Accept National Unity Government
(NUG) of Myanmar.
Reject Military!
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Monthly Observances:
March – Women’s Role in History Month
April – Month of Planet Earth
Weekly Observances:
Last Week of March: Protection and Gender Fair Treatment of the Girl Child Week
Last Week of April – World Immunization Week
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Mar 25 – International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transallantic Slave Trade
Mar 27– Earth Hour
Apr 21 – Civil Service Day
Apr 22 – World Earth Day
Apr 28 – World Day for Safety and Health at Work
