 point of view that sort of says look I've and I'll sort of end this piece by saying that I used to I come out of the public sector I worked in the White House I've worked for the current speaker of the house the United States right now I've worked for a labor union I've worked for nonprofits and I've kind of and I think that it's this type of what I call sort of called bridge building activity that sort of has made me realize that it's not sectors that are going to change anything or frankly do anything it's the people within those sectors and the more we have people who are operating with a sense of decency that are cross sector and who can have these types of conversation I think we might be able to actually do something and I'd like to talk later about some partnerships that we have going with other people in private sector companies great Rucker let's talk about concrete steps to get people out of poverty a subject you've written and thought a lot about I won't get the phrase exactly right but it's it's poverty is a lack of cash yeah that's basically what it is lack of care talk about the the impact of what happens when when you when you give people who need cash cash to pull themselves up this is an universal base the idea of a universal basic income sure well for some perspective I I mean I must first say this is my first time at Davos and and I find it quite a bewildering experience to be honest I mean 1500 private yet flown in there to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about you know how we're wrecking the planet and I mean I hear people talk in the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency but then I mean almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance right and of the rich just not paying their fair share I mean it feels like I'm at a firefighter's fight a scumference and no one's allowed to speak about water right there was there was only one panel actually we've had to you're the second of our panel there was only one panel let's go there one panel hidden away in the media center that was actually about tax avoidance I was about I was one of the 15 participants and something needs to change here I mean ten ten years ago the world economic forum asked a question what must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash the answer is very simple just stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes taxes taxes we need to I mean just two days ago there was a billionaire in here what's the name Michael Dell and he asked a question like name me one country where a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent has actually worked and you know I'm a historian the United States that's where it has actually worked in the 1950s during Republican president Eisenhower you know the war veteran the top marginal tax rate in the US was 91% for people like Michael Dell you know the top estate tax for people like Michael Dell was more than 70% I mean this is not rocket science I mean we can talk for a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes we can invite Bono once more come on it's we got to be talking about taxes that's it taxes taxes taxes all the rest is bullshit in my opinion thank you go ahead Ratka is so right the top is last year alone the wealth of billionaires was rising by 2.5 billion dollars a day and the wealth of the bottom half of humanity 3.8 billion people was declining reducing by 500 million dollars a day it's not difficult to see why if you look at the business model we work Oxfam works with government workers in many of these Asian countries take Bangladesh a woman who is teaching clothes for the clothes we bear the clothes we buy in HM in Zara in the high street shops earns four dollars a day she is always in debt when she gets sick she's not paid she works 20 21 hours a day when she's pregnant she's fired that's in Bangladesh then we also work with poultry workers in the richest country in the world the United States poultry workers these are women who are cutting the chickens and parking them and we buy them in the supermarkets Dolores one woman we work with there told us that she and her co-workers have to wear diapers to work because they're not allowed toilet breaks this is in the richest country in the world so it's a business model that is continues to maximize for shareholders and to cheat the ordinary people down the supply chains and to damage the environment damage communities and then not pay their fair share of taxes the top executives of these companies are among the highest paid in the world they own the chief executive of Zara is one of the highest paid people in the world so we have a business model that has over the years grown to maximize for a few owners of capital and to cheat everybody else and the business people who run these businesses on top of that avoid paying their fair share of taxes have built loopholes across the tax system we have a tax system that leaks so much that allows a hundred and seventy billion dollars of money every year to be taken to tax havens and to be denied the developing countries that need that money most so we have to look at the business model and we have to look at the role of governments to tax and plow back money into people's lives well let's let Jane let's go back to that explosion the brain that what what is it what's lacking in the brain that you know I think mentioned a minute ago Davos report ten years ago we've got to address this some of the solutions do seem rather obvious why can't we get there what is it about us that we see we see the solution and the urgency but we can't get there well you know I find this whole thing about our intellect is fascinating one we're now beginning to understand that we're not the only beings on the planet with personalities minds and emotions which I was taught when I went to Cambridge there was a difference between us and other animals it was one of kind and now we realize it's one of degree and animals are way more intelligent than we used to think but it can't compare with a species that designed a rocket that went up to Mars from which crawled a little robot taking photos or the Chinese have put a rocket on the dark side of the moon we seen photographs of those planets I don't want to go and live there personally and I doubt if anybody here does so to answer your question what's gone wrong how is it that the most intellectual creature that's ever walked on this planet destroying its only home destroying the environment and causing all these inequalities in our societies what's gone wrong and I think that what's gone wrong and at least in my perspective is that there has become a link that sorry that we've broken the link between intellect and wisdom and if we think of wisdom as love compassion and making decisions not based on how will this help me now how will this help my bank account how will it help the next shareholders meeting how will it help my next political campaign but how will this decision I make today affect future generations that link seems to have been broken and how do we how do we address that this is why I began a program for young people called roots and shoots us now in nearly 80 countries around the world and we bring together young people we work with those from inner city we work with the Native American reservation children and if you want inequality go to one of the reservations in the richest country in the world if you want inequality walk along some of the streets in the UK where the wealthy live and find homeless peoples sleeping on the street below it's it's everywhere and so by bringing these young people together from all these different areas of life and having them talk about it and get to understand each other's problems and then work out ways of helping each other that I'm beginning to see is making a difference a quick follow-up if if the answer is youth do we have enough time for them to get older well here here's the thing I began this program in 1991 with high school students that's where it began it's now kindergarten university and everything in between and so a lot of these students are now out there in the world taking up positions of leadership in different walks of life and they are making a difference they take the philosophy that they learned in roots and shoots and you know something that's I think very important in a discussion like this is we all need money to live it goes wrong when we live for money unless we're making money to make this a better world and a question that I always want to ask economists we always talk about you know economic growth the development of GDP and so forth which obviously we want everyone to have a good life but if you take the wealthy today you take human population growth which nobody ever wants to talk about but which is really key how can we have unlimited economic development even not counting the richest of the rich but us on a planet of finite natural resources we have to alleviate poverty on the one hand reduce the unsustainable lifestyle of so many people on the other and at least think about human population growth and finally to think that this natural world that we're destroying so fast partly because of poverty we need it for our own survival I'm not just fighting because I care passionately about forests and chimpanzees and oceans and whales I'm fighting because as we destroy the natural environment we're destroying our own future our own children and grandchildren we all care about them but we're not thinking about how what we do today is actually stealing their future intelligence versus wisdom Alicia how do we get from talking about it to doing something about it well listen I was listening very carefully to Jane I think that we have we have to change our paradigm of development and we definitely have to do that soon quickly and that was about agenda 2030 wanted to do that I don't know if we're going to accomplish that soon but we definitely have to change the development paradigm and we have to move to a more sustainable future in the sense of circular economy we have to look for sources of energy outside of the planet and that's why solar energy is so important because we are not going to use the resources of this planet as we are doing now we have to go for extra planetary resources I think and then of course inequality is also intergenerational inequality we are not we are we say we think about future generations but we are not applying the discount rate for present generations we have to pay a price now to be able to preserve the future generations from climate change from the destructions of key ecosystems of the world number two let me say that when we talk about tax avoidance I'm talking about something very concrete Latin America and the Caribbean the tax avoidance annually comes up to 350,000 250 billion dollars a year that's a lot of money 6.7% of the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean is going out of the region through tax avoidance 110 billion are going through illicit funds flows and not narcotraffic no no no no no is in the trade in the trade customs where this is happening because we are not pricing right the exports and the imports we are favoring imports versus exports so we're losing 110 billion dollars so only we get those two those two amounts of money we could be able to finance three things one a basic income for young people from 15 to 29 young people we're talking about 145 million young people in my region that could meet the basic income we have calculated more or less how much would that cost starting with the poorest of the poor and going up we can pay for that the cash transfers today that go for extreme poverty are costing 0.3% of GDP 0.3 nothing so we are asking governments don't take out those programs because those programs like Bolsa Familia and etc etc were programs that took out of poverty 40 million people in the region in Brazil 70 million in the whole region and then thirdly we would like to apply expenditure social expenditure on something that I think is very important which is labor inclusion labor inclusion which goes to capacity building of the current workers because we also think about the incoming workers but what do we do with the workers we have today we have to build capabilities on those and then go to what you are doing which is financial inclusion that is how do we link the cash transfers the income the basic income with the bank carization I don't know how you say that but how do we put these people into the banking system and so they know how to handle their own money and so forth but I think these are some concrete measures that should be taken many of them come from the governments of course we need the support of the private sector the private sector needs to have again this moral moral how to say fiscal moral contribution and and and I think this is something that we were talking about I don't want them to pay 90% of taxes I only want them to be taxes Michael Dell shit in Latin America's 18% of GDP just pay that record then then we should open it up what what your historian what would it take and does history suggest it's possible to make it so that you know five years from now when you fly back here on your private jet no on a bus on a bus rock across the Alps something will you know we will have made some headway yeah well you know the lessons of history are pretty depressing to be honest so the times that we've seen that we managed to reduce inequality radically you know we're during times of war it that's that's what what's the most effective way now I'm obviously not suggesting we should start a war here but what we do need is what the philosopher William James a hundred years called the moral equivalent of war and I believe that the challenge of climate change can be exactly that so we need to realize that we are standing you know at at at a point in history as a species that we just don't have much time left and what we need is a new green deal I believe look at the experience of France so what happened in France is that you had this whole yellow vest movements after you know a tax on petrol if I'm correct and then the an explosion of protests broke out a French CEO explained to me this week that actually the most important reason for all of these protests was the abolition of the wealth tax in France so I mean it's not it's again it's not rocket science what we need are way higher taxes on on the wealthy so that we can actually fund this green transition to a much better planet but I mean the the skill of the challenge is so radical is that again we it will never be solved by by just the private sector alone or just by words alone or by philanthropy we really need to start to realize that we yeah we need something like the moral equivalent equivalent of a war let's open it up I'll start right here and then I'll get over here hi I'm a I'm a global shaper from San Francisco and I build digital tools for the homeless community I would just like to ask the global shapers in the room to stand up maybe and so oh I didn't know there were so many but my question is to end up was that was our first time in Davos there were 49 of us today who are I think all of us committed to fighting inequality in the world it's more than 7,000 of us who are all professionals between the year between 20 and 30 years old what is your ask to our generation and our group and how do you think we could finally put an end to inequality thank you wow let me jump in here for a second because as a YGL alum as an OGL at this point the precursor to the that was my entry into Davos and so I think that it's what I would sort of say is it's where I started is that sectors alone aren't going to solve this it's about the global shapers crossing sectors it's about the YGLs crossing sectors and not recognizing whether your private sector public sector citizen sector or government that you're in it for the right reason to create human-centered design that really helps people and if your resources are allocated because you have tax or don't have tax or you have this or you don't have that the the values of how you're allocating your time and your resources need to be paramount and to what Ms Goodall said I agree that we do have the intellect and if anybody knows this global shapers know this that it's the intellect that we have but it's about aligning the interests with your intellect with your capabilities with your resources across sectors to keep people at the center and to involve love and compassion to link up our brain with our heart because I truly believe only when a head and heart work in harmony can we attain our true human potential and you know the other thing is which I think fits into this discussion as I'm traveling around the world which I hate by the way and I do not have a private jet some people say I should and I say that would be the most awful thing I could do I meet amazing people I keep encountering this indomitable human spirit the people who tackle the impossible the impossible which you might say what we're talking about now seems impossible and yet there are people who tackle it and go on fighting it and won't give up and that indomitable human spirit is in every single one of us and it's so important to realize when we're trying to solve problems that each and every one of us can make a difference and each and every one of us on this planet we do make an impact every single day and we who have enough financial ability we can choose what we do what sort of impact we make and these things are very important to remember and it's also important to remember every individual matters of course that includes animals who are also individuals but every individual has a role to play everybody makes a difference every day and everybody all of us we all have this indomitable spirit the poorest of the poor I've encountered who just face up to the challenges and I found that one of the biggest helps to reducing poverty and to empowering people is first of all through the youth but also we introduce to reduce poverty in our area micro-credit based on Muhammad Yunus's Grameen bank so that rather than hand out money to poor people you loan the money and they pay you back and they're proud it's theirs they're now empowered to go out and make a difference and encourage those other people to also rise out of poverty by their own effort question over here I think yes Ken Goldman from Silicon Valley I'm going to make a couple of comments actually I actually came because I do believe we have an issue here but I have to say honestly this is a very one-sided panel it's extremely one-sided I was surprised the way we create we created this panel well the conference is very one-sided can I talk please yeah yeah you you like you swear words too Jane thanks for I saw you yesterday lunch too it was quite good and we make our comments to swear words with anecdotes and so forth and all I've heard about here is talking about taxes I haven't seen anything in correlation of growth which I'll come back to it again and just a couple comments today the US basically has the lowest unemployment rate ever the lowest black unemployment rate ever lowest youth unemployment ever we've actually reduced poverty around the world no one's talking about that at all people are negated philanthropy just read a couple weeks ago the article on Bill Gates and what he's done in Africa and reduce the malaria reduce the polio so why don't we talk about that so really I have a question for the panel and yes I agree tax avoidance is probably a big issue probably a big issue we think but instead of taxes what else do you instead of redistributing wealth what are we talking about in terms of creating wealth you know frankly what people really want what really want is a dictate of a job and we've given more jobs in the US we've increased the minimum wage in California with a minimum wage going to $15 meaning I'll be a lot but it's up from seven so I like for the panel to talk about beyond taxes which every one of you have talked about the only thing you've talked about in this whole panel on inequality what can we really do to solve and help solve inequality over time beyond taxes can I look Shamina just since you're in the in the trenches on this I think maybe we could start with you listen I think there are a lot of points there but I think I'd like to just point to two concrete examples of sort of how we're approaching what you know income creation job creation and that's I don't know I'll give two private sector examples because I think actually one of the the areas that I'm seeing more and more of as people move from public to private private to public public to citizen sector and start to integrate the sectors is that there's a lot of private private momentum and I'll give you one example in Unilever has millions of supply chain of small shop owners around the world that create that have to create wealth for their families in their communities most of these are women they buy and sell products in small shops that behavior of buying and selling product is an enormous it it transcends something that Ms. Goodall again raised on microfinance is that when you lend in microfinance oftentimes your interest rate is 30 percent or 18 percent or 20 it's a really tough interest rate to have to pay back and there is a cycle of debt in some of these markets so what we were trying to do is say look can we take the buying and selling behavior of shop owners in the Unilever supply chain and use that as a proxy for credit as a proxy for collateral to allow them to borrow from banks regulated banks to at rates that regular shops get regular small businesses get to allow them to buy and sell product not what they can sell in a day but what can that they can sell in a week and allow them to have the dignity to create wealth for themselves and their families what we've seen in a very short period of time is that in a supply chain in Nairobi that has 40,000 we've already we've worked with about 16,000 and to work with Kenya Commercial Bank to say that are that has decided to use proxy for credit score so that these shop owners can get regular loans and what we've seen is in the marketplace a 30 percent increase on average in sales and that may not sound like a lot but to a small shop owner who has here today been living on four dollars a day or less when you start to see wealth creation in that respect you do start to see a difference in lives and that's the sort of thing that I talk about when I think we've been hearing a lot about or not talked a lot about about proximity and actually being proximate to some of these issues I don't know I know there's a lot of us who've been out in the field and out in the trenches but as somebody who's worked with nursing home workers on the front line in Detroit Michigan and seeing the lives that they've had to live and worked at the White House and worked for a corporation I can tell you that wealth creation without wisdom without some knowledge of keeping people at the center is lost and we will be lost I think when it gets back to a point that question from earlier which is there is this paradox tremendous growth in many parts of the world many people I mean China's example you know millions of people lifted into the middle class and yet inequality has been growing you know how do you reconcile growth and inequality at once okay I think it also depends on what you're counting the World Bank tells us that with this rate of inequality extreme inequality that we will not be able to eliminate to eradicate poverty extreme poverty by 2030 as has been promised unless that inequality is reduced Alicia has told us that this correlation between inequality and or rather equality and efficiency has now been disproved that you actually achieve sustained growth when you reduce inequality and the other way around so we need to now debunk the myths that you need first to achieve high growth before you can reduce inequality that actually when you reduce inequality you can achieve more sustained and faster growth that's one two we are we are talking we're not just talking about taxes but taxes are important yes we're talking about corporate taxes income tax inheritance tax capital gains tax all these wealth taxes being reduced and reduced and reduced to a point where they've been abolished in some countries we need to get fair taxation bill Gates himself says the most important responsibility of a rich person is to pay their fair share of taxes so that's we can't avoid talking about that but we also talk about tax evasion the loopholes we are in a digital economy but the tax system is from the 1920s it's full of loopholes that don't allow revenues to be collected and what happens when you don't collect them then you don't put money into people's health and education and you widen inequalities the gentleman who talked about who said we've just talked taxes and the jobs are there and there's low and unemployment rates are low let me tell you something we're talking about jobs but the quality of those jobs I've just told you about dollars in the United States who wears a diaper to work that's not a dignified job I can tell you about a company I went I I took a tax in Nairobi recently and I was charged the minimum charge I think would be that I was charged less than two dollars for a taxi ride where in the world do you go in the taxi for less than two dollars I asked the taxi driver he was from one of these companies I won't mention which I said how much are you getting out of this he said 20 must go to the global company that owns the network so I said then what about the rest said the rest I have to share with the owner of the taxi out of two dollars I asked him where he rents his home where he lives he said they rent a room three taxi drivers they sleep in turns six hours five hours because they none of them can afford to rent a room that's the job those are the jobs we are being told about that globalization is bringing jobs the quality of the jobs matter it matters these are the jobs of dignity in many countries workers no longer have a voice they are not allowed to unionize they are not allowed to negotiate for for salaries so we're talking about jobs but jobs that bring dignity we are talking about health care the world bank has told us that 3.4 billion people who earn 5.5 dollars a day are on the verge are just medical bill away from sinking into poverty they don't have health care they are just a crop failure away from sinking back into poverty they have no crop insurance so don't tell me about low levels of unemployment you are counting the wrong things you're not counting dignity of people you're counting exploited people I want to I want to ask Rutger one quick question and then I go to you just turning it to politics because I you know the the data are are complex about whether and where growth is raising wages for the poorest in in the world by some measures wages are going up but so is cost of living I mean what is an in doubt is that the the reality and perception of inequality is driving incredible political upheaval I mean it's you know remarkable to me this year at Davos how many of the world leaders we're talking about shaping global architecture the principal architects are are locked in their basements you know so many of the world leaders are back at home dealing with the upheaval caused by the topic we're talking about today and Rutger I just wanted your historical perspective on how how that how that plays out you know we we can debate the the data but the reality is the that we have a political world that is um under siege okay so let me give you both a historical and a personal perspective you know I was born in 98 so that was one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall and I grew up in the 90s when people believed that you know we had arrived at the end of history and that all that was left to solve was you know climate change and maybe poverty talk a little bit about inequality but that's it we you know we were all liberal democrats and and the rest of the world was was supposed to follow then we had the financial crash in 2008 now we've seen the rise of populists around the globe right Trump Bolsonaro we've seen Brexit and what gives me great hope right now is that there's a new generation that is actually waking up is actually waking up you know that it doesn't believe the myth anymore that the vast inequality we see today is just the force of nature you know an inevitable consequence of globalization or technology there's a new generation that just doesn't believe it anymore that sees that most most of the wealth that's you know that's being possessed by by many of the participants here has not been earned through hard work but been extracted so from workers who are doing the real work but not being paid a living wage so that that is what really gives me hope and that's I think what all these movements are about it's about people waking up and realizing that they've been sold a lie that's what's happening your question I think the yeah we go to you next alakash I'm right alakash I'm a writer basic income was briefly mentioned could I invite the participants to discuss that in greater detail and specifically address the biggest disadvantages as well as advantages I suppose a more succinct paraphrase of my question would be what is the cost of equality Alicia you want to yes and thank you for the question I think that the cost of equality would be to have education up to the tertiary education for all that's one cost we have costed it out secondly to have universal access to health which you have in developed countries in developing countries we don't nutrition and malnutrition the two the chronic and and this nutrition should be there in the first years of young child that's cost of equality for the future by the way and then the the third thing is labor inclusion I mean I understand that we can not only talk about taxes we also need to talk about jobs and decent jobs and decent jobs means to earn at least above the poverty line at least but we have to say that at least in Latin America 47% of the workers are informal and do not earn above the poverty line the poverty line means that you get your basic needs covered so for me the cost of equality and is to to to raise the basic income of people up to the poverty line that is to to make sure that they can go further so that is costed already we have the economics of that but let me also address the global shapers because I was also a global leader of tomorrow it was called of course we are the global leaders of yesterday and we are no longer the startups or the end drops but anyway but five things I would say think about the new development paradigm think about it closely we need a new development paradigm new patterns of consumption and production and the companies that are in Davos basically the companies in Davos are the ones who are thinking very profoundly on changes on consumption and production patterns I don't see that happening in the regions the companies that have their jurisdictions in my region do not think about this the man and women who are representing unilever for example I think unilever has a lot of clarity here but I want him Paul to come to my region and talk to his unilever people anyway but you see what I mean but the thing is we have to change the production and consumption patterns we have to protect the integrity of ecosystems of the few ecosystems we have left the the integrity is not to protect one plan or one three or one no no the the ecosystem itself each country will have to define which ecosystems are critical for that country thirdly oceans plastic let's get rid of plastic force I would say ask about for example there are companies here in Davos that are doing the electric battery alliance which I am part of I believe on electric mobility I believe they are going the right way but not to produce ask about the process because they are using cobalt is being produced in drc with with child labor so let's look at the process besides the outcomes and be compassion solidarity and equality it says time out on this screen alas thank you all for coming thanks to the panelists and Mr. H in particular see you