DAVOS MANIFESTO
vs.
OXFAM JANUARY 2023 BRIEFING PAPER, SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST
The revised 2020 Davos (aka, World Economic Forum/WEF) Manifesto sounds like a reasonable solution to the exploitative capitalism the developed world follows today. Nevertheless, like so much else meant to enable the super-rich to maintain their status and increase their already exorbitant and obscene wealth, it is a shadow play for what really happens behind the scenes. Unless, of course, you can pay the $100,000 + fee to be part of Davos.
One positive note from Davos is a great deal of vocal support for Ukraine. What that will actually mean on the ground remains to be known.
The main points of the Davos Manifesto, from their website, are:
- “The purpose of a company is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation. In creating such value, a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large. The best way to understand and harmonize the divergent interests of all stakeholders is through a shared commitment to policies and decisions that strengthen the long-term prosperity of a company.
- A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfils human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system. Performance must be measured not only on the return to shareholders, but also on how it achieves its environmental, social and good governance objectives. Executive remuneration should reflect stakeholder responsibility.
- A company that has a multinational scope of activities not only serves all those stakeholders who are directly engaged, but acts itself as a stakeholder–together with governments and civil society–of our global future. Corporate global citizenship requires a company to harness its core competencies, its entrepreneurship, skills and relevant resources in collaborative efforts with other companies and stakeholders to improve the state of the world.” [i]
According to Peter Goodman, global economics correspondent for The New York Times: “More than anything, Davos is a prophylactic against change, an elaborate reinforcement of the status quo served up as the pursuit of human progress.” [ii]As much as I’m a champion of the words matter concept, I need to add “words in the pursuit of truth and understanding.” The words in the Davos Manifesto are a smokescreen to the pursuit of truth and understanding. I’m not aware of a single Fortune 500 (or more) corporation that acts on the words of that document.
Davos is a sham if you measure it by its manifesto. Nevertheless, much work is accomplished there, but nothing that will further sustainability, human progress, or economic equality. Oil and energy deals are common, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there were arms deals too, BUT I have no evidence of that! The fight against democracy was in evidence, as, according to The Wall Street Journal: “US Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ind, AZ) defended her decision to oppose Democrats’ efforts to end the 60-vote filibuster threshold during a panel at the World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a stance that helped sink the party’s efforts to pass voting-access laws last year.”[iii] Afterward, she and Joe Manchin, US Senator (Dem, WV) on the same panel, who voted with Sinema and Republicans to squash the Democratic attempt to end the filibuster, and, thus, the Voting Rights Bill, high fived at their success. I did a lot of research on the filibuster, which can be read in my blog on this website.
OXFAM, based in Oxford, UK, is a global nonprofit focused on both researching data and solutions to economic justice and inequality. Their January 2023 Briefing Paper, Survival of the Richest, is an eye-opening fact-based account of the extent of global financial inequality and it’s impact on increases in poverty and hunger. Here is a statistic from that report that puts the entire situation in perspective:
“Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, paid a ‘true tax rate’ of just over 3% from 2014 to 2018.[iv]1
Aber Christine, a market trader in Northern Uganda who sells rice, flour and soya, makes $80 a month in profit. She pays a tax rate of 40%.[v]
“We are living through an unprecedented moment of multiple crises. Tens of millions more people are facing hunger. Hundreds of millions more face impossible rises in the cost of basic goods or heating their homes. Climate breakdown is crippling economies and seeing droughts, cyclones and floods force people from their homes. Millions are still reeling from the continuing impact of COVID-19, which has already killed over 20 million people. Poverty has increased for the first time in 25 years. At the same time, these multiple crises all have winners. The very richest have become dramatically richer and corporate profits have hit record highs, driving an explosion of inequality.
- Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth–nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
- Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day, even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.
- Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022, paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders, while over 800 million people went to bed hungry.[vi]
- Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes, and half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
- A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.”
[i] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-2020-the-universal-purpose-of-a-company-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/
[ii] https://www.semafor.com/article/01/17/2023/semafor-davos-daily-liu-he-and-jared-kushner-in-davos?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[iii] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/davos2023/card/kyrsten-sinema-defends-stance-on-filibuster-high-fives-joe-manchin-EBaZnIepJQLBX3nVqCi1
[iv] ProPublica. (2021, June 8). The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax. https: www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
[v] OXFAM in Uganda, Fiscal Justice for Women and Girls project.
[vi] FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. (2022). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022: Repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable. Rome: FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc0639en