The great divide: The richest 1% are likely to control more than half of the globe’s total wealth by next year, the charity Oxfam reported in a study released today. As The New York Times reports, the warning about deepening global inequality comes just as the world’s business elite prepare to meet this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The 80 wealthiest people in the world altogether own $1.9 trillion, the report finds, nearly the same amount shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s income scale. And the richest 1% of the population, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the world’s total wealth, a share that is also increasing. Read the full story.
Come together: Speaking ahead of this week’s annual gathering of some 2,500 of the world’s financial and political elite at the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, the founder of the event’s organizing group, World Economic Forum, says leaders must better coordinate their actions if they want to effectively confront risks from terrorism, global conflicts and economic volatility. Klaus Schwab tells The Associated Press “we have to confront those very dangerous developments” through international cooperation. He says that economically “the big risk actually now is that the world moves into a cycle of deflation.” Meanwhile, USA Today reports this year’s gathering of the global elite comes as the world is on the fringe of collective nervous breakdown. Read the full story.
Taking the edge off: A new study recently published in the British Medical Journal says working long hours could be driving us to drink too much alcohol. The study—which as The Washington Post reports is a “meta-analysis” of other published research that included more than 400,000 people—found that those working beyond the standard 40 hours per week were more likely to drink risky levels of booze. They defined “risky” as more than 14 drinks a week for women, or more than 21 drinks a week for men. The review examined two groups of studies. One showed that people with more than a 40-hour work week were generally more likely to drink heavily than those with regular hours. The other group found that those working between 49 and 54 hours a week had the biggest risk of starting to overindulge. Read the full story.
