Switzerland: Inequality may spark unrest, Davos elites worry - by David Cay Johnston

Davos Economic Forum: the have's versus the have not's

There’s trouble coming as the chasm between the richest of the rich and everyone else continues to widen. So says a report prepared by the World Economic Forum, the nonprofit foundation that hosts its annual conference of business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, popular with the world’s billionaires.

The forum’s 14th annual assessment of risks, issued just ahead of the Davos gathering, makes clear that social instability, whether measured in mere riots or in bloody revolutions, is the likely outcome of increasing inequality.

The report speaks of a lost generation of young people worldwide who are finishing school only to find a paucity of jobs, which in turn creates pressure to lower wages.

“Widening gaps between the richest and poorest citizens threaten social and political stability as well as economic development,” the report said.

Three of the report sponsors are specialists in pricing risk, the American insurance broker and risk advisory firm Marsh & McLennan and the European insurers Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance Group.

The four-day Davos conference, which begins today, will draw six dozen or so billionaires this year as well as several hundred other people rich enough to have their own jets. Davos will also draw a far larger crowd of government officials, vendors of financial services and journalists.

That those at the apex of the global economy brought forth this report should end the debate over whether inequality poses a problem, but it won’t.

To those who deny inequality is a problem, or herald inequality as an economic good, the report can be dismissed as simply the claims of an interest group. And why trust what billionaires say any more than what a minority of economists, sociologists and writers (including me) has been pointing out for two decades?

Read more: Inequality may spark unrest, Davos elites worry | Al Jazeera America