The world needs a more humane economic model that caters to all the sections of the society, noted an official yesterday at one of the panel discussions of the 140th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly.
“Our economies are rigged economies – rigged in favour of the super-rich at the expense of everyone else. We have today a concentration of wealth which we have not seen for a century. Oxfam data shows that 26 billionaires – mainly men by the way – own as much wealth as the world’s bottom 3.8 billion people,” said Nabil Ahmed of the Oxfam International, a global network fighting inequality around the world.
“The root cause of the political break-down we’re seeing lies is the dominant economic narrative of the last forty years”, he noted. “It is the story of excessive returns to capital at the expense of labour; the story of a race to the bottom on regulation, on controls to capital, on workers’ rights and on taxation and public spending; it’s the story of political capture”.
Ahmed was speaking at the panel discussion on ‘Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality’ which is the main theme for the 2019 UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
He also stated that the world needs to change and the parliamentarians have to grapple with the realities to provide better opportunities for all the segments of the society. Ahmed suggested that the world leaders have to think of new methods and solutions that will look into the mounting disproportionate wealth accumulation into some hands alone.
“To meet the ambition of the Sustainable Development Goals we must end this era of extreme inequality and extreme wealth – we must build a more human economic model,” elaborated Ahmed.
“We need new rules, new co-operation and new ideas”, stated Ahmed, emphasizing the importance of “quality, publicly-funded education and healthcare for all” which provides the “foundation of a dignified and functioning society”, and “more democratic models of business that give power and wealth to workers and suppliers”.
Nabeel Ahmed
