Inequality Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Is Thursday becoming the new Friday in Britain? Under Keir Starmer’s Labour government, UK workers can request a four-day compressed week. More than 90% of participating businesses in the UK decided to stick with a four-day workweek after a successful trial in 2022; some even made the change permanent.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Over the past seven decades, India’s income inequality has transformed significantly, with stark divergences between rural and urban areas. These changes highlight contrasting socio-economic trajectories and reflect the successes and shortcomings of policy efforts to address disparities.

The sight of celebrity mansions and movie landmarks reduced to ashes can make it seem like the wildfires roaring through the Los Angeles area affected a constellation of movie stars

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India’s economic growth story has been impressive. Gross domestic product (GDP) is expanding, corporate profits are looking up and the country is asserting itself as a global economic powerhouse.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. How do you get blood out of white keds? The question that came frequently to my mind while watching the new season of Squid Game on Netflix, where players routinely walk on the remains of vanquished players, rubber soles squelching against blood and hardwood. How do their white shoes stay spotless? Or are the players simply given a fresh batch of canvas sneakers before each game? This is not implausible, given how the satire—where debt-ridden contestants put lives on the line in the vain hope of earning millions—seems to be budgeted, but I didn’t think about cleaning canvas at all in season 1.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When someone says something that sounds politically correct, you may doubt whether they really mean it. But when someone advocates an idea that is so out of tune with the current reality and changing times, there is no doubt they mean what they say.

Netflix’s Squid Game stands as the platform’s most-watched series, generating a staggering $900 million empire. However, its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, endured over a decade of rejection and financial hardship before the show’s groundbreaking success. At one point, Hwang even sold his $675 laptop to make ends meet, highlighting the sacrifices behind his vision.

State Bank of India (SBI).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India’s latest survey of household consumption expenditure, carried out from August 2023 to July 2024, found a decline in the “Gini coefficient" of consumption inequality since the same period of 2022-23.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Daron Acemoglu, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who recently won the Nobel Prize in economics, worries that artificial intelligence will worsen income inequality and not do all that much for productivity. His friend and colleague David Autor is more hopeful, believing that AI could do just the opposite.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As we come to the end of the year, I want to draw attention to a debate that ought to have received greater attention. In August, Indermit Gill, World Bank’s chief economist, shocked everyone by arguing that on current trends, it would take India 75 years to achieve a quarter of the United States’ per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

Consumption inequality in rural as well as urban areas declined during August 2023-July 2024 period as compared to a year ago, according to the latest Household Consumption Expenditure Survey released on Friday.

Jeff Bezos' suggestion in a recent NYT interview that the world's richest be listed not by the fortunes they have amassed, but by the wealth they have created for others is an interesting take on the debate over rising inequality. It's also a new, legitimate take on what it means to be wealthy. In the process of making a couple of hundred billion dollars for Bezos, Amazon has made its investors richer by over $2 tn, perhaps a truer indication of wealth-creation.

«Congress has apologised for the Emergency but you are silent on various things you have done… Congress toppled elected governments, but you divided our state into two Union Territories, which was unnecessary,» he said. Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation MP Raja Ram Singh named activists like Stan Swamy, who was jailed in the Bhima Koregaon case and died in the prison, Umar Khalid, Gulfisha and Meeran Haider, who have been arrested on the allegations of links with the 2020 Delhi riots.

When Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivers her fall economic statement on Monday she’ll need to spin a good story. It won’t be easy. The deficit for this fiscal year is expected to running much higher than the $40.1 billion she promised, maybe even over $60 billion, crashing through one of her fiscal “guardrails.”

World Competition Day 2024, co-hosted by leading Indian think tank CUTS International, UNCTAD, and the WTO, convened global experts at the WTO headquarters to discuss the critical intersection of trade, competition, and inequality. The event raised the question as to how trade and competition policies can be designed and deployed to address deepening socio-economic inequalities. Pradeep S. Mehta, Secretary General of CUTS International, opened the discussions by highlighting how trade policy and competition policy can deal with economic inequalities, both among nations and within nations. He called for strengthened efforts to address these issues through global cooperation. Moderated by Suddha Chakravartti, Director of CUTS International, Geneva, the event featured insights from esteemed experts, including Roberta Piermartini (WTO), Vincent Martenet (University of Lausanne), Elizabeth Gachuiri (UNCTAD), and Kondwani Kaonga (COMESA Competition Commission). Discussions explored the role of trade in fostering inclusiveness between and within economies. While trade has contributed significantly to income convergence between nations, the benefits have often been unevenly distributed within economies. Complementary policies, such as education, income redistribution, and robust competition enforcement, were identified as essential to ensure inclusiveness at all levels.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Till recently, the digital frontier looked boundless, a perfect virtual world where human interaction and the exchange of ideas were encouraged and democratized. With the rise of AI tools, the internet is witnessing several disconcerting trends.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As India strides toward the vision of a Viksit Bharat or developed India, education emerges as the cornerstone of this transformation. It is not merely a means for individual advancement, but a foundational force that drives economic growth, social progress and national development.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Three-quarters of a century after freedom from British rule, Nehruvian policies continue to animate debates on the extent to which they aided or hobbled the emergence of India’s economy. Even before we made a decisive shift in 1991 to reduce the state’s role, a leftist critique sought to skewer the policy choices of our formative years for investing in elite education at the cost of mass learning.

America’s wealthiest have long urged each other to give away more money.

Republicans swept to power on Election Day and now control the House, the Senate and the White House, with plans for an ambitious 100-day agenda come January