Since 1971 “World Economic Forum”(WEF) has been holding an annual most expensive carnival at Davos, the super luxury ski resort in Switzerland. Here Billionaires talk to millionaires and pretend to discuss how to end inequality and other world problems in most luxurious settings with most lavish & expensive food, wines, champagne and hard liquor served for them! 2,500 participants from 90 countries, world’s richest, most powerful and downright famous about 0.00004% of the world’s 7.4 Billion population deciding the world’s fate behind a curtain of extremely tight security, secrecy and doublespeak. Since than these rich have become more rich and poor has become more poor. According to Oxfam in 2016, only world’s 8 richest headed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates were worth $426bn (£350bn), equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people. According to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report published in Nov. 2017, “The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140 Trillion.”

Jody Williams (the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner) said, “These guys just want to convince people that they care about others, which they don’t, and then get back to making money as fast as they can,”

Larry Summers an economist & former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton once told a reporter that Davos is fundamentally an exercise in corporate speed-dating. “Everyone comes because everyone else comes.” A hedge-fund manager or a C.E.O. can pack into a few days the dozens of meetings—with other executives, with heads of state or their deputies, with non-governmental organizations whose phone calls might otherwise have been ignored—that it would normally take months to arrange and tens of thousands of Gulfstream miles to attend. They conduct these compressed and occasionally fruitful couplings, the so-called bilateral meetings, either in private rooms that the WEF has set aside for this purpose or in hotel rooms, restaurants, and hallways. All that’s missing is the hourly rate.

This yeas the 4 day exclusive carnival for the world’s richest and most powerful was held from January 23rd to 26th 2018. Membership and partnership fees range from 60,000 Swiss francs ($62,243) to 600,000 Swiss francs (around $622,000) “depending on the level of engagement.” Every participant has to pay extra $27,000, a fee over and above the membership or partnership fees. That still does not include Hotel accommodation and air fare. On top of that Participant has to be only from the world’s top thousand companies.

Every participant wears a color coded badge based on a series of closely guarded criteria. The color of the badge denotes a role and a degree of access for the participant. The holographic is the top badge for senior government policy makers and the coveted pass is the white one that grants delegates free rein. A Strategic Partner gets a blue dot on the white and has access to an exclusive lounge. The Green is for “Entourage” with very limited access and Media Reporters wear “Orange” and can’t get in a lot of places. Apart from fees, WEF also accepts grants, donations and legacies. They also subsidize the scores of academics, scientists, artists, journalists, and N.G.O. chiefs who attend for free. Everyone, whether he pays or not, has to be invited. WEF Founder Chairman Klaus Schwab says, “You cannot buy your way in, it’s a large club meeting and you do need an invitation!”

The man behind this annual super luxury 4 days carnival with a fancy theme rather a fancy slogan for each year for billionaires and millionaires by invitation only; is an German academic Klaus Schwab. He is the founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that he started in 1971 as European Management Forum and in 1987 changed the name to ‘World Economic Forum”. His salary and benefits are undisclosed but average employee at WEF makes over 200,000 Swiss francs per year and operate from a swanky super luxurious Head Quarter in Geneva. Over the years WEF has also become a very successful money-making enterprise, with revenues of 280,000 Swiss francs and a surplus of 1.2 million Swiss francs in the financial year from July 2016 to June 2017.

Klaus Schwab here and there do indulge in stage managed self-criticism. In 2012 when the theme of the WEF was “The Great Transformation” he said “Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us.” “We have sinned.” He also spoke of the danger of “intergenerational conflict.” However, the benefits of economic growth remain elusive for many.

For the 2018 WEF theme “Strengthening Cooperation in a Fractured World”  in Sep. 2017, he wrote in a WEF statement that “Our collective inability to secure inclusive growth and preserve our scarce resources puts multiple global systems at risk simultaneously.” “Our first response must be to develop new models for cooperation that are not based on narrow interests but on the destiny of humanity as a whole.”

280 sessions many of them were closed door exclusive meetings, even the media is not allowed in them. As you can imagine, with that many meetings, surrounded by varying degrees of secrecy outsiders have no clue what is going on behind closed doors. The public ones, which anyone can attend are just for media hype. The closed ones; which only those participants with a white badge can attend and then the totally private ones that you don’t even know have happened. Those are where the big deals are discussed, behind closed doors.

On top of that often, there are dozens of private parties by invitation from the host only, organized every day by big corporations for their clients or head of the state or its officials making a sales pitch to CEO’s of big corporations to come and set up their shops in their countries. Indeed these are the most lavish and the best dinner parties in the world with world renowned music bands or stars from the entertainment industry to entertain the guest. This years well-known participants include actors Cate Blanchett, Shah Rukh Khan and musician Paul Williams and singer Elton John and few well known music bands.

WEF/Davos Effect on common Americans: USA is always represented at WEF carnival at Davos by the largest contingent of super rich and powerful. This year again USA ranked First with 840 participants! After 47 years of participation at WEF by the richest and most powerful of USA; 78% of the U.S. population now lives paycheck to paycheck, with essentially zero savings. CEOs, tech entrepreneurs, and other members of the “1%”—are doing exceptionally great. There has never been a better time for wealthy Americans! But the truth is, for majority of Americans, the situation is getting much, much worse every year. The middle class; the most politically and economically stable part of the American society is being pushed down into upper lower class by the rich and powerful.
According to Productivity Pay tracker chart, Since 1973, pay and productivity have diverged.
Productivity has grown 5.9x more than worker’s hourly pay

Change 1948–1973: Productivity +96.7% Hourly pay +91.3%
Change 1973–2016: Productivity +73.7% Hourly pay +12.5%

The income, wages, and wealth generated over the last four decades have failed to “trickle down” to the vast majority largely because policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and power got the 90% share that has exacerbated inequality. In essence, rising inequality has prevented potential pay growth from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result has been wage stagnation.

According to Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation increased from $1.5 million in 1978 to $16.3 million in 2014, or 997 percent, a rise almost double stock market growth. Over the same time period, a typical worker’s wages grew very little: the annual compensation, adjusted for inflation, of the average private-sector production and nonsupervisory worker (comprising 82 percent of total payroll employment) rose from $48,000 in 1978 to just $53,200 in 2014, an increase of only 10.9 percent. Due to this unequal growth, average top CEOs now make over 300 times what typical workers earn.

From East to West and from North to South at WEF, no one said any thing on the ongoing Israeli brutal occupation of Palestine, stealing of its land and human genocide of Palestinians since 1967. This is despite the fact that Israel is the only country in the world that is illegally occupying another country in the world. They did lip service to the rising global economic inequality, poverty and hunger, human rights and freedom of free speech violations, mistreatment of women, environmental degradation and widespread armed conflicts. No one from the elite club of the world’s richest & most powerful, called for the “Re-modelling of the Capitalism” to fight all these problems in the universe.

All these years of WEF, if political leaders could not be persuaded to change their minds on basic human rights, freedom of speech, human and equal status for women, environment protection and stop to widespread armed conflicts And if billionaires could not be persuaded to pledge money to eradicate rising economic inequality, global poverty and hunger, with the conversations and meetings they have had there, the WEF have failed miserably. So it is safe to say that, in terms of the WEF’s stated commitment of “improving the state of the world,” is nothing but gross misrepresentation rather pure lie.

On top of that the problem with WEF is; it is fundamentally illegitimate because it has no democratic basis whatsoever. It is not transparent because they do not open up their books to the public and they allow secret meetings that are not even open to some of the participants or televised for public or open to media scrutiny. On top of that the richest participants at the WEF have let down the humanity by allowing massive global economic inequality.

“Davos Man” phrase was originally coined by the Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington because the vast majority of WEF members were originally men; the term later expanded to include the Davos woman. Davos man/Davos woman refers to the members of the WEF a collection of leaders from a variety of fields from around the world. Huntington argued in his 2004 article “Dead Souls” The Denationalization of the American Elite” that the Davos man’s view of a global identity is not shared by the majority of common citizens. He decried a post-national wealthy globe-trotting elite. “Davos Man” can be either a capitalist oppressor or a Commie conspirator. Either way, he is a windbag, a pedant, and a hypocrite.

(Source: EPI analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis data https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)

New Jersey, US based Devendra Makkar is a social activist and author. He can be reached at davemakkar@yahoo.com