Making a difference

I have written on this before but thought it would serve as a good topic to re-visit - the importance of making a difference to the societies in which we live and work. It is absolutely essential that many of us we see how lucky we are to be living lives the way we do. Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, that's less than $1.25 a day. 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day.

The unequal distribution of global wealth is even more alarming. 20% of the world's population own 83% of the world's wealth and the balance 80% have only 17%. What is worse is that the bottom 60% own only 6.6% of the world's wealth.  With this kind of disparity in income and wealth distribution, we will not get anything other than unhappiness. This results in theft, unrest, civil strife, terrorism, cheating, etc.

So, why do we have the problem of people not wanting to share a small part of their wealth so that others can benefit and pick up their lives to an extent where they become self-reliant? There seems to be few trusted mechanisms that can do that. There are few mechanisms that help get people educated and then get a job. There is an urgent need to re-skill people and get them jobs that are relevant in this fast changing world. Unless this happens, we will not see equitable growth.

Given changes in the economy, many skills just keep dropping off the radar or are not compensated well. This results in people not being able to earn a decent wage for the work that they do. The option would be to keep track of changes in skill requirements and work with the Governments of the day to ensure that they allocate budgets to get people trained on these skill sets. 

The other issue is an ageing population that is unable to support itself. With better health standards in most countries where the population is ageing, it would be worth the while to look at increasing the age of retirement so that people can work for a longer time. However, this could cause problems for organizations to employ youngsters who are coming in to the job market. One option that has worked is where children care for their parents and support them financially.

It is not an easy problem to solve...else, we would have solved this by now. Societies should stop thinking of jobs as an entitlement. This is something that I see in many countries and this has to stop. The Governments of the day must think through changing skill needs of the world and ensure that people can get that additional training to morph their skill sets to meet the new world requirements. I have heard of a community in Germany that faced a situation where everyone in the small town was laid-off. They had superior engineering skills. Today, they are one of the world's best producers of ocean based wind turbines that requires complicated engineering skills. They morphed their skill sets and this skill has now become relevant in the new world that they face. When jobs are thought of as entitlement, then organizations take them to countries that will give them a better cost structure. Economics becomes a leveller.

It is, therefore, the job of every person to start looking to see how each of us can make a difference to the society we live in.  Given the significant level of disparity of incomes and wealth, if every one of us who lives well above the poverty line makes it a point to educate 4 people and help 4 people to find a job that helps break the vicious poverty cycle in which they are stuck, we can change this world significantly. The price we pay for terrorism, theft, unrest, civil strife, etc. is huge and somehow we seem to have accepted it as a way of life. We need not. Let us think for a better tomorrow and help change the societies in which we live.