thebigp

Taylor Nicole Rogers --INSIDER
Jan 21, 2020, 1:31 PM
• The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), or Davos as it's more commonly known, kicked off Tuesday in Switzerland.
• Davos will have dozens of billionaires and heads of state in attendance, but few women.
• The Swiss government budgeted $8.3 million for the conference's security costs in 2017 alone.
That's exactly what the World Economic Forum (WEF) does with its annual meeting. The four-day conference began Tuesday in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. This year, attendees include US President Donald Trump, climate activist Greta Thunberg, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Business Insider reported.
22: The percent of Davos attendees who were women in 2019. Davos has long been plagued by criticism over the lack of diversity among attendees, the BBC reported. As a result, the WEF enacted a quota system mandating that companies bring at least one woman for every man in 2011, according to The Guardian.
Davos also has insufficient representation of African and Asian markets, former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and Foreign Policy magazine editor David Rothkopf told CBS News.
53: The number of heads of state slated to attend Davos in 2020.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Donald Trump will be in attendance, Reuters reported. Trump gave a rambling speech Tuesday, saying "America is winning again like never before," but not mentioning his impeachment, Business Insider reported.
119: The number of billionaires slated to attend Davos in 2020. Approximately 5% of the conference's 2,000-person guest list are billionaires, Bloomberg reported. Marc Benioff, Jamie Dimon, Sheryl Sandberg, and Stephen Schwarzman are all scheduled to be there.
309: The number of private jets that flew into two Davos-area airports during the 2019 conference. Davos attendees are frequently criticized for flying across the globe on private jets to discuss the perils of c*****e c****e, CNN Business reported. "I think it's very insane and weird that people come here in private jets to discuss c*****e c****e. It's not reasonable," Thunberg told CNN at Davos in 2019.
The WEF purchases carbon offset credits to offset all attendees' flights, but such programs can have mixed results, according to CNN Business.
60,000: The number of Swiss francs it costs to be a member of the World Economic Forum ($62,000). While you do have to be a member to attend, admission is not included in the membership fee, according to the BBC. Anyone coming to represent a company is charged 27,000 Swiss francs ($28,000) to attend, while activists and political leaders can come free of charge.
This sum also only covers the lowest tier of WEF membership, the BBC reported. The higher tiers have annual fees ranging up to 600,000 Swiss francs ($620,000). 8,000,000: The number of Swiss francs that Switzerland budgeted for security during the four-day event in 2017 ($8.3 million).
The resort town is a "veritable fortress" during the event, according to The New York Times' Michael J. de la Merced and Russell Goldman. There are rooftop snipers and airport style-security at the main conference center, the BBC reported.

Millionaires join Davos protests, demanding ‘tax us now’
Group call for fresh taxation of wealthy to tackle cost of living crisis and gulf between rich and poor
Sun 22 May 2022 07.13 EDT---BY Arwa Mahdawi
Columnist, Guardian US

A group of millionaires have joined protests against the World Economic Forum gathering of the business and political elite in Davos, Switzerland, demanding that governments “tax us now” to tackle the burgeoning gulf between rich and poor.
The unlikely protesters, who describe themselves as “patriotic millionaires”, called on world leaders attending the annual conference on Sunday to immediately introduce fresh taxes on the wealthy in order to tackle the “cost of living scandal playing out in multiple nations around the world”.
The charity Oxfam recently said rising ine******y could push as many as 263 million more people into extreme poverty in 2022, reversing decades of progress.
Phil White, a former business consultant and member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, said: “While the rest of the world is collapsing under the weight of an economic crisis, billionaires and world leaders meet in this private compound to discuss turning points in history.
“It’s outrageous that our political leaders listen to those who have the most, know the least about the economic impact of this crisis, and many of whom pay infamously little in taxes. The only credible outcome from this conference is to tax the richest and tax us now. Tax the delegates attending Davos 2022.”
The protest comes as it was revealed that there were now a record 177 billionaires in the UK, with a combined fortune of £653bn.
At the same time more than 250,000 UK households are predicted to slide into destitution next year because of soaring food and energy bills. That would take the total number in extreme poverty to about 1.2 million, unless the government acts to help the poorest families hit by the huge rise in energy prices, according to the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR).
Marlene Engelhorn, another “patriotic millionaire” at the protest, said the only solution to “gross ine******y” was to demand that governments “tax me, tax the rich”.
Engelhorn, an heir to the founders of the BASF chemical company, who co-founded the #taxmenow initiative, said: “As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of wealth my whole life, I know how skewed our economy is and I cannot continue to sit back and wait for someone, somewhere, to do something. I feel there is no option left for us other than to take action.
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“Our governments continue to do nothing to address gross ine******y and instead meet behind closed doors in this spectacle of private wealth. We have hit the end of the line when another quarter of a billion people will be pushed into extreme poverty this year. It’s time to rebalance the world. It’s time to tax the rich.”
The theme of this year’s WEF meeting in Davos – the first-in-person gathering in more than two years, because of the p******c – is “working together, restoring trust”.
Djaffar Shalchi, a Danish multimillionaire engineer and property developer, said: “You don’t win people’s trust by holding events like Davos, where the world’s rich and powerful meet behind layers of security. The most significant thing Davos participants could do to actually win people’s trust is to acknowledge that the wealth and privilege they represent and protect, is incompatible with a world where everyone can live full and prosperous lives.”
The year is 2033. Elon Musk is no longer one of the richest people in the world, having haemorrhaged away his fortune trying to make Twitter profitable. Which, alas, hasn’t worked out too well: only 420 people are left on the platform. Everyone else was banned for not laughing at Musk’s increasingly desperate jokes.
In other news, Pete Davidson is now dating Martha Stewart. Donald Trump is still threatening to run for president. And British tabloids are still churning out 100 articles a day about whether Meghan Markle eating lunch is an outrageous snub to the royal family.
Obviously I have no idea what the world is going to look like in a decade. But here’s one prediction I feel very confident making: without a free and fearless press the future will be bleak. Without independent journalism, democracy is doomed. Without journalists who hold power to account, the future will be entirely shaped by the whims and wants of the 1%.
A lot of the 1% are not big fans of the Guardian, by the way. Donald Trump once praised a Montana congressman who body-slammed a Guardian reporter. Musk, meanwhile, has described the Guardian, as “the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth.” I’m not sure there is any greater compliment.
I am proud to write for the Guardian. But ethics can be expensive.