Taiwan could find a report recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) helpful in devising strategies to narrow the widening income gap in the country, a government planning agency said.
The Council for Economic Planning and Development said the strategies introduced in the latest report by the OECD aimed at creating a more balanced distribution of income could serve as a valuable reference in addressing the issue.
REPORT
The organization’s report, Growing Unequal?, observed that income differentials in its member countries over the past 20 years had widened and analyzed factors that contributed to the situation.
The report pointed to a changing population structure and the impact of globalization as playing significant roles in the widening of the income gap, the council said.
Less access to information technology recorded among less educated or jobless households, for instance, accounted for the continual decline in their employment rate, the report showed.
Workers with higher education or more sophisticated skills, on the other hand, earned higher pay as well, causing the income gap to widen.
REDISTRIBUTION
The report proposed a redistribution strategy and a work strategy, which, in combination, could effectively narrow the differences, the council said.
The redistribution strategy refers to methods such as imposing higher marginal tax rates on the rich and providing subsidies to the poor, while the work strategy involves boosting employment to minimize the risk of poverty.
The report said the adoption of more proactive work policies would help narrow the gap.
The council said that OECD countries have pushed for work welfare policies in recent years as part of their efforts to assist low-income families in maintaining basic living standards.
Some programs, for example, have provided subsidies to employers as incentives to hire low-paid workers, the report said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
RSS