Shared Growth; Enhancing Economic Development

Now thats what I call true teamwork.

Further to my previous article on shared-growth, here we have an article addressing the issue of the declining middle income group in South Korea. Let's give this a thought for a moment; the decline could be caused by;

1) The growth of either class outpacing each other or;

2) The substantial decline in the population growth of the middle class group.

But logically, I find reason 1) to make more sense in this case as we have large conglomerates moving their operations overseas - depriving the middle income group of growth. Can we blame them for doing so for the sake of higher profitability and productivity? The public might throw a fit; why dont they explain it to the shareholders of the companies then.

But one thing I really liked about the article was how it mentioned that Korea has developed this perception that "money would bring happiness"; prevalent in its society due to long working hours and high suicide rates, disregarding any other values which would contribute to an overall better and higher quality of living. I couldn't agree more on this. Their substantial economic growth has indeed resulted in them becoming money grubbing people; a philosophy they have picked up from the Yanks.

Coming back to shared growth, it seems that there are a number of companies who have started to adopt this policy, as can be seen in this article. The importance of SMEs or Trading Companies in the economy of Japan can be seen through their stringent regulations in protecting them from larger corporations, resulting the birth of the term Sogo Shosha - relfecting how the people and government view these small players as an integral part of the econonmy, unlike South Korea.

So in essence, developing pro-shared growth policies without a doubt would foster the economic growth of a country, creating a symbiotic win-win relationship between the smaller companies and their larger counterparts. But as I mentioned in my earlier article; would it be possible to implement? Implementing is one thing, changing people's mind is another.

Bottom line, we'll just have to wait and see.