Gerard Geijtenbeek from Roldo Rent Holding BV in the Netherlands looks at the trends driving the international moving industry and how COVID-19 has accelerated them.
Of course, COVID-19 has badly affected the removal sector. The international removal market has nearly come to a standstill and if corporate movers can work at all, they must only do so with precautionary measures, just like their colleagues in the private sector. And although businesses may have survived the first period - with or without government aid - the future is simply unknown.
Income inequality, insecurity and popularism
Branko Milanovic, a Serbian American economist, working at universities in New-York, Luxembourg, London and Barcelona has been well-known for his studies of inequality for more than 30 years. His ‘Elephant Curve’ shows how, although global prosperity is continuously better distributed, the difference between rich and poor is getting bigger.
Poor people from Asia, Africa and South America are rising from their dead-end existence and enjoy more and more prosperity as a result of increased production. The world's rich are getting richer as return on shares and real estate rises and, not unimportantly, taxes shift from wealth to labour. The middle classes of the western world, however, see no real change in income or possessions. But the things they have come to think of as certainties, are being broken down: there are fewer secure jobs, less social security they can rely on, fewer stable family relationships and secondary education is insufficient ...