Odds are that if you’re reading this, you did not attend the 46th World Economic Forum that ran through Saturday in Davos, Switzerland. You’re not a banker or tycoon, celebrity or statesman, economist or development official or otherwise among 2,500 of the world’s economic elite.

Every year they show up in the chic ski resort town, challenging the Zurich air traffic control system with their private jets, to listen to earnest speeches during the day and network late into the night. If the world’s economic leaders were ever going to do something significant about the problems affecting the world’s poor and middle class, Davos might be where it started.

Two years ago, for example, the Davos elite were warned — in a study they commissioned — that the widening rich-poor income disparity presented a global threat second only to climate change. Did they go home and advocate for spending more on education and training? Did they advocate for tax reform and higher minimum wages? A few did. Others, not so much.

What happens in the Alps stays in the Alps.

Every year, right before the Davos conference, Oxfam, the U.K.-based anti-poverty organization, releases a new study of power and privilege. Five years ago, Oxfam reported that the world’s 388 richest people owned as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population. In 2014, that number was down to 85 rich families. This year it’s 62.

“The growing disparity between those with and without privilege and power is being fueled by tax havens, loopholes, and subsidies — things that working families don’t have access to,” Oxfam reported.

Meanwhile, back in Davos, participants were hoping to rub shoulders with likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Bono. A few were signing up for the “Refugee Simulation Experience,” where for an hour they’ll get to see what it’s like to live like a displaced person, albeit displaced to the basement of a Hilton hotel.

The big worries this year are the cratering Chinese economy, the refugee crisis as it affects the European economy and the global commodities glut. Income inequality will be worsened by all of these factors and more, but inequality, per se, is not a major agenda item.

Besides, what happens in Davos has little impact on political systems already captured by moneyed interests — that is, by the wealthy who want to protect their bottom lines ahead of everything else.

When people come home from the World Economic Forum advocating for a living wage, for affordable health care, environmental justice and a fair tax burden, then Davos will be more than a feel-good playground for plutocrats.

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch