Depends on where you're sitting.
I recently thought of Thomas Friedman's 2005 book The World is Flat that told us, like we didn't already know, that we're living squarely in the Age of Globalization. And that reminded me of 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot's warning that "that giant sucking sound you hear" will be American jobs being sucked south and eventually overseas if the US passed the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Perot lost, Clinton and Congress passed NAFTA, and he (Perot) was essentially proven correct. New industries have since been created to make up for many of the lost jobs, but it's been an ongoing gut-wrenching transition.
International trade has been around for thousands of years, but things really kicked into high gear after WWII when America's revved-up wartime economy had the capacity to produce much more than we could consume at home and the world found itself with an abundance of surplus cargo ships.
At first lots of our "stuff" went over there (thanks in large part to a Europe rebuilt by the Marshall Plan), and a few early VW Beetles and assorted cheap junk began coming back over here. By-and-large, though, we were the big international trade winners. Payback has been hell ever since.
The irreversible tipping point came in the 1990's when the world's telecommunications companies grossly over-estimated the future demand for new world-wide fiber-optic cables. Rates charged due to the glut of new capacity fell through the floor. Now it wasn't just merchandise that was flowing back and forth across oceans, but ideas, aided by the fledgling internet, too.
Supporters of globalization say it's been a good thing because the choice of goods available to us here has multiplied exponentially, while costs have come way down. Others say prices had to come down in order for us to afford them as the purchasing power of American middle class consumers has been essentially stagnant for the past 20 years.
I personally don't see globalization as having been particularly kind to the American middle class, all things considered. Sure, we have more "stuff", but at what price? (Globalization isn't just about ideas and goods, but the flow of capital and jobs, too.)
I suppose whether globalization has overall been a good or bad thing (for Americans) will ultimately have to be reviewed over a number of decades by future historians, but from where I'm sitting today I see it as a prime example of unintended consequences run amok.
Regardless of what historians determine, all I know is the Globalization Genie isn't going back into the bottle.
More on this subject tomorrow. (Another snoozer, right?)
S
The good part of globalization is that I can get a blender for $10 from Wal-Mart. The bad part is if you were working for the company that used to make blenders you're probably out of work now.
ReplyDeleteThe problem has always been as we dump these manufacturing and telecommunications jobs overseas what are we replacing them with? Especially if you were working in a factory for 20 years it's hard to go train for another career.
I'm not qualified to render an opinion on globalization, but I will say that the US doesn't do a good job of negotiating trade deals. I hear that in Japan an apple can cost as much as eight dollars but Washington State can't sell them cheap apples because of tariffs and trade agreements. This while Japanese cars flood into our country. We also face difficulties exporting US rice to Asia.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Stephen - globalization as a concept may not be such a bad thing. It's the uneven playing field that screws us. If we import something, it should be from places that have the same environmental protections, wages, and business rules.
ReplyDeleteIf we are importing goods then we should be exporting the same amount, but we seem to be in the position of importing everything to get the low prices while at the same time not able to afford the low prices because all our jobs have been shipped overseas.
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