Posted on 05/02/2008 8:21:11 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...The globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes. It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety...
But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world.
Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few decades. Capital does indeed flow around the world. But as Pankaj Ghemawat of the Harvard Business School has observed, 90 percent of fixed investment around the world is domestic. Companies open plants overseas, but that’s mainly so their production facilities can be close to local markets.
Nor is the globalization paradigm even accurate when applied to manufacturing. Instead of fleeing to Asia, U.S. manufacturing output is up over recent decades. As Thomas Duesterberg of Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a research firm, has pointed out, the U.S.’s share of global manufacturing output has actually increased slightly since 1980.
The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Brooks concludes that globalization means the intelligence and training of the worker is the final determining factor in success. No politician can rescue us from that.
Not a day goes by on FR and elsewhere that someone demands we do someithing about foreign trade and foreign competition. The politicians oblige and place themselves as generals in the unnecessary trade wars they and their constituents have waged.
Our tax policy punishes manufacturers, but Brooks a looter in his soul couldn’t uncover that for his life.
Globalization is a fancy code word for Socialist wealth redistribution.
“Globalization is a fancy code word for Socialist wealth redistribution.”
Yep!
Besides the misplaced economic fears of globalization, there are also cultural fears, which is why the cultural conservatives are opposed.
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