Skip to main content

Comment: The Economist's Special Report on Globalization

By

With protectionist and isolationist sentiments rising around the world, this week's special report on globalization by The Economist is timely and well worth a read.
Yes, globalization has left many behind, particularly those working in the manufacturing sector of wealthy Western nations. A growing body of research shows that for those who lose their jobs to trade, the negative effect can persist for a lifetime.
The benefits of trade are often more diffuse and felt less acutely. Yet, in the aggregate, a decrease in prices, increase in consumer choice, and gains in efficiency more than compensate. Indeed, as the report notes, it is the poor, not the rich, who stand to lose the most purchasing power when borders are closed.
The report also suggests that much-maligned economic migrants don't compete with native workers so much as they complement them. Skilled migrants are net contributors to the welfare system, and unskilled ones satisfy labor requirements not met domestically.
For those who have lost their livelihoods, the report presents solutions—including wage insurance and retraining schemes—that governments would do well to heed. Weak action so far has incubated the discontent that created demagogues like Trump and Farage.
We need an open world. This case is closed.


Comments

  1. Vicky RamJanuary 21, 2019 at 10:25 PM

    It is really amazing...thanks for sharing....provide more useful information...

    Education
    Technology

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Myanmar

By
This is adapted from a paper I wrote for my Comparative Politics class at Harvard . A Friendless People Thousands have been killed. Hundreds of thousands have fled. They are a people without a home, much less a state. Such is the plight of the Rohingya, whom a UN spokesperson once called the most friendless people in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the situation a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (“UN”). This latest wave of state-sponsored violence follows a series of attacks by militants—a small insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—in August on Myanmarese military outposts. The brutal military crackdown is ostensibly targeted at insurgents. Yet, it is unmistakably civilians who are bearing the brunt of the violence, with the UN High Commissioner calling the response “clearly disproportionate” and “without regard for basic principles of international law” (“UN”). The approach of ethnic institutionalism...
Post a Comment
Read more

Harmony in the Middle Kingdom

By
Image: Wikimedia Commons The four decades since Deng Xiaoping spearheaded “Reform and Opening Up” in China have seen growth on a scale unparalleled in modern history. Where hundreds of millions were once destitute, extreme poverty has been all but cast into the annals of history; the world competes to attract the wealth of China’s burgeoning middle and upper classes. Analyses of the country's explosive growth are aplenty. Real GDP has grown 64-fold, literacy is above 95%, and in a once Communist country the private sector, at least on paper, now accounts for 60 percent of economic activity. This piece, however, will look more at the stability of the country—while analysing potential economic factors underpinning this. A number of scholars predicted political and economic instability in China as nation rapidly became prosperous. Yet, in a country transformed, political and economic durability remain. The Chinese Community Party continues to enjoy high levels of popular leg...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where Lurks the Next Crisis?

By
Photo: SCMP Optimism flows freely through the markets today. Asset prices are at record highs: investors are happier than ever to throw money at barely profitable technology companies, debt issuances from dubious companies and volatile governments, and anything blockchain related—from Bitcoin to Ethereum to Insanecoin, which does actually exist.     Most observers think that the coin mania is a bubble waiting to burst. But bears have been calling the whole market a bubble for a while, predicting an end to the years-long economic recovery and stock market boom. The old joke goes that economists have called seven of the last two recessions. It still rings true. Doomsayers have been convinced of a market crash since the post-recession recovery had barely gotten on its legs. But with things as they are today, are we on a path toward crisis?   I will not engage in the perilous business of trying to predict when the next economic downturn or market tumble will occ...
Post a Comment
Read more