This is an interesting parallel to a book I'm currently enjoying (The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman). I'll admit, international economics wasn't my strong suit, so I'm interested in learning more about the changing opinion on globalization from economists.
Of course, these are interesting times for American workers. The current labor market is far from picturesque. The latest data suggests that although the economy is not technically in a recession, a lot of Americans may not technically give a damn. The unemployment rate remained at 5.5% in June, the highest level it's been at since October 2004.
And to top it all off, there is the steady battle cry against the outsourcing of American jobs. But this is nothing new. Throughout America's history, politicians have pandered to America's working class by passing protectionist legislation such as tariffs, quotas, etc. all in the name of helping John Q. Public. Now, economists still don't support tariffs and quotas, but the day may be coming closer when economists begin fearing foreign competition in labor markets.
All of which makes me wonder: are we being selfish here? For so long, America has enjoyed an unprecedented and nearly unrivaled golden age of prosperity. If we are worried about our jobs being outsourced, isn't it because we don't want to lose the good thing we have going? We don't want to lose our three cars (all hybrids, of course), our tech job, our brand new plasma HDTV, our house (oops! too late), or any of the other luxuries we take for granted. But do we deserve to continue having such a high standard of living when so many others continue to suffer? Maybe globalization is finally getting around to what it's supposed to be doing: making poor nations richer. Of course, this isn't at the expense of the rich nations...unless those rich nations have been living disproportionately rich lifestyles relative to their neighbors and trading partners. An equally timely parallel would be the current situation in oil. Most Americans don't realize that our European friends have been paying what we are currently paying for gas for a while (and if you think gas is pricey here, just hop across the pond and check out how much "petrol" costs in London). Well, now oil is going through the roof, and the "good times" of cheap oil have ended. They couldn't last forever, and maybe prices were even too low for the past twenty years or so. Is it impossible to think that the same could be happening to America in terms of globalization? We've enjoyed the benefits for so long, it may just be time to pay the piper his due.
I think that this may be what is happening to the U.S. Maybe we've had "more than our share" for far too long, and now the coming shock will awaken us to reality: you can't be the national equivalent of James Dean and expect the fast life to continue without consequence. It won't be pretty, but it will mean that the wealth gap between industrialized nations and third-world ones will shrink. If the cost of having the world finally rise with the tide of globalization is a less wealthy America, then count me in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Thankfully, hopefully, things will start turning around and our bloated economy will become more efficient and streamlined. It'll hurt, but we had it coming for being so silly.
The problem (to me) was we got content at where we were and we stopped innovating. For example, the car companies complained about foreign competition, and once the protectionist legislation was passed, the American car companies squandered the time. Instead of building better, more competitive cars, they wasted their time building name brands for really big, really inefficient cars.
We've developed a culture that glorifies excess. Excess houses, excess cars, excess activities which leads to frenzied soccer mom shuttles. Mmm...excess stress.
Once the country that invented almost every development that changed the world (telegraph, telephone, incandescent lightbulb, television, etc.), we have grown fat and lazy and stopped caring about learning and science.
The next big industry will be green energy, mark my words, as we head into an oil crunch and people start demanding cleaner power. People will want more efficient transportation (so they're not paying an arm and a leg for gas) and more efficient energy. Solar and wind are becoming big, but all of the innovations and developments are happening in Europe because they've been paying out the nose for "petrol" for a long time now. Efficient city centers (sorry; "centres"), efficient transportation, efficient energy. They've had to face the music for a long time now, with a shortage of land and resources. We were blessed with an abundance of land and resources and instead of learning how to make it last the longest and use those resources to develop advanced technologies to keep ahead of the pack, we (like our car companies) instead spent the time building inefficient, grossly wasteful brands and products. Or missiles. If we don't get our act together soon, America will be the one playing catch-up.
And then the conservatives will be really pissed off!
And blame it on the liberals.
Post a Comment