Globalization: who has
won and who has lost? This past election
has put the issue of globalization front and center. Apparently, the results have pointed to
disgruntled voters among the white working class (WWC) and their demands for
more equitable treatment.
One of their reported complaints is
the results accrued from several decades of a shift toward a more global
economy. Simply put: this shift is characterized by markets opening
to global competition by doing away with tariffs and other restraints. This move has been further advanced using the
web and other communication advancements.
Along with
communication there has also been deregulation of finance. With a relatively few calls and other moves,
any entrepreneur can identify and establish working relationships that lead to
an entire array of products being produced by cheap labor. That puts American workers in competition
with workers who are more than willing to work for a few dollars a day.
Hardest hit have been those workers
in what used to be strong labor union areas of the country such as the northern
midwest states. This development was
described in the last two postings. They
are the big losers of globalization, but who has won?
Well, of
course, workers and, in turn, countries who previously were described as under-
developed nations have made significant advances during this globalization
period. For example, poor Asian
countries have been able to close the gap between themselves and Western
developed nations. Within those
countries, middle and upper class groups have been particularly favored by
these developments.
On the other
hand, middle class and working class people in the US and other western
countries have not seen real wage increases:
Thus while many
relatively poor people did well during this latest globalization episode, those
somewhat richer may have more complaints. People around the 80th global
percentile, with incomes ranging from $13 to $27 international dollars per day,
saw few improvements. Their incomes were stagnant or barely increasing.[1]
And this trend stretches back to the late 1980s. Add to this the effects of the Great
Recession and the WWC has lost its patience.
The US is not
the only place where this frustration is being seen. In Great Britain recently, the electorate
voted for Britain to leave the European Union (commonly called Brexit). Comparable popular movements are currently
gaining strength in other European nations; for example, the nationalist candidacy
of Marine LePen in France. This
undermines the more international trend that has occurred ever since the end of
World War II.
Generally,
this trend was seen as an antidote to the forces that led to that disastrous
conflict in which over 50 million (some estimate more than 80 million) people
were killed. This human toll was
accompanied by vast capital destruction.
The accepted truth after such an experience was: what is needed is a set of international,
peace seeking institutions such as the United Nations.
In this spirit, such collaborative organizations
such as the European Union have been set up, but this has also led to opening
up the free trade agreements that have led to the current economic conditions. Along with these organizations have been
policy changes that eased the way to encourage these international markets.
For example, in the US, there was the repeal of
the Glass-Seagall law that prohibited commercial banks from investment
banking. This allowed these commercial
banks to engage in derivative trading.
Some argue that such practices helped develop the conditions that led to
the financial crisis of 2008 (some argue that they didn’t). But either way, a name associated with that
development is Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration.[2]
This is a quote from an article in which Summers
tells how his and Robert Rubin’s policies were developed during the nineties:
In July, [George Packer] went to see Summers at
his vacation home in Massachusetts. When
[Packer] arrived, [Summers] had just pulled up – in a Lexus – after a morning
of tennis. [The two of them] sat on a
terrace overlooking Cape Cod Bay.
Summers described numerous trips that he had made during his years at
Treasury to review antipoverty programs in Africa and Latin America, and in
American inner cities. “I don’t think I
ever went to Akron, or Flint, or Toledo, or Youngstown,” he admitted. To Democratic policymakers, poverty was
foreign or it was black. As for
displaced white workers in the Rust Belt, Summers said, “their problems weren’t
heavily on our radar screen, and they were mad that their problems weren’t.”[3]
This, this writer believes, captures the conditions that have
befallen the Democratic Party and speaks volumes as to why there is a
president-elect Trump.
More
concretely, the attitudes that are being catered to are those that are antagonistic
to internationalism and domestic minorities.
In a word, they would be nationalist attitudes. Nationalism can be summarized by the
saying: “my country, right or wrong, my
country.” It is an ideology that places
the value of national interests above such values as fairness or equality.
In the extreme, it would be a fascist ideology
as that espoused by Benito Mussolini in Italy or Juan Peron of Argentina. When those ideas and values associate
nationalism with a national stock or race, then one reaches Nazism. One needs to be careful with such language
and the president-elect has not made an authoritative policy decision yet. So, one should not make accusations, but
observations are legitimate; they indicate vigilance.
One can
therefore ask: is this what the nation is now facing? The Trump “movement” has admitted that it is
not for globalism, but is for giving nationalist interests higher priority. And in their target sights are
multiculturalist policies, programs, and initiatives. This is what they call identity
politics. Their battle cry rails against
political correctness; in doing so, the language becomes a weapon. That language can debase sensitivities that
promote equality of treatment.
It is this
backdrop that places Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, as Chief Strategist,
in context. Yesterday, the alt-right
group associated with Bannon and the news service he headed, Breitbart News, supported
a conference where Nazi salutes were noted and “heil” (or was it “hail”) was
shouted.[4]
This seems beyond mere symbolism. It also follows a pattern: blame a foreign element for the problems that
a group is facing. This is the formula
often used by nationalists to gain support among disgruntled or disaffected
groups such as the WWC. Hitler used the
Jews.
[1] “The Tale of Two Middle Classes,” Branko Milanovic, YaleGlobal,
July 31, 2014, accessed November 21,
2016, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/tale-two-middle-classes
.
[2] Later still, he was Director of the White House
National Economic Council in the Obama Administration.
[4] Shaun King, “The Alt-Right Movement Goes Full Nazi As
Steve Bannon Prepares to Enter the White House,” New York Daily News, accessed November
21, 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-alt-right-full-nazi-bannon-lands-white-house-job-article-1.2882385
.
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