Spreading the Benefits of Globalisation
In preventing the big backlash
So far, only a small minority of top earners has benefited from global integration. Even conservative economists have begun to worry about social inclusion and effective redistribution. As many argue, it is better to prevent protectionist tendencies, which would cut the overall benefits of globalisation, and to share the cake more fairly. By Rainer Falk
Immanuel Wallerstein and Stephen Roach are miles apart ideologically. But they pretty much agree on one thing: after three decades of globalisation euphoria, the pendulum has begun to swing back.
“The political balance is swinging back,” writes world-system’s analyst Immanuel Wallerstein (2008). “Neoliberal globalisation will be discussed about ten years from now as a cyclical swing in the history of the capitalist world economy. The real question is not whether this phase is over but whether the swing will be able, as in the past, to restore a state of relative equilibrium in the world system.”
Where Wallerstein sees the end of neoliberal globalisation, the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, Stephen Roach (2007), sees an about-turn: „What I suspect is that a partial backtracking is probably now at hand, as the collective interests of globalisation succumb to the self-interests of ‚localisation‘. An era of localisation will undoubtedly have some very different characteristics from trends of the recent past. The most obvious: Wages could go up and corporate profits could come under pressure.” ...
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Posted: 31 Mar 2008
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