GLOBALISM WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Perhaps we should reevaluate our embrace of globalism. Now as the results of this disastrous pandemic seeps in to our collective consciousness, with millions of deaths, loss of livelihood, impact to our children’s education, as well as a decline and negative change in almost everything we examine—-all due to a world too much interconnected.  Today a deadly disease outbreak in an irresponsible or backward nation half a world away appears in our backyards within days.  So what are the advantages of globalism to the common working man and woman? 

I don’t see many.  It is clear that globalism is a boon for those, now too numerous. globalized companies, and the top CEOs of these now international behemoth institutions.   But does their greater market share, stock values, product success and massive wealth transfer to our own citizenry?  Do these giants  improve the lives of our citizens?  The CEOs and top business elites prosper enormously while the citizens of the original company’s source  nation, where it developed its products,  are left with darkened decaying plants, unemployment lines and economic peril for the entire community.  The  results for working class Americans are a few cheap electronic trinkets, poor paying jobs, and exposure to potentially deadly disease, as well as more social, cultural, and economic instability.  

Furthermoe globalization clearly tends to increase the massive wealth disparity in our own nation, as wealth increasingly moves from the hands of workers and small business owners into the pockets of the corporate elites. By maximizing profits, reducing tax burden, eliminating labor costs and offshoring good paying jobs wealth concentrates in the hands of the very few.  This concentration of wealth at the top is not an asset for our economy as a whole. 

Good- paying, satisfying jobs have all been sucked off-shore and now pour wealth into the coffers  of overseas nations. The result is the hollowing out and pauperization of small town America.   The cities and towns where these once local businesses thrived, where smaller satellite businesses prospered and communities grew are now shuttered and the communities only shadows of their former selves.  In these places  instead of the hum and whirr of industry and the bustle of commerce on main street we afind only dark store windows, silence and the smell of rotting wood. 

Off-shoring of manufacturing has resulted in our supply chains becoming  long, uncertain and tortuous affairs…where even our essentials—like medicines, essential tools, clothing, machinery and  are all else are developed, manufactured, packaged and sold from overseas. Only token employees and chief officers reside in “headquarters” in the original nation.  Often even those remnant offices are moved overseas to take advantage of tax breaks. 

We have become dependent upon off shore manufacturing nations for our manufactured essentials.  These nations which we now depend for survival may in the future become less dependable allies or even antagonists or enemies.  It’s obvious that basic security depends on independence and secure sources of essentials. 

Then too, with the advent of massive movements of people by air travel we are subject to disease carried by the millions of people who enter our nation almost daily. 

Could we shut down like the Aussies to control a deadly air borne pathogen?  Not the way our economy is configured today.  

Let’s reconsider what the vantages of globalism are.  Who profits?