This is key.

Dear Mr. Stiglitz

You need therapy too. And your use of selective data isn't considered "scientific" - when male income for workers is lower today it improved much more for women and in ceratin age groups women earn today more then men.

Then of course everything has more then just one aspect. But you only see the obviouse one.
Income may have been flat for the past decade. But this is just one side of the coin. Through globalisatiaon consumer goods got cheaper and today the consumer can buy more goods then he could affort 20 years ago.

The jobs that politicians and unions didn't want anymore in the US got outsourced and those jobs were happily accepted by the developing countries. And so these countries could improve their living standard in an unprecedented time in history.

My dear Mr. Stiglitz you btw are also part of the global 1% world's plutocrats. But unlike many of them, like Zuckerberg, Brin, Musk etc. you created hardly any job. You are only a pale theoretician and demagog - which is the most dangerous form of any plutocrat.

Furthermore you miss the forest for the trees. Government intervention did only increase in the past 80 years since the Great Recession. Government expenditures increased constantly. Enslaving by taxes and duties increased. Every facet of our life got more and more complex just because of more and more regulations! But you still brag about "neoliberals". That shows your idiological and biased view which is clearly not scientific.

Having said that, we do have many problems with globalization. The main problem is that competition got distorted by the free floating currency regime that is not connected to the real economy anymore. Budget deficits devalue the currency and the disconnect gets worse because the currency manipulation has to level out the devaluation by those deficits. Inflation gives us a wrong picture of economic prosperity which is in fact no prosperity.

Furthermore it is you that allege "neoliberals" thinking of perfect markets. Maybe you should finally read the classic liberal economists starting with Galiani and then all the way to Keynes. It seems to me that you don't know anything about those "neoliberals" you are takling about.

Stiglitz's piece was of interest & persuasive, but the fact that it it is in company with the writings of Tony Blair does not inspire confidence.

Yes, We no olnger should put up with such organizatiuons behing all this malfeasance. The Bilderburg group should disband forthwith. No more Davos. The Council on foreign Relations Ditto. all these quasi secret groups should be consigned to the dustbin!

Management of globalization is in the hands of politicians who pray to the god of economic growth. The real issue is (as always) demographic. The cohort of consumers in the 1st world is declining at a rate of .03% per year, meanwhile the needs of the the 'non-producing' (no longer earning an employment/self employed income) is growing. Until there is a better plan for the redistribution of wealth within societies, the current disparity between rich and poor will grow. This time around the middle class is at risk at that is a recipe for social dis order on a larger scale. Meanwhile the corporations and private money have already given up. Since there is no prospect for a reasonable ROI, (low interest rates) they are sitting on the biggest cash pile in history. Politicians and enlightened leadership should be working on a plan to redistribute this cash back into the economy. Otherwise social revolution will take care of the problem, albeit in a less tidy fashion.

The root cause of inequality is the legal system that assigns ownership of what is created to the owner of the business. A more basic system- that of fundamental rights- says that what is created belongs to its creator. The business owner has a claim based on what he contributed to the creation. If he wants to sell it in a market he must buy out the equity of the employee-creator. That is what the employee should be paid for, not his time.

I hope you next book looks forward as much as your earlier book did. People with skills are becoming worried that they are next. Revolutions in communications and artificial intelligence are beginning to put skilled jobs at risk.

Globalization's dilemma is that "underdeveloped" nations are pilfering as taught them by "developed" ones since 1601--even better!

Ignorance breeds incompetence.There is a direct line between the Republican party's evolution from Reagan to Trump. The two entertainers/celebrities whose great accomplishments have been to create an alternative universe of belief for their political followers - Reagan's "It's morning in America again" is now followed by Trump's "Make America great again" - while American society continues to struggle to overcome the consequences of Republican policies that have encouraged industrial decline and the promotion of social and racial conflict.

Needless to say that the governments forgot to set the rules and regulations to global standards. (Anyone for global minimum wages like 10 dollar)
So one might ask what is it really globalization globalized?
And of course corporations can move production and profits to invest anywhere but did the labor force other than the eu clould move itself anywhere globally it wanted to go to get the best return for it's labor activity.
Funny that Mr Stiglitz mentioned the lower skilled workers.
Like driving a cab or a truck or a retail store worker and most jobs the skill can be learned in a short time.
Clearly very few jobs needs years of studies.
And of course if the labor clould move just like the capital than these job would be done by the cheapest workers that comes from the lower waged countries.
It is veryconvenient to talk about protectionism but of course mostly the producing sector must compete globally and the rest I guess protected by laws and regulations.
Governments and economists themselves sold the globalizing scams to the public with a sugar coated low price that of course anyone would love as long their own respective income is protected by government's policies and regulations.
So how Mr Stiglitz competes globally?
And how are the teachers,government workers truck drivers ,fast food store employees ,construction workers and the lawyers ,police ,and the list is endless competing globally when their competitors are not allowed to move and do the same job for lot less.
Globalization based on economic discrimination period!
Nothing works in isolation ! So when the effects gets to the protected sectors suddenly cheap products doesn't matter as much anymore.
I just leave it here.

Is true even in Latin American countries. The promised economic development has never arrived and therefore the poor are even poorer and the rich are getting richer every day!

Dr. Stigliitz is, as usual, totally on point.

Doc, I have sad news for you. Like Casandra of the Legend, you will be dead on right and no one will listen to you. And that is a damned shame!

161120, Reply to globalization improvements
How to improve on something that is as old as the Roman Empire, has always spectacularly succeeded and then spectacularly exploded over the course of thousand of years? Ww1 put an end to the last global expansion of trade, commerce and population transfer. Ww2 was the cake's icing. Now again. I believe the human hard wired need for tribal identity, affiliation and ''not us'' definition, is crucially relevant to the globalization discussions. To the extent that humans are seriously territorial and pack-like biologically, the purely economic solutions will leave only partial and unreliable solutions. So what else needs to be addressed? To the extent that people between the coasts voted republican and middle England voted Brexit , it is clear that it wasn't only the unemployed or even the under-employed. I believe it was those who not only felt ignored but also those who felt imposed and intruded upon in their lives. One example; We ask soldiers (usually not from the coasts) to give their lives for ''our way of life" (our pack's substance) but then we unilaterally act so as to impose another another pack (whoever that may be or may have been in the past) into our territory. Wtf. An informed and integrated Social science needs to be part of any solution that wants to deal with changing the world back to functionality; before it is once again too late.
www.parentingandsocieties.com

All very well, but missing one important point (as most economics unfortuinately do) the pride or better the lost pride of workers. Miners are proud to do their job, be it at the Ruhr or at the Rust belt. Loosing the job (as well if they find another job as a normal worker) will destroy this pride. The best example are workers in the former GDR. Their pride was to keep outdated machinery running. With 1990 and reunification this was over. Today, already retired, they are electing AfD.
Not only globalization, but as well technical developing are generating every day such frustrated people. New jobs may come up, but not for them. With further technical development their number will increase. As Brecht has written in his poem 0f the hunger winter 1918 "a horse accusses": ..und tut es in bälde, oder ihr werdet etwas erleben, das ihr euch nicht habet vorstellen können" (and do it quick or you'll experience something, you have not imagined) Economist should start to think about a solution, and quick!

Two comments.

First, Professor Stieglitz needs to be a bit more thoughtful in ascribing the impacts of globalization only to "unskilled labor". Most people, for example, would characterize computer programming as highly skilled labor, but this profession is surely affected by globalization as much (or even more) than any other. At the same time hair dressing, surely a not-very-skilled form of labor, is, for obvious reasons, less impacted by globalization.

Second, it is nonsense to assert the that benefits of globalization only flow to the top 1, or even 10, percent. Surely everybody benefits from lower cost flat screen televisions, clothes, shoes, etc. The issue here is that even though the top 75, or 80, or 90 percent benefit from globalization, the cost of that benefit is born by those who cannot find jobs to support themselves. Say, for example, the 9 million men who have dropped out of the workforce completely.

Globalization has pros and cons. It makes some people richer and facilitates the development of some countries. However, rich are getting rich than poor are getting richer. Government should have policies that assist people adapt to the globalization because nowadays it’s hard to avoid the influence of globalization in a global village.

Globalization is the trend and will continue to benefit countries if only the path is not disguised, manipulated and mislead.

Protections against globalizations will be insufficient if we don't also achieve protections against the rentiers. The assault is both external and internal. All you Randians; don't you see the virtual pitchforks gathering?

While I agree that trade is good, however when countries have a wage and workplace standards that are lower than the advanced economies like the US , it bring points for businesses to push for that lower standard by threatening to move to that country if he does not get what they want. That's where the problem is.
You are seeing that in EU where it has been expanding rapidly incorporating countries that was once part of the Communist bloc that have such low standards that many would leave to work elsewhere rather than make effort to uplift their own country.

I read engineering at Cambridge before I read economics and subsequently qualified as a Chartered Accountant. I have never been impressed by the understanding of how things work being demonstrated in the economics establishment, something that may well be worse now in the age of big data than when analysis was far less sophisticated.
There are just too many myths in conventional economics that should have been debunked decades ago, not least of which is that we have to have consumption growth which drives GDP growth in order to have a better world ... or that profitable corporations and especially small businesses are job creators. Economists don't differentiate enough between good spending and bad spending whether it is at the personal level, or at a corporate level or at a government level. Economists don't seem to understand that profitable corporations have reached their levels of profit performance by being job destroyers ... that is what productivity is, but that is not important as long as profit goes up and stock prices soar to record levels. Economists will continue to get it wrong as long as the measures are dysfunctional ... a better world needs better metrics ... http://truevaluemetrics.org

globalization without real growth must hurt developed countries per capita income. Denominator growing while numerator stagnant.

When things get complicated, ask simple questions.
Who gets the lion share of any process. in our case of globalization?
Did Chinese or Indians or Pakistani or Africans got the fair share of the profits of expatriated West corporations and companies? Or they just have been exploited by speculative capitals to make only few people super rich?
How much do they get paid for their services? Is it fair when compared with payments in West World and if not why?
How big is the pay gap between CEOs and workers and how big between companies owners and people who make a company big?
How many hours employees work, is there any child labor allowed? Why?
Do we really need to blame globalization process for these inequalities or a very specific elite and some really bad World Organizations for not implementing global rules to ensure peoples prosperity allover world?
Why simple steps like :
Banning tax havens allover world.
Limiting pay gaps globally no higher than 10 fold for everybody involved in production.
Limiting working hours to no more than 4-5 hours per day allover world.
Banning labor under 18 allover world.
We all know that severe sanctions have been implemented, even wars have been waged for much less important reasons as for ensuring profits of some very unbridled and risky investments (see toxic derivatives) transferring the losses of the few to the many.
What Institutions, Organizations, States and every other powerful actor in the decision making process do and why?
Simple questions not very difficult to be answered, certainly very annoying to be asked!

guess the Discontents are mostly on the Western "front". Only about 3 decades ago Globalization was the sunrise thingy, with huge load of biz corps going global and Western societies enjoying plentiful of goods at low prices (in $ & cents). The world continues to spin and the Western "front" now finds itself relegating to a backseat.

The other day, I saw a foreign worker sitting on a small excavator in an urban setting, starring on his smartphone. Guess he could send money home to his village. Some time ago he might still be" a frog living under a coconut shell". Globalization has likely widened his Perspective. I am sure if he should complain?

Rules don't need to be written to tame globalization, but to regulate it to benefit more people. The growth of global trade is already slumping, so I don't know if taming is the word you were looking for. I couldn't agree more that the primary winners of globalization have been the wealthiest .1%, but so have the hundreds of millions of previously impoverished Chinese. It is not black and white and the answer is certainly not populist protection, the flames of which you're stoking. I recently read a great analysis by Dani Rodrik about the competing forces of the nation-state, global economic integration, and democracy. I think that what we're seeing in the wake of the Great Recession is inflamed nationalism lead by populist democratic politics. What we should instead attempt is global federalism that incorporates more democratic economic policies and continues global economic integration.

"Under the assumption of perfect markets (which underlies most neoliberal economic analyses) free trade equalizes the wages of unskilled workers around the world."

and

"[Neoliberals] claimed – one could say lied – that all would benefit."

So which is it? Did "neoliberals" acknowledge that wages in some sectors would go down? Or did they "lie" and tell us everyone would benefit? You have to pick one assessment of what these economists actually said.

Here's what happened: Economists never told us there weren't going to be losers. They were very clear. I learned Heckshire-Ohlin as a sophomore in intro to international trade.

It's the failure of politicians to compensate losers that created this mess. You kind of touch upon that towards the end of this piece. But somehow the heaviest criticism of the piece is preserved for economists who are accused of promising something they never did.

The U.S. has traditionally allowed its trading partners nearly unlimited access to U.S. markets without a corresponding symmetric access to their markets. The Chinese can leverage their low-cost labor tied to a fixed exchange rate and wreak havoc on existing U.S. firms, forcing them to go out of business or move their production to China. In the meantime, the Chinese restrict access to their own markets and require significant technology transfers. Maybe it takes a crude individual as President to dictate our terms and conditions to countries that want to sell their goods to the U.S. to provide similar access to their markets, and to require labor and environmental conditions roughly commensurate with our own.

The writer should be more careful to distinguish the effects of free trade under current Statist societies from the operation of totally free choice trade between people and organizations in fully free societies (ie voluntary, fully unregulated transactions), which as part of free choice in general cannot logically be negative. For how such societies could potentially operate see: http://www.selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html

"Populist and rightwing politicians" vs "us enlightened  sophisticates" has been a major intellectual theme of late. I find myself needing to review the old definition of populism. For instance is it possible that Richard Haass' weekend article in WSJ.COM has some realistic concerns:
"The world is not self-organizing. An invisible hand may help to guide the markets, but no such force is at work in geopolitics. For the past 75 years, the visible hand of the U.S., more than any other factor, has created and maintained conditions of stability"'
"The benefits and influence that the U.S. derives from its longstanding alliance commitments far exceed the costs."
"We do not have the option of becoming a giant gated community. Sooner or later, we would feel compelled to step in to restore stability and to right the balance of power."
Concerns on an international geopolitical level, may contradict a more local-oriented approach? Is that local concern to be called "populism"? If the western urban definitions of cleanliness or decorum and deliberate restraint of emotional expression is suddenly confronted in "changed" neighborhood grocery stores or in local parent teacher meetings and if that disparity causes communal disharmony and approbation; is that populism?
Are people reaonably entitled to expect maintenance of "social values" and "a way of life"? The constitution says we must let people choose their own religious behaviors. Does it guarantee third world agrarian village values in an industrial urban neighborhood? Does it guarantee minority religious law to usurp majority courts in secular populations? Is that populism? For the majority of middle class western neighborhoods the sudden and unacknowledged insertion of these and other "subtle" ways of being, takes away years and generations of "investment" in a person's most valuable possession; the home and "quality of life" around that home. Are these "populist" concernsbecause they are not expressed in dollars, cents and GDP? Really?
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

Now we learn that the meaning of Globalizations differs in Time, Place and Group (#TPG). Not in a linear way but graphical. We then have a triangle with Time on top and Place and Group in the downcorners. We call this Conceptual Blending.

oh how far from the targets(of globalisation) we are indeed!But this is not the main issue.
The problem in reality is what globalisation did to society in the years passed ,what ethical destruction took place ,on the basis of non ending profits at all costs.
People are angry ,and maybe this was the target all along.To make everyone so hatefull of all others ,in order to apply the clean version of free market,big fish eats small fish and consequently stronger men ,kill weaker ones.(or women ,kids ,whatever,greed doesnt have boundaries)).
And since people are angry ,there is no way we will reach a good solution.Because as the ancient greeks said,"there s no happiness without balance"...
And today's unbalanced world can only have one ending.Destruction.(self).
Angry mobs dont think,just react.And the greedy few knew that all along,and used it against the common ethos and the average man/woman.They knew that humans (mostly) have boundaries that they wouldnt violate even if in mortal danger.This use to be a value appreciated by all humans on earth,to sacrifice your own interests in order to help others ,this was a honour,something those who did,were really appreciated for.
Instead of this ,today we appreciate the vultures who make most money.They sell the dream of "anyone can get it" to humans,and this way they keep society under their control.
People need to stop being angry and start thinking.Start boycotting those who kill them,start objecting in taking part in their wars,their companies their profits.we need to stand up for all humans.And if the few greedy do not want to stop their perverted actions,ther s always physical destruction.I d rather if we do not resort to that ,but when you re faced with total annihilation ,your only way out is the possibility that if you attack first you might win,you might survive..This is what will happen eventually.those who pretend not to see it,are only telling lies to themselves.We will go through rough times in the near future,we can all tell the signs already.Instead of the peace for all and food and water for all of the 80s we are engaged in nationalist racist wars,religious wars,all kinds of stupid wars.And all for profits.Oil or other.So i say lets stop consuming their stuff.Lets start making our way in life only with the bare minimum,only to see the rich and famous greedy melting away .Without your contribution ,no vulture,no corporation or nation can take over.If you do not assist the few ,you will never have to fight them.Because all the cents you give today to buy the useless stuff,will eventually pay for the bullets that will kill you ...So stop buying crap.!!!Stop expecting more profits,or better lives.You will never have a better life if you dont first do away with this ,messed up one.Same goes for all systems.If you cant fix it,demolish it and start fresh.thats my 2 cents.good luck to all .

@Steve Hurst

Off shoring by itself doesn't have much meaning to me. Off shoring oil production? Off shoring call centers? Off shoring computer coding? Off shoring x-ray analysis? Off shoring data entry?

Without being specific off shoring would be a good example of a US company severing a limb to remain competitive both at home and abroad. It even underscores my point that the hybridization of across the border labor with US management has delayed the decline of some US industries.

Indeed the new discontents have brought the message home. This article by Prof. Stiglitz perfectly points out blatant ignorance of the mainstream policy makers to the real world problems - we are yet to see if there will be a change of policy direction in the the advanced countries following the a new wave of public discontent in recent times.

As the devil speaks from the Scripture, so capitalist greed speaks from liberalism.
Capitalist greed wears the attire of cosmopolitan, liberal internationalism. But as Samuel Huntington says, in Who Are We?, it poses problems. He says multinational corporations are most cosmopolitan in American society.

Liberalism makes very little, if not nothing, of political power. It is derisive of it. But even democracy cannot work without political power, which needs to be absolutitst in the sense of binding every citizen. Absolutist power is what has been handed down from absolutist monarcy to democracy in both theory and practice. What if the United States had two Congresses and two Supreme Courts, one in Washington DC. and one in Atlanta?

We must think well and take care so that economic liberalism will not go out of its bounds and impair or destroy democracy.

Biased and ideological as everything that comes out of Mr. Stiglitz. Blameing some sort of "neoliberalism" that never existed since most economists and certainly all politicians praise and live Keynesianism!

It is true that globalization might be linked to unemployment and pose a threat to low skill workers. However, these dangers could be mitigated by two solutions, which are different for their own reasons. The first is education (very expensive and not an immediate response).
The second is social protection or redistribution (does not receive political support even though it would be one the best solution and the least costly for those who are about to retire or leave the job market.

The writer should be more careful to distinguish the effects of free trade under current Statist societies from the operation of totally free choice trade between people and organizations in fully free societies (ie voluntary, fully unregulated transactions), which as part of free choice in general cannot logically be negative. For how such societies could potentially operate see: http://www.selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html

It is difficult to delineate, but declining wages and increasing unemployment probably has more to do with automation than globalization - but globalization is an easier thing to target and malign. In the future, automation is a much more difficult challenge to address - and one that may put virtually everyone except those who are doing the automating or investing in it out of a job. In the past automation has just led to changes in employment, but increases in robotics and cognitive machine learning are destined to create widespread structural unemployment - which will create massive issues that no one is prepared to address.

It IS true that people are better off, despite the statistics. Assuming one can afford housing, 1960's era cars, electronics, and appliances can be purchased for nearly nothing today - but now every high school drop out believes they are entitled to $120/month cable packages, smart phones, and big screen TVs as well as state of the art healthcare and large wardrobes of trendy clothing. Advances in everything compromise all the statistics and no one wants to go back to living like they did in the 60s - which would be quite affordable now.

Given the track record of "economists" of every stripe over the past several decades, one needs to take their "projections" with a very large grain of salt. These aren't stupid people, either. Could it be that their models are seriously flawed or that supply-side vs. demand-side economics is a false choice?

You know, I am struggling to recall the last time I heard anybody say - 'Lets make this a more expensive way', other than possibly in the vanity market which is quite small and typically oriented towards the 1%, or would-be 1% aspirants. Hence globalisation and shortly AI. The problem is that unless you replace redundant activity you end up with nobody to sell stuff to. Hands up who thinks politicans can sort this business conundrum, excluding tax spend which is not their money but is forcibly collected. Thought not

Stiglitz is making a very important point that one of the signs of prosperity is social protection; the world's most advanced nations have the highest levels of social protection. This for U.S. may need a re-look.

I completely disagree. Even without globalization those developed economies that have seen their working class lose their bargaining position and earnings power would have suffered worse. Ask yourself first what is the main driving force behind globalization and you will come to the same conclusion as me in that it was driven mainly by slowing growth in their own economies and the search for higher growth in other parts of the world. Your notion that by tapering or even removing globalization completely will help the working class maintain their relative wellbeing is just barmy. You believe too much in the utopian idea that when a nation achieves economic nirvana i.e. total equality and flat income distribution then everyone will be well off and happy in merry land. Instead, I take the opposite view that it is globalization that has in fact delayed the natural course of those economies to decline from their economic heights. For a minute let’s put some of your anti-globalization idea into real practical terms: Let’s say like what Trump is advocating in that he wants to move manufacturing back to the US. Let’s say he penalizes imported iPhones so that it makes more business sense to have them manufactured in the US instead of China. Let’s say this puts 10,000 additional Americans in factory work. They produce iPhones for the domestic market of 340m Americans. What happens when the domestic market is saturated? OK you say, the US will trade iPhones for cheese. So you need to import enough cheese to export enough iPhones to the world. This leads to the complete destruction of cheese manufacturing in the US. By the way if you were to ask me which I would prefer, a finicky product like iPhones with its extremely short lifespan and thin margins of 5% or cheese which has a more stable lifespan and probably better margins I would take cheese. What it all reduces to is you are advocating a central controlled economic model where you decide which industries are the winners and which are the losers something China is doing with its state run organizations and making a complete utter hash of it all instead of letting capital decide where to find the best returns. How you distribute that wealth is a social contract between the government and its people and something that is decided upon at election time. So your real argument then is that the Swedes have a better social contract with its government than Americans do with theirs. But a diminishing middle class in the US and Europe has nothing to do with globalization, in fact quite the opposite.

Globalization dramatically increases productivity of the human race as it allows whole nations to specialize in certain trades. However, it is of no use if it guts local areas of any jobs. It needs to be quid pro quo. If we offshore our manufacturing to China then China needs to start paying us big bucks for high grade design services rather than just copying or stealing our IP. The money and jobs need to flow both ways. Globalization is worth saving as it has much to offer. To do that it needs a revamp. Globalization 2.0 needs to protect the jobs and lives of people who do the offshoring.

So President Obama is pushing these new nocive trade agreements because he's stupid but well-meaning or because hes bought and sold by the corporations? Or is he just smarter than you are and should be trusted to do the right thing? Which is it? Because if he's so smart, why would he do the wrong thing instead? But of course, the first two explanations aren't politically correct are they? When a politician does things against the common good for his own reasons nobody EVER says of him (or her} "S/he's dishonest and self-serving". Why is that? He can't sue you for expressing ypur opinion of his character. He won't send the Mafia after you. But ordinary people who never hear him challenged, who never hear a journalist ask him WHY he's pushing measures that are unpopular and on the face of it undesireable cannot but decide that he must know what he's doing. After all, he's a good, smart man and would never do anything to hurt ordinary people, right? Arrrrrgh.... In America, bad things only happen by accident. There are no power hungry, ambitious, greedy, politicians. Just good honest men {mostlty} making honest mistakes. Or not ...How lucky we are!

The TPP and TTIP agreements are not wrong moves, they are a result of economic dispute between continental countries and main economies in the globe. It's called capitalism, sovereignity, profit.

Globalization works because of differential wage costs and compliant labour. Eventually, those economies benefiting from globalization will see their internal cost structures rise and remove the incentive for capital to be directed in their direction. So given time, the forces that drive globalization will attenuate. Japan is a prime example where rising living standards made the country less internationally competitive. Capital (even Japanese capital) was increasingly directed to other Asian countries and eventually China. The question is will all this happens before robotics captures industrial production? Robotics should return production to advanced countries in the first instance where there is a higher skills base.

This absurd experiment in laissez-faire economics was destined to fail from the outset. A moron could have predicted this. The only people to support it, were and still are, an assortment of right wing economic zealots and free market fanatics and the so-called 1%'ers who stand to make billions from it.

This kind of economics existed in America and Europe in Charles Dickens' time. It was an unmitigated disaster then as it is now. Neoliberalism has cause me to revisit the Marxist leanings that I had in my youth. As I seem to recall it this trend to globalization by the capitalist class was something that Marx predicted in the 19th century. This trend certainly helps to explain the rise of more extreme politicians around the world. Unfortunately most of these seem to be from the far-right or lunatic fringe.

The reality is that in the last 25 years or so we have had +2 billion people dumped on the global labor market (China, India, ex- Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for example), none of these countries have traditional Western style of living and wages but have fast growing middle classes. Effectively this is partially due to a wealth transfer from the Western countries to these countries and it continues. As long as technology allows management to take advantage of labor cost arbitrage (NOT skills arbitrage) this wil continue until the labor cost base is relative OR, labor as a whole has been replaced. We are part way through a global resetting of the wage level, and the Western governments still didn't wake up yet.

Globalization be befits ME, and my country as a whole - fook the poor.