One World?

One World?
Globalization hasn’t suddenly appeared in the past 10 years, it has reappeared. Even before WWI there were attempts of globalization, but with WWI and II and the Great Depression, it was only in the 1970s with the collapse of the Bretton Wood system, that determined that fixed exchange rates, that a rebirth of the capital market appeared. Two forces drove the increased flows of goods and money; the improvements in technology, where costs of communication and computing fell rapidly, and liberalization, which, also due to GATT, almost all countries are more open to foreign trade. Suddenly, there is a clear worldwide trend in globalization. As cross-borders flows of trade, national economies become more integrated, there’s an increase in investment and financial capital, and consumers buy more goods. This globalization buzz can be viewed from two sides. The positive view shows the boost in productivity and the rise in living standards. The division of labor between countries is better and firms can exploit bigger economies of scale. Critics argue however that jobs will be destroyed and wages will be pushed down due to the increases competition from developing low-wage countries that they predict for the future. They see a “race to the bottom” in the pressure of businesses to compete. In the end, there is no right or wrong, but there is the big question whether globalization can be reversed a second time.
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