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Today’s Globalization an American Invention

Globalization has helped America sustain its lead as the world’s largest economy and also has helped Americans get wealthy and enjoy one of the world’s highest standards of living
American capitalism managed to sustain and expand its lead in the world economy.
American capitalism managed to sustain and expand its lead in the world economy.

Globalization, the increasing integration of world markets, has already done a lot of great things for Americans. It has helped America win the war on communism. It has freed Americans from government regulations and militant unions. It has assigned America the role of the world’s best innovator. It has helped America sustain its lead as the world’s largest economy. And it has helped Americans get wealthy and enjoy one of the world’s highest standards of living.

For the record, globalization is not new. The most recent opening of national and local markets to international trade and competition is a resumption of an old trend that began in the last quarter of the 19th century, which was interrupted in the first half of the 20th century by the rise of nationalism, communism and trade/military wars, Forbes reported.

Today’s globalization is an American invention. It began with America’s initiative to create GATT (now WTO)/IMF/World Bank–a regime to save its economy and the world from the threat of communism by creating a world market, which would help each country excel in what it does best.

There’s a well-tested economic theory behind the basic premise behind globalization: it is called comparative advantage. And it produced the hoped-for results. By the mid-1980s, the war against communism was won. The Soviet Union collapsed, and its satellite countries rushed to join America’s world market regime.

In the meantime, the collapse of the Soviet Union helped America win another “war”, too. The war against excessive government regulation and militant unions, (ie, the usual suspects behind corruption and cronyism that constrain technological progress and economic growth).

Without an ideological rival or tariffs and quotas, and with information highways to momentarily connect buyers and sellers around the globe, American capitalism managed to sustain and expand its lead in the world economy.

At the same time, Americans not only escaped from the tyranny of unionism and government regulation, but they began to enjoy higher standards of living, and have more choices as to what they could buy and at what price.

Actually, this is the most important benefit of globalization for all Americans, especially those with the lowest incomes: more product choices at ever-lower prices. For most sectors of the economy, that is.

There’s still the cable guy, the electricity guy, the smartphone service provider, and all sorts of local oligopolies where cozy relations between Big Labor and Big Government have escaped globalization. Those are the areas where Americans continue to have limited choices and ever-rising prices.

Most notably, globalization allowed America to maintain its lead in innovation. Anti-globalists often tend to forget that popular products like Nike snickers and Apple’s smartphones and iPads may be made in China or elsewhere in Asia, but they are designed here (in America), generating highly paid jobs for American employees and hefty returns for American investors.

 

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