May 14, 2008

Americans, how sure are you it is not Mr. Jones that you should blame?

The fundamental driver of the unease with globalization is the reduction of the share of decent salaries paid in the gross global production (GGP) and since “decent salaries”, whatever that means, has almost exclusively to do with the developed world, there is a growing grumbling in the western world that this globalization thing might not have been such a bright idea after all.

Clearly, if an American holds that the world has to stop growing, immediately, so that he can go back to his 2 dollar per gallon of gas, he has a point, though he would also have to explain what to do with a paralyzed world.

Devesh Kapur, Pratap Mehta and Arvind Subramanian, “Is Larry Summers the canary in the mine?, May 14, worry that American liberal intellectuals might now team up with Lou Dobbs and produce a pure local US knee jerk reaction, which would be both dangerous and unproductive for the whole world, instead of teaming up with them in finding some valid solutions for all. They are very right about that.

Americans should know that when you build an isolation wall the worst part is how difficult it is to be 100% sure that you got stuck on the right side of it and so, before shutting themselves out, they would de well trying to get at the root of who are really capturing a larger share of the GGP, since besides from those obviously benefiting from the commodity boom, one of the culprit might even be their next door neighbour, Mr. Jones.