The factors that contributed to economic globalization during the twentieth century was the agreements and institutions that strongly emerged after WWII, like World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions were basically responsible to promote and "imposed such free-market and pro-business conditions on many poor countries if they were to qualify for much needed loans"(1135).
In South America Argentina followed the recipe given from these international institutes and had bad economic consequences like "El Corralito" which was a measure taken by the government of Fernando de La Rua with the intention that money from banks will not go outside the borders of Argentina. So every citizen could not take from the bank more than 250 pesos (around $30) a week. In addition people who had money in savings accounts had lost their savings or could not access that money. The working class was primary affected not the corporations because they were not in Argentina. All this because World Bank did not understand the reality of the people in Argentina and tough that giving an economic recipe will work for every country in South America.
Another area that contributed to the globalization was and is technology, like "containerized shipping, huge oil tankers, and air express services dramatically lowered transportation costs, while fiber-optic cables and later the Internet provided the communication infrastructure for global economic interaction"(1135).
The mobility of goods and money made globalization easy. Like when a big company wants to reduce production cost opens a factory in South America, to "take advantage of cheap labor, tax breaks, and looser environmental regulations in the
developing countries"(1136). This generated a movement of capital from country to country with the purchasing of foreign currencies. These huge business are known as Transnational Corporations (TNCs), and as Strayer defined it are corporations "which produce goods or deliver services simultaneously in many countries"(1137)
This new way of making business was, this Economic globalization "has generated inequalities not only at the global level and among developing countries but also within individual nations, rich and poor alike"(1141). While people are migrating from their countries to the north looking for opportunities and some of them leaving because the economic, political and cultural tensions and instability. With this action are providing "an inexpensive source of labor for their adopted countries"(1137). Other people in United States are also affected by this inequality, because companies are moving their manufacturing overseas. "This left many relatively unskilled American workers in the lurch, forcing them to work in the low-wage service sector, even as other Americans were growing prosperous in emerging high-tech industries"(1141). In addition this new way to do business is "the instability of this emerging world economy"(1138). The the unequal distribution of wealth that created this gap between rich and poor people and the reductions of the middle class. Strayer quoted George Soros, a billionaire who said, “The global capitalist system has produced a very uneven playing field.The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider.”
How is this statement affected by a regular person like us? The different income between what we need to earn to pay our bills and what we are earning right now. Something basic like medical care for some of us is still a dream, more employment opportunities for everybody, access to a good education, and now what is getting cut little by little is access to internet equally. Because now internet is information and if the price of access to internet will be according to the speed, this is going to affect us. The poor get slow speed or none and the rich ones the faster speed. One of the quote that shake my head is from Subcomandante Marcos, referred to globalization as a “process to eliminate that multitude of people who are not useful to the powerful”(1141). Like the natural selection of Darwin and the survival of the best suited.
Source: Strayer, Robert W. Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Bedford Bks St Martin'S, 2014.
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