What to make of Globalisation? One moment it is the arch-villain with rapacious, immoral capitalism laying waste to societies and Occupy the favoured anarchist warriors of choice at the BBC, then suddenly not so much, Bankers are in, Big Business is beloved and the unemployed mere whingers, shirkers perhaps, who just don’t get it. ‘Populist’ scum.
Of course Big Business and the Bankers all supported Remain so no surprise the BBC put aside its decades of anti-Capitalist rhetoric and banged the drum for them…the once evil money launderers of the City now the golden boys.
Those who argued against the millions of cheap workers being ‘on-shored’ to the UK were now on the wrong side of history and the political, moral debate. Trump, many of whose policies seem more in line with the Left than the Right economically, as he seeks to defend US jobs and businesses, is the enemy. Globalisation is now good. Greed is now good.
The BBC’s defence of the EU is in a major part predicated upon the ‘fact’ that the EU will impose swinging tariffs upon the UK…and the BBC seems to have no problem with that…the EU, and the world, will come out of that unscathed.
Different though for Trump who they denounce as protectionist for wanting to impose tariffs…these, the BBC assures us, will start a trade war and destroy global stability.
And then we have a curious BBC ‘defence’ of globalisation…it’s good for us, but we’ll all lose our jobs…we’ve just got to learn to lie back and take it and learn to love it….
Will globalisation take away your job?
Millions around the globe may have taken to the streets in recent years to protest against the impact of globalisation on their jobs and communities – but this backlash is only likely to grow as globalisation itself becomes more disruptive.
The stark warning comes from Richard Baldwin, president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research think-tank, who has been studying global trade for the past 30 years.
The trick is to accept “21st Century reality”, he says, and the fact that many jobs simply aren’t going to come back.
“In essence there was a set of complementary policies that reassured workers that they would have a good chance of taking advantage of globalisation.”
The challenges all this is throwing up for governments are many, but Prof Baldwin says it should be possible to develop policies that embrace globalisation – and give workers displaced by it the support they need.
Liked this…’Millions around the globe may have taken to the streets in recent years to protest against the impact of globalisation on their jobs and communities’….as said once they were the beloved ‘right-on’ lefties, now, as they vote for Brexit or Trump, they are Far-Right scum who are taking us back to the 1930’s.
Quite right too! Or is it wrong? Now I can understand why people would want to work and not only to provide for themselves and their family. However if the new way is not to work, what can people do, as utilities and council taxes still need to be paid and food and drink have to be obtained? Either globalisation is good and all the previously poor foreigners now earning have to pay for our keep, or its bad and we have to get jobs to pay for aid to poor foreigners…. This is almost too convoluted to be real and as the sad old fat fella said (he doesn’t look well though) we are down the rabbit hole.
Apparently ‘The city UK’ that represents the square mile has done a maaaasive U turn and come round to the fact that Brexit is now good and will offer lots of opportunities. It now embraces Brexit!
Brexit Trump and the City, looks like game, set, match to me.
Watching the snowflakes explode is just icing on the cake, I just can’t contain my joy, I may even watch the BBC news tonight and have a little snigger!
I suspect that opposition to Brexit was never as clear cut as reported in the MSM.
“Greed” always amuses me. Used selectively by the Left for success, or just ambition in other people. Pop stars, footballers, celebrities and BBC presenters are never “greedy” (footballers occasionally, perhaps).
Globalisation has not really done this country much good at all.
Its taken generations for ordinary working people and professionals alike to maintain a reasonable standard of living.
Better working conditions, less hours, ample food on the table, better training, better health care, progression etc etc.
Then what happened in the 60s, cheap labour being imported and cheap products imported from countries we can never compete with.
You cannot compete with a person working up a jungle track with no proper services or sanitation, but we are expected to.
We made all our coal miners redundant and let all our coal mines flood and become derelict.
Skilled personnel redundant because their company has moved aboard or taken on cheap labour or just sold out to some foreign firm that asset strips and runs, leaving the once loyal skilled worker to work on a till at Tesco.
We now import all our coal from Columbia the drug capital of the world and some of it in mined by children, imagine the increase in carbon footprint by that diesel fuel used by tankers to transport it here.
I waiting for the BBC to do a programme about the negative effects of globalisation on this country. I think I will wait a long time.
Just drove wife back from the station and whilst waiting for her had been half listening to a R4 programme on globalisation. American guy spouting on about what it meant, efficiency from companies moving production looking to use cheaper labour. I was waiting for the fuckwit Al Beeb facilitator to ask if globalisation in EU terms also meant UK companies shifting production to, say Poland, which had used EU development funds (MY MONEY) to build infrastructure, factories etc which then competed with our remaining producers (or we lost it completely). Meanwhile Poland sends us hyper-intelligent, PhD’s mostly, to pull coffees or pack parcels on MW + in-work benefits, jobs which our own workers or unemployed could do.
So as I always point out, our net contribution to the EU equals almost exactly what Poland gets net from the EU. We lose in output, employment with its social and fiscal cost, over-crowding and loss of access to services and in paying Poland to steal our jobs. MW workers don’t even pay enough for their share of NHS costs let alone anything else.
And the working man can see this and voted for Brexit and the prize, gaping assholes of the Left and Al Beeb tell us that the EU is good for us and that voting Brexit is racist!
This is the same argument really when industrialisation replaced cottage industries in the late 18th century. The working men of the time knew that their standard of living would fall . What saved the situation was the vast growth in markets mostly in our Empire which absorbed all labour here (plus the railway revolution ) .
The difference now is that there does not seem to be any reason to think that the developed economies will expand as they did in the early industrial age.
In any case the growth of financial markets which we seem to rely on are illusionary in the long term. Nothing is created except debt and financial instruments.
Here we seem to have an economy reliant on increasing property prices and other assets. Already the price of a house is beyond most new buyers. if you price out your customers the business fails in the end.