Neoliberal Globalization Essay

In the article â€Å"Neoliberal Globalization† by Dan Clawson, the author contended that the advocates of neoliberalism tried to integrate this into globalization. He said that they are continuously attempting to make policies favorable to companies’ profits. Unfortunately, these do not make corresponding benefits and compensations to its workers that trigger labor crisis in the United States. Clawson further argued that neoliberalism should not be misunderstood as an inevitable phenomenon to accompanied globalization. Take for example the internet. Since the internet is a â€Å"powerful force† that connects people in one region to the world, it is also considered as the best contributor in globalization. In order to take that advantage, companies today tried to adapt a neoliberal perspective on the use of the internet to make more profit for themselves. Even so, the internet is for everyone in the world – whether a person has wealth and power or not. In addition to this, the concept of globalization of the internet is very different from the perspective of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on globalization. Their belief is to generate most profits for business, much to their interest. The neoliberals believe that the their version of globalization has generated many profits and has made individuals wealthy. Yes, businesses nowadays are indeed making more profit than before because of neoliberal strategies. However, the wealth has been distributed unequally; in other words, wealth has been concentrated in certain business people. Clawson demonstrates this wrong argument of neoliberals by providing two different economy periods namely, the welfare state and the neoliberal state. Clawson’s argument questioned why the average family income during the welfare state period was doubled compared to the slow increase during the neoliberalism period, given that the neoliberal oriented economy brought prosperity to the state. There was a noticable increase in income during the later period, but these increases were made by women workers and mostly distributed to the top people in the business. The Neoliberal version of globalization has then resulted in the continuous gap widening between the average workers and the top executives. With this, how does neoliberal globalization damage our economy? The damages are serious and concentrated in the working class population. The more international trade grows, the higher income inequality becomes. This causes more people to lose their jobs because of the companies’ decision to relocate to other countries to cut costs. Many of them relocate their manufacturing jobs to China and the service sector jobs to India. This is the main reason why most of the products we avail are from China, and the servicing jobs are in India. All of these are causes of the companies’ downsizing and the increased unemployment. Clawson proposed some solutions to the neoliberal form of globalization. He said that if the workers formed a union, the capital would be controlled, and there would be a decrease in the relocation. I agree with this thinking of Clawson. Abolishing the boundless rights corporations have in relocation is an effective way to maintain the workers’ rights. Unfortunately, the process was more complicated than what Clawson suggested. Another alternative was the regulation of labor conditions through organizations, such as the United Nations or the WTO. Clawson proposed that WTO should focus more on the workers’ rights and environment, and not only the company profits. WTO was established to protect organizational profits. If the right to regulate labor condition is granted to the WTO, there is a possibility that the WTO operate favorably to generate corporations’ profits. Clawson’s neoliberal version of globalization brought labor’s crisis in the United States. He demonstrated these by providing many case examples. However, his proposals did not address possible obstacles, which may follow as a result of those solutions or in the process of formulating those solutions.