# Will Globalization Ever 'Produce the Goods' **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 13, 2016, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116 "2016-04-13T20:05:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/21 "2016-04-13T22:29:09Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Yes, I think that a high percentage of outsourced blue-collar jobs would be automated if trade barriers were enacted. There are certainly big categories of jobs that are not easily automated, but these tend not to be easily outsourced, either–construction, plumbers, electricians, etc. Some jobs, like garment manufacturing, have been traditionally difficult to automate, but you can bet that there would be an enormous push in that direction if the economic incentive was there (i.e., no longer any giant masses of low-wage workers available). > > With globalization, you still at least have people competing against people, so depending on the economics (the foreign jobs get more expensive over time, too), it may make sense to bring the jobs back onshore. But once you build a good enough robot, it can reach the point where it’s not worth hiring a person even for free (no matter where they live). So in the long run I think automation is the greater threat and globalization a relatively short-term issue. That’s what I thought, but I read a paper which had thousands of jobs (which I’d never thought of) which were at a low risk of automation, and many which were at a high risk that I didn’t realise were. Anything to do with selling insurance or financial services would go more quickly, I found most surprising. The jobs that support the jobs that can’t be automated quickly are the ones we forget, a teacher needs support staff, their own childcare, a mechanic to fix his/her car, a locksmith when they lose their keys, maybe a therapist when work gets too much, a techie to fix their computer, a delivery driver to bring all the books in (yeah Google will direct the truck but it can’t unload a stack of books), a dentist, other medical carers in their old age, a funeral director etc. Unless I see it wrongly, a job gained will have effects that ripple out. Every extra working body needs support in one way or another, every company needs suppliers, every transaction will enable other transactions. Of course the ‘price’ to pay for in-sourcing whole industries would be more costly goods, you may say that leaves the outsourcing countries out but did not outsourcing do that to western workers? Hundreds of millions have been taken out of poverty in the east, with a concurrent drop in living standards for most in the west. It’s been great for economic activity but the downsides are plenty and as unintended as they were, have been pretty dramatic. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/22 "2016-04-13T22:29:12Z")
China has given up some of its old-fashioned communist tyranny and is moving in the direction of a free (free-er) market. China is now one of the world’s great economic powerhouses. That’s “producing the goods.” It’s progress, of the healthiest possible kind. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/23 "2016-04-13T22:33:14Z")
I fear the OP is arguing out of emotional discontent (“Throwing themselves off balconies…Cancer villages”) and is not going to listen those reasonable voices who say that globalized capitalism has been the greatest force of alleviating poverty in the history of the world. It’s really that simple. Is it perfect? No. Is it better for everyone (ESPECIALLY the third-world)? Damn skippy. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/24 "2016-04-13T22:59:16Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > China has given up some of its old-fashioned communist tyranny and is moving in the direction of a free (free-er) market. China is now one of the world’s great economic powerhouses. > > That’s “producing the goods.” It’s progress, of the healthiest possible kind. > [@Stringbean](#): > > I fear the OP is arguing out of emotional discontent (“Throwing themselves off balconies…Cancer villages”) and is not going to listen those reasonable voices who say that globalized capitalism has been the greatest force of alleviating poverty in the history of the world. > > It’s really that simple. Is it perfect? No. Is it better for everyone (ESPECIALLY the third-world)? Damn skippy. Two points that are related. Firstly, you’re both assuming a lot, in that the Chinese are generally healthier and happier to be ‘free’ of communism and that workers manufacturing Apple products throwing themselves off of balconies at Foxconn or dying in cancer villages aren’t a product of a wider malaise. That’s what I mean by cultural imperialism and the reason I offered the thread - not because of some emotional discontent :rolleyes: Also, Stringbean, could we do without the ad hominem comments? Thanks. Secondly I already gratefully acknowledged, several times in this thread, that hundreds of millions have been taken out of poverty because of globalization. Whether ‘Skippy’ is damned or not doesn’t mean just because they have two farthings to rub together automatically means they’re healthier and happier. Maybe they were happier when living in an agricultural paradise, sure the seasons were as unpredictable as ever but the land and water were clean, your kids didn’t hassle you for a new cell phone or GI Joe and all of your friends were as dirt poor and happy as you were. Life was simpler, your kids had no pressure to get grades, the state provided for everything, ‘stress’ wasn’t even a concept you registered. All that is presumptive, just as is China being an economic powerhouse means all 1.4 billion of her population are thriving. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/25 "2016-04-13T23:03:44Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Also, Stringbean, could we do without the ad hominem comments? Thanks. There was no “ad hominem comment” there. Perhaps you just didn’t understand. Sleep on it, read it a few more times. > [@](#): > > Whether ‘Skippy’ is damned or not “Damm skippy” is an idiom. Look it up. . ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/26 "2016-04-13T23:12:43Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Income (in)equality is one measure, and one we’ve been fed as the barrier the great leveller of globalization is breaking down. I’m not so sure we’re not just guilty of cultural imperialism. Say a farmer in China loses his farm because a factory owner has ganxi (influence) with local politicians, goes to work in the factory built on previously his land and his salary goes from $1 to $4 a day. Great, he can feed his family on goods from someone else’s farm and send his daughter to school, all good. > > Then the factory is outsourced to cheaper Vietnam and he loses his job (with no safety net in China) and his farmland is never recovered or too polluted to farm, or he and his family get sick and he can’t work (with no safety net in China), or he suffers an industrial accident (with no safety net in China) and can’t work, or his daughter gets sick on the chemicals being let into the local waterworks and its either feed the rest of his family or care for her (with no safety net in China) etc. > > My ‘cultural imperialism’ comment is that the higher income is always assumed to be the better option, when actually it’s the difference between being able to not afford to send your child to the hospital or not needing to. Maybe the father, rather than send his daughter to school, saves the money in case he or they get sick (with no safety net in China). The Chinese save more than almost any other nation because… I’m not disagreeing with you that these are bad things. I’m just saying that we in the US went through all of them also. We’ve got relatively few big farms here, and we hardly invented land grabs by the rich. Safety nets are a rather recent thing. Pollution didn’t just kill crops, it killed people too. Why are the jobs going to Vietnam or Bangladesh? Increased wages and better conditions. Eventually the robber barons are going to run out of people to exploit or people in the US will finally give a crap about not buying stuff made with near slave labor. In 1900 plenty of people would have told you that the migration from farm to city was a horrible mistake, and looking at a sweatshop would have made you think they were right. But we evolved out of that. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/27 "2016-04-13T23:14:18Z")
> [@andros](#): > > There was no “ad hominem comment” there. Perhaps you just didn’t understand. Sleep on it, read it a few more times. Really, I thought “arguing out of emotional discontent” was playing the man and not the ball. ad hominem ad ˈhɒmɪnɛm/ adverb & adjective 1.(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining. (I looked it up) > [@andros](#): > > “Damm skippy” is an idiom. Look it up. > . I know, I looked it up too. Did you have any point to make on the debate or are you just going to make up irrelevant arguments? Actually, rather that derail a thread I’ll assume “Yes”. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/28 "2016-04-13T23:21:04Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Secondly I already gratefully acknowledged, several times in this thread, that hundreds of millions have been taken out of poverty because of globalization. Whether ‘Skippy’ is damned or not doesn’t mean just because they have two farthings to rub together automatically means they’re healthier and happier. Maybe they were happier when living in an agricultural paradise, sure the seasons were as unpredictable as ever but the land and water were clean, your kids didn’t hassle you for a new cell phone or GI Joe and all of your friends were as dirt poor and happy as you were. Life was simpler, your kids had no pressure to get grades, the state provided for everything, ‘stress’ wasn’t even a concept you registered. > > All that is presumptive, just as is China being an economic powerhouse means all 1.4 billion of her population are thriving. You must have been watching one of those modern Communist operas where the happy peasants are dancing in the village square and apparently the crops harvest themselves. While the government has forced people to the cities, many people both here and there moved of their own will. And a lot of them aren’t going back. Hobbes said that life was nasty, brutish and short about an agrarian world, remember. Yeah, the Chinese have plenty of income inequality of their own, but someone is buying all those phones. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/29 "2016-04-13T23:21:46Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Did you have any point to make on the debate or are you just going to make up irrelevant arguments? Hardly an argument, but not irrelevant. I’m reading the thread because I find the subject matter interesting. I’m also fascinated by the meta-debate, in which I find it hard to take your posts seriously when you criticize others for behavior _you exhibit yourself_. (Or did you not notice I used your own words?) Your presentation is distracting, and that makes it more difficult to follow your arguments. . ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/30 "2016-04-13T23:22:48Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I’m not disagreeing with you that these are bad things. I’m just saying that we in the US went through all of them also. We’ve got relatively few big farms here, and we hardly invented land grabs by the rich. Safety nets are a rather recent thing. Pollution didn’t just kill crops, it killed people too. > Why are the jobs going to Vietnam or Bangladesh? Increased wages and better conditions. Eventually the robber barons are going to run out of people to exploit or people in the US will finally give a crap about not buying stuff made with near slave labor. > In 1900 plenty of people would have told you that the migration from farm to city was a horrible mistake, and looking at a sweatshop would have made you think they were right. But we evolved out of that. All good points, I’m not against developing nations in isolation. The US and western Europe could develop without the cross-border problems of resource depletion and subsequent warring we see today (although Imperialism did quite a lot of bad). It’s been said many times those in China and India could never reflect our lifestyles without adding another couple of Earths for resources, but you and I know they’re going to try their best. In fact they’re also going to enable Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and most likely much of Africa to achieve the American Dream too. Sorry, I used a sleight of hand there and dodged your point, which was made in response to my point about environmental conditions in China alone. My point about _Chinese_ conditions was that we know the repercussions they will likely suffer, back in 1900 we didn’t. We do know now and we prevent them out of humanity and not because we have to develop. I’m getting tired as it’s gone 2am here and I’m working tomorrow. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/31 "2016-04-13T23:49:01Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > You must have been watching one of those modern Communist operas where the happy peasants are dancing in the village square and apparently the crops harvest themselves. While the government has forced people to the cities, many people both here and there moved of their own will. And a lot of them aren’t going back. Hobbes said that life was nasty, brutish and short about an agrarian world, remember. > Yeah, the Chinese have plenty of income inequality of their own, but someone is buying all those phones. I’d hardly call questioning globalization a love of communism. That you do should raise questions as to if you’re entirely open to a debate on the subject. It’s quite an existensial question = is globalixation good for us overall? > [@andros](#): > > Hardly an argument, but not irrelevant. > > I’m reading the thread because I find the subject matter interesting. I’m also fascinated by the meta-debate, in which I find it hard to take your posts seriously when you criticize others for behavior _you exhibit yourself_. (Or did you not notice I used your own words?) > > Your presentation is distracting, and that makes it more difficult to follow your arguments. > > . I did notice that, but when I used those words it was in response to the questioning of the thread title (and as an adjunct to my “OP being borderline incomprehensible” when John Mace had obviously not bothered to understand it properly). Maybe I’ve approached this incorrectly, I came in for a Great Debate and stumbled in to a Great Attack, I;d have thiuught someone woud’ve also chimed in with something not totally opposite to my OP by now, it seens in choice of debate I have choson unwisely. Now arguing about what I tosomeone said an hour before is even worse and feels like marriage! Can I have my money back? I’ll go to bed, too tured to tyoe orperlly. thansk i will sleep on it and read it a few more times once the characres on the screen stop jumooing about ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/32 "2016-04-14T00:14:24Z")
False: > [@JustinC](#): > > […]and if they [the middle class] want an education they have to take out a huge loan. Where are you getting this information? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/33 "2016-04-14T01:00:17Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Whether ‘Skippy’ is damned or not doesn’t mean just because they have two farthings to rub together automatically means they’re healthier and happier. Maybe they were happier when living in an agricultural paradise… Who cares about 40M people killed in a manufactured “famine” when you’re living in “paradise”? We should force those factory workers back to the “paradise” of back-breaking labor involved in substance farming that most of them left willingly. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/34 "2016-04-14T01:04:36Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > . . . doesn’t mean just because they have two farthings to rub together automatically means they’re healthier and happier. Maybe they were happier when living in an agricultural paradise, sure the seasons were as unpredictable as ever but the land and water were clean, your kids didn’t hassle you for a new cell phone or GI Joe and all of your friends were as dirt poor and happy as you were. Life was simpler, your kids had no pressure to get grades, the state provided for everything, ‘stress’ wasn’t even a concept you registered. . . . If you imagine that farm life is without stress, you are severely misled. And, no, the land and water were not clean. Live on a cattle ranch for a while; you do not drink out of the stream. Chinese farm laborers were beyond poor: they were wholly destitute. They had no education, no medical care (no teeth!) and no power over their own society. They were no better than serfs or slaves. Until fairly recently, they didn’t even have the right to leave their farms and go to the cities. (Many did so anyway, illegally, just as millions leave poor countries to go to the U.S. or Europe.) Please don’t allow yourself to fall for the myth of the “Happy, dancing peasant.” There’s a very simple one-word rebuttal to that myth: ringworm. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/35 "2016-04-14T01:20:45Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m gradually growing more suspicious and wary of globalisation, we’re fed the immediate impact of hundreds of millions being brought out of poverty and cheap goods for all. At first they seemed to be a nice thing. It turns out the cheap goods are depleting our world and most are of no absolute return, and those who are benefiting in the Far East are either growing up in cancer villages, wanting to throw themselves off of their balcony, or have become filthy rich because they’re connected. Hundreds of millions HAVE been brought out of poverty and we DO have cheap goods for all. Go to a freaking Walmart sometime. Is your problem really with ‘globalisation’ or with the environmental impact of cheap goods on the planet…it’s hard to tell what exactly you ARE having an issue with, to be honest, and difficult to understand what you want to debate. It’s also hard to determine if you actually understand the economic impact that ‘globalisation’ has actually had globally. > [@](#): > > Also the middle classes are being reduced into obscurity, and if they want an education they have to take out a huge loan. This has two benefits for those in power; firstly the inevitable reduction in the number of students who feel free to comment, the best and most productive protests have been from student populations. And those who are educated will be more inclined to toe the line, rather than question why the line is as it is. Which middle class? Are you talking about the American middle class? The middle class in Europe? Asia? Outer Mongolia? The middle class in the US is pretty much stagnant, though hardly ‘being reduced into obscurity’. World wide, however, it’s booming. Again…do you actually understand what ‘globalisation’ is and what it does and who it impacts. > [@](#): > > Secondly the middle classes have often been where social and cultural change has come from; the Beatles, Stones, Monty Python, Jon Stewart, the Young Ones, Aristotle, Zuckerberg, Einstein, Muse, many Dopers, Tony Hart, Tony Hancock. We lose the middle classes and we lose a lot of entrepreneurial, original and innovative peoples, there are many papers online which detail how middle classes dominate the arts. So, your focus is solely on the US middle class, and you figure that it’s not working or producing ‘the Goods’ because it hasn’t been completely focused and beneficial to us? The US middle class should be an ever increasing upward economic trajectory with high paying jobs and great benefits forever because…we are Americans? And if we supposedly lose it we will lose ‘entrepreneurial, original and innovative peoples, there are many papers online which detail how middle classes dominate the arts’? Ok. Well, to start, you’d need to prove your premise…that, in fact, this is the trajectory for the US middle class across the board. Not that the US has lost manufacturing jobs to globalization (some of which is certainly offshoring and outsourcing, but much of which is actually automation, expert systems and streamlining of business processes, which is why despite a large loss in manufacturing JOBS the US is actually producing more manufactured GOODS than any time in our history…look it up :p). > [@](#): > > The bogeymen being fed currently and since 2007 has been nationalism and protectionism are harbingers or doom which were thus back in the Great Depression, with very little attention on being on the Gold Standard along with the confiscation of gold (and, so, wealth) in America back then, along with Europe coming off the gold standard much sooner and also emerging from the GD much sooner. Protectionism has been tied with the GD and Trump - both a big negative today and both I’d rather avoid, conveniently. Rather than just accept them unquestionably, I’d rather ask why I should and also question if the alternative(s) is worthy of a debate. So…we need to go back to the gold standard? And we need to institute trade protectionism and ‘nationalism’, whatever that means to you? And Trump is bad…or good? I can’t honestly tell what the hell you are getting at in this sentence. And before you tell me to sleep on it why don’t you, instead, try to clarify whatever it is you are trying to say instead? ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/36 "2016-04-14T02:03:29Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Secondly I already gratefully acknowledged, several times in this thread, that hundreds of millions have been taken out of poverty because of globalization. So it has, literally and figuratively, produced the goods. /thread ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/37 "2016-04-14T17:36:39Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Two points that are related. Firstly, you’re both assuming a lot, in that the Chinese are generally healthier and happier to be ‘free’ of communism and that workers manufacturing Apple products throwing themselves off of balconies at Foxconn or dying in cancer villages aren’t a product of a wider malaise. That’s what I mean by cultural imperialism and the reason I offered the thread - not because of some emotional discontent :rolleyes: I’m more or less a communist and even I would agree that the Chinese are objectively better off today since they moved away from many aspects of communism. (People in the former Soviet Union are, as an understatement, not). I agree with communist ideals in general and think in some places it was implemented decently well. In China, it was implemented terribly (starting with the famines). Chinese people are probably subjectively less happy than they were under communism (partly because their expectations are higher and partly because of increased inequality) but subjective happiness by itself isn’t a great way to measure things. Objectively, I doubt that even poor peasants are _worse_ off, and many people are better off. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/38 "2016-04-14T17:42:14Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Will the FT do? [America’s Middle-class Meltdown](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/c3de7f66-9f96-11e5-beba-5e33e2b79e46.html#axzz45k3S1079). It was the first ‘cite’ of legitimacy I found, I’m surprised that needs evidence. The gutting of America’s blue collar middle class has been the topic of economic papers for at least a decade, automation and globalization have put previously worthwhile blue collar workers out of work - is this not general knowledge? Pew did a [survey](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/) and found out that the percentage of Americans who are middle class has shrunk 11% since 1971. The percentage of people in the highest income bracket went up 5%., the percentage of people in the Upper Middle bracket went up 2%, the lower middle bracket percentage stayed the same and the lowest bracket percentage went up 4%. It is a good think that the percentage of rich people more than doubled and the percentage of upper middle class people went up 20%. If you look at the survey for the type of person whose income has gone down, the big losers are hispanics and people with high school education and less. This is because the country has taken in millions of poor immigrants from Latin countries. They show up as poor in the stats but in reality their lives have improved since it is better to be poor in the US than poor in Latin America. As has been pointed out already globalization has resulted in hundred of millions of people moving out of desperate poverty. Meanwhile in America more and more people are getting rich but some ill educated people are losing out. Since it is literally impossible for a change to benefit everyone globalization should easily pass any cost benefit analysis. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/39 "2016-04-14T18:54:09Z")
Globalization has brought the goods. Your issue is that you think middle class Westerners are some exalted class. Why is the fortune of a middle class Westerner more important than a villager in China or a laborer from Mexico? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116/40 "2016-04-14T19:04:01Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > I’d hardly call questioning globalization a love of communism. That you do should raise questions as to if you’re entirely open to a debate on the subject. It’s quite an existensial question = is globalixation good for us overall? Not love of Communism, but rather love of the countryside where all is clean and the living is easy - the Green Acres syndrome. Whereas throughout the world people move to cities because things are easier there (if not easy in absolute terms). As for it being better, it is clearly not better for everyone. But probably more people are helped than hurt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-globalization-ever-produce-the-goods/752116.md?page=3)