ABSTRACT
The key point made in this chapter is that economic globalization can enhance labor market capabilities and thereby improve the standard of socio-economic well-being of workers. Moreover, increasing material benefits to labor need not have any negative competitive consequences; most probably positively affecting productivity. Thus, I argue that the anti-globalization-trade-market hypothesis is fundamentally flawed. A contentious populist belief, with much academic weight behind it, contends that increasing international trade and its most recent historical rhetorical manifestation, “globalization,” has damaging affects upon the economic welfare of the vast majority of the world’s population. Such negative effects are an inevitable consequence, it appears, of capitalism, especially that which embraces globalization. Globalization implies a race to the bottom and a shift of resources from the less developed to the more developed economies. It is either implicitly or explicitly assumed that globalization is part and parcel of a zero-sum game—there can only be winners and losers and most folk in this world end up with the short end of the stick.
