Excluding those that shop at Walmarts, does the average American STILL believe that a "global economy" is...

Question

a good thing?

Answer 1

The only good thing about it is that it makes the world a big lifeboat.

That means, if one economy falters, all suffer as a result of it. So its in everyone's best interest, being interdependent and all that, to help each other out.

There has always been a world economy. Its just more pronounced and visible today with the internet and instantaneous communications than it was half a century ago when only the wealthiest could afford regular telegrams, overseas telephone calls, and other forms of instant communication.

Today any schmo with a computer can talk to another of his or her ilk across the globe practically for free and relay instant reports or gossip. Fifty years ago this was not possible.

So the fact that we know about the global economy as it unfolds in slow, painful, grinding motion before our eyes we see more of it.

Aint that grand?

Answer 2

Yes.  I don't think there's anything wrong with other human beings becoming more free and improving their standards of living.  Do you?

Answer 3

It is a good thing. Trade between nations has allowed modern society to develop. Just because we're going to actually have to share our wealth a bit instead of completely dominating like we used to doesn't mean we should stop trading with anyone. Look at North Korea's economic situation. That's where everyone would be if there was no global economy.

We're just getting jobs transferred away from the manufacturing sector and to the service sector. There's no reason service sector jobs need to be inherently low-paying. I think we should focus on unionizing retail jobs instead of trying to change back to what we had. Then they'll be good paying.

Answer 4

Every economy is a global economy. Each economic decision made within one country will ultimately influence others. For instance a government with no free trade agreements and high taxes may suffer negative political changes that will offset the power balance in a certain region, therefore creating political and economic change in other nations.

Answer 5

I don't.  I'm currently taking a management course and all I keep thinking: we are setting ourselves up to be screwed by China.

Answer 6

Who cares?  The average American ACTS like it is.  She eats bananas (which don't grow in the U.S.), drinks coffee (the vast majority of which, except the precious little grown in Hawaii, is imported from Africa and South America), works for European and Japanese financial institutions, technology and pharmaceutical companies from Boston to San Diego, fills up her car with gasoline made in Aruba from oil mined in Norway, builds Boeing airplanes for Korean Air and Air New Zealand, and so on and so forth...

[Later addition]

Wake up!  "Decent manufactiring jobs" DO NOT go overseas; they are eliminated by mechanization and automation, PRECISELY because they are "decent" (i.e., pay well, which creates a decent-size incentive to mechanize or automate them).  The real decent jobs are no longer in manufacturing, they are in transportation (find out how much money locomotive operators, portal crane operators, or wide-body aircraft pilots make).

Also, ask yourself one question: if manufactiring jobs do indeed go overseas, how come manufactiring employment decreases all over the world, with China and Brazil experiencing the fastest manufactiring job loss?

Now there are jobs that go overseas, but there are also jobs that come in from overseas.  In the U.S., the technology industry (and to a lesser extent, financial services) has been hit by the wave of outsourcing to India.  The same industries, as it happens, get a lot of insourcing from Europe (Nokia runs its software development out of San Diego, Barclays has quite a bit of its global business based in San Francisco, etc.)  Meanwhile, pharmaceutical research has been a net job gain for the U.S.; virtually every major pharmaceutical company in the world has research facilities in the U.S.  A similar thing happened to automotive design; most of the world's automotive concept art these days comes from Southern California (which, by the way, is why cars look so much alike)...

[An even later addition]

It's easy to go into a rightful indignation about child labor.  But what would you rather have those children do?  School is no more an option than it was in, say, 18th century Britain, where even children of noble families entered military service at 12 (look up admiral Nelson, for example).  What's left?  Working on the farm for the parents (or, more likely, for a slightly better-off neighbor), begging on the streets, petty crime, and prostitution.  If sweatshops disappear tomorrow, no one's life will be improved by it...

Answer 7

Having a global economy enables nations to exploit their efficiencies in the production of goods and services to increase global output to levels that would otherwise be unattainable by nations in autonomy (nations that don't trade). Higher output means that living standards for all people rise. So to answer your question; the average college educated American would believe that having a global economy is a good thing.

Answer 8

Show me a single example of successful nation who's economy is in autarky?  It's just evolution of financial markets and the transfer of goods and services.  You either join it or get washed away to the side by it.  There is no real middle ground in the long run.  The next stage will be ever more free mobility of labor between countries.