<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A great job at summing up the core problems of globalization
Review: Professor Tabb has done an excellent job here. This book is well researched, well argued and cautious to avoid naive oversimplifications of the issues surrounding globalization. I haven't read another book that lays out more clearly the ways in which "globalization" is effecting the environment, workers rights and democratic ideals. I strongly encourage you to read this book if you are looking for solid information on what the "globalization" debate is all about. There is certainly too much to overview in this space. However, I should respond to another reviewer's claim that Professor Tabb is not well researched in that he does not cite much from academic journals. this is true, as the scope and focus of this book lies outside of academic ideological posturing on world issues and goes to the statistical facts, actual statements and track records of global finance institutions and examines the official public line on these issues, as documented in the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. this book is in fact very well researched, and very much worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: A great job at summing up the core problems of globalization
Review: Professor Tabb has done an excellent job here. This book is well researched, well argued and cautious to avoid naive oversimplifications of the issues surrounding globalization. I haven't read another book that lays out more clearly the ways in which "globalization" is effecting the environment, workers rights and democratic ideals. I strongly encourage you to read this book if you are looking for solid information on what the "globalization" debate is all about. There is certainly too much to overview in this space. However, I should respond to another reviewer's claim that Professor Tabb is not well researched in that he does not cite much from academic journals. this is true, as the scope and focus of this book lies outside of academic ideological posturing on world issues and goes to the statistical facts, actual statements and track records of global finance institutions and examines the official public line on these issues, as documented in the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. this book is in fact very well researched, and very much worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Refutes the logic of neoliberal capitalism
Review: The author gives some examples of the logic of capitalism. For instance, he quotes the memo written by former Clinton treasury secretary and current Harvard president, Larry Summers, when he was Chief economist at the World Bank in 1991. In that memo he explained the "impeccable" economic logic of exporting "health-impairing pollution" to "vastly underpolluted countries" such as in Africa. And then there is recounting of former Bush treasury secreatary Paul O'neil's confrontation at a shareholders meeting with one of the workers at an Alcoa plastics plant in Mexico when he was CEO of that company. O'neil told him that Alcoa's plants were so clean in Mexico that one could eat off their floors but the worker responded that his excellency was lying and produced newspaper clippings to prove it. Alcoa pays virtually no taxes in the town of the Mexican plant of that worker and the town's infrastructure (schools, hospitals, sewage, etc) is in shambles. Half of the town's 15,000 residents use backyard latrines. Alcoa, along with Ford, contributed 52,000 dollars to build a school for three hundred students, that has one teacher, a leaky roof......He points to the workers at the Reebok plant in Thailand, workers in China's "industrial zones," Nike and Alcoa workers in Mexico. Instead of working 80 hours a week, and getting constantly cut and bruised by machines, and getting chemicals in the eyes and nausea and headaches, or getting beaten up if you don't work fast enough and getting arrested if you try to leave work, these people could fight for their dignity if they had a viable union to advance their cause. It is only labor rights, such as the right not to be fired for launching a strike, which allow workers to try to get rights to decent pay, humane working conditions and other such essentials while they make their bosses such huge profits with their work. The author goes over some of the public relations efforts of such companies. The Clinton administration helped in such an effort with top retail companies which created a "code of conduct" with companies policing themselves but such standards have been little enforced. The author looks at the particularly interesting case of aids drugs. 17 million people and counting have died of AIDs in Africa. However U.S. companies have patents on the leading AIDs drugs which gives them a monopoly on producing them so they can charge 10,000 dollars to poor Africans for Aids treatment. Al Gore on behalf of U.S. pharmaceuticals threatened sanctions on South Africa when that country passed laws allowing for local companies to produce Aids drugs at 90 to 95 percent cheaper than American pharmaceutical companies demand. The Clinton administration argued that compulsory liscencing laws did not apply in that case. And the Pharmaceuticals have argued that they need to charge high prices so they can continue to research Aids treatments and if they are stricted their entrepreneurial genius will strangled. Of course, the problem is that these drugs have been substantially developed through U.S. government funded research. For instance the author points out that while the company Glaxo Wellcom claims to have developed AZT, it was actually the National Cancer Institute and Duke University researchers that developed AZT to suppress the Aids virus in human cells and Glaxo Wellcom did not do any of the immunological or Virological studies or test it on patients. The author points to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research which found that of the 21 drugs "considered to have the highest therapeutic value of those introduced between 1965 and 1992" publicly funded research developed 15 of them. Most tropical diseases have been cured by U.S. military research or by private companies that do research on livestock and pets. The author notes that the U.S. government has offered 200 million to the UN's proposed 10 billion dollar program to fight Aids and has insisted that its money be used to buy from American pharmaceutical companies. He notes that neoliberal capitalism has been a horrible failure throughout the world. The deregulation of capital flows has led to increased financial panics such as the Asian crises a few years ago. 90 percent or more of international financial transactions are for speculative purposes. He notes that eliminating tarrifs for Western goods has led to the destruction of local industries, throwing farmers off the land, and so on. He notes that Western countries, with their usual grotesque hypocrisy, put tarrifs and huge subsidies on their agricultural products against foreign competetion. He quotes a study from the World Bank which states that greater openness to trade slows income growth amongst the poorest 40 percent of poor nations. The author refers to the subidized sugar industry of Mozambique and IMF efforts to privitize it. The author notes that polls show that a majority of Americans symphathize with the views of Anti-WTO protestors. Real wages have stagnated for a majority of Americans over the last few decades. Job insecurity has greatly increased. His quotation of statistics about Americans crying on the job, getting inadequate sleep, problems at work affecting their personal lives, and so on is interesting. He quotes Human Rights Watch which points out the great attack on Unions launched by the U.S. government, continuing since the Reagan years. 54 percent of young workers say they would like to join a union but 80 percent of workers say it is somewhat or very likely that union organizers will face retribution from companies The author devotes a section to the environment too, probably the most difficult of the book. He points out that drilling in the Wildlife refuge in Alaska will only produce oil in ten years and after that only 42 million gallons a day. He says that 49 million gallons a day of oil would be saved if the miles per gallon of SUV's would be increased by three miles.
Rating: 
Summary: Little analysis
Review: This is not a very helpful book to understand globalization. The author makes a lot of rhetorical comments, blames every bad thing in the world on multinational corporations or international organizations, and offers little analysis in global issues. It is also deplorable that the author mostly refers to newspapers and popular magazines rather than academic books, even though he is an economics professor. (There is no bibliography in the book, only a few endnotes for each chapter). Last but not least, the book is very poorly written. It is dull, repetitive, and full of unnecessarily long sentences.
<< 1 >>
|
