Globalization and Inequity Essays

Submitted By afarrash
Words: 814
Pages: 4

Globalization and Inequality
Over the last two centuries income inequality has risen in many developing countries. One of those countries is the United States of America. Often times, the rise of inequality in the United States is attributed to globalization and corporate expansion. As leaders in globalization, the United States was one of the first countries that experienced the benefits of globalization and corporate expansion. This meant that many of the large globalized US companies set the standard to how to operate in a global economy. However, the establishment of “globalism”, a direct consequence of globalization, mainly focused, and still focuses, on protecting corporate capital instead of improving and advancing the average American worker’s life.
The focus on capital and wealth has in tern caused its government to create and progress upon inequalities between its people, specifically between the capitalists and the minority groups. One of the ways that globalization and focus on capital has added to the increase of inequality is the measures that the United States take in order for them to attract foreign companies. The United States offers highly profitable companies tax cuts. While the tax cuts do give companies incentive, they happen to happen on the expense of social welfare programs. Also, according to several sources, many of the tax cuts also affect public spending on public services, creating different social inequalities and social class disparities. Adding to the causes of disparities, Pablo Solon of the Huffington Post writes that globalization has weakened the bargaining position of immobile labor, as opposed to the mobility of fully mobile labor. This, consequently, leads to lowering wages.
The push of globalization spilled over to many countries. While the disparities do appear in the United States, work regulations remain better than me developing countries. However, with globalization, many firms relocate from the United States to many East Asian countries, where workers are exploited to work extreme hours for very low compensation, mainly women. The increases inequality in many countries, and, since the American worker lost his or her job, contributes to inequality in the United States. And the companies that do not send their manufacturing abroad, capitalize on minimum wages and high employee turnover. This allows big companies, like Wal-Mart, to limit employee benefits and wages, while operating at low cost and gaining huge revenues, which is why Wal-Mart can sell at low prices. Not only that but companies like Wal-Mart, in order to continue abusing the system, work tirelessly on influencing government policies. Wal-Mart continues to try to prevent and ensure laws increasing people’s wages and work pay rate never take off. They also ensure that unions are not to be assembled and that the notions of unions are the poison to their business motto. Copeland writes that Unions are often regarded by many as “the most powerful potential form of resistance to Wal-Mart’s low wages and ‘people’ policies”. The result of this business model and the lobbying to protect it led to the creation of a “low wage work force…who cannot afford to shop else were” than Wal-Mart, as Copeland writes. This furthers the concept that social and economic inequalities exist between working people and corporate people. Corporate people, who receive the highest salaries, live comfortably and securely as compared to