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HEARTS AND HEADS

By Paul Krugman

SYNOPSIS: Anti-globalization protestors want to turn the world into a nasty place. There is an old European saying: anyone who is not a socialist before he is 30 has no heart; anyone who is still a socialist after he is 30 has no head. Suitably updated, this applies perfectly to the movement against globalization — the movement that made its big splash in Seattle back in 1999 and is doing its best to disrupt the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City this weekend.

The facts of globalization are not always pretty. If you buy a product made in a third-world country, it was produced by workers who are paid incredibly little by Western standards and probably work under awful conditions. Anyone who is not bothered by those facts, at least some of the time, has no heart.

But that doesn't mean the demonstrators are right. On the contrary: anyone who thinks that the answer to world poverty is simple outrage against global trade has no head — or chooses not to use it. The anti-globalization movement already has a remarkable track record of hurting the very people and causes it claims to champion.

The most spectacular example was last year's election. You might say that because people with no heads indulged their idealism by voting for Ralph Nader, people with no hearts are running the world's most powerful nation.

Even when political action doesn't backfire, when the movement gets what it wants, the effects are often startlingly malign. For example, could anything be worse than having children work in sweatshops? Alas, yes. In 1993, child workers in Bangladesh were found to be producing clothing for Wal-Mart, and Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation banning imports from countries employing underage workers. The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets — and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

The point is that third-world countries aren't poor because their export workers earn low wages; it's the other way around. Because the countries are poor, even what look to us like bad jobs at bad wages are almost always much better than the alternatives: millions of Mexicans are migrating to the north of the country to take the low-wage export jobs that outrage opponents of Nafta. And those jobs wouldn't exist if the wages were much higher: the same factors that make poor countries poor — low productivity, bad infrastructure, general social disorganization — mean that such countries can compete on world markets only if they pay wages much lower than those paid in the West.

Of course, opponents of globalization have heard this argument, and they have answers. At a conference last week I heard paeans to the superiority of traditional rural lifestyles over modern, urban life — a claim that not only flies in the face of the clear fact that many peasants flee to urban jobs as soon as they can, but that (it seems to me) has a disagreeable element of cultural condescension, especially given the overwhelming preponderance of white faces in the crowds of demonstrators. (Would you want to live in a pre-industrial village?) I also heard claims that rural poverty in the third world is mainly the fault of multinational corporations — which is just plain wrong, but is a convenient belief if you want to think of globalization as an unmitigated evil.

The most sophisticated answer was that the movement doesn't want to stop exports — it just wants better working conditions and higher wages.

But it's not a serious position. Third-world countries desperately need their export industries — they cannot retreat to an imaginary rural Arcadia. They can't have those export industries unless they are allowed to sell goods produced under conditions that Westerners find appalling, by workers who receive very low wages. And that's a fact the anti- globalization activists refuse to accept. So who are the bad guys? The activists are getting the images they wanted from Quebec City: leaders sitting inside their fortified enclosure, with thousands of police protecting them from the outraged masses outside. But images can deceive. Many of the people inside that chain-link fence are sincerely trying to help the world's poor. And the people outside the fence, whatever their intentions, are doing their best to make the poor even poorer.

Originally published in The New York Times, 4.22.01

Answer 1

Kudos to the thoughts of sir Paul Krugman,

I am glad that some economist are still there with hearts and have the thought of social upgrade above the upgradation of economy considering humanity the first.

According to this synopis, he mentioned that apart from globalisation positive effects there are several worse effects which make him think that should globalisation be there with these terms which is actually prevailing all around us.

Apart from advances in technology, communication, means of production, and transportation, globalization is a challenge to health and well-being worldwide.

In the article he also mentioned that we cannot snatch the opportunity of being employed from the small workers but we should consider the humanity.

If the wages are higher then limited number of employees could be recruited or you can say given work therefore wages can also be not increased so that maximum number of people could get work to earn for their livelihood but apart fromt his here he is concerned about the work offered to childern and also he mentioned that if work is being snatched from the hands of children in name of child labour then they will be seen with the more worse jobs or on the street.

In the thought of all scenario only one thing can be done is to upgrade few policies towards the humanity as we cannot go decades back and alter globalisation or stop trade accross the world but we can add humanity policies with trade which may include:

• Sanitization of the place were children or the employees had to do work
• proper home shelters
• cruch facility to the womens with babies
• meal facilty
• even we can add part time education facility to be provided after working hours (if child can work then he can easily manage to learn few things through education which the employers can make availabe as per there work too btu atleast a approach for the development)
• dress code to made compulsory from employer side(which help employees to get clothes )
• above all there must be mechanism of check over the implementation of the policies(as many policies are made with the optimist thought but not followed by the people)
• proper medical check up should be made compulsion of the employees with every quater passed.

these policies may sound as heard before in normal departments but they are not attached in globalisation policies .If they are added as mandatory and without completion of this basic policies trade may be cancellled by the authorities.