Faster Economic Growth In Developed Oecd Countries example essay topic

1,000 words
"GLOBALISATION" has become one of the most talked subject and concepts in recent times. It has become the most popular subject of many articles, speeches and seminars. Before talking about the advantages and disadvantages of the globalisation we should firstly be sure of the description of it. For years, many sociologists defined it in different ways. The sociologist Anthony Giddens, for example, defines globalisation as a decoupling of space and time, emphasizing that with instantaneous communications, knowledge and culture can be shared around the world simultaneously. ( web accessed 01/09/03) David Held and Anthony McGrew write in their entry for Oxford Companion to Politics that globalisation can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power. (web accessed 01/09/03) With regard to advantages and disadvantages of globalisation, people are divided into two groups which first group is in favour of it as they think that if a country opens to world trade its economy gets more powerful than it was. China's opening to world trade, for instance, has brought it growth in income from $1460 a head in 1980 to $4120 by 1999.

Also, poor countries that have lowered their tariff barriers have gained increases in employment because more trade means more jobs and national income as labour and capital shifts from import-competing industries to expanding, newly competitive export industries. In addition to providing jobs, companies moving to developing countries often export higher wages and working conditions compared with those in domestic companies operating in the country. In contrast, second group claims that least-developed countries are becoming more dependent to the rich countries as their production power is not as strong as others and they have to buy many products from these countries. According to the annual UN Human Development Report ( web accessed 01/09/03) which also support the idea of second group the effects of globalisation and increasing economic integration have led to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer in nearly every way. In my point of view, if The World Trade Organisation (WTO) which is the only international organisation dealing with the global rules of trade between nations, (web accessed 01/09/03) changes the rules to distribute benefits of trade more equally, all countries will benefit from globalisation. However, the current global rules are resulting in few winners and many losers.

In particular, the 600 million people in the world's 48 least-developed countries (LDCs) remain largely excluded from the benefits of international trade. Why has global inequality increased? The answer is in four parts: (1) faster economic growth in developed OECD countries than developing countries as a group; (2) faster population growth in developing countries than in OECD countries; (3) slow growth of output in rural China, rural India, and Africa; and (4) rapidly widening output and income differences between urban China on the one hand, and rural China and rural India on the other. ( web accessed 01/09/03) So, the importance of the WTO emerges at this point. The goal should be to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. The WTO cannot claim to make all countries equal. But it should reduce some inequalities, should give smaller countries more voice, and at the same time freeing the major powers from the complexity of having to negotiate trade agreements with each of their numerous trading partners.

Nowadays, the WTO argues that the growth of trade between countries increases the wealth of the people. Undoubtedly, more trade means more money, more money means more investment and more investment means more jobs which also means wealthy society. However, the situation in Turkey is a good description of the task of WTO. Turkey has doubled its export in 5 years nevertheless it couldn't make investments as they are dependent to IMF due to its dept. On the other hand, although Turkey has great agricultural products to sell them all over the world, they cant compete in Europe due to high custom taxes which is not fair. If Turkey had technological power, they would have produced industrial products and could compete with rich countries.

According to an article of Anatole Kaletsky in The Times on 10/07/2001, if rich people really want to help the poor people, they wouldn't just pour money into dept relief, structural adjustment or dam-building projects. those who really want to help world's poor, should bring their technology into these countries since technology can actually do more for poor countries than rich ones and in many circumstances technological progress can produce results faster than economic progress. For example, since 1970 the threat of famine has been almost eliminated in Asia despite the rapid growth of the population. This was made possible by the doubling of cereal yields that resulted from technological breakthroughs in plant breeding, pesticides and fertilizers. It took England almost 1000 years to achieve similar gains in yields before the industrial revolution. To sum up, Globalisation is a description of the fact that countries and their citizens are affected by other people, or governments, or businesses, or decision-makers all around the world. And because communication is faster, and transport cheaper, the connections are more immediate and more intense than ever before.

The telephone which first connected suburbs now connects the world, money, email, knowledge from business to business, home to business, home to home across the world. There is something we should bear in mind that the WTO should enforce its rules to all countries fairly. Otherwise the balance of the world is lost and this makes poor more poorer. To some extent, globalisation is like a gun.

You can use it to defence yourself or to kill someone.

Bibliography

. web accessed 01/09/03. web accessed 01/09/03. web accessed 01/09/03. web accessed 01/09/03. Kaletsky, A. "Developing countries will suffer without continued globalisation" The Times, 10/07/01.