Commentary: Globalization no scapegoat for economic inequality

Globalization has come under heavy fire in some Western countries for widening income gap and increasing social inequality. But those who chant protests against globalization are mistaken, if not entirely.

Like everything else, globalization is neither perfect nor omnipotent.

Since 1980s when globalization was on the rise, emerging economies has witnessed rapid growth, leading to narrowing income gaps among different countries. While in Western countries, the gap has been widened between high income earners and medium and low-income groups.

To a certain extent, globalization has favored financial elites, business tycoons, and global multinationals, and trickled down the very limited remaining benefits to low-wage and unskilled workers in the West as well as in the under-developed economies.

This, however, is not the whole picture of globalization.

Since World War II, globalization has shrunk trade barriers, facilitated investment, opened up markets worldwide for flow of goods and services, produced unparalleled prosperity in human history, and promoted international cooperation and peace.

As far back as almost 10 years ago, the International Monetary Foundation (IMF) noted that technology is a driving force in inequality, as it increases the premium on skills and substitutes for relatively low-skill inputs.

This is proved by what is exactly happening in the United States, where angry blue collar workers in the Midwestern states, mistakenly blaming closer economic ties with the rest of the world for their miseries, have helped elect a new president who has made quite a few remarks against the current global trading system.

Moreover, slower growth in major countries itself could be a main factor to hinder income growth of middle class, resulting in an increasing widening of income.

Also, nations worldwide should know that domestic income policies and tax systems play even more crucial roles than globalization in determining the gaps between the rich and the poor. They should seriously review the existing arrangements and make them more just and rational.

As U.S. economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said, the existing discontent about globalization reflects the existence of problems in how to manage and control the globalization process, instead of globalization itself.

Therefore, given its many upsides, globalization needs to be ameliorated rather than abandoned.

On one hand, countries need to repair their economic structural flaws and enhance their governance capability. On the other hand, from long-term perspective, global economic governance is in urgent need to be improved into a new inclusive international economic order, where advanced economies will not plunder resources from under-developed countries and squeeze out their development.

Ironically, when the Western powers began to colonize the Asian and African continents as early as the 15th century to extract raw materials and pour industrial products of mass production back into the markets they forced open, they probably never thought that there would be a day when they advocate quitting the global trading network they have worked over these centuries to fabricate.

Today, the international community is not only struggling to rehabilitate a wounded global economy, but also trying to cope with conflicting comprehensions about a historic process that has largely shaped the current global economic landscape.

While nations are debating for their new consensus, they should at least first agree to reject the notion of dropping globalization and upholding the flag of isolationism. Endi