How globalization benefits America's economy - Essay Example

The recent advancement in Asian economy is really transforming the world and the notion that globalization only makes the rich richer and the poor poorer is disputable according to Wolf. He supports international economic integration as the reason behind success of many countries. However, Wolf says that different countries success is not attributed to full adoption of the neo liberal policies rather by instituting their own policies intended to enter market economy. He further argues that growth weighting distribution amongst nations by population shows that the most important things is the people but not countries themselves thus making it important only to consider income distribution alone.

Inequality changes amongst world individuals are contributed by changes in the relative wealth of countries such that if the performance is low, the decline in inequality also changes. However, it should be noted that most countries have not fully benefited from globalization especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America countries (Wolf, 2004). The rapid growth of economies brought about by globalization has immensely reduced the level of poverty especially in east of Asia but went up in Eastern Europe, central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

There was also general increase of life expectancy in developing countries though the growth was challenged by the AIDS epidemic and malaria. Moreover, globalization has reduced infant mortality and boosted literacy level in developing countries and the world as a whole. There has also been recommendable increase in food production thus lowering undernourishment issues globally. Finally, Wolf has noted that child labor has tremendously reduced because most parents have opted to taking their children to school (Wolf, 2004).

Concepts Central to the Argument One of the most important arguments that has dominated the text is that globalization has negatively affected economies of most countries. This is very wrong and I really concur with Wolf that globalization has instead boosted the economy of a good number of countries especially in Asia. The author has noted India and China as some of the beneficiaries of globalization. However, their success is attributed to the policies of individual countries towards globalization (Wolf, 2004).

Countries have worked hard by adopting policies that can see them succeed in the wider market that has been brought about by globalization. The effect of globalization is therefore very intense and has positively developed most of the world economies especially countries that were once considered poor. Living standards and income per capita has greatly increased in most of the countries that took advantage of globalization. Nevertheless, some countries have not experienced the benefits of globalization because they have not changed their policies to properly fit in the international market (Wolf, 2004).

Moreover, criteria used in measuring economic progress by World Bank are clearly unsatisfactory. The method of measuring economic progress and income per capita as used by world ban is not the best. Wolf argued that population of a country does not reflect failure or difficulty in economic progress by highlighting India and China which are the most populated countries yet making positive economic progress. Average incomes of the world cannot be weighted by population and accurate results be found (Wolf, 2004).

This is because even amongst the less and densely