By Robert Barrington, Ad Editor
Globalization is the buzzword that you hear every time you watch the news or read the newspaper. Globalization is taught in our school systems and our universities and is seen as a way to improve our economy. But no one asks who really benefits from globalization? In our efforts to become a global economy, did we sell the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Looking at the United States exporting figures would make you think that we, as a country, are doing very well, but upon closer examination, it becomes clear that what we are exporting are our manufacturing facilities, our technology, and our natural resources. Why we used to prosper is because our competitive advantage was our industrialization and our high technology, but since we live in a global market, cheaper labor is easier to obtain in counties such as India and China. We do have the smartest entrepreneurs in the world, and our corporations are always striving to improve the bottom line, but they increased their profits by exporting our technology and manufacturing facilities to other countries.
The United States started exporting our facilities and our jobs many years ago, and on paper, the profits looked good for the corporations and entrepreneurs, but not much is left for the American people. We have sold the goose that lays the golden eggs, and China learned very quickly that they no longer need to supply our corporations with cheap labor. They started their own corporations, and now we are left with the bad end of a huge trade deficit. We sold our manufacturing to globalization, and now we scratch our heads looking for a competitive advantage for our people. Since we manufacture much less than what we used to, we can now start selling our natural resources to globalization since we don’t manufacture much anymore. The way the United States benefited from globalization is short-lived; we sold our manufacturing, and if we continue down this path, eventually we will run out of natural resources to sell.
If we are to succeed in this new global market, we need to increase our share of the global economy, or we will become cannibalistic. Our slice of the world economic pie has decreased, and our entrepreneurs will be fighting each other for a larger portion of our shrinking slice. Due to cheap labor in the global economy, manufacturing is no longer our competitive advantage. Entrepreneurs are left with the task of increasing their share of the global economy, but it is going to be difficult boring money, and thanks to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, there are tighter restrictions on small corporations raising money by selling their stock shares. Our Defense industry seems to be strong, but every time our country goes to war, our deficit increases. We are also selling our military technologies to other countries, and most of the weapons that the enemy is pointing at our soldiers were made or developed in the United States.
The solution to globalization is to be the best at the game, and in the past, we relied on our technology and innovation. Our entrepreneurs need to create better products and services so we as a country are taking in more money from the world than we are putting out. We need to produce quality as well as quantity. Who needs another two-dollar can opener from China that doesn’t work anyhow? Other countries are good at copying products, but the United States is great at innovating high-tech products and services. Let’s create another goose that lays the golden eggs, but this time let’s not be so short sighted and greedy. Our country needs to give our corporations and entrepreneurs more incentives to keep improving our competitive advantage, and instead of selling our technology, use it locally and sell other countries our products and services.
