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Globalization means the increasing scale and importance of exchanges of people, products, services, capital and ideas across international borders. Globalization is driven mainly by advances in technology. The fundamental changes that have accelerated international exchanges are the falling costs of communication and transportation. Since 1945, average ocean freight charges have fallen by 50 percent, air transportation costs by 80 percent and transatlantic telephone calling charges by 99 percent. The explosion of computing power and communications has created the global financial markets. The implication is that the trends we call globalization will continue and in fact accelerate, as the global communications revolution is still in its early stages.
Commentators who see the impact of globalization as fait accompli are profoundly mistaken. Included here are both optimists and pessimists who believe either that globalization will naturally lead to convergence of incomes between rich and poor countries, or that it will marginalize the role of government, or that it will inevitably put American workers out of work or further impoverish the Third World. Policy choices will matter a lot to how things turn out for individual countries. The phenomena commonly labelled as globalization can be divided into four categories: Beliefs that are, broadly speaking untrue. Phenomena that are true but not new. Phenomena that are new but whose influence will soon plateau. Phenomena that will radically transform the world in the next 25 years.
The Untrue
There are a number of mutually contradictory beliefs about globalization which get a lot of press that are either false, misleading or dramatically overstated. On the optimist side, the claim is sometimes made that globalization is leading to the convergence of incomes among rich and poor countries. The risk of several East Asian economies – notably Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea to developed-country income levels and the rapid growth rates in China and a few other poor countries are cited as examples.
On the negative side, globalization has often been cited as the main culprit in the disturbing rise in wage inequality in the United States and the rise in unemployment in Europe. However, it is clear that high unemployment levels in some European countries are due mainly to inappropriate restrictions on labor markets and especially product markets that have restrained the growth of the service sector as manufacturing employment has declined. As for wage inequality in the US, globalization – in the form of trade and immigration – has probably accounted for no more than 20 percent of the increase in inequality. The bulk of the increase in wage inequality is driven by domestic factors, particularly by advances in technology that disproportionately benefit more highly educated workers (…). I.COMPREHENSION:
A. True or False? Justify
1. International exchange is caused by the increase in communication and transportation costs.
2.The decrease in the cost of telecommunication resulted in the development of country-to-country exchange.
3.Those who think that the impact of globalization is reversible are wrong.
B.Answer the questions:
1.What does globalization mean?
2.What helped to accelerate the international exchange?
3.What happened since the Second World War?
4.How did that influence globalization?
C.FIND IN THE TEXT WORDS MEANING THE SAME AS:
1.Deceptive: P.1 : :
2.Decreased: P.2 :
3.Flamboyant :P.2.
4.Named:
D)Fill the blanks with the right word from the above exercise:
1-The phenomena commonly as globalization can be divided into four categories
2-A lot of opinions about globalization are
3-The number of American people who support the war on Iraq has because president Bush lied to them.
4-The word “Globalization” is because it can mean many things
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