<a href='http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=1934' target='_blank'>Findings</a> that may surprise even the most radical stone-throwing hooligan waiting outside WTO conferences.

Quote:..Most striking in the survey is that views of globalization are distinctly more positive in low-income countries than in rich ones...

In general, the developing countries that have increased their participation in trade and attracted foreign investment have accelerated growth and reduced poverty.

While on the subject of globalization, the auto industry has <a href='http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/define27_20030827.htm' target='_blank'>changed considerably</a> over the past 20 years, and fortunately - in many ways - for the better.

Living in the metro Detroit area in the early 1980s, the "Buy Union / Buy American" obsession was suffocating. Owning a foreign car would invite the potential of verbal abuse and vandalism to your automobile, such as deliberate key scratches. I know, because both happened to my family when we had a Toyota. Even at 11 years old, I found it frustrating that people were willing to resort to harrassment and garden-variety vandalism to force people to buy a certain type of product. While the larger-than-life UAW didn't explicity support it, it was common belief that the hard-core UAW leaders and union members condoned these sorts of action. In other words, you were supposed to buy a domestic oil-spilling clunker to support the local factory workers' inflated paychecks.

Now, with mergers, blurred lines of manufacturer origin, and foreign makes building plants here in the US (and hiring US workers), such tactics have fortunately declined considerably since 1983.

Says Csaba Csere, editor of Car & Driver magazine:

Quote:The overwhelming majority of buyers in America don't care (what a vehicle origin is). They're looking for a vehicle that best suits their needs at the best price. They don't care where it comes from and what it's called.

And says Mark Perry, associate professor of economics and chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan-Flint:

Quote:As a consumer, you want the maximum amount of competition, the maximum amount of car dealerships and manufacturers competing for your business because you know you'll get the best price and the best value.

Long live the global economy, but the positive results will be limited if countries continue to partake in tariff wars, and push suffocating subsidies in developing countries.

--------

August 30, 2003