"Snowball’s “publisher’s letter” shares a hard truth: despite everything you’ve heard in the past year, things are getting better."
I found David's post a necessary tonic and I applaud that, but I think if we are talking big picture as he does, we also have to look at the even bigger picture of this globalization jigsaw puzzle. There is no question that the level of extreme poverty has decreased worldwide because of industrialization and globalization. But that has had consequences environmentally, economically and politically for more developed nations where people are accustomed to living on far more than $
1.90 a day. One of the best pieces I've read on the recent election is this one:
newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/hillary-clinton-and-the-populist-revolt In it the author states:
"Earlier this year, an economist named Branko Milanović published a book called “Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization.” It’s a progress report on the “system” that Friedman heralded. Milanović analyzes global economic data from the past quarter century and concludes that the world has become more equal—poor countries catching up with rich ones—but that Western democracies have become less equal. Globalization’s biggest winners are the new Asian middle and upper classes, and the one-per-centers of the West: these groups have almost doubled their real incomes since the late eighties. The biggest losers are the American and European working and middle classes—until very recently, their incomes hardly budged.
During these years, resistance to globalization has migrated from anarchists disrupting trade conferences to members of the vast middle classes of the West. Many of them have become Trump supporters, Brexit voters, constituents of Marine Le Pen and other European proto-fascists. After a generation of globalization, they’re trying to derail the train."
So there has been a trade-off that has occurred between the world's wealthiest nations and the world's poorest and that has caused political upheaval. I cannot view that political upheaval as things getting better. Nationalism--a particularly virulent strain of nationalism in my view--is on the rise in several countries as a result. That has led to a level of geopolitical uncertainty we haven't seen in a long time. And yes the world has always been uncertain--this is a fact of life--but the stakes are higher than they've ever been. That's what's different--the stakes. The world is far more interconnected economically than it's ever been and the weaponry far more powerful than it has been prior to the advent of the nuclear age. Having unstable political leaders like Trump and Putin with such weaponry at their fingertips is not things getting better in my view. I reject notions to normalize these leaders. There is ample evidence they are not.
Then there is a larger question David touched upon of climate change. That is also part of the jigsaw puzzle because the economic growth that has lifted so many out of extreme poverty as David rightly points out is a primary cause of carbon emissions and climate change. While the poor in emerging countries have every right to have dreams of living middle class American lives, there is a realistic question as to whether the climate can take more than one giant economy where people live like Americans do. In other words, the world's addiction to economic growth has environmental consequences. This seems to me to be the primary challenge of the generations to come so long as we don't end up in a terrible war before then.
So no, I can't see things as getting better in 20
17, not with a climate science denying, nuclear missile embracing jingoist in charge. But then I'm a journalist--a glass half empty guy on such issues--as David rightly points out most of the media is. Perhaps somewhere between the pessimists and the rose colored glasses is the truth.
