Overview
An eye-opening primer on some of the less explored aspects of globalization. We know that globalization has moved many jobs away from the industrialized countries and to the Third World, where people are paid far less. But do we know the consequences of this upheaval for the AIDS epidemic, the environment, and the costs of basic medicines? In one concise book, William K.Tabb, a professor of economics at Queens College in New York, provides an informative and incisive introduction to these complex themes, and a clear perspective on how they mesh and how vitally they matter to us all. In a chapter on banking, for example, Tabb explains how the WTO, IMF, and World Bank's efforts to regulate the world's economy have driven entire nations into insurmountable debt: the increasing mobility of money drives up inflation and forces countries into a web of dependency, where their only option is to obtain loans from multinational banks. While much has been written about the effects of globalization on corporations, Unequal Partners is a comprehensive introduction to globalization's effects on everything else. It is also an excellent primer on the issues behind the growing anticorporate movement.Author Biography: William K. Tabb is professor of economics at Queens College and professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City of New York. He is the author of The Postwar Japanese System, Restructuring Political Economy, and The Amoral Elephant.
Synopsis
An eye-opening primer on some of the less explored aspects of globalization. We know that globalization has moved many jobs away from the industrialized countries and to the Third World, where people are paid far less. But do we know the consequences of this upheaval for the AIDS epidemic, the environment, and the costs of basic medicines? In one concise book, William K.Tabb, a professor of economics at Queens College in New York, provides an informative and incisive introduction to these complex themes, and a clear perspective on how they mesh and how vitally they matter to us all. In a chapter on banking, for example, Tabb explains how the WTO, IMF, and World Bank's efforts to regulate the world's economy have driven entire nations into insurmountable debt: the increasing mobility of money drives up inflation and forces countries into a web of dependency, where their only option is to obtain loans from multinational banks. While much has been written about the effects of globalization on corporations, Unequal Partners is a comprehensive introduction to globalization's effects on everything else. It is also an excellent primer on the issues behind the growing anticorporate movement.
Author Biography: William K. Tabb is professor of economics at Queens College and professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City of New York. He is the author of The Postwar Japanese System, Restructuring Political Economy, and The Amoral Elephant.
Publishers Weekly
The world is heading toward "corporate globalization," according to Queens College economics professor Tabb. Multinational entities use unrestrained economic power to decide political, social and ethical questions. Like the global justice movement, the loose coalition of protesting groups whose exploits Tabb reviews in the opening chapter, the book itself conveys a deep, energetic opposition to unbridled corporate power, but isn't always able to articulate clear policy positions. It comes out against many things, e.g., AIDS, environmental destruction, cultural homogenization, poverty, money laundering and exploitation. These problems are described only in broad strokes, without a discussion of solutions. Also absent is the admission that choices have to be made: labor unions often disagree with environmentalists, for example, and standard-of-living issues sometimes conflict with the survival of indigenous cultural practices. Tabb's discussion focuses entirely on enemies: governments that don't stand up for justice, corporations and multinational entities that are accountable only to an undefined elite, and individual decisions (as represented in elections and free market choices) that are antithetical to the idea of civil society. This is a book for energizing people who believe in good guys and bad guys and already know who's who. (May 1) Forecast: There's no strong selling angle for this book. The author's The Amoral Elephant covers the same ground, and Marjorie Kelly's The Divine Right of Capital offers a stronger argument of Tabb's position. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.