It seems almost incredible at a time of buoyant optimism about the world economy, but attempts are being made to write the epitaph of globalization, or at least of the free-market policies that have helped to create it. Exhibit A in the latest far-fetched case against the open global economy is a report that the number of people in absolute poverty worldwide grew to 1. 2 billion in 1998, from 1 billion five years earlier.
Globalization is a relatively recent phenomenon.
The term only began to enter current usage in the early 1990s. To blame globalization for a rise in nominal world poverty figures during the first years of its era is rather like saying that peace has been given a chance and failed because the number of casualties in African wars has risen in recent years. The allegation is particularly inappropriate given that the figures cited actually reveal a decline in the proportion of those in absolute poverty once world population growth is taken into account. And the problem in those countries, of course, is not too much globalization, but too little. To judge from the arguments of some of globalization's opponents, one of the main reasons why they dislike it so much is that it benefits multinational corporations.