Chapter 108 Chapter 19 Towards a New Millennium 4

4 In fact, alone, the problems of the world economy are not serious.If left unchecked, the world economy will continue to grow.If there are any fluctuations in Kang's long-cycle theory, it must be because the world has once again entered a period of prosperity and expansion before the end of the millennium.Although this prosperity, in the short term, will be caused by the aftershocks of the disintegration of Soviet socialism, the phenomenon of anarchic wars in some parts of the world, and the infinite enthusiasm of the world's excessive investment in global free trade (for this fantasy, economists seem to be better than historians) more impractical) and temporarily frustrated.Still, the prospects for economic expansion are extremely limited.As we have seen earlier, the golden age was basically a great leap forward of the "developed market economy". This economic region consisted of about 20 countries with a population of 600 million (in 1960).Global internationalization and the redistribution of international production will continue to drive most of the rest of the world's six billion people into the realm of the global economy.In this situation, I believe that even the most pessimistic people have to admit that the future of the enterprise is extremely bright.

But there is one big exception: the gap between rich and poor countries is not only widening, but irreversible.This deepening of the gap between rich and poor has been accelerated by the severe blow to the Third World in the 1980s and the impoverishment of former socialist countries.While the population growth of the Third World will never decline sharply, it seems that this gap will only increase.According to the theory of neoclassical economics, unrestricted international trade will gradually bring the distance between poor and rich countries closer; this idea is not only contrary to historical facts, but also contrary to common sense.In a world economic system built on deepening inequality, future headaches will only get worse every day.

Economic activity can never exist independently of its larger environment and its consequences.As we have seen above, there are three aspects of the world economy in the late 20th century that deserve the world's vigilance.First, the continuous advancement of science and technology has further separated human labor from the production process of goods and labor, but it will not provide enough or similar job replacements for these abandoned labor; nor can it guarantee a certain economic growth enough to absorb the remaining labor. artificial.The golden age of full employment in the West no one expects even a short-term recovery.Second, although manpower is still the main force of production, economic globalization has caused industrial centers to shift from rich countries with high labor costs to countries where cheap labor is the greatest advantage under other conditions.As a result, there are various consequences: jobs are transferred from high-wage areas to low-wage areas; at the same time, wages in high-wage areas (based on the principle of free market operation) are also falling under the competitive pressure of the global wage market. Britain, too, had to follow the path of cheap labor, with socially explosive consequences, so that it could not compete with the newly industrialized countries on this basis.Historically, such pressures have usually been countered by states taking action, such as raising the banner of protectionism.However, this is the third hidden worry of the world economy at the end of the century, that is, due to the prosperity and victory of the world economy and the promotion of the Nazi free market consciousness, there are no effective tools to deal with various social shocks caused by economic changes. At the very least, the processing power is also weakened.The world economy has become an increasingly powerful but uncontrollable engine.Can this engine be controlled?Even if it is possible, who will control it?This phenomenon naturally brings social and economic problems at the same time.In some countries (such as the United Kingdom), the degree of its immediate severity is obviously greater than in others (such as South Korea).

The economic miracle of the golden age was based on the increase in real income of the "advanced market economy", because a mass-consumption economy required a large number of consumers with sufficient income to absorb high-tech durable consumer goods.In a high-wage labor market, much of this income is labor wages, but now that income is under threat, and the economy is more reliant on mass consumption than ever.It is true that in the consumer markets of rich countries, the labor force has been stabilized by the migration from productive industry to the tertiary industry-the employment situation of the tertiary industry is generally less variable-and the large transfer income The increase (mostly social security and welfare income) will also contribute to the stability of the consumer market.The above income accounted for about 30% of the GNP of Western developed countries in the late 1980s; back in the 1920s, it was less than 4% (Bairoch 1993, p. 174).This change may explain why the 1987 Wall Street stock market slump, the largest since 1929, did not cause the Great Depression of world capitalism as it did in the 1930s.

Yet even these two forms of stabilizing income are now under disruption.As the short twentieth century drew to a close, Western governments and "orthodox" economics came to agree that the burden of public social safety and welfare was too great and must be cut.At the same time, in the most stable industries in the tertiary industry, large-scale personnel reduction has become commonplace-such as state agencies, banking and finance, and in terms of technology, a large number of redundant office-type jobs have been repeated.For the global economy, however, there will be no immediate threat—as long as the relative shrinkage of the old markets is relatively compensated by the expansion of the rest of the world.Or, from a global point of view, as long as the number of real income earners continues to grow faster than the rest of the population.To put it more brutally, if the global economy can ignore a small group of poor countries as irrelevant economic underdogs, then it can also ignore the poor within its own borders, as long as those worthy consumers There are enough people.From the bird's-eye view of corporate economics and corporate accounting, who needs 10% of the US population whose real hourly income has plummeted by almost 16% since 1979?

Viewed again from the global perspective implicit in economic liberalism, the growth of inequality does not matter at all—unless, at the global level, it can be shown that the overall effect is more negative than positive.From this point of view, as long as the results of cost comparisons permit, economically speaking, there is no reason for France not to completely stop agricultural production and import food from abroad.Likewise, there is no reason why all of the world's television production should not be moved to Mexico City, as long as it is technically and cost-effectively feasible.However, this view cannot be fully accepted by the people of the world (that is, the governments of all countries and their residents) who live under the category of "national" economy and "global" economy.The biggest reason is that we cannot avoid the social and political consequences of world events.

Whatever the nature of such problems, an unrestricted and uncontrollable global free market economy clearly cannot provide answers; what is more, it is likely to exacerbate permanent unemployment and low growth.Because all companies and enterprises that operate rationally and specialize in the pursuit of profits have no other choice, naturally: ① reduce personnel as much as possible, and you must know that personnel costs are much more expensive than computers; ② reduce social security tax burdens as much as possible (or any other tax burden).A global free market economy is also unlikely to solve the above problems.In fact, until the 1970s, neither national nor world capitalism had ever operated in a completely free and open environment—and even if it had, it did not necessarily benefit from it.Taking the 19th century as an example, we can raise some doubts: the real situation at that time was "just the opposite of the classical model: free trade, depression and protectionism occurred at the same time, or the former may be the cause of the latter two. The main factor. And the last item is probably the main reason why most developed countries can achieve today's level of development.' (Bairoch, 1993, p.164) As for the economic miracle of the 20th century, it did not follow "laissez-faire" , is simply the opposite.

Therefore, the high-profile economic liberalization and "marketization" that dominated the 1980s and reached the peak of self-satisfaction after the collapse of the Soviet system could not last. In the early 1990s, the crisis broke out in the world economy, and the crushing failure of the so-called "shock therapy" in the former socialist countries has caused many people who followed the excitement to reflect on it. In 1993, an economic expert consultant declared that "maybe Marx didn't Wrong?" Who would have expected such words before?However, on the way back to reality, there are two obstacles.One is the lack of major political threats, such as communism and the Soviet bloc, or major crises such as the seizure of power in Germany by the Nazis at the time.Threats of this kind, as this book has shown again and again, are major factors in motivating capitalism to reform itself.However, now that the Soviet Union has disintegrated, the working class and the labor movement are gradually declining and disintegrating, the third world has little military significance in traditional warfare, and the real poor in developed countries have been reduced to a minority of "lower class" status—— — All of these have reduced the incentives for active reform.The far-right movement is on the rise, and the former communist country's support for the heirs of the old regime has unexpectedly revived, which is nothing less than a major warning to the world.By the 1990s, the warning was even stronger.The second is the process of globalization itself, which is intensified by the disintegration of national protection mechanisms.The global free economic system is proudly praised as "the manufacturing field of wealth... is regarded as the most effective human invention in the world." However, when it comes to the social cost of this great invention, the victims are no longer there. The national means of the past have come to protect it.

But this same editorial in the Financial Times (24/12/1993): However, this force has its imperfections... In the face of rapid economic growth, about two-thirds of the world's population has benefited from it very little.Even in developed economic regions, the lowest income quarter of the population does not see benefits trickle down, but wealth continues to flow back to the top. As the new millennium advances, the first task at hand becomes more apparent.We have no time to gloat over the wreckage of the Soviet Union any longer.The world should reconsider: What are the inherent flaws of capitalism?Prescribe the right medicine, where should we start?And if the flaws are removed, will the capitalist system still be restored to its true colors?As the Czech-American economist Joseph Schumpeter once pointed out, the cyclical fluctuations of capitalism are not like the amygdala, which can be separated and dealt with separately. On the contrary, they are like the heartbeat, which is the organ that expresses the symptoms of the heartbeat. the essence." (Schumpeter, 1939, I, V)