The Great Failure of Globalization

US and European leaders are in denial over realities of global capital markets and competition from Asia, contends Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sachs argues that rapid globalization, responsible for the sharp economic decline of the west, has disproportionately hurt the unskilled and middle class while benefiting the wealthy. “The path to recovery now lies … in upgraded skills, increased exports and public investments in infrastructure and low-carbon energy,” he writes in an opinion essay for the Financial Times. “Instead, the US and Europe have veered between dead-end, consumption-oriented stimulus packages and austerity without a vision for investment.” Sachs urges developed governments to invest in human and infrastructure capital, cut wasteful military spending and to balance budgets by boosting taxes for the wealthy and corporations. Europe and the US have become “weak, slow and divided,” devolving into combatting special interests. Unless leaders unite their citizens on visionary policies, the advanced economies will lose wealth and influence. – YaleGlobal