Advantages and Disadvantages of Globalization for Modern Society

Introduction

What is globalization actually and is it important to us? Globalization is a an ability that improve the growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information. Since ancient times, humans have looked for places to settle, produce, and exchange goods enabled by improvements in technology and transportation. For example, there are many countries that grow up by globalization such as China, China’s rise has been one of the most dominant forces in the global economy. In the past 40 years, China has achieved sustained high rates of economic growth after the implementation of the policy of reforms and opening up. In 1980, China’s exports amounted to only 5.9 per cent of GDP and its foreign investment abroad was only just over $1.6 billion; by 2013, the latter figure had increased to $290 billion.Therefore, it cannot be denied that there are many advantages and disadvantages of globalization, which are discussed in this essay. The advantages of globalization are not lesser than disadvantages although there are those who argue that globalization will encourage disease transfer.

Advantages of Globalization 

Firstly, globalization has more advantages as it would reduce labor exploitation. The imperfect integration of labour markets we are a long way from the global labour market, as demonstrated by a wide disparity in incomes. One study found that the median wage for jobs in advanced countries is two and a half times that for jobs with similar skill levels in the most advanced developing countries, and five time that for low-income countries. Throughout 2008, a Chinese manufacturing worker gained around one-twentieth the salary of a U.S. manufacturing worker; a Mexican worker, one-sixth. Next the global forces behind wage convergence. Migration, trade, foreign investment and the spread of technology. Increased migration is likely to play only a small role in wage convergence. Some studies have also shown that immigration has had only marginal long-term effects on incomes in advanced countries. Trade can promote wage convergence even if workers do not move. Developing countries with abundant labour- intensive exports of labour- intensive goods, therefore, trade causes their wages to rise relative to rich countries with less labour and capital. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in capital-scarce developing countries can increase the productivity and wages of workers by transferring management skills, capital and technology, and sometimes by outsourcing jobs from advanced countries. Lastly, globalization of the labour market and income distribution. Such globalization factors were correlated with rising living standards as well as a deterioration in the distribution of earnings in advanced countries: low-skilled salaries remained flat or even declined, while high-skilled wages rose sharply. Labour income decreased by 3.5 percentage points as a share of GDP from 1993 to 2009. 

Globalization can improve our communication channels. With the advancement of the technology, the world getting bigger and bigger. There are many ways we can communicate with people around the world. In the past people always felt that globalization or communication between countries was impossible. With the advent of new technologies, the problems of global communication and learning have been resolved. The rise in Internet usage has brought us a lot of convenience in improving the way we connect with each other. With the technology of the Internet, we can view a variety of perspectives that were previously beyond our scope and the ability to connect in real time with people thousands of miles away. People always feel impossible to communicate with people with cultural differences. Initially, people used body language to communicate with people with cultural differences. With the rise of globalized communication, communication between people and cultural differences is no longer a difficult task. For example: a person in Malaysia and a person in China. The two people can share not only business content, but also their cultural perspectives. This communication opens your sense of where accessible in the world, thereby laying the groundwork for a developing worldview. Global communication is a major component in changing and improving the world's environment, culture, politics and economy. Most companies now utilize communication tools such as video calls to employ employees from other countries and to communicate quickly with peers around the globe. Through the technology, we can speed up deliveries, monitoring shipments and more, the most important is the company can promote and strengthen partnerships with multinational vendors and consumers. Other than that, the communication technology helps other companies to exploit opportunities to improve the global economic environment of different countries or towns. Through global communication, everyone's life becomes modern and more efficient no matter where they are.

Disadvantages of Globalization 

However, there are who argue that globalization has some drawbacks such as it would encourage disease transfer (Mirski T., Bartoszcze M. & Bielawska-Drozd A., 2011). As can be seen nowadays, a new coronavirus which named COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan, China at the start of December and without 2 months there have been 71000 confirm cases and 1773 deaths in whole world (Wetsman N., 2020). Unfortunately, one of the reasons that causes this virus spread quickly is due to globalization as one infect others easily and highly transmissible. In addition, infected person without having any symptoms of virus will bring it back to their own country. Thus, coronavirus will outbreak in others countries as in China. Moreover, economic aspects of globalization are mainly the trade development, including food trade, which has an impact on the spread of food-borne diseases (Mirski T., Bartoszcze M. & Bielawska-Drozd A., 2011). People migration between countries and rural and urban areas, which will also essentially favors the global spread of many infection diseases. However, this is weak argument as globalization would encourage disease transfer but it would be prevent as globalization has enhanced healthcare technology (Mittelman M. & Hanaway P., 2012). Indeed, start from trending of globalization, average of human lifespan has increasing substantially due to advance in technology and medicine.

For example, a patient can get a better medical treatment from another country which is more expert in the field of special disease treatment. Other than that, medical organizations from every country also join an alliance which named WHO (World Health Organization) to share their new medical treatment or explore a medical situation and tackle the global health issues. Hence, although globalization will give the opportunity to spread virus or diseases but also bring more benefits in medical field treatment.

Conclusion

In spite of the litigated nature of globalization and the persistent argument about its field, stride and driving forces, there is a clear requirement for better theoretical and pragmatic understanding of the particular effects of globalization. In a nutshell, it is shown that globalization has more advantages than disadvantages. As globalization has always been correlated with both increments of the living standards and decline in income distribution in advanced apportionment in developing countries (Uri Dadush, 2012). Ospina agreed that globalization has influenced the quality of living of several types of labor to different levels within countries, in all countries (Ortiz-Ospina, 2018). Moreover, it is true that associating with people on the other side of the globe is now much easier than it was a few decades ago, all thanks to globalization. Globalization has improved our communication access by having the Internet, satellites and fiber-optic cables which make it trouble-free to share data with those in different time regions and areas. (Ahmed, A. 2018). Both globalization and global communication have changed the environmental, cultural, political and economic elements of the world. Nevertheless, there are people who still claimed that globalization has some downsides such as it would encourage disease transfer. For example, the latest viral disease is known as Coronavirus, a.k.a. Covid-19 disease which has globally infected from China itself to more than 20 countries especially Asian countries like Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam & Taiwan to name a few. Even so, on the other hand, it has been said that it can actually put a stop on carrying the virus globally by strengthening healthcare facilities and technology all over the world. This can be shown by having WHO to share their new pharmaceutical treatment or search a medical situation and manage the global health issues. Finally, studies have shown that there are more benefits of globalizations than its limitations by being able to reduce labor exploitation effectively, able to improve our communication access and finally able to prevent the transferring of diseases to around the world by enhancing various healthcare technology.

References

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2. Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2018). What’s the impact of globalization on wages, jobs and the cost of living?. [online] Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/trade-wages-cost-living [Accessed 19 Feb. 2020].
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