Globalization- Capitalist Exploitation or Global Prosperity?

In contemporary times, technology, capital investment, production, marketing, and communication networks all have global dimensions. Technological advances have caused time and distance barriers to vanish, which greatly encourage companies to join the international arena.  Globalization is the term used to describe the international network of communication, transportation, and trade.  While supporters of globalization claim that it promotes global peace and prosperity by establishing interconnectedness among all countries of the world, others claim that globalization does not help everyone and further increases the wealth of corporations at the expense of the working class. Globalization has greatly facilitated the improvement of many social indicators and contributed to the worldwide decrease of absolute poverty, however, it has failed to alleviate poverty where it is most urgently needed.  Nearly half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 dollars a day and 23 percent live on less than $1. This statistics are truly heartbreaking.  Half of the inhabitants of the world struggle to survive, they lack food, clean water, and shelter.  Poverty in the developing nations is nothing like poverty in the industrialized nations.  For instance, the threshold for poverty in the United States for a family of three is $17, 738 annually, while the established poverty line for developing nations is $1,095 to $2,190 annually.  In the industrialized world, the United States has a rate of 13.6 percent of absolute poverty, only surpassed by the United Kingdom and Canada.  In addition, the United States has the highest relative poverty rate of the industrialized nations. This might be due to the fact that Western European countries spend a significantly higher percentage of their GNP to subsidize social welfare programs than the U.S.

What is being done about poverty in the United States and globally? “The Millennium Project was commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2002 to develop a concrete action plan for the world to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to reverse the grinding poverty, hunger, and disease affecting billions of people.” The Millennium Development Goals are a time-bound targets set to eradicate absolute poverty and its devastating effects. The 8 Development Goals are: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development, respectably in that order. While, there are many rumors that the goals set for 2015 will not be achieved, at least the United Nations, NGO’s, and others are working extremely hard to alleviate poverty.