The NYT has yet another columnist (Roger Cohen) telling the fairy tale about how the market processes underlying "globalization" led to greater inequality between rich and poor. Of course, people who actually know anything about globalization, know that we have not had a market driven process, but rather one that was explicitly designed to redistribute income upward. If globalization was purely market driven, we would have removed the barriers that prevent smart people in Mexico, China, and India from working as professionals in the United States. If globalization was purely market driven, we would have eliminated the antiquated patent system of financing drug research, which makes life-saving drugs unaffordable and creates enormous economic distortions. If globalization was purely market driven, we would have promoted efficient 21st century models for financing creative and artistic work and software design, instead of tightening the patent and copyright protections that make Bill Gates and the entertainment industry rich. If globalization had been purely market driven, most of the world would have seen much more rapid growth and had greater equality -- and the NYT wouldn't need to fill its opinion pages with columnists telling fairy tales on globalization.
--Dean Baker
