Will a sputtering economy in conjunction with rising
prices begin to weigh on the forces of globalization?
For the first time in about 15 years, the US economy
looks to be entering a prolonged slow down in growth and rising unemployment.
Unfortunately these two factors have been accompanied by a significant
increase in prices to create the building blocks of stagflation, something
that hasn’t been seen since the early 1980s. Prior to this most recent period
of slowing growth (beginning in 2007) many US consumers have enjoyed the
ability to increase the standards of their living by either taking advantage
of the US Equity bubble in the mid to late 1990s or the real estate bubble
from the late 1990s into 2007. In addition to this, consumers also
experienced lower prices for select goods and services that were produced in
low wage economic zones due to expanding global trade. The combination of
these were referred to as the goldilocks economy.
However, were the positives of globalization and
outsourcing masked by the bubble economy that transpired over the last decade?
In other words, did bubble assets which helped augment consumption and
standards of living enable globalization to expand without a populace
scrutiny? And if so, will the recent, bubble-less weakening economy begin to
turn US consumers against such policies of outsourcing and lash out against
multinational activities that have produced lower real US wages and less job
security. With bubble assets at their disposal, many US laborers perhaps did
not feel the lack of wage growth over the past decade, however with no Housing
or Stock bubbles to extract income from, flat wages may just come up short to
maintain life styles.
Many say
globalization is just the way of the future, but the real test of the future
will be consumer reactions to the real affects of globalization, some of which
are stagnant wages and job insecurity.