globalization and other worldly matters

I have this awful feeling that i'm going to find the next two years wordier and less number-based than I am accustomed to. I've realized over the last few years that I need data to function. It's like oxygen, or a good plot line. Even though we took a somewhat stupid personality test and it told me I was more convinced with words and verbiage, its totally not true. I am totally down with some good hard number-based facts. I think I'm really going to enjoy econ and stats, and hopefully I'll take a lot more econ as I progress through the years. 

Right now we're reading Stiglitz's Making Globalization Work and Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization in my Globalization and Governance class. It's interesting to read the free trade (bhagwati) debate vs the fair trade (stiglitz) debate. Both authors, in this case, want the same end result -- the elimination of poverty in third world countries, fair arenas in which to perform trade and commerce for all countries, and the proliferation of markets. Both men are economists, and their viewpoints aren't all that mutually exclusive to each other. However, Bhagwati adovcates free trade, and determines that when small farmers can't compete with big multinational farming corporations with their low, subsidized prices, that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should step in and clean things up. Stiglitz advocates a built in protectionist slant within the trade policy, protecting small, poor countries. He also discusses international trade more from the point of view of the US and discusses very specific trade policy failures and successes, whereas Bhagwati discusses ideas from a much more theoretical, international view. 

The problem with relying on the IMF and the World Bank to clean up inevitable problems has multiple consequences. First off, the asymmetries and financial crises are bound to happen under free trade. Bhagwati denounces shock therapy (sudden market liberalization and opening of trade borders) and describes it as a proven method for failure. However, going completely over to free trade would have the same effects. 

The analogy to US domestic policy would be similar to what we currently have in place. A capitalistic meritocracy, where everyone looks out for themselves and their prodigy, and then when individuals grow up and find themselves down and out, social safety nets like welfare and medicaid/medicare step in and save them. While theres nothing wrong with the social safety nets, I think we all know that those safety nets are overloaded. They were designed for emergency backup use, not for long term dependency. A much better solution to end poverty in the United States would be to make opportunity fair from the beginning -- revamp public school funding, give poor people better teachers, provide poor individuals with the tools to enter into a meritocratic system on a level playing field. Don't simply leave them in the dust, counting on them to grow up and eventually need to rely on social safety nets. 

Stiglitz's advocation to build in protectionist measures to trade agreements in order to allow poor countries to develop slowly and intensively makes much more sense. However, according to Bhagwati, these protectionist measures can not be too pervasive or their economies will fail and they will never be able to reach the exalted capability of trading completely freely.