It seems to be conventional wisdom in some quarters that globalization is a cause of increased income inequality and various other noxious results.
I'm not a real expert in these matters, but as I was browsing through the World Almanac it occurred to me that there might be some way of measuring which countries were the most "globalized". It also occurred to me that imports as a percent of GNP might be a way of doing this- that countries with a lot of imports were the ones most tied into the global economy, and that it might prove something if those countries were especially rich, poor, egalitarian, inegalitarian, etc.
I spent an hour or so doing this, and I'm not sure if the results prove all that much. But certianly they do suggest that countries isolated from the world economy don't do all that well.
Countries where imports are under 10 percent of GNP tend to be on the poor side, with the partial exceptions of Argentina (8%), India (8%) and Brazil (just under 7%, I think the lowest) three countries not noted for egalitarianism. Our murderer's row of economic isolationism includes: Azerbijan, Benin, Bolivia, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, India (!), Iran, North Korea, Malawi, Pakistan, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Timor, Uganda, Uzbekistan. Notice the number of European social democracies on the list- somewhere between zero and zero.
The most globalized countries are a much more diverse list. Two very poor countries clock in at over 100 percent- Zimbawe and Liberia (foreign aid perhaps?)
In the 50-100 range: Austria (51), Belgium (85), Denmark (51), Estonia (50), Holland (63), Iceland (51), Lesotho (51), United Arab Emirates (59), Slovakia (53), Slovenia (54), Switzerland (61). With the exception of Lesotho, not a bad group. Some other social democracies were within shouting distance of this group- Sweden 45, Finland 42, Germany 39. (Though some poorer countries in this group too- Jordan at 43, Malaysia and Burma at 40).
And what of North America? All in the boring middle- USA 14%, Canada 30%, Mexico 22% (UK and France were about the same as Canada).
Not sure what to make of it all. Certainly, however, a highly internationalized economy is not a barrier to a relatively egalitarian economic structure. But I'm not sure how any of this correlates with trends over time- maybe when I'm in a library I'll look up an old World Almanac and see if the patterns are similar.
