Unmentioned Down Sides of Globalization: Do Good for “the Rich”
Stephanie Black’s documentary film, Life and Debt, powerfully critiques globalization, and points out specifically its damaging effects to poorer countries in the world using the example of Jamaica. Life and Debt, through meaningful interviews, singing and narratives, tells us the difficult business conditions for local workers and manufacturers in Jamaica under globalization. Moreover, it shows how the country’s poor economic situation forced itself to borrow international loans and agrees on structural adjustment policies, and the actions in turn deteriorates its economy base even more. The film has shocked me, as I have never thought about the down sides of globalization before, and I have hardly heard about any comments on the global inequality effects that it can cause. In fact, now I believe that a big issue that globalization has is that it does not do good for “all”; rather, it is controlled by the rich Europe and North America; and in a way, Europe and North America use globalization and the structural adjustment policies as tools to control, influence and take advantages of the poorer countries in the world.
Global inequality, the difference between richer countries that have more power and control and poorer countries that do not, can be reflected evidently on their citizens’ daily activities. For example, as depicted at the beginning of film, in the airports of Jamaica, Americans can easily access the country without applying for a visa or going through the rigorous process of baggage searching; however, the situation reverse for Jamaicans, who have to queue for hours to apply for visa and have a lot of restrictions and stricter searching on their baggage items. This situation suggests to me that inequality is already reflected in the citizenship that one holds. Compared with North Americans and Europeans, citizens from a lot of third world countries have to go through much more troubles imposed by government policies or society rules in different aspects of their life. For instance, a person may be discriminated based on his/her country origin and religion the he/she holds. This can be seen in the refugee problems that Europe is facing currently, as a person who looks like having a middle east origin or who looks like muslin is more likely to be a target of police questioning and searching in public.
Global inequality is worsened by globalization, where rich countries become richer and more powerful and poor countries become poorer and less independent. In the example of Jamaica, the original reason that prompted it to borrow loans from the World Band and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was to develop the country’s economy and build up infrastructure after its independence from England. Relying on the loans from international monetary organizations, whose mission is supposed to help developed countries to better develop themselves by offering them short term loans, Jamaica however, was forced to “reform” its major economic policies, as an exchange for the loans. Jamaica had to agree on signing “free trade zones”, where foreign factories are established and their goods arrived with zero taxes, and Jamaica had to allow deregulation on trading policies and allow imported goods from other countries without restrictions. Moreover, other than these policies, the loans pose huge interest rates, making Jamaica even poorer in the periodic repayments, while failing to reach its original goals of developing the countries. The high interest rates have also resulted in the devaluation of the Jamaican currency, which results in the higher price of locally produced goods. The combined effect of the devaluation of currency and the imports policy is that the imported goods are much cheaper than local goods, and the local industries are seriously harmed by the shrinking markets they can get.
