GLOBALISATION

ZMAG: The Global Benefits Of Equality by Joseph Stiglitz

The world should have a vested interest in resolving inequality, not just protecting its own, says Joseph Stiglitz

Picture yourself as a poor African farmer, scraping a living on a hectare or two. While you may not have heard of globalisation, you are affected by it:
you sell cotton, which will be woven into a shirt by a worker in Mauritius in a style designed by an Italian, to be worn by some well-off Parisian. You are better off than your grandfather, who relied on subsistence farming. But you are also the victim of globalisation, and the unfair global economic regime that has been crafted - and, in some cases, made increasingly unfair
- over the years.

The price of the cotton that you sell is so low because America spends up to $4bn a year subsidising its 25,000 farmers, encouraging them to produce more and more cotton - the subsidies even exceed the value of what they produce -and as they produce more, the price of cotton falls lower and lower.

Professor Joseph Stiglitz, of New York's Columbia University, was chairman of President Clinton's council of economic advisers, and from 1997 to 2000 was senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Nobel prize in economic science

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