Page 387 - Essencials of Sociology

360 Chapter 11 politics and the economy

Read on MySocLab The New Economic System and the
Document: The Uses of Global Old Divisions of Wealth
Poverty: How Economic Inequality
Benefits the West Suppose that you own a business that manufactures widgets. You are paying your workers
an average $156 a day ($19.47 an hour including vacation pay, sick pay, unemployment
benefits, Social Security, and so on). Widgets similar to yours are being manufactured in
Thailand, where workers are paid $8 a day. Those imported widgets are being sold in the
same stores that feature your widgets.
How long do you think you could stay in business? Even if your workers were willing to
cut their pay in half—which they aren’t willing to do—you still couldn’t compete.
What do you do? Your choices are simple. You can continue as you are and go broke,
try to find some other product to manufacture (which, if successful, will soon be made in
We are in the midst of the Thailand or India or China)—or you can close up your plant here and manufacture your
globalization of capitalism. The widgets in Thailand.
explosion that is sending products
around the world brings new ways These are not easy times for workers. One disruption after another. High insecurity with
of thinking to people in the Least layoffs, plant closings, and the prospect of more of the same. The insecurity is especially
Industrialized Nations. Many ideas hard-hitting on the most desperate of workers, the less skilled and those who live from
are subtle, such as what refreshing paycheck to paycheck. How can they compete with people overseas who work for pea-
drinks are.
nuts? They suffer the wrenching adjustments that come from having their jobs pulled