Globalization and Appropriate Governance

Professor Jagdish N Bhagwati delivers WIDER December 2000 Annual Lecture Firstly there is the ‘tyranny of the missing alternative’. The triumph of capitalism, and the collapse of a practical alternative with the final demise of the Marxist and Soviet models, has led to great dissatisfaction among idealistic youth... ...Finally, within international agencies, the question of ‘listening to the voices of civil society groups - unelected as they are, and grossly disproportionate in their funds and influence between the rich and the poor countries and constituting a massive form of ‘non-economic’ globalization - must be addressed as well. Jagdish Bhagwati is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, New York This aricle is base on the 2000 WIDER Annual Lecture given by Professor Bhagwati on 27 Nov 2000 in Helsinki. Comment "Non-economic globalisation must be addressed ?" A so called economist is arguing that where 80% of the worlds population is living in conditions which are non-economic !, Than what is the economic term for a non-economic society for the hundreds of millions of people? Surely you the reader must realise that any condition where the wealth of the producer (the labourer) is not retained by the producer because of taxation and land price, which steals the wages from the mouths of his and her children is non-economic. The economic profession must begin to redress the corruption in their discipline. No condition is economic when the rent of land is not returned to the government for the provision of security of tenure which it grants. No condition is economic when the labourer does not receive the untaxed wages he or she has earned for selling their labour. And the capitalist should not be taxed either for the provision of valuable equipment to produce wealth. Why is this so difficult for economists to grasp?