Globalisation needs no defence - it needs to be questioned

The main point of the globalisation argument is that trade liberalisation drives economic growth
and economic growth raises living standards. Its supporters say that on a wide range of measures -
poverty, the age to which people live, health, education - more people have  become richer at a
faster pace in the past 60 years than ever before. However, globalisation's opponents would claim
that this success has had its negative sides:

 that the increases in prosperity have favoured the rich far more than the poor, that trade
liberalisation has encouraged the growth of bad working conditions  and child labour, that lifting
the barriers to the free flow of international capital has increased financial instability, and so
on.

    Globalisation's enthusiasts are so good at cataloguing globalisation's benefits while ignoring
its costs. And I am referring not just to the flight of  jobs from developed countries to less
developed ones or the environmental damage caused by the developing world's rapid
industrialisation,  but  to  globalisation's social and cultural effects.

    What I would like to see, therefore, is an attempt to weigh up the costs and benefits of
globalisation to decide whether it is making the world  a better place or a worse one - not just
economically but across a range of issues.