Globalization has failed poor nations and factory workers, says Vatican newspaper editor

December 29, 2017

Globalization’s promise of increased living standards in poorer nations has proved to be a “delusion,” L’Osservatore Romano’s deputy editor said in an op-ed.

Giuseppe Fiorentino cited the example of Brazil, stating that wages there have failed to keep pace with a cost of living that now rivals that of Europe. Globalization has also brought the “impoverishment of the producer classes in nations of an industrial tradition,” where numerous factories have closed, he continued.

Multinational corporations and the world’s wealthiest people have been globalization’s beneficiaries, said Fiorentino, who cited several reports from the past year:

• “Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world” (Oxfam)
• “World’s Wealthiest Gain $1 Trillion in ‘17” (Bloomberg)
• World Inequality Report 2018 (World Wealth & Income Database)
• “When a hospital becomes a prison” (The Lancet)

 

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Further information:

• Sempre più ampio il divario tra poveri e ricchi (L’Osservatore Romano, p. 2)