Customer Reviews

Global Squeeze

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With all the hoopla surrounding the surging American economy and stock market, it's refreshing to read something that offers an intelligent and unbiased view of the harm and instability resulting from the fluidity of large multinational conglomerates that freely move about from one nation to another in search of cheap labor. Longworth's astute and meticulous analysis shows us all the full impact of globalization on the people who live with it on a daily basis. This book would be particularly valuable, I think, to young people in college-level current events courses.

I read Global Squeeze when it first came out. It's much more realistic than any others I've read since. (Future Perfect, Maestro, Independently Wealthy) I can see no hope for our middle class due to the job exports in all occupational categories. For the latest real world view read Business Week, Feb. 3, 2003, "The Global Job Shift."

We are in real trouble.

The book would better be titled "The First world squeeze", because if we go by the parameters of this book, what we find is a purely First world crisis.This crisis infact looks like a boon for the labour-cheap thirdworld or developing countries. But, combined with the on going hi-tech revolution, it could mean a elite class in the third world also. This is the sort of reality we find, as we observe the yawninig gap in the developing countries also, between its rich and poor. So, it looks like that the world's poor are being pitted agianst the rich and privileged few of the world more and more as the Globalization advances. Going by the present trend in polarisation of the classess world wide it looks-the day is not far off when the working class of the world would rise in unison, to deliver a death blow to the global capitalist system- as predicted by Karl Marx 150 years back.

As an Economics major in college, I found the book captivating. It shows the ways the emerging global market affects the first world nation's prosperity, stability, and confidence. The book also raises social responsibility and personal justice issues that will directly affect everyone within the next 30 years.

A scary must read for those concerned about the country's future. If you feel the uneasy economic chill in the air, this book will explain why! If your city's industrial base is gone this book will explain why! If you are stuck in a minimum wage "temp" society this book will explain why! This book exposes the neo-con globalist fantasy for what it is...Free trade is not free! and Cheap labor is not cheap! Unfortunately this book does not explain why no one seems to care!!!!

This is a very effective piece of economic reporting and must be one of the most acute pictures of 'capital in the raw' that I have read, a desmerizing tonic to the endless litany of neoliberal triumphalism. Neither Marxist, nor doctrinaire, it unwittingly scores a bullseye of indirect marxist analysis of the one-and-the-same process that is the invariant of the capitalist system. This isn't even a radical statement. Slogans one way or the other are stopped in their tracks by facts here, and facts that induce momentary helpless shock, quite short of firebrand indignation. We don't live in a global democratic system. Therefore we don't live in a democratic system. Capital has beaten the pants off sentimentalism here. Democracy so-called is a good front, but otherwise an inconvenience to the predators described herein. The author produces one horrendous
statistic about forty thousand people controlling 81 trillion in assets. Capital.
Not much more needs to be said.
Your move, unless you are powerless, a democratic nobody. Checkmate?

As a African American female that recently got into the stock market, I found this book absolutely fascinating. The research that was put into looking at the First World Nations, their cultures, and decisions being made for all its citizens is a real eye opener. It is written with great depth, understanding and compassion. The author has certainly put together a book that I would recommend to everyone, on all sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. He pointed out the seriousness of an unbridled global market and the consequences for all of us. My hope is that this book can move to the best seller's list, and hopefully begin some dialogue on all levels.