but i think that is outweighed by a large number of disadvantages.
the first one is that it does hurt the local governments ability to deal with issues like welfare benefits, wages and taxes,
mainly because the corporation is able to say to the british government or the french government or the american government,
‘lo ok, unless you lower your taxes on us, well the moving off to south east asia or latin america, and so on.
and so it takes out of the hands of government the ability to control their own welfare systems,
and provide a decent infrastructure for their people.
now this is not so bad as long as there is some negotiation between governments and companies.
but more and more in recent years, companies have started to rule the roost. the corporation... some commentator said the other day,
‘the corporation is t he most important institution in our lives, and i think theres a lot truth in that.
they can now dictate to governments,
and i want to see some kind of give-and-take between governments and corporations. now thats the first problem.
the other problem that i see, of course, is one of unemployment in the western world. as companies want to improve their profitability, theyre going to be looking for the low-cost, low-wage centres.
so were going to see a flight of capital from the west which is going to be sudden and dramatic.
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if this is too sudden and is not managed properly we could find very sever employment problems in the western world.
so that is, i think, the kind of issue weve got to deal with as this process of globalisation gathers pace.
1.2
a survey has come up with some interesting information about the cost of living in our major cities.
tokyo is still the most expensive city in the world.
osaka is second and moscow third, on a par with hong kong. many european cities have gone down the rankings because their exchange rates have become weaker against the us dollar.