How Globalization Went Pop

Global trade is old — really, really old. But something new is happening to the world economy as software and container trade shrink the globe — the rate of “globalization” is increasing, allowing developing countries to hitch a ride on the capital of advanced economies and race forward.

But how do you measure how fast the world economy has “globalized” in one figure? Perhaps, by borrowing a concept originally developed by physicists known as entropy.

The Mystery of the Incredible Shrinking American Worker

The mysterious and growing divide between the rich and the rest in just about every wealthy country on Earth, including the U.S., is really two mysteries wrapped in one. The first mystery is why real wage growth has sped up at the top and slowed down for everybody else. But the second, more recent, and more fascinating problem is why labor’s share of the winnings in developed economies has been in decline. It’s not just that middle-class wages are falling behind the rich. Overall wages are falling behind something else — capital.

People are becoming less valuable to companies. Why?

Continue reading on The Atlantic…