Polity by Rob Salmond

Politically, it was never part of globalisation’s sales pitch

Really! So the sales pitch was what?
If we take advantage of lower wages and lousy working conditions in the third world and move our factories off shore we can make more money.....(.and improve living in the third world.)
And all you workers in the first world will have to live like people in the third world?

No, the reason it happened is callousness and greed. how about, if you participated in the money grab you lose it, all of it.
Now some arseholes are thinking and saying the way forward is automation for everything. Automate yourself's off the planet, morons!

I'm kinda with Andin on this, except that I think you have the sales pitch exactly backwards. The goal was further enriching the rich at the cost of everyone else, but the sales pitch was "spread the wealth", with a quiet subtext of "we will spread your wealth to the global poor", generally expressed as "ship low-wage jobs to the third world". Even at the time it was obvious that the agenda was enriching the obscenely wealthy at the expense of the rest of us - remember the widespread disgust with that aspect of Rogernomics? "open our markets, float our dollar... watch as the rest of the world takes advantage without reciprocating"... yeah, nah.

Note that having a higher income isn't helping a lot of those poor people who are also getting the downside of globalisation. From the looting of third world countries, to "spreading democracy" to environmental damage (and boy, you ain't seen nothin' yet on that front). Having more money is no compensation to the average Syrian or Naurian today, and I suspect a lot of (say) Bangladeshi sweatshop workers would take a bit of convincing, even before sea level rise makes their country tidal. My Filipino housemates here as guest workers would much prefer their country wasn't a US colony being run for the benefit of its foreign owners (their views on sovereignty make Trump seem restrained and reasonable.. and look at their new president).

Really! So the sales pitch was what?

That globalization is good for the developing world. I've heard that claim many times and it seemed plausible.

I'm not sure I can clearly see everything happening in this graph as a result of globalization, though. The high growth in the developing world could also simply be a function of them being so far behind. A bit like how my church can double in size by the time I get my first convert, but it needs a hundred million new followers to grow by 10% if it's already got a billion.

To that end the spike in the upper end is even more worrying. To spike so much upwards when already in the most primo position in the world.

It's a pity that the graphic can't convey the "top 1% captured 29% of the growth". The y axis only shows proportional growth, not absolute growth. It would be possible to show absolute growth, but the graph would be one of those unreadable hockey sticks, in which the growth in wealth of the wealthy of, say, 50 million dollars each, makes it impossible to even see the growth of 1000 dollars of the poorest people.

it seemed plausible.

It was spin from the moment it kicked off back in the 80's
Coupled with the continuing gutless attacks on pay and conditions in the so called "first" world. Improving the plight of poor nations was never on the agenda it happened purely by coincidence.

I'd say it was "not the whole truth, by a long shot". There is certainly an element of truth to the offshoring of production helping the workers at those offshore locations. I don't think it was much of the motivation for the decision makers, of course. They just wanted to save money, and get a more compliant workforce that had no comeback on them. But you can't deny that the money in the hands of people in a very much more impoverished society helped those people out of proportion to how much it might have helped a local.

It's a conundrum. I don't entirely approve of it, of course, far from it. But nor can I buy wholesale the alternative, of local workforce protectionism. It seems to me that this is one of the hardest aspects of modern labour, something that there are few good answers for.

To me the problem is the coupling of labour with remuneration itself. It's an ironic offshoot of socialism and the deification of the worker. It sanctifies work itself. To me, this is problematic, always has been. The purpose of work is the end of work. Work is not an end in itself. At least, I'd say that soul-less paid work isn't. The kind of freely undertaken work that we do in our spare time is, and it's not our only end. The other ends are things like shelter, food, companionship, love, pleasure, goods, entertainments, travel, etc. The kind of things we work for.

If the jealous protection of our work against it being done offshore is something that becomes our main battleground, then ultimately we are driven towards nationalism, and it's corollary, racism. These aren't attitudes I support as the way of the future. The Winston Peters brand of socialism, set against the neoliberalism of...practically all the other political players.

There must be another way. I don't see this neoliberal project as some crushing inevitable unstoppable force. It's just something for which the solution has not presented itself clearly enough. The false dichotomy of this slow moving disaster or the other faster moving disaster of tax-and-spend protectionism needs to be exposed. This Left vs Right that no one even cares about any more. There are many more possibilities.

Is this the most important graph because you can summarize Donald Trump by saying he's the bit above the line on the right, consolidating his position by convincing the bit below the line in the middle, to hate the bit above the line on the left?

Work is not an end in itself.

In a moneyed global society it shouldnt be, but it is to a lot of people.

nationalism, and it’s corollary, racism.

Hey if you like its a manifestation of discontent. I have lived through these changes and to see what those years have wrought, and its not pretty. On all sides.
There's lessons in there somewhere, but who's in learning mode.

There must be another way.

We havent identified the problem yet. Its not just the monetary, work/reward system and how its worked out. The political system is dead from the neck up. So what else is left, you figure it out.

I do get the sense of helpless rage. I just don’t feel it. Or rather, I refuse to give in to it. To give in is to say it was always inevitable and all the fighting over all those years was just a rearguard action. As someone who has also lived a long time, but also has maybe the same again to come, I’m not ready to lay down and die, accepting the slide into rising inequality and the violent tumult that it is likely to lead to.

Percentage growth rates aren't particularly useful for understanding things like growth in wealth, in that 1000% of nothing is still nothing, the peak at 50% may well represent a much smaller net growth than the dip at 80%.

Late 80's is also a weird start point, it's mostly going to capture the massive economic growth of China and India as they underwent their equivalent of the industrial revolution in combination with the digital revolution, with nearly half the world's population between them.

While presumably the near-zero relative growth is for western countries who piled on the neoliberalism, cut taxes on the rich to nothing, smashed unions, and slashed social spending to pay for it all in the early 90's, along with getting rid of any notion that the state should provide for full employment and a rising standard of living (or much of anything else). We have 6% unemployment because that is government policy, to hold wages down: obviously that limits the growth of wealth for most people here.

None of which really has anything to do with modern trade networks.

I’m not ready to lay down and die, accepting the slide into rising inequality and the violent tumult that it is likely to lead to.

Well us plebs mostly have no choice but to come to some kind of acceptance of the venality of our fellow humans, cause we cant do much else. And that not only thru powerlessness, time often just doesnt allow us such luxury.
It will happen in NZ, But is Labour going to draw the short straw and have to clean up Key&co's mess and get no thanks for it? probably.

Well they will probably get power, eventually. But it's on us to hold them to a proper cleanup, and we have to start by knowing what we even want that to look like. I know what I don't want it to look like, and that's something. But it's far short of enough.