CAIRO – So I was sitting in the apartment of an American in Egypt over the July 4 weekend when I looked around and saw the true meaning of globalization: In a flat world, everything is competing with everything else. And it’s not just in business and economics. It is in everyone’s personal lives.
One white American had lived in Cairo for five years and was soon moving to India because he was raised as a Hindu. One white girl was born in Canada but had lived most of her life in Qatar. One Jordanian woman studied nursing in Egypt and was returning to Jordan to work. One German had been working in international development in Afghanistan and Sudan for years. Two friends of mine, now married, were born in Arizona, educated in Boston, and now working for the U.S. Peace Corps in Benin. I am an American who was born in the Midwest and educated in Boston but who now lives in Israel. Another woman was born in Mexico, raised in the United States, and now teaching English in Syria. Over the weekend, I had also met a girl who was half-Palestinian and half-Egyptian and a French woman who had Arab parents and now lives in New York. I could go on.
This is the future of the world.
Globalization is transforming the very nature of the world. Since countries are increasingly opening their borders to immigrants, people are moving everwhere else for education, employment, a lower cost of living, and even better chances to meet significant others. (A few Americans I’ve met in Israel have told me, half-jokingly, that it will be easier to find a “nice, Jewish girl” in Israel than in the so-called JAP atmosphere in the United States. These are their words, not mine.)
In Cairo, I saw that my American friends could eat a luxurious, multiple-course meal for the eqivalent of $20, order a large beer for $3, and get a pack of cigarettes for less than $2. A taxi anywhere in Cairo costs no more than $10 — and the city is enormous. Americans do not even have to clean their apartments because maid services are also cheap.
Now, compare this life to the United States. In Boston, I paid $600 a month for a small room in a three-bedroom apartment. Utilities were another $50 or $100. Basic groceries were another several hundred (and the prices have certainly risen since I left). These expenses were also growing at a time when wages have not been keeping up with inflation and the economy is teetering on the brink of recession. If an American has the option to choose between a lower-middle class lifestyle in the United States or an upper-class one elsewhere, I can certainly understand why they would choose the latter.
Individual countries no longer just have to manage their own economies and societies; they need to compete with those of other countries as well. If life is too expensive in Britain, people will move elsewhere. If a college education is too expensive in the United States, people will study at universities abroad. (And if those friends of mine cannot find a nice, Jewish girl in New York, then they will look for one in Jerusalem.) If countries do not adapt, then they will lose their most precious resource: their people.
Even the Israeli government is getting in on the act:
With a strong Israeli economy and dropping stock markets in the United States, the North American aliya [immigration] movement may be on the brink of a new wave of immigrants, said Jewish Agency officials on Monday.
“I do believe there is the beginning of an awakening in the Orthodox community of the importance of aliya [immigration] especially during the financial crunch [in the US],” said Akiva Werber, senior shaliah for the Jewish Agency’s Israel Aliya Center.
“All of the economics, tourist trade, and high technology industries in Israel have [a growing] financial future, despite the fears of the approaching recession in the United States.”
In the era of globalization, competition is paramount. Everyone is competing with everyone else for everything. As I wrote in a lengthy essay, this is generally good for consumers as long as countries and people adapt accordingly. We’ll see where this world leads.
