One of the central tenets of Dependency Theory is that the creation of wealth also leads to the creation of poverty–the determining factor being who produces the inputs and who sells the outputs. There is probably no better example of this phenomenon than the success of the Walmart chain of stores. Walmart was able to produce many goods in low wage areas of the world, primarily China. In so doing, many higher paying jobs in the US were lost as firms that could not compete with the low wage production. Researchers have estimated that about 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the US were lost as a result. The owners of Walmart became very rich (the three siblings are among the 20 richest Americans) and the workers in China who had jobs became richer (but hardly rich). But the workers in the US became poor since they lost their jobs. Wealth and poverty are causally related.
PressTV, the Iranian television news media, has released a video on the impact of globalization on Islam. The video is fascinating and offers a different perspective on how global trends have affected Muslim populations and how Islam is interpreted by those populations. It is not a perspective that Western media appreciate at all.
China has relaxed some of the restrictions on the movement of its citizens, a policy called hukou which made it difficult for migrants to receive medical care and education when they moved to take advantage of employment opportunities in the cities. The change will affect about 13 million people and will dramatically enhance labor mobility in the country. The move amplifies the effect of the earlier loosening of the one-child policy in China.
World Politics News 
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