I wonder if the age of imperialistic capitalism is over?
The industrial revolution but it was based on raw materials imported from poor colonies and turned into manufactured goods at relatively high wages for workers in the imperialist countries. Mills in England and New England would not have been so profitable if they could not buy cheap cotton from slave plantations or Egypt.
Economists of the 18th and 19th century saw this as a miracle!
Invest money in mills, make stuff cheaper, sell more! The increases in money could, as taught by Marx, Ricardo, Marshall et all .,. be used to elevate the working classes who then bought more stuff. Everyone won.
Kind of a perpetual motion machine!
Until now. Imperialism is dead. Even the communist version with its altruistic claims failed. Deng Zhau Ping adapted capitalism to a single-party state and showed that even iPhones were cheaper to make in Shenzen than in California.
So, what happens to workers in the first world? If the “third” world can now make widgets more efficiently and cheaply than the first world, then perhaps the reality of capitalism dictates that people in China should be richer and people here should be poorer?