体验商务英语3课本听力材料.docVIP

Audio scripts 1 Globalisation 1.1 (I = Interviewer, SH = Stephen Haseler) I Could you tell me about the advantages and disadvantages of globalisation? SH The great advantage of globalisation in my view is that it increases competition. Companies and firms have to be careful and have to order their affairs so that they compete in a global market. But I think that is outweighed by a large number of disadvantages. The first one is that it does hurt the local governments ability to deal with issues like welfare benefits, wages and taxes mainly because the corporation is able to say to the British Government or the French Government or the American government, Look, unless you lower your taxes on us, well be moving off to South East Asia or Latin America, and so on. And so it takes out of the hands of government the ability to control their own welfare systems and provide a decent infrastructure for their people. Now this is not so bad as long as there is some negotiation between governments and companies. But more and more in recent years, companies have started to rule the roost. The corporation ... some commentator said the other day, The corporation is the most important institution in our lives, and I think theres a lot of truth in that. They can now dictate to governments and I want to see some kind of give-and-take between governments and corporations. Now thats the first problem. The other problem that I see, of course, is one of unemployment in the Western world. As companies want to improve their profitability, theyre going to be looking for the low-cost, low-wage centres. So were going to see a flight of capital from the West which is going to be sudden and dramatic. If this is too sudden and is not managed properly we could find very severe employment problems in the Western world. So that is, I think, the kind of issue weve got to deal with as this process of globalisation gathers pace. 1.2 A survey has come up with some interesting information about t