Answer to Question 1
The world's poverty rate has been cut by half since 1990.
Thanks to the redistributive powers of globalization, the ranks of the middle class have grown in LDCs in recent years.
Improved and more widely available education, much of it facilitated by graduate study abroad (especially in the US), has generated a surge of human capital fit for placement in the knowledge economies that generate a growing portion of the world's economic capital.
Globalization is credited for this transformation, with more economic as well as human capital entering the system: taxes have been lowered while wages and foreign investments have grown in the BRICS and other emerging market economies.
Globalization moves jobs to where wages are low, and so growth in the LDC middle classes is tied directly to losses in the MDC middle classes.
Income inequalities certainly are growing in the MDCs, and especially in the United States.
These income and wealth inequalities are bad news: they erode social cohesion and increase the scope for internal conflict.
Globalization weakened the unipolar dominance of the United States in economic, political, military, and cultural matters, and through a momentous tilt of power, we have entered a new multipolar world, according to many observers.
One very hopeful trend accompanying globalization is that the flow of information is becoming more democratized.
Another plus of globalization is that it has given people everywhere access to the cultures of others.
The same revelation of cultural wealth that invites us to appreciate others also makes it possible to revile others in thought (especially through writing on the Web and social media) and in deed.
Answer to Question 2
D