Could you comment sometime on how corporat M&A effects employment. I would think that as the number of companies declines, the employment rate is going to go down. Also, isn't it true that GATS, with help from the WTO, is driving this privatization of formerly public services? How can the average citizen fight the WTO?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the free market fanatics are going to shoot themselves in the foot all over the world. I think that they have been given enough rope to hang themselves with.

Preach it, bro. Of course, this is old news -- the same phenomenon began in Mexico nearly a decade ago. But don't tell the Fundie Traders at the WaPo, and NYT -- much less those in government. You might scare them.

"Could you comment sometime on how corporat M&A effects employment. I would think that as the number of companies declines, the employment rate is going to go down."

In economic theory, when a sector that was competitive (i.e. many small companies none of which can dominate the market) becomes concentrated through mergers into only a few large companies (which can collectively control prices and output), those few large companies maximize profits by limiting output and then raising prices sharply (like what OPEC does in the oil industry), and then by cutting their workforces to the lower numbers needed to produce that reduced level of output. Antitrust laws are supposed to prevent concentrations of corporate power, but these days they're rarely enforced.

Nowhere in the article you link to does it say anything about "falling wages in many sectors," nor is it true that wages are falling in India. Please correct this.

Wages are rising in India, poverty is falling, the incidence of malnourished children is falling, and there's no "mass unemployment."

India is really the poster-child for the benefits of globalization. It's a huge, poor, democracy that's been advancing rapidly since it opened up to the world. India's progress is pretty much the best thing that's happened in the world in the last decade, and it's frightening, and a little offensive, that you seem unhappy about it.

I've posted a more detailed argument at my blog.

Don't forget about security. Secureroot.org