Privatization and unemployment

Both of the articles "Egypt Prepares to Privatize," May 4, and "Bush 'Privatization' Approach Gathers Steam at Local Level," May 4, implicitly recognize two factors: that the global market place is a de facto worldwide economic condition, and that chronic unemployment is increasingly becoming a social cost of this new world order.

The Egypt article also presents explicit recognition of the unemployment implications endemic to reorganization for the delivery of goods or services through privatization.

With 5 billion people currently on this planet, employment as a means of accessing the goods and services of this global market place has become universally scarce. In this time of footloose, transnational business enterprise, industry either moves to where labor is cheapest or substitutes capital for labor.

The end result is economic disenfranchisement of an ever-increasing proportion of the population through a diminution of opportunities for human labor.

Our political leaders, when confronting a new economic organizing principle need to ask the question: What will be the affects on American labor and society as a whole? Wilfred E. Richard, Fairfield, Maine

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