2. Global Change

The information and communications revolutions have transformed life conditions and how economic and financial systems function. Major changes include: causing assumptions that underpin social, political and economic theories to be undermined; economic globalization, which created a complex global economy that functions outside the parameters of the past; rapid industrialization of China; South Korea, India and Brazil, which caused the global capacity to produce most goods and services to exceed the global capacity to absorb such goods and services; the internationalization of trade, investment and financial markets, which caused corporations and banks to compete and collaborate as a matter of need, and to lose their national identities; Changing the rules that govern relationships between jobs and job-seekers has led industrial and knowledge jobs to chase qualified workers, and economic theory to become largely dysfunctional.