European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

THE CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN IDENTITY THE BUSINESS FRAMEWORK 335is produced in larger quantities; lowering of product prizes as aconsequence of the previous point; market enlargement;technological up-dating. Its risks are: job losses; early retirementthat brings about the rise of underground economy and an addedsocial cost; reduction of the market’s real competitiveness due tothe concentration of offer; destruction of other business cultures;small businesses can no longer compete in the free market againstmacro-companies. According to trustworthy sources, around 300of the latter will control the world economy by the year 2030.c) Foreign labour, entailing the following possibilities: necessary tocarry tasks which national workers do not want to perform; itensures the payment of pensions to an ageing population; itfavours interculturalism and the wealth this phenomenonentails. Some of its risks are: massive arrival of immigrants withno identity documents and no job offers; labour and wagediscrimination for these people, which results in unfair and oftenillegal situations; appearance of mafias for the introduction ofimmigrants; risk of delinquency in order to survive; flow of greatmasses of unemployed people: Europeans from non-EUcountries, unemployed or pre-retired Europeans, citizens fromthe rest of the world in search of social welfare or survival; andthe underground economy, black market which disrupts healthycompetition between small and medium-sized businesses.d) New technologies, entailing the following possibilities: greatboost for the development of new businesses; creation of newjobs; open paths for creativity, training of people, Sciencedevelopment, etc.; have led to the Internet phenomenon, whichis so important in the current and future world; and they haveresulted in the so-called “new economy”. The risks they involveare: business expectations have been exaggerated; a financialbubble which does not square with economic reality has beencreated; financial scandals of great business corporations, whichhave even reached trickery and fraud; their failure has causedthe closing of businesses and sometimes massive redundancy.Considerations on solidarity to cambat povertyFedor Dostoievski: Each man is responsible for everything in frontof everybody.If the poor remain hopeless, poverty undermines the foundationsof our society causing confrontation, violence and civil disorder.This