Canadian Income Distribution

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: Canadian Income Distribution

Just want to butt-in with some of my thoughts on the OP:

1. income != wealth
If you look at most of the wealthy immigrants' tax filings, you will see them with $Millions or Billions in assets, but below avg global income.

2. 1% in Canada simply means [35 mil total population - (35mil *7% unemployed)] * 1% = 330,000.
If we assume on average there are 10 executives in each med-sized and large companies, and executives make more than 10X more than the average employees in their company. Then it's not really that hard to find 33,000 companies in Canada with that assumption. (and we forgot about some self-employed jobs like Dentists, family docs, real estate brokers, etc....)

I don't see anything surprising in the math there. It's more about the misconceptions on figures like 1%, 10times, average income, etc.

Neal, say what?

What is OP?

“!=” , I am unfamiliar with this mathematical expression.

If you have millions or billions in assets,
your investment income alone would almost certainly put your income above the global average.

[35,000,000 - (35,000,000 x 7%)] x 1% = 325,500, not 330,000?
But, what does that mean?

[Bob Armstrong]

Re: Canadian Income Distribution

Hi Bob G:

I also had trouble following Neal's points - seemed worthwhile though if he can pabulum feed us neophytes to economics.

As to investments leading to "taxable income", as you know given your background: it depends - investments in an RRSP or RIF generating revenue are not currently declared "taxable income" while in the container. I assume the whole immoral regime of tax shelters and tax havens operates on the same principle. I happen to qualify for Canadian GIS - income poor; but not without assets. But I nevertheless legally am entitled.

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Current Young Adult Income: Canadian Income Distribution

From CBC.ca, Sept. 11/13:

Wealthiest 1% earn 10 times more than average Canadian

The richest of the rich in Canada earn about 10 times more than the average Canadian income of $38,700 and are generally married, middle-aged, white men, the final release of data from the National Household Survey shows.

Is this a problem? If so, why?

Bob A

P.S. I assume that the $ 38,700 is a single individual income. If so, I am surprised that it is this high these days. It seems to me that many in the 25-40 year olds range, are having difficulty finding decent paying full-time jobs, and that many are underemployed (many with first University degrees), many working more than one low-paying part-time job just to survive. Is anyone else surprised by the individual average?

The Globe and Mail On-line / Globe Quebec - Wed., Nov. 27, 2013 : Gen-Y wages: The pain is real - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...&click=dlvr.it

Bob A

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Canadian Income Distribution

Neal, I understand what you are saying and pretty much agree.

Chasing the 1% is a dumb strategy. They have the means of looking after themselves even if it means moving to more friendly jurisdictions and taking their companies with them. One would think the unions could negotiate wages for their members which closed the gap if it wouldn't force a company to close its doors.

[Bob Armstrong]

Re: Canadian Income Distribution

Neal, I understand what you are saying and pretty much agree.

Chasing the 1% is a dumb strategy. They have the means of looking after themselves even if it means moving to more friendly jurisdictions and taking their companies with them. One would think the unions could negotiate wages for their members which closed the gap if it wouldn't force a company to close its doors.

Hi Gary:

We agree, it seems, on the value of unions, to level the playing field with employers.

And yes, the union has to know when it is going to shoot itself in the foot - demands bringing the company to the edge of bankruptcy; causing flight to less cost countries; etc.

Bob A

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Canadian Income Distribution

Hi Gary:

We agree, it seems, on the value of unions, to level the playing field with employers.

And yes, the union has to know when it is going to shoot itself in the foot - demands bringing the company to the edge of bankruptcy; causing flight to less cost countries; etc.

Bob A

Unions are pretty good. It's usually in the contract how much you have to pay a worker in severance when you want to close down. You don't have to worry about negotiating with each employee on the merits of their work for raises. It's not personal.

With no union, if a company buys out the one where you work and offers you a job in some other town you can turn it down. They have to cut a cheque taking a lot of things into consideration and if the employee isn't satisfied they can go to court. Win or lose it consumes time.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Elites lack the patience and culture for classical music. Will chess follow?

Jacobin magazine has an article in which it is argued that, in these neo-liberal times of fundamentalist market idolatry, culture gets affected as well.

So, for example, elites seem to no longer care about classical music. Instead, completely inappropriate standards are applied:



Could the support of chess suffer the same fate? Or has it already? Interesting question.

The Last Symphony: Today’s elite lacks the patience and culture for classical music.

What support of chess? Perhaps a few of the FQE people could chime in on that question. I haven't noticed any lessening of their fervor for standard chess. But at the same time, I believe I recall someone mentioning maybe a year ago that the FQE is or was somewhat supportive of chess variants, obviously to a limited degree.

My own enterprise in chess will prove to be very self-supportive, enough in my mind that it is worth risking resources on. It certainly won't be considered by chess purists as worthy of any kind of mania, because it won't have much in the way of long, positional play (although it actually will have a tiny bit of that). But for those wanting to make money from chess, either as reasonably skilled but not elite players or as organizers, it will be seen as a panacea. And it will eventually boost chess publishing.

Meanwhile, in southern Europe, I would expect to see standard chess undergo at least a gradual diminishing as the "troika" continues to impose austerity well beyond 2020. But the one thing about chess that doesn't apply to classical music is that the skills learned can be readily applied to the needs of the market, and so chess may be seen as an alternative form of "training". So support may still be forthcoming even there.

Which begs the question, Nigel: what would you think if chess schooling and training globally were to become in effect a channeling of talented intellects into this neo-liberalization movement you speak of? In other words, if elite chess players played until say age 25, and then signed lucrative contracts to become market traders, derivative traders, etc? Isn't that kind of what happened with Mark Bluvshtein, even if it wasn't premeditated? Perhaps Hansen and Hambleton and a whole wash of others are next...

[Nigel Hanrahan]

Re: Elites lack the patience and culture for classical music. Will chess follow?

What support of chess?

I mean chess as a public good, e.g., so it's taught in schools, is treated as a valuable cultural activity, etc., just as society in the form of governments support libraries, public parks, community centers, and so on. This is chess outside of neo-liberal ideology, outside of the market idolatry mentioned earlier.

... if chess schooling and training globally were to become in effect a channeling of talented intellects into this neo-liberalization movement you speak of? In other words, if elite chess players played until say age 25, and then signed lucrative contracts to become market traders, derivative traders, etc?

That sounds like the application of inappropriate standards as in the example with classical music. Things that are genuinely valuable in a human sense, not in a market ideology sense, are ends in themselves and not simply means to another end (Preparing traders, especially derivative trading, which is part and parcel of the financial collapse in the last few years, by making chess a means to that end does nothing for chess. Of course, for some individual players, it's a career choice. Obviously, I don't think that what's good for some players, even the best players, is automatically good for chess.)

Educating children to become intelligent, civic-minded adults that care about the society they live in and, therefore, wish to see it improved, is the sort of public good that the promotion of chess can be compared to. Widespread teaching of chess helps cognitive development and other useful kinds of learning. The very idea of friendly and respectful competition, characteristic of the teaching of chess, already contrasts with other zero sum views of competition in which any means (such as Borislav Ivanovian cheating) is justified if it leads to desirable ends such as winning.

[Gary Ruben]

Economic Equality

Here's an interesting article on Economic Equality.

The Mayor of London, England makes some interesting points.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...n-in-life.html

[Neal Pan]

Re: Canadian Income Distribution

Neal, say what?

What is OP?

“!=” , I am unfamiliar with this mathematical expression.

If you have millions or billions in assets,
your investment income alone would almost certainly put your income above the global average.

[35,000,000 - (35,000,000 x 7%)] x 1% = 325,500, not 330,000?
But, what does that mean?

Hi Robert,

"OP" - original post (1st thread of this topic)
"!=" - not equals to

one with $1 billion in his (her) pocket is not necessarily investing a lot. Plus, not all investors make money by the end of the day, no matter if he's investing a billion or a dollar. So, not all rich people (new immigrants) have incomes.
What I meant is that if they actually invest and have a positive return like what you have said there, the "new" top 1% could earn well beyond 10 times of the average then.
So, there is nothing strange with the "1% vs 10X". Even "1% vs 20x" is possible. Thus, it's not a problem, as an answer to the original post's question.

thanks for the reply and the math check (i respect you for paying attention! I really do. we do math with extra care in UW, don't we? :p). But, that's a rounding compensation against the fluctuating unemployment rate in Canada.
(sorry, that was my elegant excuse of: i just calculated in my head and round off for simplicity, since i thought no one really cares :) )

I hope I could have made my point clearer on the 1st attempt...

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Elites lack the patience and culture for classical music. Will chess follow?

Educating children to become intelligent, civic-minded adults that care about the society they live in and, therefore, wish to see it improved, is the sort of public good that the promotion of chess can be compared to. Widespread teaching of chess helps cognitive development and other useful kinds of learning. The very idea of friendly and respectful competition, characteristic of the teaching of chess, already contrasts with other zero sum views of competition in which any means (such as Borislav Ivanovian cheating) is justified if it leads to desirable ends such as winning.

I'm going to start off this reply with a chess diagram with White to move. I'll explain why in a bit, but I'll put it right at the top to pique reader interest, because this position does have an interesting point to it related to this discussion:



Regarding your last statement, Nigel: cheating is not confined to chess, and friendly and respectful competition is also not confined to chess. Teaching kids tennis or curling also teaches them respect, and gives them physical fitness to boot. So in these respects, chess offers nothing special and in fact falls short. It teaches nothing about chaos and random behavior, which is needed for a wholistic vision of our physical world.

And I did note you mentioned "teaching of chess", which can be looked at from three viewpoints: that of the teacher, that of the child student, and that of the parent(s). The teacher may well be striving for the instilling of virtues into the student that the student can apply to far more than chess. But I would hazard a guess, in 80% or more of cases, either or both of the student and the parent(s) are striving for one thing only: winning chess. And so chess for them is already a means to an end. The offering of chess scholarships a la Webster University only increases this pressure to be "better". So I don't think one can just declare that teaching of chess is somehow above the competitive fray. That's a huge generalization that just doesn't cut the mustard.

Moving on... It's fine to see chess in these altruistic terms, but what I was getting at was the possibility not just that chess players would make career choices, but that the people on the lookout for naturally talented securities / derivative / futures / options traders would suddenly jump out of bed one morning and say, "Eureka! Chess players! There's gold in them thar hills!" The next thing you know, virtually all the 20-something elite players are signing contracts and becoming part of the market-idolatry problem. Hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean it can't. And if it were to succeed -- if these elite players were to be recruited and to excel at the trading business -- suddenly you've got a new vision of chess as a means to a neo-liberal end, with money as the carrot. God knows chess players could use more money! If you've read "Liars Poker" by Michael Lewis, you know from his accounts that Goldman Sachs, just as one example, is as much a cult as is chess itself, probably more difficult to get out of because of the gobs of money involved.

With chess at the elite levels becoming more and more dreary, drab and dull, trading (like lion-taming) offers the attraction of bigger risk and excitement as well. The just-concluded WC added to this sense that chess can't get out of its rut. All this talk of Carlsen as a player who just plays and plays until he wears an opponent down to a mistake: is that an ideal that young children or teens are going to look at and say, "That's what I want to do with my life! Sit for hours and hours waiting for someone to make a mistake!"

I mentioned in another post that Lawrence Trent commented on that by saying he believed there would be a backlash against this style. Kudos to Lawrence, but standard chess offers only so much in the way of opportunity to be creative and aggressive. That opportunity is arguably less now than ever before. In this computer engine age, everyone is getting too well versed in the tactics. Perhaps what we saw in the stifling of Anand's creativity is the only thing standard chess has left to offer for the future? It certainly would be interesting to ask Anand himself about this.

And that seques nicely into the next point: the chess diagram I placed at the top of this post. I believe you can set this position up in any current chess engine software, and the engine will accept it. I did it with Stockfish. But wait, don't set this up in an engine, because I want you to actually look at it.

Also, take note: it is an impossible position to ever arrive at in standard chess. There is no way for the pawns to get where they are.

Now without using a computer, tell me WHITE'S ONLY WINNING MOVE! That's right, there is one move and one move only that can be said to be winning for White. There is another move that gives with "perfect" play maybe 3/4 pawn advantage to White (not quite winning, I'd say, given the possible complications). All other White first moves lead to LARGE / WINNING ADVANTAGE TO BLACK.

Readers are encouraged to post their winning move opinion and how much time it took for them to arrive at it, if they are honest and don't use an engine. This position is of my creation.

Now, I'll wait till another post to give the answer (or one may cheat and use an engine if they are impatient). But why am I bringing this into the discussion? Because this is an example of the kind of dynamic, exciting, super-tactical position that standard chess at elite levels is steering away from. Nakurama might be the only elite level player capable of creating this level of havoc, and even he in his drive to the top is probably doing it less and less... playing more and more like Carlsen? I should study some of his recent games to find out if he's changed much from a few years ago.

The closest we get to this is when the two players castle on opposite wings, as happened in Game 9 of the WC. I watched much of that game, and despite Lawrence's obvious delight at seeing "blood on the board", I found it somewhat dry and lacking and certainly not worth that level of hype. When Anand went into his 30-minute think, I knew it was all over for him. I shut it down and was not surprised the next day to find he had indeed lost.

So my point to you is that yes, standard chess being taught to children can help cognitive development and spatial visualization and all that good stuff. But the situation at the elite levels tells us that it's the ADULTS that are deprived. I liken it to having your child learn a musical instrument at a young age, but imposing on them the restriction: only play polka music! Nothing else is acceptable. For the child, it is at first exciting: so many possibilities! So many polka variations!

Now imagine there existed an organization controlling music worldwide, and it too decreed that only polka should be played or heard at sanctioned events. There might be various nightclubs around the world in which musicians tried variant forms of music, but let's assume this organization had such control that no musician could make money playing anything but polka. Even the nightclubs themselves would only pay you if you played polka style. So you could experiment and have fun... but to get back to serious business, you have to come back to polka.

This is the current and long-standing situation with chess. But like music, chess has myriad variant forms almost all of which can express beauty to varying degrees, and a lot of which haven't even been invented yet. I've invented a few dozen forms that I'm pretty sure are unique; remember Binary Chess, Nigel? You thought that was pretty far out.

Like the music example, we have a world federation that is repressing chess by restricting it to the one form that gets officially sanctioned. And that one form is running on fumes, spittering and spattering, and some people are at least thinking of getting off the bus. But there are no other buses to jump onto (even chess960 is in the garage, brought out once in a while for a spin around the block). You can go to a club somewhere and play bughouse or other variants, but if you want a tournament with ratings and prizes, it's back on to the bus of standard chess.

Despite our differences, Nigel, I would still think it might be possible (because of your apparent altruistic sensibilities) you and I could share a vision of chess as a general domain and not just one specific and rigid implementation. If we could share that vision, we could perhaps also share a vision of breaking through the current barriers, of providing more "chess buses" for people to travel on, each taking them on a unique journey. On some of those buses, the edict of 100% information and no influence of chance could even be rolled back. Teaching children all these forms of chess (and having them create their own) would be closer to the altruistic goal of instilling in them a creativity and an appreciation of the beauty and variety of the physical world, as it were, making them more resistant to the soullessness of unfettered market capitalism.

What's ironic is that in order to see my vision through, I have to actually participate in market capitalism and create a profitable version that can fund a new organization that oversees chess in all the variant forms that are deemed worthy by some sort of popularity test -- except of course the form that FIDE controls. I'm taking a very different tack from that of Andrew Paulson. He is deeply attached to standard chess only, it seems.

One consolation I have is that if I do succeed even just to a moderate degree, I can later turn around and give back in a more direct financial way.

[John Coleman]

Re: Elites lack the patience and culture for classical music. Will chess follow?

Paul, I didn't read your whole post; life's too short. However, this paragraph jumped out at me.

The closest we get to this is when the two players castle on opposite wings, as happened in Game 9 of the WC. I watched much of that game, and despite Lawrence's obvious delight at seeing "blood on the board", I found it somewhat dry and lacking and certainly not worth that level of hype. When Anand went into his 30-minute think, I knew it was all over for him. I shut it down and was not surprised the next day to find he had indeed lost.

I wonder if you have the right game number: in game 9 both players castled on the kingside.

[Nigel Hanrahan]

Re: Elites lack the patience and culture for classical music. Will chess follow?

I'm going to start off this reply with a chess diagram with White to move. I'll explain why in a bit, but I'll put it right at the top to pique reader interest, because this position does have an interesting point to it related to this discussion:



Regarding your last statement, Nigel: cheating is not confined to chess, and friendly and respectful competition is also not confined to chess. Teaching kids tennis or curling also teaches them respect, and gives them physical fitness to boot. So in these respects, chess offers nothing special and in fact falls short. It teaches nothing about chaos and random behavior, which is needed for a wholistic vision of our physical world.

And I did note you mentioned "teaching of chess", which can be looked at from three viewpoints: that of the teacher, that of the child student, and that of the parent(s). The teacher may well be striving for the instilling of virtues into the student that the student can apply to far more than chess. But I would hazard a guess, in 80% or more of cases, either or both of the student and the parent(s) are striving for one thing only: winning chess. And so chess for them is already a means to an end. The offering of chess scholarships a la Webster University only increases this pressure to be "better". So I don't think one can just declare that teaching of chess is somehow above the competitive fray. That's a huge generalization that just doesn't cut the mustard.

Moving on... It's fine to see chess in these altruistic terms, but what I was getting at was the possibility not just that chess players would make career choices, but that the people on the lookout for naturally talented securities / derivative / futures / options traders would suddenly jump out of bed one morning and say, "Eureka! Chess players! There's gold in them thar hills!" The next thing you know, virtually all the 20-something elite players are signing contracts and becoming part of the market-idolatry problem. Hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean it can't. And if it were to succeed -- if these elite players were to be recruited and to excel at the trading business -- suddenly you've got a new vision of chess as a means to a neo-liberal end, with money as the carrot. God knows chess players could use more money! If you've read "Liars Poker" by Michael Lewis, you know from his accounts that Goldman Sachs, just as one example, is as much a cult as is chess itself, probably more difficult to get out of because of the gobs of money involved.

With chess at the elite levels becoming more and more dreary, drab and dull, trading (like lion-taming) offers the attraction of bigger risk and excitement as well. The just-concluded WC added to this sense that chess can't get out of its rut. All this talk of Carlsen as a player who just plays and plays until he wears an opponent down to a mistake: is that an ideal that young children or teens are going to look at and say, "That's what I want to do with my life! Sit for hours and hours waiting for someone to make a mistake!"

I mentioned in another post that Lawrence Trent commented on that by saying he believed there would be a backlash against this style. Kudos to Lawrence, but standard chess offers only so much in the way of opportunity to be creative and aggressive. That opportunity is arguably less now than ever before. In this computer engine age, everyone is getting too well versed in the tactics. Perhaps what we saw in the stifling of Anand's creativity is the only thing standard chess has left to offer for the future? It certainly would be interesting to ask Anand himself about this.

And that seques nicely into the next point: the chess diagram I placed at the top of this post. I believe you can set this position up in any current chess engine software, and the engine will accept it. I did it with Stockfish. But wait, don't set this up in an engine, because I want you to actually look at it.

Also, take note: it is an impossible position to ever arrive at in standard chess. There is no way for the pawns to get where they are.

Now without using a computer, tell me WHITE'S ONLY WINNING MOVE! That's right, there is one move and one move only that can be said to be winning for White. There is another move that gives with "perfect" play maybe 3/4 pawn advantage to White (not quite winning, I'd say, given the possible complications). All other White first moves lead to LARGE / WINNING ADVANTAGE TO BLACK.

Readers are encouraged to post their winning move opinion and how much time it took for them to arrive at it, if they are honest and don't use an engine. This position is of my creation.

Now, I'll wait till another post to give the answer (or one may cheat and use an engine if they are impatient). But why am I bringing this into the discussion? Because this is an example of the kind of dynamic, exciting, super-tactical position that standard chess at elite levels is steering away from. Nakurama might be the only elite level player capable of creating this level of havoc, and even he in his drive to the top is probably doing it less and less... playing more and more like Carlsen? I should study some of his recent games to find out if he's changed much from a few years ago.

The closest we get to this is when the two players castle on opposite wings, as happened in Game 9 of the WC. I watched much of that game, and despite Lawrence's obvious delight at seeing "blood on the board", I found it somewhat dry and lacking and certainly not worth that level of hype. When Anand went into his 30-minute think, I knew it was all over for him. I shut it down and was not surprised the next day to find he had indeed lost.

So my point to you is that yes, standard chess being taught to children can help cognitive development and spatial visualization and all that good stuff. But the situation at the elite levels tells us that it's the ADULTS that are deprived. I liken it to having your child learn a musical instrument at a young age, but imposing on them the restriction: only play polka music! Nothing else is acceptable. For the child, it is at first exciting: so many possibilities! So many polka variations!

Now imagine there existed an organization controlling music worldwide, and it too decreed that only polka should be played or heard at sanctioned events. There might be various nightclubs around the world in which musicians tried variant forms of music, but let's assume this organization had such control that no musician could make money playing anything but polka. Even the nightclubs themselves would only pay you if you played polka style. So you could experiment and have fun... but to get back to serious business, you have to come back to polka.

This is the current and long-standing situation with chess. But like music, chess has myriad variant forms almost all of which can express beauty to varying degrees, and a lot of which haven't even been invented yet. I've invented a few dozen forms that I'm pretty sure are unique; remember Binary Chess, Nigel? You thought that was pretty far out.

Like the music example, we have a world federation that is repressing chess by restricting it to the one form that gets officially sanctioned. And that one form is running on fumes, spittering and spattering, and some people are at least thinking of getting off the bus. But there are no other buses to jump onto (even chess960 is in the garage, brought out once in a while for a spin around the block). You can go to a club somewhere and play bughouse or other variants, but if you want a tournament with ratings and prizes, it's back on to the bus of standard chess.

Despite our differences, Nigel, I would still think it might be possible (because of your apparent altruistic sensibilities) you and I could share a vision of chess as a general domain and not just one specific and rigid implementation. If we could share that vision, we could perhaps also share a vision of breaking through the current barriers, of providing more "chess buses" for people to travel on, each taking them on a unique journey. On some of those buses, the edict of 100% information and no influence of chance could even be rolled back. Teaching children all these forms of chess (and having them create their own) would be closer to the altruistic goal of instilling in them a creativity and an appreciation of the beauty and variety of the physical world, as it were, making them more resistant to the soullessness of unfettered market capitalism.

What's ironic is that in order to see my vision through, I have to actually participate in market capitalism and create a profitable version that can fund a new organization that oversees chess in all the variant forms that are deemed worthy by some sort of popularity test -- except of course the form that FIDE controls. I'm taking a very different tack from that of Andrew Paulson. He is deeply attached to standard chess only, it seems.

One consolation I have is that if I do succeed even just to a moderate degree, I can later turn around and give back in a more direct financial way.

Long submission - I will reply later.

[Nigel Hanrahan]

Re: Neo-liberalism as an assault on common sense

more on this subject at Huffington Post by Mark Taliano

"Technocrats, argues John Ralston Saul in his book Voltaire's Bastards, have a narrow band of intelligence which is divorced from reality, from common sense, and from morality. Technocrats love power, they are obsessed with structure, and they believe in certain "absolute truths." This is their downfall in the real world which has its own logic.

The economic theory of neoliberalism, for example, is seen as an absolute truth, even when hallmarks of the theory, such as unregulated financial speculation, create market crashes that tear at the fabric of civilized society. Everything can be rationalized by technocrats, though, whose world-view does not include common sense...."

The author uses the example of Goldman Sachs ...

Since the 1980s, with the "liberalization/deregulation" of markets (neoliberalism), stock market speculation has become more important than investing in "enterprises" such as manufacturing, trains, canals and so on. Even worse, financial firms such as Goldman Sachs speculate on commodities, such as food, for profit. Consequently, short-term shareholder profits can raise food prices and contribute to food scarcity for millions. At the very least, speculation in food commodities should be illegal.

The legislation which was crafted over the years to legalize trading such as commodities, derivatives and hedge funds is responsible in large part for the crash of the financial system in 2008, yet it still has not been altered significantly. As a start, a Financial Transaction Tax/Robin Hood Tax would help to regulate speculative market transactions. This tax is gaining widespread approval in Europe, but of course it isn't being considered in Canada.

In India, where neo-liberal views and rampant GMOs in agriculture are coming to dominate, a major cause of death for farmers is suicide. There are literally tens or hundreds of thousands of suicides connected to this brutal policy. (eg, article from 2006 already identified this horrific trend.)

Technocrats and the Assault on Common Sense

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Neo-liberalism as an assault on common sense

In India, where neo-liberal views and rampant GMOs in agriculture are coming to dominate, a major cause of death for farmers is suicide.

Specifically, what have Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in agriculture have to do with causing suicides in farmers?

The article rambles so much I don't see that point specifically addressed.