ABSTRACT
The employment-generating impact of the alcohol industry varies widely between countries. In addition to tax revenues and export earnings, employment generation in alcohol and alcohol-related industries is also a major consideration. The levels of electronic technology are spreading into distilling, and, as the wine industry becomes more concentrated, it can also be expected that microprocessor applications will extend to this sector as well. The employment impact of the microprocessor and other new technologies will lead to major cutbacks of the work-force at the plant level. As such technology is diffused, it will lead to a cutback in unit costs, squeezing out smaller producers for whom the cost of such technology is prohibitive. The preceding geo-economic overview is but a prologue for analysing, at far greater depths, the transnational power complexes which have become the overriding determinant in shaping the global market for alcoholic beverages.
