Page 12 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • October 26, 2011 stooges in D.C. – continue to support Most Favored Nation status for the folks who left Yueyue in the street and ran her over twice because the corporations can make more money selling manufactured goods from the unprotected workers of China than from the carefully protected workers of Europe or the marginally protected workers of Japan and South Korea. The French or German workers would hit the streets with placards and shouts if Wall Street told their employers to cut their wages and benefits so they could stay competitive with China. The Japanese would brawl with the police and the South Koreans would throw rocks at them. That’s why all these free countries are undercut by the moneymen who want the cheapest possible labor for the greatest possible profit. All these non-Chinese countries have some sort of environmental standards (South Korea still needs to work on it) and all of them exercise quality control – but you do not see as many of their products in the discount stores. Their products cost more, so while the quality is better, the profit margin is slimmer. One of my spies watched the disintegration of Japanese consumer electronics from the inside. The branch manager was quizzed on what workers were paid to deliver middle-of-the-line electronics made in Japan or under Japanese supervision in Thailand. The American workers were paid the industry standard for the United States, about $500 a week for non-executives. Japanese workers were paid about $200 a week. Thai workers were paid about $200 a month. In each case, the workers earned a living wage in his or her respective county. “What do the Chinese pay their workers?” he was asked. “About $20 a week,” the manager said. “But how can they live on that?” He shook his head to indicate that he didn’t see how. Then he said: “But we are doomed.” The office closed the year after that, and about 200 American jobs vanished. The better conditions of European workers are based in large part on the influence of Christianity and of the whole Judeo-Christian ethic of how people are urged to treat one another. Slavery that had expanded during the Roman Empire gradually disappeared during the Middle Ages because no Christian wanted to hold another Christian as a slave. The same impetus led to the construction of the great cathedrals and the first real hospitals in Europe. When Roman slaves got sick – unless they were beloved family tutors or household servants – they were generally abandoned to die on islands, or on the streets like Yueyue. When medieval serfs got sick, they were sheltered in monasteries or hospitals until they recovered or died. Unwanted foundlings were dropped off with monks or nuns who raised them as “oblates,” taught them a trade, and on their maturity offered them the options of joining the order that raised them, or leaving with a trade skill and a small gift of money. These kindly customs slipped into disuse as northern Europe secularized, but worker’s rights were restored by an unexpected benefactor: military conscription. Fearing one another, France and Germany each introduced laws to force every healthy male to be a soldier for two or five years and then put him on a reserve list. Both countries realized that millions of trained soldiers wouldn’t find it all that hard to break into an arsenal and pick up their rifles and cannon if their children were literally starving, so they introduced unemployment insurance, old age insurance, and wage policies that enabled productive workers not just to eat, but to have time off from work. Their countries today are not the worker’s paradise propounded by Karl Marx and his tedious blasphemous parody of the New Testament with Marx himself saving the workers. This man was a very spoiled child and never got over it and the people who fell for it were suckers. Neither is northern Europe a workers purgatory like China, the preferred supplier of the big box stores now strangling local businesses that pay taxes in their own towns. Similar systems were introduced to South Korea, now substantially Christian, and to Japan through missionaries, through the undercover survival of namban Christians whose teachings have permeated Japanese reform movements, and through the writings of Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoyevsky. Building on a background of feudalism – itself largely Christian – the major industrial powers other than the United States have managed to strike a better balance between big money and workers’ rights than we have ourselves. Occupy Wall Street suffers from lack of a program: Here’s a start. Millionaires really should be taxed at a higher rate than they are now, and Warren Buffett himself even says so. Do it. Point to the Democrats. Taxes on non-millionaires are going to have to be drastically cut so the money can trickle down to local businesses which help sustain local economies and provide starter jobs. Point to all property tax payers. Public sector employees at the top of the scale are going to have to face a ceiling on wages that may reduce some of them to what people earn for jobs in the private sector. In addition, some of the public workers whose jobs are redundant may have to take early retirement. Point to the Republicans. Military bases around the world are going to have to be shut down. The armed forces, other than the combat arms and medical services, are long, long overdue for a size reduction. Point to the pacifists. Solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy, and all forms of energy not dependent on petroleum and coal are going to have to be subsidized. Point to China, until we start making our own solar panels. The outrageous degree of anti-Semitism the United States tolerates from some of the petroleum producing nations, their covert anti-Christian restrictions, and their proclivity to shelter terrorists, are utterly intolerable. The Sept. 11 murderers did not come from Iraq. They came from Saudi Arabia. We need to not need these guys. Last but not least: Most Favored Nation trade status must be denied to countries with bad records on the environment and on human rights. I hope and pray that Yueyue recovers. If we keep selling out American and free-world workers to the corporations, I hope and pray that America recovers. The warning that the video is graphic is not overstated. On a dark street, a two-year-old Chinese girl named Yueyue toddles in front of a late-model white SUV. The driver runs her over, stops to see what he hit, and then drives on. A couple of Chinese pedestrians walk past Yueyue sprawled on the street, but they do not stop to help. Then another vehicle runs over her. One woman picks Yueyue up like a bundle of laundry – still visibly alive -- and sets her down outside the rightof-way. Finally, the little girl’s mother shows up, looks at Yueyue with horror and pity, and carries Yueyue off in her arms to seek help. Yueyue is last seen in an intensivecare ward with her vital signs being monitored. What happened to Yueyue is what happens when capitalism functions without Christianity and a fair regard for human rights and fair wages. Commentators explain that China has a reverse version of the Good Samaritan Law: If you injure or kill a person trying to help him or her, you may be taken to court and have to pay that person’s medical expenses. The Chinese have long believed that if you save a person’s life, you are responsible for that person for their rest of their life. I don’t think this explains the whole case. The woman who moved Yueyue off the street was probably overwhelmed by human decency or maternal instincts, but the law was the same for her as it was for the others who just walked past the girl without even looking at her. I wouldn’t presume to tell my fellow Americans with whom they should trade, but kids who are run over do not lie around on the pavement for 15 minutes in Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, or Paris, much-maligned by Bush because they tried to warn us about Iraq. On the other hand, all those other guys actually have some sense of fair minimum wages and social benefits. The French and the Germans get a mandatory month of paid vacation and work a 35-hour week. On Wall Street, which is to say corporate America, you pick your trading partners not by how fairly they treat their workers, but by how much you can fleece them. That is why Occupy Wall Street is now endorsed by a vast majority of Democrats, a smaller majority of Independents, and a very significant minority of Republicans. A Fox poll that backfired showed that 198,000 voters support the Occupy Wall Street protest with only 137,000 opposed. In the Quinnipiac University poll, Democrats espoused the goals of Occupy Wall Street 81 percent to 11 percent, Independents agreed 58 percent to 30 percent, and Republicans agreed by 35 percent and disagreed by 58 percent. About three-quarters of the Republicans, incidentally, added that they supported the constitutional rights of the demonstrators, which shows that all three groups are serious about being Americans. Other polls showed that more people blame Washington than Wall Street for the economic crunch. Since the collusion between the corporations and both parties is so obvious, this is a no-brainer. American corporations – with the support of their A toddler’s message for America Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: With regard to the renewal petition of Valley Hospital, if more of the concerned citizens would go through emergencies that require a rapid visit to the emergency room, they would certainly change their minds, as there is no better solution for emergencies than to have access to a modern hospital located nearby. One of the main reasons we still live in Ridgewood after 40 years is the close availability of good physicians linked to a hospital in our area. I hope the council will agree with the decision of the planning board. This does not involve an increase in traffic, because the number of beds does not increase, except by three beds to the present 451 beds. The purpose of the renewal request is mainly to modernize the hospital and make it possible to treat all patients with the necessary modern diagnostic equipment without having to dislodge others. This is achieved primarily by changing all rooms to single occupancy, which happens to be the norm for modern hospitals and is legally required for new or renovated hospitals. Due to the renewal, the present traffic patterns should therefore not be assumed to change negatively, especially A modernized hospital is an asset since according to a specialist’s comments this can be fixed by altering some of the intersections leading to the hospital. I strongly believe that Ridgewood has a relatively silent majority who would like to have a modernized hospital readily reachable in case of emergencies. George Gerliczy Ridgewood