GLOSSING OVER HUMAN RIGHTS.
Written by Robin Locke Monda
to The New York Times,
April 19, 2007.

Dear Editor:
Regarding Jim Yardley’s entertaining and informative article, “No Spitting on the Road to Olympic Glory, Beijing Says” (New York Times, April 17, 2007), I am glad to hear that China is cleaning up its act. All that spitting can’t be good for Beijing’s sidewalks, though the blood that stained Tiananmen Square in 1989 probably did more harm to the sidewalks and China’s reputation than any amount of spit.
The most provocative part of Yardley’s article touches on another Chinese habit that has become undesirable due to the approaching Olympics—its blatantly bad English translations. Civic-minded private Chinese citizens, along with the Chinese government, are cajoling or coercing accurate English translations out of local advertisers, restaurants and cultural arenas to impress the world (read “the United States”) with China’s fitness to stand among modern (read “Western”) nations.

Do we really want this to happen? Why would we not want to go to China during the Olympics and see a billboard that says, “Pleasanty Surprise of Groping”? I would pay the price of a nonstop flight to order a well-turned pullet identified as a “sexually inexperienced chicken” from the menu at a local restaurant. Only in China can I go to the Dongda Anus Hospital for a polyp probe. Oops! Not anymore. Now it is the Dongda Proctology Hospital.

In its efforts to join the money train without substantive reforms to its human rights policies, China has possied up with other (English-speaking) corporate blandizers to homogenize the known world. Better to appear standardized, tidy and transparent than to admit the darker truth of China’s substandard (and hidden) treatment of human beings. In the process, China’s cultural and historical uniqueness is being sacrificed on an altar of pragmatic commercialization.

—Robin Locke Monda
—Staten Island, NY

GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS.
Written by David Griscom
to The Washington Post,
April 25, 2007.

This comment pertains to the 25 April
2007 column by Robert Samuelson,
“The Up Side of Recession?”

I regard this as one of Samuelson's better columns. His remarks on ethanol were right on the mark—although he neglected to mention the “collateral damage” of subsidizing U.S. farmers to produce it. NAFTA recently eliminated tariffs on agricultural products but placed no restrictions on subsidies. Since the U.S. farmer (who is typically rich) receives 6 times the subsidies of the Mexican farmer (who earns the lowest wages in Mexico), the initial effect of abolishing tariffs was that the 26% of Mexicans involved in farming suddenly could no longer earn a living by growing corn. (This is the root cause of the so-called illegal-alien crisis.) But now with the new ethanol subsidies, the price of U.S. corn has suddenly gone from ridiculously cheap to so expensive that the average Mexican can no longer afford to buy corn for tortillas. So, first NAFTA wipes out Mexican agriculture, then it turns around and raises the price of Mexico’s staple food beyond affordability. Isn't globalism
wonderful?

As Samuelson mentions, back in the U.S., about 70% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) consists of consumer spending; (this figure rises to about 76% if you count home buying). By comparison, consumer spending is just 53% of the Chinese economy. How caAmericans afford such a good life, given thaevery day more and more middle class job are off-shored to India, China, and other places? Answer: They can't. Americans are spending way beyond their means. The national savings rate has been negative for the past two years—something that hasn’t happened since the great depression. And when the heroic American consumer finally wakes up to the realization that his/her future is truly bleak without retirement savings, he/she will begin cutting back on spending—causing 76% of the GDP to shrink. When this happens, businesses, jobs, and financial markets will also nose dive. It will be more than a recession. It will be another great depression!

—David L. Griscom
—San Carlos, Sonora, México