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October 10, 2005

A wider perspective is needed, Mon., Oct. 10, 2005, 7:09 AM

Waking this morning to the reality Pakistan has suffered at least 21,000 deaths from an earthquake, and there have been devastating storms in Guatemala that have taken almost a thousand more, I started to ask myself: is an American life worth more than one in less wealthy nations?

After all, how much publicity and pleas for financial help can the world receive with respect to the Katrina/Rita situation before other people in the world stop to ponder this issue. There is a limit.

If we give in to the notion that the American taxpayer and consumer are worth more" to global society, is that fair to the rest of us?

Is it even fair to Americans? By placing a higher value on some lives, is that not to say that the suits in the office are worth more than the workers in the back office and on the production lines, across America?

There was a silver lining to Katrina/Rita, which was that the world has now seen both ends of the social spectrum in America, and that for about 100 million Americans, life is not a Yellow Brick Road.

I try hard to stay out of politics, but the fact is that the capital markets have been jeopardized because of politics. Americans, the world can see, ought to be solving its own problems, which are many, before sending hundreds of thousands of its own young men and women into harm's way ten thousand miles away, trying to solve the problems of mankind that have existed long before there even was a nation called the U.S. of A.

At the end of the day, only Americans can make the decision to want their leaders to follow the path of Columbus, or not?

From where I sit, I hope the American people next year give their political candidates the message that problems at home must be solved before any other.

And many of those problems are social.

Yes, life is as much social as it is political and economic. A wider perspective is needed to see that.

Posted by Posted by Bill Cara on October 10, 2005 06:42:40 AM | Category: Social Equity