[Jeff Higgins]

From a little bit different perspective, let's talk about how this relates to "globalization". Here in the U.S., that has become the mantra of large corporations and their gubmint stooges. Some of the touted benefits are to help raise the standards of living in countries that receive our off-loaded work; to help them see the benefits of "democracy" (our definition anyway) where it does not exist; to help with their social re-engineering. Not much is said about their extremely cheap labor, lack of envronmental laws, etc., other than that we are there to help influence a change for the better.

So what about here in the U.S.? We lag behind the rest of the industialized world in many facets concerning how we treat our workforce. The emphasis here has always been on the worker as an employee first and some one with an outside life as second, if it comes up at all. With our ever accelerating drive towards "globalization", I see no push to adopt "quality of life" kinds of elements from other countries. That in itself exposes the true motivations of our corporations and their cousins in gubmint. They are happy to use the "making the world a better place" line when the work flows out and the profits flow in. They get pretty quiet about it when it looks like improving our workers' lots in life might cost them a bit of money.