X-Message-Number: 28040 From: "egg plant" <> Subject: Things are better now Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:31:43 +0000 Anthony ." <> in 28033: >Wal-Mart would hardly be impoverished by socialist policies > instead, the >company's workers would not be so harshly exploited Sam Walton has done more to alleviate world poverty than any man who ever lived and if you don't want to be exploited by Wal-Mart then don't work there. >difficulty in reaching agreements with international >sponsors denied Haiti badly needed budget and >development assistance. What Haiti needs is a large corporation to exploit them by opening up sweat shops that pay 40 cents an hour because that beats what they make now, zero cents an hour; but companies won't do that because well meaning but foolish people like you would organize boycotts. >Show me a significant drop in air pollution in your country The amount of sulfur dioxide in the air of London reached its peak around 1850, by 1950 it was one tenth that, today it is one tenth that again. Particels in the air reached its peak in 1960, today it is one tenth what it was; Carbon monoxide has been reduced 80% since 1990 and there was a similar reduction in lead compounds; the reduction of nitric oxide has been less dramatic but even here has been cut in half since 1975. > look to the life-expectancy rates of people in poor > countries and you will see that they are the same as > pre-industrialisation. Baloney. The poorest area on earth is sub Saharan Africa, in 1950 the average life expectancy was 38 years, today it is 49. It's true there has been no increase since 1990 but that is entirely due to the AIDS epidemic, for the world as a whole it has gone from 48 to 64. John K Clark Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28040