To Americans and indeed most Europeans, what is at stake is a simple matter of social justice – if Khobragade couldn't afford to pay her domestic help a humane wage, she shouldn't have had domestic help at all.
In Grandin's words, this outpost of modern capitalism was to be "an example of his particular American dream, of how Ford-style capitalism — high wages, humane benefits and moral improvement — could bring prosperity to a benighted land".
They haven't allowed themselves to become so institutionalized that they forget the basic things we owe each other as human beings, regardless of context: humane treatment, a prevailing wage for a day's work, the right to speak out against injustice.
Wal-Mart's retail rivals such as Costco and Trader Joe's have maintained their margins and kept customers happy while keeping workers happy with decent wages and humane labor policies.
If our government seriously regulated the Free Market, and extended that moral behavior to the international community with living wages and humane worker conditions, it would profoundly change the way Americans live.
The 1877 strike by tens of thousands of railroad, factory and mine workers -- which shut down the nation's major industries and was brutally suppressed by the corporations and their friends in government -- was the first of many mass actions to demand living wages and humane working conditions.
-- Of course, we customers are telling Publix, again and again, what we want: for Publix to join the Fair Food Program, and to join us in ensuring a fair wage and humane conditions for farm workers.
Upper- and middle-class citizens must pay fair wages and support humane working conditions to help people climb out of poverty.
The woman, María Ríos Fun, said that the official, Marita Puertas Pulgar, first secretary of the Peruvian mission, and her partner, Alexis Aquino Albegrin, had promised her fair wages and a humane work schedule when they recruited her in Lima, Peru, last year to work in their house in Wayne, N.J., while Ms. Puertas was stationed at the United Nations.
Since those "terms of recruitment" denied by the Saudis include better wages and more humane working conditions, Mr Yudhoyono should have few problems converting Saudi Arabia's spite into higher approval ratings at home.The Indonesian government's do-gooding began before the Saudi backlash and indeed before Mr Yudhoyono's televised address.
