Plight of U.S. Workers Should Come First

James Flanigan pleads too excessively the case of poor nations [“Debacle in Seattle Was a Defeat for the World’s Poor,” Dec. 8]. If his numbers are correct--about a 2-billion population increase in those nations in the next decades--it can also be said that they may be indifferent to the fact that they are breeding themselves away from their own dinner table.

However, that aside, Flanigan first and foremost should consider our own nation of workers and more of the situation that global economics has pressed upon their economic situation. I don’t think he has enough of the interest of the U.S. worker at heart and examines their situation with rose-tinted glasses.

Recently, another Times columnist said that more than 60% of our workers are receiving $10 or less per hour. That is a figure that places most at or below poverty earnings for a family of four. Many large profiteering corporations in this country, in order to avoid purchasing health-care plans and providing pension plans for their employees, are centered on hiring part-time employees wherein they avoid this decent and justifiable American standard.

If Americans permit continued globalization of the national and world economy undeterred, who is to say that the nonrepresentative economic oligarchy that is cementing an irrevocable power structure in this country will not have the majority working for only $5 an hour a decade hence?

D.J. PONDER

Torrance

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Get real. Do you really think the U.S.-dominated WTO is going to actually help developing countries and their poor?

It is precisely because of the WTO’s past actions against the poor that the demonstrations took place. The WTO is controlled by private corporate greed, and even though they might give fluff to helping developing nations, the fat cats are only looking to get fatter.

DOUG KIESO

Los Angeles

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I intend to e-mail the column to my “progressive” friends who are mindlessly celebrating the defeat of the WTO because they, as a matter of principle, stand in opposition. Perhaps the column will lead some of my friends to reconsider. They pride themselves on their compassion. What they haven’t yet learned from the history of the 20th century is that ill-considered compassion inevitably leads to greater personal misery.

DENNIS GURA

Santa Monica