Yesterday, after a building housing garment factories collapsed in Bangladesh, killing almost 200 workers, Matt Yglesias wrote :
"Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it's entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States.
The reason is that while having a safe job is good, money is also good. Jobs that are unusually dangerous—in the contemporary United States that's primarily fishing, logging, and trucking—pay a premium over other working-class occupations precisely because people are reluctant to risk death or maiming at work. And in a free society it's good that different people are able to make different choices on the risk–reward spectrum....
Bangladesh is a lot poorer than the United States, and there are very good reasons for Bangladeshi people to make different choices in this regard than Americans....The current system of letting different countries have different rules is working fine."
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And the poor and the rich are equally free to sleep under bridges. Words fail me.
Joanna