"A Russian Meets America," by Oleg Voskresensky (Aug. 30), provided a unique perspective — as he compared living in his homeland to living here. We Americans are indeed sometimes overly concerned about scheduling our time. We are challenged by having so many choices. And our friendships are too often superficial.
Let's take his commentary one step further. Exactly why are so many of our friendships not as deep as those he experienced and observed in his native country? I can't help speculating that a main reason is the freedom we experience and cherish. It allows us to be individualistic, goal-oriented, efficient people, and those characteristics in turn lead us to be a competitive people. Do we avoid developing more emotionally connected relationships because we sense unconsciously that other individuals have the potential to compete with us? Are we afraid to communicate our own emotional depth because that might make us appear vulnerable or weak and less able to compete — even make us look un-American? Besides, our freedom encourages us to be more mobile, so we might inwardly resist developing some friendships simply because we don't want to experience the pain of separation that can come with "moving on."
Even within our country there is difference. I noticed it right away when I moved from the Washington, D.C., area many years ago to Dubuque, Iowa, to finish college. Midwestern people seem less likely to see other people as potential threats. At least on a basic level, we are friendlier. That might go back to the time when more of us were on farms, when somewhat distant neighbors still found a way to help each other when nature caused problems. Everybody knew that isolation could lead to failure or even death. Cooperation was a necessity. And other people were valued just because they were rare in a sense — not always there.
I'd be very interested in reading possible explanations from other readers.
Jim Bartos, Brooklyn Park
PUBLIC POLICY
We govern for more than utility or the worst-case scenario
The minimum-wage discussion is always framed as only an economic issue ("And what if the worst case doesn't transpire," D.J. Tice column, Aug. 30). But, like slavery, it is a moral issue that trumps economics.
Anyone in America who works at a job 40 hours a week, for 50 weeks a year, for 50 years deserves a livable income and a livable retirement. That is a reasonable and moral result to expect in the richest nation in the world.
We don't have a living minimum wage for our workers because we don't have a moral compass to guide us. Most of our morality comes from the Christian and Jewish religions. But neither of these religions provide any real moral guidance in matters of commerce. While we spend more than half our waking hours selling our services or buying goods and services, religion is silent on issues related to the treatment of employees. This lack of moral guidance is one reason slavery in this country lasted into the 1860s.
Commerce is a very important part of our lives, so when religion fails to provide us with a guide, we turn to economic theory to fill the void. But economics isn't a moral guide; it is merely descriptive of what may happen under certain conditions. It is not concerned with what is right, only with what is efficient. Economic theory fails as a moral guide for minimum treatment of people because it treats people as commodities, not as humans. Commodities can have zero value in economics, but people never have zero value in America, because we chose to value and care for all people in this country.
