Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [53]
Of course, many Israeli children have died, too, at the hands of the Palestinians. You would think that would make every Israeli want to wipe out the Arab world. But the average Israeli does not have that response. Why? Because, in their hearts, they know they are wrong, and they know they would be doing just what the Palestinians are doing if the sandal were on the other foot.
Hey, here’s a way to stop the suicide bombings—give the Palestinians a bunch of missile-firing Apache helicopters and let them and the Israelis go at each other head to head. Four billion dollars a year to Israel, four billion a year to the Palestinians—they can just blow each other up and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
7. Five percent of the world’s population (that’s us) use up 25 percent of the entire world’s energy resources, and the well-off 16 percent, mostly the U.S., Europe, and Japan, use up 80 percent of the world’s goods. To some, this seems to be a little greedy, and it’s got to change. If there’s not enough to go around because we’re hogging everything, that will tend to get some people upset. They may say to themselves, “Hmmm, how come we are living on a dollar a day, and they aren’t?” It’s not like we want them to live on a dollar a day, and if we could we’d certainly give them another 50 cents a week, but God Blessed America and we can’t help that.
8. We need to offer the world a drink of water. Right now, 1.3 billion people can’t have a glass of clean water. 1.3 BILLION? That’s a lot of thirsty people. I say, give them a friggin’ drink! If that’s all it’ll take to stop them from coming over here to kill me, it seems a small price to pay.
There is no excuse, considering our wealth and technology, for not ensuring that everyone on this planet has safe, clean, and sanitary living conditions. What if we vowed to provide clean drinking water for everyone on Earth within the next five years? And then we did it! How would we be thought of then? Who would want to kill us? One cup of clean water, then maybe throw in some HBO and a Palm Pilot or two and, before you know it, they love us, they really love us! (And no, we don’t do this by letting Bechtel or Nestlé go in, buy up water, and sell it back like they’re already doing in many places.)
9. People should be able to buy the products they are making. The way it is now, Manuel in Monterey, who just built your new Ford, will never be able to buy that Ford for himself. That might make Manuel a bit edgy toward us. Or how about that worker in El Salvador who makes 24 cents for each $140 NBA jersey she produces? Or the factory workers in China who earn 12 cents an hour making those cute toys for Disney, or the workers making clothing for The Gap in Bangladesh, including pregnant women, who are routinely beaten and slapped for production mistakes?
America became well off when its workers were paid enough money to afford to buy the very houses and cars and stereos they built with their own hands. That made them happy, content, and not thinking thoughts of revolution or terrorism. The genius of Henry Ford was not only his invention of the assembly line; it was his idea that everyone should get five bucks a day (a bonanza in those times). By keeping the price of the Ford low enough, all his workers would be able to buy one.
Why have American corporations forgotten this lesson when they go abroad? It will be their doom. They say they are paying their overseas workers practically nothing so that the price of the products is kept low for American consumers. But the truth is they have moved these factories to foreign countries so they can pocket the profit. They made