THE NEED FOR A LOGICALLY PLANNED WORLD

D.  SOCIAL CONDITIONS (cont.)

Women and Children

Children are the particularly vital elements of this proposed brave new world--for they are the innocent victims of today's foolishness; and the potential heirs as well of the improvements herein sought.  They are in fact our only hope for tomorrow. And they will hopefully eventually take part in, and thank us for, the progress that is anticipated herein. 

Rates of child mortality need to be drastically reduced--especially in certain parts of our world.  Surveys show that the incidence of infant and child mortality in a place decreases as the average number of years of education had by the mothers in that locale increases.  Thus, appropriate education being made available to all on a worldwide basis--especially to women--will serve to save many young lives, in addition to providing as well a better lifestyle for the parents who receive it.  This education should include information pertaining to health, child care, and family planning.  It should also include lessons in family and household financial planning and activities.  Further, it must educate women to perceive themselves as equals, in places where this is not presently the case.  It is my conviction that women have actually always been the motivators behind, as well as the vanguards of, civilizational development.  Thus, I believe that increased education and equality for women will likely do more than numerically increase the vigor of the movement and transformations that are the subject hereof.  Moreover, I believe that it will result in a number of giant steps forward for all of mankind.

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Employment

Employment and income security are additional critical components of advanced civilized societies. Therefore, these must be likewise provided for, universally, in the worldwide society envisioned herein.  Everyone is entitled to gainful employment--including the handicapped who can perform same.

In a borderless world having a universal economy, wages would be basically within the same range for all employees of a particular type and level worldwide.  Although there would be a universal minimum wage, employers would otherwise be free to determine and offer such wages as they saw fit to particular job applicants.  However, under the influence of a single worldwide economy, this range of compensation would likely turn out to have become much more uniform than at present.  In this connection, equal pay for men and women is so fundamental a concept as to hardly deserve mention.  Thus, there should never be any variation in rates of pay based upon the gender of the employee. 

Notwithstanding what I have said thus far, there would of course always be variations within a particular job title based upon experience, competence, job site location, number of hours, etc.; but the present situation, whereby people in place "A" can be hired for a mere fraction of the wages paid to the people in place "B" for the same services--being, of course, the basis for what has come to be called "outsourcing"--will be over.

Labor unions ought continue to be formed and function.  However, they too would likely become worldwide organizations, seeking what would be more or less similar wages, benefits, and working conditions everywhere.

A worldwide network of (voluntary) employment placement service, coupled with worldwide safety nets of unemployment insurance and retraining programs, would need to be established.  (Parenthectically, in the atmosphere proposed herein, it might be necessary to establish a system of maximum distances from one's present domicile that an unemployed person would be obligated to seek and/or accept a new job, in order to avoid forfeiting continued unemployment benefits.)

Child labor and other forms of expoloitation would also have to be defined and controlled worldwide.  The foremost consideration regarding child labor would be the deucation of a;ll children to a certain minimum level.  A family that truly requires one or more of its children to work instead of attending school in order to survive is clearly entitled to some form of public assistance in order to avoid this.  (Of course, family planning would also assist in this regard.)  

Other forms of human exploitation--including slavery and forced prostitution--would need to be declared illegal, and thus forbidden and prevented all over the world.

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Life Expectancy

More widespread education, together with improvements in healthcare, woule moreover serve to do more than decrease infant and child ,mortality; they will also cause life expectancy to increase in many places, and to eventually reach more or less equally higher levels worldwide.

Although excessive population growth was cited a short time ago as an undesirable thing, the remedy for that issue must be found in appropriate educational and family planning measures.  Notwithstanding, I bring up the subject of life expectancy here because it reflects the great ineqalityin living conditions as well as quality of life among people in different parts of the world.  For example, today, life expectancy in Japan and Hong Kong is 82.9 years; in the United States it is 78.2 years; while in Zambia it is but 42.4 years; and in Swaziland and Mozambique, only 39.6 and 39.2 years respectively.

This is shameful evidence of the fact that, at a time wherein humanity is capable of sending people to the moon, and spacecraft to Mars and beyond, conditions here on earth have been permitted to remain so unfavorable in some places as to result in life expectancy being less than half that which it is in other places.

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