More From a Most Favored Source

If 6,995 American workers lost their lives on the job in one year, how would most critics react?

If these lives were lost in just one industry, how much howling would be heard about the need to get the government involved?

If these lives- just shy of seven thousand- were lost in just one segment of one industry in one year, wouldn't there be almost universal outcry?

Of course. One could expect the usual accusations to fly from the usual critics: lousy, indifferent management; exploitation of the workers; the greed of ownership; etc.

In this case, the usual critics would be correct. Unfortunately, I have not heard the accusations from the usual critics. Why? The operation in question is China's state owned coal mining industry.

My latest Most Favored Source ran an expose` on this Most Favored Nation's latest human rights outrage in their Tuesday, July 8 edition. There is a dismaying photograph of mine workers pushing three loaded coal hopper cars on a railroad track, up grade.

Mining is filthy business, but at least in the United States, where the greedy capitalist owners are said to run amok, locomotives do this work, and have done so since roughly the time of the Civil War.

If anyone needs to see the difference between capitalism and socialism, this should serve nicely.