We need to rethink the whole concept of having a job. When we say we need more jobs, what we really mean is we need more money to live on.
So why don't we try an old idea? Establish a basic income for everyone, enough at least to get by on. Each of us could then try to find work to earn more.
Al Sheahen
Sherman Oaks
Expo visitors see another side
Re "Where's our cool pavilion?," Opinion, July 16
Fred Bernstein's Op-Ed notes that the U.S. role at this summer's Shanghai World Expo matters, and he's absolutely right. That there is a U.S. pavilion at all speaks to the determination of hundreds of people who stepped up to create the pavilion in record time — after others said it was already too late to do anything.
Critiques of this effort must be weighed against the over 3 million Chinese visitors who have braved long lines to make this one of the most popular pavilions at the Expo.
Most Chinese guests come away reporting they were surprised and delighted by the American values projected inside. Chinese visitors have commented that the Chinese already knew the U.S. was a rich, powerful and important country, and that the U.S. was very wise to instead portray a side of itself the Chinese did not know: friendliness, creativity and a call to collaboration.
The U.S. pavilion is engaging millions of Chinese visitors with a pavilion that up to the last minute seemed unlikely ever to exist. That is no small achievement.
Bob Rogers
Burbank
The writer is founder of BRC Imagination Arts, part of the U.S. pavilion team.
Bernstein complains that Chinese visitors to the World Expo's U.S. pavilion "will see a country determined to promote its corporations rather than its people or its political system."
I'm just guessing, but I would imagine the two things that Chinese people have enough of are people and political systems.
I read The Times every day, and from what I read, it seems the Chinese nowadays are most interested in business and a higher standard of living — and where would you find a better example of this than through America's companies?
I for one am proud of our Henry Fords and our Bill Gateses.
Jack Buss
Banning
