In the prologue we asked whether Paulette Johnson’s job is more important than Yun Liu’s job or vice versa. (Paulette Johnson was one of 4,500 workers making Fieldcrest, Cannon, and Royal Velvet sheets and towels at Pillowtex Corporation’s plant in Kannapolis, North Carolina, but lost her job when the company shut down the plant because it could not compete with imports from countries such as China; Yun Liu left the poverty-stricken rural area in China where she grew up and went to work for the Huafang Cotton Weaving Company, one of China’s largest textile mills, a mill that supplies the export market.) If one accepts an ethic of universal human rights that affirms the dignity and worth of each person and asserts that all people living in all countries in all parts of the world should be viewed as possessing equal rights, the answer to this question can succinctly be stated: Paulette Johnson’s job and Yun Liu’s job are of equal importance. Yun Liu has just as much right to be employed as Paulette Johnson and vice versa. In short, when it comes to the importance of having a job, there are no distinctions to be made between our near neighbors and our distant neighbors, between ourselves, our families, and those who live down the street from us, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those who live some distance from us.

There is, however, a related question that is far more complex: Are there any distinctions to be made about the obligations and responsibilities we might have with respect to our family members and those who live near to us, compared to our obligations and responsibilities with respect to those who live in distant countries? Take, for example, the matter of providing funding for a college education. If one assumes that each person is of equal significance, does this mean that whatever obligations we might have to pay for the college educations of our own sons and daughters are of equal magnitude to whatever obligations we might have to pay for college educations for young men and women in Ethiopia and Liberia?