PPR Should Care About The MiddleClass
MarketAndChurch
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26 Aug 2011, 2:04 am
Philologos wrote:
We MIGHT like to define what we mean.
Pertaining as I do to three generations of steadily economically receding professionals [law and academia and engineering] I tend to see "our kind" as upper class - far higher class than the moneyed groups most people see as high class.
But in economic terms we barely match middle class definitions - and are decidedly worse off than some who would count and be counted as working class.
So are we talking economics, culture, ocopation - what?
Pertaining as I do to three generations of steadily economically receding professionals [law and academia and engineering] I tend to see "our kind" as upper class - far higher class than the moneyed groups most people see as high class.
But in economic terms we barely match middle class definitions - and are decidedly worse off than some who would count and be counted as working class.
So are we talking economics, culture, ocopation - what?
not the culture, but the economics and the occupation as the culture is created by both and both of those precede it in importance.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... an_legends
Quote:
Perhaps the most damaging misconception of all is the idea that concentration by its very nature creates wealth. Many writers, led by popular theorist Richard Florida, argue that centralized urban areas provide broader cultural opportunities and better access to technology, attracting more innovative, plugged-in people (Florida's "creative class") who will in the long term produce greater economic vibrancy. The hipper the city, the mantra goes, the richer and more successful it will be -- and a number of declining American industrial hubs have tried to rebrand themselves as "creative class" hot spots accordingly.
Even legitimate cultural meccas aren't insulated from economic turmoil. Berlin -- beloved by writers, artists, tourists, and romantic expatriates -- has cultural institutions that would put any wannabe European Capital of Culture to shame, as well as a thriving underground art and music scene. Yet for all its bohemian spirit, Berlin is also deeply in debt and suffers from unemployment far higher than Germany's national average, with rates reaching 14 percent. A full quarter of its workers, many of them living in wretched immigrant ghettos, earn less than 900 euros a month; compare that with Frankfurt, a smaller city more known for its skyscrapers and airport terminals than for any major cultural output, but which boasts one of Germany's lowest unemployment rates and by some estimates the highest per capita income of any European city. No wonder Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit once described his city as "poor but sexy."
Culture, media, and other "creative" industries, important as they are for a city's continued prosperity, simply do not spark an economy on their own. It turns out to be the comparatively boring, old-fashioned industries, such as trade in goods, manufacturing, energy, and agriculture, that drive the world's fastest-rising cities. In the 1960s and 1970s, the industrial capitals of Seoul and Tokyo developed their economies far faster than Cairo and Jakarta, which never created advanced industrial bases. China's great coastal urban centers, notably Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, are replicating this pattern with big business in steel, textiles, garments, and electronics, and the country's vast interior is now poised to repeat it once again. Fossil fuels -- not art galleries -- have powered the growth of several of the world's fastest-rising urban areas, including Abu Dhabi, Houston, Moscow, and Perth.
It's only after urban centers achieve economic success that they tend to look toward the higher-end amenities the creative-classers love. When Abu Dhabi decided to import its fancy Guggenheim and Louvre satellite museums, it was already, according to Fortune magazine, the world's richest city. Beijing, Houston, Shanghai, and Singapore are opening or expanding schools for the arts, museums, and gallery districts. But they paid for them the old-fashioned way.
Nor is the much-vaunted "urban core" the only game in town. Innovators of all kinds seek to avoid the high property prices, overcrowding, and often harsh anti-business climates of the city center. Britain's recent strides in technology and design-led manufacturing have been concentrated not in London, but along the outer reaches of the Thames Valley and the areas around Cambridge. It's the same story in continental Europe, from the exurban Grand-Couronne outside of Paris to the "edge cities" that have sprung up around Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In India, the bulk of new tech companies cluster in campus-like developments around -- but not necessarily in -- Bangalore, Hyderabad, and New Delhi. And let's not forget that Silicon Valley, the granddaddy of global tech centers and still home to the world's largest concentration of high-tech workers, remains essentially a vast suburb. Apple, Google, and Intel don't seem to mind. Those relative few who choose to live in San Francisco can always take the company-provided bus.
- But this argument, or at least many applications of it, gets things backward. Arts and culture generally do not fuel economic growth by themselves; rather, economic growth tends to create the preconditions for their development. Ancient Athens and Rome didn't start out as undiscovered artist neighborhoods. They were metropolises built on imperial wealth -- largely collected by force from their colonies -- that funded a new class of patrons and consumers of the arts. Renaissance Florence and Amsterdam established themselves as trade centers first and only then began to nurture great artists from their own middle classes and the surrounding regions.
Even modern Los Angeles owes its initial ascendancy as much to agriculture and oil as to Hollywood. Today, its port and related industries employ far more people than the entertainment business does. (In any case, the men who built Hollywood were hardly cultured aesthetes by middle-class American standards; they were furriers, butchers, and petty traders, mostly from hardscrabble backgrounds in the czarist shtetls and back streets of America's tough ethnic ghettos.) New York, now arguably the world's cultural capital, was once dismissed as a boorish, money-obsessed town, much like the contemporary urban critique of Dallas, Houston, or Phoenix.
Sadly, cities desperate to reverse their slides have been quick to buy into the simplistic idea that by merely branding themselves "creative" they can renew their dying economies; think of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Michigan's bid to market Detroit as a "cool city," and similar efforts in the washed-up industrial towns of the British north. Being told you live in a "European Capital of Culture," as Liverpool was in 2008, means little when your city has no jobs and people are leaving by the busload.
Even legitimate cultural meccas aren't insulated from economic turmoil. Berlin -- beloved by writers, artists, tourists, and romantic expatriates -- has cultural institutions that would put any wannabe European Capital of Culture to shame, as well as a thriving underground art and music scene. Yet for all its bohemian spirit, Berlin is also deeply in debt and suffers from unemployment far higher than Germany's national average, with rates reaching 14 percent. A full quarter of its workers, many of them living in wretched immigrant ghettos, earn less than 900 euros a month; compare that with Frankfurt, a smaller city more known for its skyscrapers and airport terminals than for any major cultural output, but which boasts one of Germany's lowest unemployment rates and by some estimates the highest per capita income of any European city. No wonder Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit once described his city as "poor but sexy."
Culture, media, and other "creative" industries, important as they are for a city's continued prosperity, simply do not spark an economy on their own. It turns out to be the comparatively boring, old-fashioned industries, such as trade in goods, manufacturing, energy, and agriculture, that drive the world's fastest-rising cities. In the 1960s and 1970s, the industrial capitals of Seoul and Tokyo developed their economies far faster than Cairo and Jakarta, which never created advanced industrial bases. China's great coastal urban centers, notably Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, are replicating this pattern with big business in steel, textiles, garments, and electronics, and the country's vast interior is now poised to repeat it once again. Fossil fuels -- not art galleries -- have powered the growth of several of the world's fastest-rising urban areas, including Abu Dhabi, Houston, Moscow, and Perth.
It's only after urban centers achieve economic success that they tend to look toward the higher-end amenities the creative-classers love. When Abu Dhabi decided to import its fancy Guggenheim and Louvre satellite museums, it was already, according to Fortune magazine, the world's richest city. Beijing, Houston, Shanghai, and Singapore are opening or expanding schools for the arts, museums, and gallery districts. But they paid for them the old-fashioned way.
Nor is the much-vaunted "urban core" the only game in town. Innovators of all kinds seek to avoid the high property prices, overcrowding, and often harsh anti-business climates of the city center. Britain's recent strides in technology and design-led manufacturing have been concentrated not in London, but along the outer reaches of the Thames Valley and the areas around Cambridge. It's the same story in continental Europe, from the exurban Grand-Couronne outside of Paris to the "edge cities" that have sprung up around Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In India, the bulk of new tech companies cluster in campus-like developments around -- but not necessarily in -- Bangalore, Hyderabad, and New Delhi. And let's not forget that Silicon Valley, the granddaddy of global tech centers and still home to the world's largest concentration of high-tech workers, remains essentially a vast suburb. Apple, Google, and Intel don't seem to mind. Those relative few who choose to live in San Francisco can always take the company-provided bus.
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John_Browning
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26 Aug 2011, 2:52 am
MarketAndChurch wrote:
California Vs. Texas
The last decade has not bode well for California, and these trends have begin long before the recession. Texas has been coming up well over this last decade and even with its share of problems, it is the young California before California became what it is today. It is romantic for startups, families, and young people just finishing college looking to get ahead, your wages rise immediately from the incredibly low rent allows for families to keep a larger portion of their income and afford a home. Do note that the environment that allowed the likes of Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Intel to come up no longer exists in California. Going forward, California is only a model for the left and are largely living off of the business revolution of the golden days which have long passed.
The last decade has not bode well for California, and these trends have begin long before the recession. Texas has been coming up well over this last decade and even with its share of problems, it is the young California before California became what it is today. It is romantic for startups, families, and young people just finishing college looking to get ahead, your wages rise immediately from the incredibly low rent allows for families to keep a larger portion of their income and afford a home. Do note that the environment that allowed the likes of Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Intel to come up no longer exists in California. Going forward, California is only a model for the left and are largely living off of the business revolution of the golden days which have long passed.
While you're at it, try California Vs. North Dakota as well. Even their economy is booming due to aggressive investment in proven capitalist ventures vs. the stagnant socialism in California. People are leaving here and moving places like there and Texas where there they realistically can expect to find jobs that will last a few decades.
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MarketAndChurch
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26 Aug 2011, 3:54 am
John_Browning wrote:
MarketAndChurch wrote:
California Vs. Texas
The last decade has not bode well for California, and these trends have begin long before the recession. Texas has been coming up well over this last decade and even with its share of problems, it is the young California before California became what it is today. It is romantic for startups, families, and young people just finishing college looking to get ahead, your wages rise immediately from the incredibly low rent allows for families to keep a larger portion of their income and afford a home. Do note that the environment that allowed the likes of Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Intel to come up no longer exists in California. Going forward, California is only a model for the left and are largely living off of the business revolution of the golden days which have long passed.
The last decade has not bode well for California, and these trends have begin long before the recession. Texas has been coming up well over this last decade and even with its share of problems, it is the young California before California became what it is today. It is romantic for startups, families, and young people just finishing college looking to get ahead, your wages rise immediately from the incredibly low rent allows for families to keep a larger portion of their income and afford a home. Do note that the environment that allowed the likes of Cisco, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Intel to come up no longer exists in California. Going forward, California is only a model for the left and are largely living off of the business revolution of the golden days which have long passed.
While you're at it, try California Vs. North Dakota as well. Even their economy is booming due to aggressive investment in proven capitalist ventures vs. the stagnant socialism in California. People are leaving here and moving places like there and Texas where there they realistically can expect to find jobs that will last a few decades.
Exactly.
A Liberal Example Will Help:
North Dakota and Salt Lake City are a model for growing the middle class. They may not have the uber cool bar district or places that one can enjoy modern vices but they are affordable. You liberals want a liberal example? To an extant, Portland can be justified(for its wonderful metropolitan) but a better example would be Austin Texas. Austin makes it work, it is a powerful academic hub thanks to the University of Texas and employs a lot of public employes being a state capital (which is not bad if everything else is fine.) It also employs low taxes, it is in a non-union state, it is a great place for startups and entrepreneurs alike, incredibly low rent, has low business regulation, and a house that would cost you a million+ in the suburbs of SF will only cost you 3 to 400k in Austin. Contrast that with other Liberal havens like San Francisco and New York where it is only for the young hip portion of your life, but since a great many also marry afterwards and have children, SF and NY are not suitable for most unless they come from money. Austin allows you to be hip and liberal and then as you age, you can still move to its burbs, have a a great paying job either in public service, academia, or its robust private economy. This is how you service people from cradle-to-grave whereas NY, Boston, LA, and SF is for the hip and young, the wealthy, and the poor: One should be able to grow up in an economic and intellectual hub, and be able to marry and live in a nearby affordable suburb near it and be able to raise a family on a finance-sustaining job.
War On Suburbia Is A War On The Middle Class
The war on roads(vs. public transportation), vehicles larger then a station-wagon, and suburbia is a war on the middle class. Especially the one waged by environmentalists and the youth who they influence today more then ever. Not that I justify SUV's because most people don't need it, they are un-necessary, eat up a lot of foreign oil, and an ungainly sight when its just one person sitting in an 8-passenger Suburban sipping a latte going to the mall, but though less relevant today with the option of cool "people-movers" or CUV's that keep on getting more and more gas-efficient but take up less space, SUV sales subsidize the small cars of the future that GM and Ford(and every other car manufacturer) are building at a loss. Just like roads (and the industries that depend on its use) virtually fund every public transportation system in America outside of New York City, SUV's sales are funding the manufacturing of electric-car and small-car development, manufacturing and sales. GM has invested a billion dollars into the Volt and sold only 2000 for the first half of the year at a hefty loss so Tahoe and Suburban sales (which net 40 to as high as 60k a piece) to keep its small and electric/hybrids afloat.
Public transportation should be expanded but within the means of the respective communities they support because they are currently subsidized by the more productive, work-going drivers who use our roads. And should certainly not take priority over our roads (which need repair and expansion as every passenger mile traveled by one person correlates in a dollar of revenue for the federal government and powers our economy, and needs to be expanded, but more roads is an issue of its own to be discussed another time).
Government can have still have a positive active hand...
... in making a better environment for the middle class but every city follows the hip urban crowd in trying to make a cool city and more dense serviced well by public transportation. Every city wants to be perceived as hip, cool, trendy, and smart, but city hall needs to stop being visionaries and just go for the less sexy and less romantic things that work for real people who have to support a family, run a small business, or get ahead in life! Like... for one, stop only looking to land Google or the next Google or other white-collar jobs, which is the trend these days. Land Intel in your town and your lauded a hero but Intel employs very few people, all of which are highly-trained. Try going for the less sexy manufacturer of parts that'll go in a car or things that can employ a lot of people with a decent wage without too much training. That is the Texan way and what built up the no-longer "great" state of California. You love California? Remember what made it great before you diss Texas.
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26 Aug 2011, 9:50 am
MarketAndChurch wrote:
A Liberal Example Will Help:
North Dakota and Salt Lake City are a model for growing the middle class. They may not have the uber cool bar district or places that one can enjoy modern vices but they are affordable. You liberals want a liberal example? To an extant, Portland can be justified(for its wonderful metropolitan) but a better example would be Austin Texas. Austin makes it work, it is a powerful academic hub thanks to the University of Texas and employs a lot of public employes being a state capital (which is not bad if everything else is fine.) It also employs low taxes, it is in a non-union state, it is a great place for startups and entrepreneurs alike, incredibly low rent, has low business regulation, and a house that would cost you a million+ in the suburbs of SF will only cost you 3 to 400k in Austin. Contrast that with other Liberal havens like San Francisco and New York where it is only for the young hip portion of your life, but since a great many also marry afterwards and have children, SF and NY are not suitable for most unless they come from money. Austin allows you to be hip and liberal and then as you age, you can still move to its burbs, have a a great paying job either in public service, academia, or its robust private economy. This is how you service people from cradle-to-grave whereas NY, Boston, LA, and SF is for the hip and young, the wealthy, and the poor: One should be able to grow up in an economic and intellectual hub, and be able to marry and live in a nearby affordable suburb near it and be able to raise a family on a finance-sustaining job.
North Dakota and Salt Lake City are a model for growing the middle class. They may not have the uber cool bar district or places that one can enjoy modern vices but they are affordable. You liberals want a liberal example? To an extant, Portland can be justified(for its wonderful metropolitan) but a better example would be Austin Texas. Austin makes it work, it is a powerful academic hub thanks to the University of Texas and employs a lot of public employes being a state capital (which is not bad if everything else is fine.) It also employs low taxes, it is in a non-union state, it is a great place for startups and entrepreneurs alike, incredibly low rent, has low business regulation, and a house that would cost you a million+ in the suburbs of SF will only cost you 3 to 400k in Austin. Contrast that with other Liberal havens like San Francisco and New York where it is only for the young hip portion of your life, but since a great many also marry afterwards and have children, SF and NY are not suitable for most unless they come from money. Austin allows you to be hip and liberal and then as you age, you can still move to its burbs, have a a great paying job either in public service, academia, or its robust private economy. This is how you service people from cradle-to-grave whereas NY, Boston, LA, and SF is for the hip and young, the wealthy, and the poor: One should be able to grow up in an economic and intellectual hub, and be able to marry and live in a nearby affordable suburb near it and be able to raise a family on a finance-sustaining job.
Salt Lake City is by far the most liberal city in Utah, has near any kind of vice you could want aside from weird restrictions like you can't see a drink made in front of you and you can't touch the stripper. SLC routinely elects democrats.
26 Aug 2011, 10:01 am
MarketAndChurch wrote:
It's time we started caring for the middle class on WP PPR.
Good idea. You first.
MarketAndChurch wrote:
What policies from your political end can you lend to this discussion on growing our middle class and allowing access to upward mobility for the masses?
Free education in the applied sciences, such as Engineering and Medicine, and the theoretical sciences behind them, like Physics and Biology. Free education in all forms of Mathematics. Free Vocational-Technical education, as well.
Then, free subsidies for manufacturing start-ups for the first five years (most start-ups fail within five years, so if no profit can be shown in five years, then the should be left to succeed or fail on its own).
No-Down-Payment loans for first-time home buyers.
Free basic medical care for everybody. Free emergency medical care, as well. Elective procedures should come out of the recipients' pockets.
Free subsidies for infrastructure projects.
Send all illegal aliens and their anchor babies back to where they came from.
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26 Aug 2011, 12:31 pm
blauSamstag wrote:
Salt Lake City is by far the most liberal city in Utah, has near any kind of vice you could want aside from weird restrictions like you can't see a drink made in front of you and you can't touch the stripper. SLC routinely elects democrats.
Mormon Democrats? Liberal relative to the Mormon Republicans? I thought Salt Lake City was where the LDS were headquartered and where their prize university, Brigham Young University, was located. A secular, liberal atheist, for example, may not find much of a community there, I'd assume.
26 Aug 2011, 12:40 pm
NeantHumain wrote:
blauSamstag wrote:
Salt Lake City is by far the most liberal city in Utah, has near any kind of vice you could want aside from weird restrictions like you can't see a drink made in front of you and you can't touch the stripper. SLC routinely elects democrats.
Mormon Democrats? Liberal relative to the Mormon Republicans? I thought Salt Lake City was where the LDS were headquartered and where their prize university, Brigham Young University, was located. A secular, liberal atheist, for example, may not find much of a community there, I'd assume.
BYU is in Provo, 40 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Those democrats may or may not be mormon, but Salt Lake City is a blue dot in an otherwise red state. Officially the position of mayor in SLC is non-partisan but the office has been held exclusively by democrats since 1976.
John_Browning
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26 Aug 2011, 5:47 pm
Fnord wrote:
Free education in the applied sciences, such as Engineering and Medicine, and the theoretical sciences behind them, like Physics and Biology. Free education in all forms of Mathematics. Free Vocational-Technical education, as well.
Then, free subsidies for manufacturing start-ups for the first five years (most start-ups fail within five years, so if no profit can be shown in five years, then the should be left to succeed or fail on its own).
No-Down-Payment loans for first-time home buyers.
Free basic medical care for everybody. Free emergency medical care, as well. Elective procedures should come out of the recipients' pockets.
Free subsidies for infrastructure projects.
Send all illegal aliens and their anchor babies back to where they came from.
Then, free subsidies for manufacturing start-ups for the first five years (most start-ups fail within five years, so if no profit can be shown in five years, then the should be left to succeed or fail on its own).
No-Down-Payment loans for first-time home buyers.
Free basic medical care for everybody. Free emergency medical care, as well. Elective procedures should come out of the recipients' pockets.
Free subsidies for infrastructure projects.
Send all illegal aliens and their anchor babies back to where they came from.
With the exception of the illegal aliens you are getting ahead of yourself. The no down payment home loans are a repeat of the subprime crisis.
_________________
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- Unknown
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-Sigmund Freud
26 Aug 2011, 5:52 pm
John_Browning wrote:
With the exception of the illegal aliens you are getting ahead of yourself.
I live in southern California. Illegal aliens seems to be everywhere, especially on the freeways and in the emergency rooms.
John_Browning wrote:
The no down payment home loans are a repeat of the subprime crisis.
I did not say to give these loans to everybody. Of course the lessons learned during the Subprime Crisis must be applied. For example, to qualify for such a loan, the person's credit rating should be 775 or better.
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John_Browning
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27 Aug 2011, 9:55 pm
Fnord wrote:
John_Browning wrote:
With the exception of the illegal aliens you are getting ahead of yourself.
I live in southern California. Illegal aliens seems to be everywhere, especially on the freeways and in the emergency rooms.
Tell me about it! I live in southern California as well and the illegal aliens here are like the 11th plague from the book of Exodus!
_________________
"Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars."
- Unknown
"A fear of weapons is a sign of ret*d sexual and emotional maturity."
-Sigmund Freud
27 Aug 2011, 10:21 pm
Master_Pedant wrote:
For one thing, supporting the middle class in the American context entails NOT destroying popular middle class social programs like social security. Another key element is supporting unions, which (particularly in ethnic minority communities) have proven the surest way to ensure upward mobility through wage bargaining. Supporting unions in general supports a broader middle class and stronger social mobility.
More importantly, we need to stop gutting the educational system. Republican governors all across the country are slashing education funding while trying to crush the teachers' union. In Florida, the Medicare fraudster Rick Scott is trying to abolish tenure for professors at public universities, and proposes to pay professors based on how favorably students review them. Our public school system in this state is already crap (I think it's ranked second-worst in the country for k-12) but we have one decent public university in UF which will be crushed by Scott's lunacy. Back in Ohio, the teachers' union has effectively been outlawed- they are no longer permitted to fulfill any of the functions of a union, such as collective bargaining.
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27 Aug 2011, 10:28 pm
Orwell wrote:
In Florida, the Medicare fraudster Rick Scott is trying to abolish tenure for professors at public universities, and proposes to pay professors based on how favorably students review them.
Wait?? Seriously? How does this guy manage to breathe? The stupidity of the idea is obvious. Student ratings are not based upon quality alone, but also on the student grades. This will just promote grade inflation, and grade inflation will potentially gut the quality of the university.
MarketAndChurch
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28 Aug 2011, 3:46 am
Okay guys, I need to sleep for my next of a back-to-back double but one such policy from the Right I'd like to throw out there is:
Smart Sprawl
Feel free to define it as you want till I get time to flesh it out in full but it is a merger between smart-growth policies and sprawl
I'll also reply in full to all posts and I'll summarize the positions posted so far as well in Policies from the Left and Polices of the RIght and put our collective minds into drafting a WP position on the Middle Class, with the opinions of the Left and Right for growing our Middle Class. I've had enough with the focus of every conversation being about the rich and the poor, and ocassionally, when the middle class is brought up, it is to dump on them as being SUV-driving suburbanites who are bad for global warming and fair trade.
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28 Aug 2011, 6:34 am
if being middle class is the best thing for all people then what you really want to do is ignore the middle class and not support them (only support them just enough to stop them being poor). what you want to do is tax the rich and not tax the poor. this is how you get more people INTO the middle class. or were you just trying to sound nice and you really meant we should ignore the rich and poor and give all the concessions to the middle class because they're the most important?
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28 Aug 2011, 12:27 pm
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
Orwell wrote:
In Florida, the Medicare fraudster Rick Scott is trying to abolish tenure for professors at public universities, and proposes to pay professors based on how favorably students review them.
Wait?? Seriously? How does this guy manage to breathe? The stupidity of the idea is obvious. Student ratings are not based upon quality alone, but also on the student grades. This will just promote grade inflation, and grade inflation will potentially gut the quality of the university.
His stated goal is to treat the students as consumers who are buying a degree- so I suppose if they will be paying more, they will also demand higher grades. Imagine the difficulty of trying to find a professor willing to teach organic chemistry under the new system- no one rates their orgo professor favorably. Professors will also be penalized for teaching small classes under the new system, so we can say goodbye to classes covering specialized topics.
Incidentally, these reforms in Florida are copied from Perry's reforms in Texas.
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MarketAndChurch
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29 Aug 2011, 7:39 pm
John_Browning wrote:
Fnord wrote:
John_Browning wrote:
With the exception of the illegal aliens you are getting ahead of yourself.
I live in southern California. Illegal aliens seems to be everywhere, especially on the freeways and in the emergency rooms.
Tell me about it! I live in southern California as well and the illegal aliens here are like the 11th plague from the book of Exodus!
I've picked a few up from the home depot before, they wait there for landscapers needing cheap labor, my uncle had some nice homes in Palo Alto to maintain so we payed them all $100 for 5 hours of work and bought them burger king as we dropped them back off at the home depot...
most white people won't do that kind of work, though these illegal immigrants do flood other job markets where the communities (no matter what the ethnic backgrounds that comprise them are) are starved for job opportunities, and unskilled labor desperate for a job compete with high-school graduates who can only read at a 4th grade level and recently unemployed folks who have a mortgage to pay or a family to raise, or those in hospitality or service industry who depend on good economic times where people have money to spend on services. In some communities, unemployment is as high as 40% or even more. It's an ugly picture, and illegal immigrants, as moral as their character may be, make it worse.
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