Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Last February, my wife and I stayed at an all-inclusive condo on Cozumel. We asked the staff about tipping – not required but okay if you want to. How much to tip? Well, the groundskeepers, the people who speak no English and have no particular skills, make 70 Pesos per day. The wait staff in the restaurants have some English skills so they make 100 per day. Everyone was super-efficient and friendly because there was a line of applicants for those jobs. At those wages in that economy, they weren’t just jobs – they were GOOD jobs.
At the time, one American dollar was 15 pesos. The groundskeeper was making about $5.00 per day; the waitress, $7.00. Not per hour. Per day.
One year later, Trump’s been elected and one American dollar is worth 20 pesos. Yes, I’m glad Trump’s been elected, the strength of the dollar shows the rest of the world is glad, too.
Will it make America look like the Promised Land? The starting wage for one day of part-time work at McDonalds is an entire week’s pay back home.
Will illegal immigration increase?
“Build the Fence” is a wonderful short-term solution but eventually there will be 500 million inside the fence and 6,000 million outside it. Can a fence hold off Billions of immigrants? What’s the long term solution?
Obama’s long-term solution seems to have been “if we make America into a Third World country, nobody will bother to come here.” What’s Trump’s long-term solution?
Joe Doakes
Not sure Trump was about long term solutions – but I’ve been surprised before.
Trump’s narrative probably better fits Classic Greek Comedy in the manner of Aristophanes.The Comedies were used to lampoon the important political figures of the day, portraying them as buffoons.
The language of the Comedies was ‘Trumpish’: scatological, sexual, and satirical.The sexual anatomy of targeted politicians was often front and center in the discourse of the comedies.
In Aristophanes’ comedies, the chorus operated like Trumps surrogates.They repeated and regurgitated the politician’s words and added additional innuendo. Like Kellyanne Conway, the voices of the chorus had no minds of their own.Their role was to echo the central figure.
However corrupt and vulgar Aristophanes may have been in his personal propensities, however much he offended public decency and taste with his vulgarity, he somehow spoke to the ordinary Athenian. There was a vulgarity about Athens that the philosophers tended to ignore.
Aristophanes, like Trump, had an instinct for the basest aspects of ordinary citizens.
Catching up on old bathroom magazine reading? That meme has been going around for months – Time magazine last March, the New Yorker in October and the Spectator earlier this month. It reminds me of ‘gravitas,’ the word every political commentator suddenly used to describe Dick Cheney when added to the Bush ticket. Sounds scholarly, lends an air of credibility to the learned thinker’s explanation why he opposes the rest of the world’s opinion.
The intellectual in you should always try to understand both sides of every argument.
I’d love to understand both sides of the argument I posted about, which concerned long-term solutions to the problem caused by wealth disparity between America and the rest of the world.
You posted a screed using pedantry to cover misogyny, then complained when I criticized it. Help us out here: in what way does your comment relate to the argument about international wealth disparities? Which side did you take? What solution did you offer? What proposal did you criticize?
Looks to me as if you skimmed over my entire post until you found a word you recognized – Trump – and launched your attack from there.
Did someone just make a comment about my comments on this whatever-the-topic-is thread?
Simplify and ENFORCE existing laws. Set a coherent immigration policy which spells out quotas (yes, quotas because you cannot take all 6,000 million outside in one swoop), and admission criteria. And, illegal means ILLEGAL and punishable by law – if you are in the country illegally, you get booted out. Not that hard really.
You can’t deport your way out of every problem in your society. Both ends of each spectrum are bad choices. Full freedom or complete control/abolition is untenable for trade, immigration, taxation and regulation. We are no longer battling monarchies, or totalitarian regimes (mostly). We are battling each other, and we need to find some common ground to succeed.
Grey goo.
“Human, all to human is the monument of a crisis.”
Nietzsche wasn’t reflecting on the state of the world; he was commenting on his own deterioration.
Many reprobate leftists are in that sort of fugue today; they say America is going to shit, but they are really just revolted by the smell wafting up from their own mouths.
The US, as far as I know, is the only country in the world that does not believe that it should protect the incomes of its citizens using immigration and trade laws.
I’d choose rule by Trump over rile by Zuckerberg.
According to this, the average wage in Mexico is 316 pesos/day, or a little more than $15/day at current exchange rates: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/mexico/wages
Geographers tell us that immigration/emigration is driven by both push and pull factors. One of the factors that increases immigration from Mexico and central America is that our border is porous. Unlike the early settlers in the US, you don’t have to bid your mother country and your family there goodbye forever if you emigrate to the US (legally or illegally).
In fact, many of the illegal immigrants in the US return to their home villages frequently.
You overestimate the power of government in a free society in the 21st century.
QUOTE: “I’d love to understand both sides of the argument I posted about, which concerned long-term solutions to the problem caused by wealth disparity between America and the rest of the world.”
This is the ultimate problem that is facing the world and it is killing us. The West is doing every single thing wrong.
Get David Stockman’s new book. Listen to his interviews on the Tom Woods Show, ContraKrugman, and Peak Prosperity.
What I’ve been told by actual Mexicans is, they can get a job in Mexico, thy just can’t live as well as they do up here. The cost of living differential is better in the USA for them.
In fact, many of the illegal immigrants in the US return to their home villages frequently.
It is not the bodies, it the flight of capital that is even more concerning, as a large portion of the illegal’s income ends up in their home country.