Went grocery shopping on the rich side of town yesterday. Thanks to the freezing weather all the wealthy women in town were out and about showing off their fur coats. Haven't been able to do it much this year. Most with just one item in their cart, the real reason for the shopping trip was to be admired. I haven't seen that much fur since the last time I was at our local humane society volunteering. Any moment I expected some mad crazy person with a bucket of red paint to come bursting out of the veggie isle and douse the blatant wearer of murdered little animals from head to toe. But for the most part, thank goodness, this town wouldn't do that. We respect your property.
Except for the graffiti vandals. I once asked a young man why he had spray painted the gibberish on the wall? "That way", he boasted, "everyone that goes by will know it was ME"! Many people go through this alley in the poor section of town to look at this wall with your name? Wouldn't it better if you want to be known to find the cure for the common cold? Cure cancer? Find a way to get trash to disappear once it was thrown out. Wouldn't people then be singing your name from the tops of roof tops. Why on buildings, rocks, trains and other peoples property. Why at others peoples expense.
Lately I have been hearing on the talk shows and news something I knew anyway. Look! Since they sent some of the illegal aliens back Americans are taking the jobs. WHAT! The jobs Americans don't want? How can that be?
I already knew that. I live in a town that is surrounded by beef and pork packing plants. For as long as the buildings have stood there have been American workers working there. Or legal American immigrants. Families were raised, homes were bought. The people worked hard, but with the help of the union they got fair wages and could make a living. That started changing about 10 years ago. Although they will deny it, the plants started bringing in illegal aliens to do the jobs. Going so far as to make them shanties on the back of the plant to stay in until they got busted. Wages dropped by over $4.00 dollars an hour.
Try telling a man who is busy packing because he just lost his job and home that his job was taken by people who are doing the jobs Americans don't want to do. You'll get a free nose job for it. Try telling our Cement workers who have been on strike since before Thanksgiving that they don't really want to do the job. Try watching the young contractor who built your home tell you with tears in his eyes that he is giving up his life long dream because he can't compete with the cheaper labor. No they are not telling me something I didn't already know. But maybe, just maybe.....they are telling someone who really didn't know. And maybe, hopefully it will change.
6 comments:
Odd the way of the world..My family came from Poland, and Austria, they worked in the mines,and steel mills in Penna...most of them died from lung related problems from working down in the mines but those jobs are rare and hard to get anymore, the steel mill towns in Pa. are closed down with the exception of Reading and a few others and most of the big companies are overseas in countries were the minimum could be as little as 17cents an hour! Yep...what happened to the economy? I think it up and went!
:))) Doreen
When I was married to my sons dad, he was a contractor. And that's exactly what happened. He couldn't compete with the cheaper labor. It took him a lot of years and a lot of financial hardship to come to terms with it before he closed down his business. It was sad. I did the payroll for them. We just couldn't compete with those guys who worked under the table with no workers comp insurance.
Pam
I hear you, Julie. I live in the ghost town of Pittsburgh which is dying faster every day. The steel mills closed a good many years ago because of the invasion of the Japanese vehicles and car production dying in Michigan. What in the world happened? It also irks me that most companies have chosen to move their customer service to India. That just boils my blood when I have a problem and have to speak to someone who can't understand what I'm saying. I wish I knew the answer because the people who can do something about it dont' give a crap. Chris
I have NEVER understood the reason illegals were allowed to just take over like they have. Never.
~Meg
Yep, I totally agree! It is so frustrating. I see these illegals standing out on the corners every morning getting paid to do a job that an American is willing to do, but for less money. And, to top it all off, these illegals are paid in cash and don't pay any taxes. Yet they come in my ER and sign up for welfare and get free medical care, their children go to school for free, and then they have the NERVE to demand that we speak Spanish. You know what I do when I walk into a room if they can't or won't speak English? I say "Oh I'm sorry" and I walk out, and unless they are really sick (you know what I mean) I wait a while before I walk back in there with someone to interpret for me. Drives me crazy!
Oh and another thing that gets me? People who are so jealous of others who have the money to buy fur coats hide their jealousy behind some self-rightous group (PETA for one) and throw red paint or whatever and ruin another person's property. Okay people, that is assault. But it is acceptable because it is for those poor, helpless, defenseless animals that God put on this Earth to serve us by providing us with their skins.
Man, Julie, you got me going there. Sorry for my soapboxes! :) De
http://journals.aol.com/erarein63/DesThoughts/
Very good points Jules!!!!!...but we could flip the coin and see another ugly side to it all....
...one thing is the ball has a cause and affect...higher wages, higher cost of food and produce...then we end up having more Americans work, less immigrants and the international trade profits because cheap slave labor brings in the food that Americans will buy....FEW will buy the more expensive to save American jobs, so eventually unless trade agreements were lessened which would also have another cause and affect, we would still end up with jobs lost because consumers buy what they can afford...So, really the trade market in America affects us whether Immigrants work here or not....Its all sad...I dont know the right answers..~Raven
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