Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!ccsf.homeunix.org!news1.wakwak.com!nf1.xephion.ne.jp!onion.ish.org!gcd.org!news.yamada.gr.jp!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-12!sn-xit-08!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Kevin Wayne Williams Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan Subject: Re: Poor People's Greatest Hits Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 20:09:50 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <10t6hqj2upd9b24@news.supernews.com> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040616 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, ja MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <33eih0F40e8rsU1@individual.net> <10t5t624dkpusa6@news.supernews.com> <33gsh2F3ub20sU1@individual.net> In-Reply-To: <33gsh2F3ub20sU1@individual.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 51 Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.life.in-japan:23841 Kevin Gowen wrote: > Kevin Wayne Williams wrote: > >> B Robson wrote: >> >> >>> >>> >>> TAX, Gowen and I are talking about TAX. I am sure you have paid tax, >>> you can freely criticise poor people for abusing their most generous >>> welfare payments. As for me, I am glad I come from a country that >>> doesn't have an underclass. >> >> >> >> Wait until you move somewhere that truly has an underclass. This place >> is proud of its nearly 100% employment rate, but doesn't seem to >> notice that over 90% of the population only takes home about $10K a >> year per job. > > > Why do you suppose that is? Could it possibly be because they are > unskilled workers? Absolutely. It's a tourism dependent place, and gets caught in the trap that most such places fall into: the only jobs available to the locals are service jobs at hotels and restaurants, and there is nearly no way for the locals to rise from those jobs to be able to afford to buy the hotels and restaurants. Immigrants like me buy those, and sell them to other immigrants. The staff I inherited is the bottom of the labor rung: Columbian and Cuban immigrants that have difficulty fitting in because most of the natives are quadlingual (English, Dutch, Spanish, and Papiamentu), and are better able to serve the tourist population. Still, the standard of living here is so high compared to Columbia and Venezuela that there is a growing anti-South American sentiment. > >> Most of my staff works around 80 hours a week at multiple jobs to make >> ends meet. > > > How many of them have cable/satellite tv? None of them that I can tell. One has managed to get a small home and a used car, the others rent and ride small scooters or walk. The government taxes and tariffs the hell out of "luxuries", like cars, washing machines, cable tv, gas, etc., because those hit the immigrant population without hitting the natives. I did get one of your favorite wishes though: a flat tax. Unfortunately, it's 34.5%. KWW