Rod Dreher

What Would We Do If Rockets Fell?

As Goes San Bernardino…

By Rod Dreher • November 16, 2012, 12:35 PM

This Reuters report on how the city of San Bernardino, Calif., drove itself off the fiscal cliff makes for bracing reading. Excerpt:

Yet on close examination, the city’s decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward — and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America’s largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino’s city workers — and especially its police and firemen — grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind.

No single deal or decision involving benefits and wages over the years killed the city. But cumulatively, they built a pension-fueled financial time-bomb that finally exploded.

In bankrupt San Bernardino, a third of the city’s 210,000 people live below the poverty line, making it the poorest city of its size in California. But a police lieutenant can retire in his 50s and take home $230,000 in one-time payouts on his last day, before settling in with a guaranteed $128,000-a-year pension. Forty-six retired city employees receive over $100,000 a year in pensions.

Almost 75 percent of the city’s general fund is now spent solely on the police and fire departments, according to a Reuters analysis of city bankruptcy documents – most of that on wages and pension costs.

Remind you of anything? Here’s a statement from the final report of the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission:

Over the long run, as the baby boomers retire and health care costs continue to grow, the [US budget] situation will become far worse. By 2025 revenue will be able to finance only interest payments, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Every other federal government activity – from national defense and homeland security to transportation and energy – will have to be paid for with borrowed money. Debt held by the public will outstrip the entire American economy, growing to as much as 185 percent of GDP by 2035. Interest on the debt could rise to nearly $1 trillion by 2020. These mandatory payments – which buy absolutely no goods or services – will squeeze out funding for all other priorities.

Posted in Decline and Fall, Economics. Tagged debt, San Bernardino, Simpson-Bowles.

36 Responses to As Goes San Bernardino…

Richard Johnson says:

November 16, 2012 at 12:54 pm

“In bankrupt San Bernardino, a third of the city’s 210,000 people live below the poverty line, making it the poorest city of its size in California.”

Why the incredible growth in poverty in this town? Surely it’s not solely the fault of the pension fund game?

“According to four people present at the meeting, Penman, the city attorney, brought a pregnant co-worker to the session. By their account, Penman’s co-worker made an emotional case for an even more generous pension deal. Otherwise, she said, she would be forced to leave San Bernardino and seek work in a city with better benefits.”

This happens daily in many other communities, except it’s usually a corporate executive brought into a closed meeting threatening to move or close a plant unless a sweet deal can be made to keep them in the community. Here in the Midwest many towns are starting to feel the pinch after 20+ years of giving away the farm to keep businesses from moving elsewhere.

The unions in San Bernardino are doing exactly that larger businesses are doing across the nation. They are using their political connections to gain benefits for their members/stockholders. In both cases the taxpayers in the communities are left holding the very expensive bag.

The GOP has focused on the unions in the last few election cycles, and said little or nothing about corporate welfare. The Democrats have said much about the corporate side, but nothing about the unions’ influence. But honestly, neither side has a solid solution to the problem.
M_Young says:

November 16, 2012 at 1:36 pm

Why the incredible growth in poverty in this town? Surely it’s not solely the fault of the pension fund game?

Immigration. Immigration. Immigration. And the knock on affects of immigration. In 2000 ‘Hispanics’ accounted for 39% of San Bernadino’s population, in 2010 49 percent.

While it’s all well and good to beat up on the unions, because of the crushing of wages by mass immigration, jobs in fire protection or policing are one of the few well-paid blue collar jobs around. Likewise teaching — not blue collar but one available to not-so-spectacular graduates of our state university system. Further, the new immigrant population requires a lot — a whole lot — of state spending. From their kids in schools with the free breakfasts and lunches to their kids in one of our many correctional facilities.

You know, proper sociologists focus on the ‘dependency ratio’ which is (dependent population)/(working population). That dependent population was includes not only old folks, but pre-working age children and institutionalized people. Those later two categories have been driven up by mass immigration — if not by the immigrants themselves, then by the children they have who would obviously not be here without their being here.

Finally, the housing bubble was huge in the Inland Empire — and it was driven by immigration itself (including the cheap construction labor that was available) and Bush II’s plan to increase home ownership among Hispanics and other ‘minorities’.

This is really sad, because San Bernadino really was prosperous suburban place — it’s a ‘foothill’ county, gateway to our ski resorts. Yet another thing wrecked by our immigration policy (or lack thereof).
M_Young says:

November 16, 2012 at 1:38 pm

On the politics of this — if Republicans think bashing the unions is the way to go, they need to look at Meg Whitman’s 50% of the white vote. Pathetic.
Joe Magarac says:

November 16, 2012 at 1:44 pm

A few thoughts from Pittsburgh, which like San Bernadino is technically bankrupt (I say technically because the Burgh didn’t file for federal bankruptcy; instead it did so under a state law for bankrupt municipalities):

1. A city can be bankrupt without being a “crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case.” Pittsburgh went bankrupt because its industrial employers closed; many of its middle-class families moved away; and a thriving non-profit sector gobbled up 40% of the real property that it could tax. But at the same time, it has enjoyed a very low crime rate (at least among cities), has won lots of livability awards, has one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the nation, and is on pace to have one of the youngest and best-educated populations of any city in the country within a decade.

2. What happened here, as in San Bernadino, was a lag between changes to the tax base (the factors that I listed above, which shrunk it) and changes to city spending. The tax base had bottomed out by roughly 1990 but the city kept its spending the same through roughly 2004. It used a combination of debt and accounting tricks (adjusting the expected growth of the pension fund, selling the water system to an authority which then issued bonds to pay for it, etc.) to kick the can down the road. It couldn’t keep that up forever, and in 2004 it filed for state oversight or technical bankruptcy.

3. The good news is that state oversight has helped a lot. Having a panel of accountants approve the city’s budget, and having those same accountants be able to override the formerly automatic pay and benefit increases that city police and firefighters got due to state no-strike laws, has brought the city’s budget back into balance.

Herbert Stein’s law applies here as everywhere: if something can’t go on forever, it will stop. Pittsburgh’s overspending stopped. San Bernadino’s and the US government’s will, too. HOW they will stop is another question, but stop they will.
Chris says:

November 16, 2012 at 1:49 pm

This is case of getting the government we deserve.
M_Young says:

November 16, 2012 at 2:09 pm

“A city can be bankrupt without being a “crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case.” Pittsburgh went bankrupt because its industrial employers closed; many of its middle-class families moved away; ”

Pittsburgh famously was voted one of the best cities in which to live 2 or 3 years ago. Pittsburgh is also one of the whitest major cities in the country, and one with a very low immigrant population. It doesn’t face the demographic problems — the deep demographic problems, not the temporary baby boom blip — that San Bernadino and all of California does.
Josh McGee says:

November 16, 2012 at 2:42 pm

I’m on board with the criticism for Romney’s 47% comments and ‘gifts’ comment, but this only helps show that there is at least a kernel of truth in what he is so poorly stating.

Between stuff like this, the Honey-Boo-Boo part of our culture, the “Hillbilly Mating Call” part of our culture, etc., and the high rate of fatherlessness in black culture (and growing in the rest of the country), it is unfair to Romney to pretend that what he is talking about never happens, that there is no element of state dependency in our culture.

Again, I think Romney’s comments are callously stated (and over-stated, misreading where some of his support and opposition resides and why), but “Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions,” is saying the same sort of thing. That is a perfect example of ‘gifts’ and how hard it is to overcome that if you are a politician opposed to it.

We can’t on the one hand say that all the people are noble and to say otherwise is a horrible thing to do (How dare Romney say such a thing about ‘gifts’! about our wonderful citizens), while at the same time saying that the country is going to go bankrupt because those very same noble people refuse to reform the problems of the entitlement state. Noble people, if they really put the interests of their kids and grandkids first, would not consistently refuse entitlement reform even in the face of bankruptcy.

This is a real city whose people would rather watch it die than give up their goodies. That is not noble. It is not conservative because it refuses to conserve the heritage of the city for the next generation. And before anyone just dismisses not just the ineloquence of what Romney is saying but the point he is trying to make, they should try to find out just how many cities are like this or close to it (more than you think). And they should consider that regardless of the merits or failings in the Romney/Ryan goal to reform Medicare, on a national level we face the same issue of a populace that would rather ride the current insolvent entitlement programs to their bloody death than seriously begin reforming them (this despite the claim that ‘we do it all for the children’).

Romney may be a bumbling, out of touch fool when he talks about this sort of thing, but there is some truth to what he is saying.
Joe Magarac says:

November 16, 2012 at 2:57 pm

Pittsburgh is also one of the whitest major cities in the country, and one with a very low immigrant population.

Wrong on both counts, I think. Pittsburgh is 66% white and 7% foreign-born. If you throw in the suburbs, it’s much whiter and has fewer foreign-born folks, but the suburbs didn’t go bankrupt: the city did. I think the city’s percentages of white and foreign-born residents are typical for mid-sized US cities: i.e., they are lower than you would see in New York but higher than you would see in Indianapolis.
bayesian says:

November 16, 2012 at 3:01 pm

@Joe M.

Interesting, and thanks. The 40% of the nominal property tax base going to nonprofits (possibly including the Steelers seems astonishingly high – can you say more about that? A quick look at the map doesn’t show that much prime real estate being occupied by obvious nonprofits (mostly the universities, UPitt Med Center, etc.).

Are you a long time resident? I’ve only been there twice, both shortish business trips, one in 1989 and one last year. Difference in “feel” is astonishing – 1989 felt like a city in a death spiral, last year felt like a city in difficulty but on the way up.
More Tea Party says:

November 16, 2012 at 3:51 pm

Public sector unions are vampires, no different in their way from the Wall Street firms that were bailed out with trillions of dollars of public money.

Bankruptcy seems to be the only way to starve these beasts – locally, taxpayers vote with their feet to accelerate the process.

Of course at the national, federal level, you can’t vote with your feet. That’s why we have to keep kicking sitting politicians out of office until we get the critical mass to balance our budgets, let Wall Street firms go down when they’re bankrupt, shut down government departments that we can’t afford, and tell public sector unions to go to hell.
Tyro says:

November 16, 2012 at 3:51 pm

Ever since I moved out of California, I have argued that what the state needs is to abandon its current constitution and rewrite it from scratch. But no one in the state wants to do this– they think that the problems can be solved by just one more proposition to amend the state constitution which will fix their financial and institutional predicaments.
Bob Jones says:

November 16, 2012 at 4:24 pm

Being a quasi neighbor to San Bernardino, there are two points of focus already mentioned here, which continute to SB’s troubles. 1. The high costs of city employees, and the growing burden of pensions (which by the way is a problem for all, or at least most local government in California, so SB is not unique in this regard) 2. the immigration issue raise by M. Young, which is also a tremendous burden not only in SB, but across the state.

However, what makes SB unique, in terms of some of its similarly demographically structures neighbors, i.e. cities like Fontana (home to NASCAR in California), or Moreno Valley (former home to a Riverside International Raceway – now a shopping mall). Is the endemic corruption to be found both in the City government as well as the County Government. SB City and County likely has the highest ratio of elected officials got to jail than any other local government in California. When you factor in the political corruption, with the systematic incompetence of the City government, and their inability to observe and follow the trends of their neighboring cities, then what is currently happening to SB, is what geographically proximate cities like Fontana, Ontario, or Riverside and Moreno Valley took measures to avoid starting a decade or more ago. Reducing costs, outsourcing services through city managed contracts, and creating more collaborative law enforcement environments, while also encouraging various types of economic development. SB did none of these things as their political leaders were often too busy enriching themselves, and the city managers where to busy doing nothing.

As someone who has done consulting work with many of these cities, and with SB (city and county) in particular this bankruptcy was inevitable, and unfortunately, the powers that be in those communities are unlikely to do anything about it.
Scott Snider says:

November 16, 2012 at 4:32 pm

I read this article and was left wondering “so what are supposed to do?”. I want to hear some solutions presented. I am more than willing to sacrifice now for my children’s future.
Is anyone presenting viable solutions. Viable means they work financially and politically.
sjay says:

November 16, 2012 at 5:00 pm

I think the city’s percentages of white and foreign-born residents are typical for mid-sized US cities

FWIW, when compared to the five cities immediately above in population, and the five-immediately below, Pittsburgh has the third highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites of those eleven. Five of those cities are more than 10 percentage points lower; only one is more than 10 percentage points higher.
Chris says:

November 16, 2012 at 5:38 pm

San Bernardino is bankrupt because it’s economy tanked. It had two major industries, construction and warehousing, and one US Airforce Base. Norton closed in 1994, and all the jobs associated with it left with it along with a healthy portion of San Bernardino’s economic base. But housing was booming until 2008 when the housing market (and construction and warehousing sectors that rely upon it) was decimated, and there you have it.

This is not to say that the structural issues were not critical, but a house built on the thin sand of the “service economy” is not one that will withstand a storm, and San Bernardino did not.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

November 16, 2012 at 5:55 pm

What California has done over the past few decades is to almost totally insulate decisions about taxation and revenue from decisions about program, priorities and spending. Although I lean Populist (in the original sense) on many issues of government, this is definitely a weakness in government by referendum. One year, we vote to cap taxes, seems good. Another year, we vote to enshrine spending on X priority, because its important. Seldom do the twain meet any more.

Any discussion about cutting taxes should include forthright discussion of EXACTLY what we will do without, just as any discussion about new spending should include EXACTLY where the revenue will come from. Bonds are OK, as long as the revenue flow to pay them is specified and accounted for.

I suspect Bob Jones’s notes about corruption are AS relevant as as any other factor mentioned here.

Public sector unions have certainly shown a capacity to over-reach, but on the other hand, taxpayers are not entitled to pay markedly less (as often happened to public sector workers before they had unions), on some ground that they should be happy to serve for free or close to it.

M_Young, I don’t know if you’ve spent time in Pittsburgh, but I assure you there is a substantial population of Americans of African descent. We could quibble about percentages, but Pittsburgh’s relative congeniality is not a product of their absence.
JonF says:

November 16, 2012 at 5:55 pm

Rod, quit hating on Social Security. It’s nothing, I repeat NOTHING like the San Bernadino situation. I think your parents are on SS now, right? Ask them how much they get. I can guarantee it’s nothing munificent: even the maximum benefit is pretty paltry. Certainly no one gets a check for 230K the day they go on SS!
Moreover Social Security is sustainable indefinitely with modest tweaks (I sound like a broken record having to repeat this simple fact endlessly whenever the topic comes up). It has nothing in common with over-generous municipal pensions, beyond being a payment to retired people.
And again: our budgetary problem boils down to healthcare, and all healthcare not just federal benefits.If we are to prevent the medical-industrial complex from bankrupting both public and private sectors we will need to put on the brakes there. And note: I did not say toss anyone off the bus, I said put on the brakes.
J says:

November 16, 2012 at 6:54 pm

Immigration. Immigration. Immigration. And the knock on affects of immigration.

I’ve continued to skim your posts on the off chance you have a second note, MY. I think I’ll give up now.

Back when I lived there I came to the view that entitled white middle class people and the sloth and scams and corrupting industries in which most of them seemed to participate were the basic problem to Southern California. At least average Hispanic people were willing to try to live and work honestly.

SB…honestly, I can’t muster much sympathy for their many years of idiocy and corruption and irresponsibility catching up to them. When racial dominionist whites give up on a place they always do a bust out on it, making SB just part of a general pattern in the West and South.
bjk says:

November 16, 2012 at 7:16 pm

Ultimately there are two parties, the optimists and the realists. Argentina is the triumph of the optimists, Norway is the triumph of the realists. With Reagan the Republicans realized there were more votes in optimism than realism. Unfortunately that left us with two parties of optimists competing to see who could promise more. Not a sophisticated analysis, but accurate.
Myron Hudson says:

November 16, 2012 at 7:38 pm

There is a mention of CA’s constitution further up. As a neighbor to the north with a growing similar problem I’d like to expand on that. In “direct democracy” states the public can change the constitution by ballot measure, effectively bypassing the legislature to pass legislation.

Ballot measures often come in two flavors: cutting taxes/decreasing revenues, and increasing spending on pet projects or programs. I can’t imagine a worse way of doing things. Until CA fixes that they will never climb out of the hole. And we in OR are following in their footsteps.

If I were any kind of an activist I would bring up a ballot measure to require that all future ballot measures identify exactly where the $$ would come from; either increasing revenues or specifically cutting another program’s budget. That would clap a stopper on their antics.
Lord Karth says:

November 16, 2012 at 8:19 pm

JonF writes: “Rod, quit hating on Social Security. It’s nothing, I repeat NOTHING like the San Bernadino situation. I think your parents are on SS now, right? Ask them how much they get. I can guarantee it’s nothing munificent: even the maximum benefit is pretty paltry.

Theft is theft, no matter how you pretty it up.

Social Security remains what it is: an intergenerational act of warfare against workers and non-retirees, fully justifying what Southerners in the 50s called “massive resistance”. Trying to keep what is yours is, in my book, no crime. Quite the contrary.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Lancelot Lamar says:

November 16, 2012 at 9:11 pm

I am sad for my sons for I know they will face an adulthood in a country that is bankrupt at nearly all levels.
pjsmoov says:

November 16, 2012 at 9:13 pm

J.
Could you possibly point to some specific study, other than the role of city workers, unions, and politicians mentioned in the above piece, to support your generalizations? Otherwise, you don’t provide much to go on.

“At least average Hispanic people were willing to try to live and work honestly.” Not sure what you precisely mean by hardworking, average Hispanic people, although they sound just fine to me. But, Hispanics have an out-of-wedlock birthrate of over 50%, a statistic that correlates well with poverty. Thus, immigration has to be considered a factor to some degree just as immigration, in a different way, is a factor in the success of Silicon Valley. I’m not sure whether the immigrants in Silicon Valley represent some particular ethnic average, though.

“When racial dominionist whites give up on a place they always do a bust out on it…” Did white racial dominionists leave behind a mess in Detroit or were there other factors? Were any non-racial dominionist whites involved as well? Are you able to detect a difference between the two or is it largely irrelevant? We’re the above mentioned crooks who ruined SB mainly white racial dominionists? And how many other places have these dominionists ruined? Just curious. I still haven’t figured out where to retire.
M_Young says:

November 16, 2012 at 9:18 pm

“Wrong on both counts, I think. Pittsburgh is 66% white and 7% foreign-born. If you throw in the suburbs, it’s much whiter and has fewer foreign-born folks, ”

Joe, that is very low for a major city in both areas. The entire state of California, for example, is 25% foreign born.
M_Young says:

November 16, 2012 at 9:28 pm

Here, if you scroll down, is a list of the whitest metropolitan regions in the country. Pittsburg heads the list as far as region, and is near the top if you look at ‘core city’. Portland, yet another place that gets ‘most livable city’ awards regularly, is tops in the core city as far as I can see.
Glaivester says:

November 16, 2012 at 9:34 pm

Back when I lived there I came to the view that entitled white middle class people and the sloth and scams and corrupting industries in which most of them seemed to participate were the basic problem to Southern California. At least average Hispanic people were willing to try to live and work honestly.

And immigration is a tool that such people use. That the motivation behind the scam that caused the banking crisis may have been the greed of the corporate bigwigs rather than actual sympathy for immigrants does not mean that immigration and housing “anti-racism” were not used as tools to achieve the scam.
JonF says:

November 17, 2012 at 6:01 am

I think there’s a place for ballot initiatives, but they should have a higher bar than mere majority for passing. Florida, once plagued with referenda on every question under the sun, now requires 60% to pass- I would recommend that to every state.
Roberto Rivera says:

November 17, 2012 at 7:52 am

Rod, quit hating on Social Security. It’s nothing, I repeat NOTHING like the San Bernadino situation.

Hear. Hear. The closest thing in federal law to the kind of deal SB cops and firemen have is military retirement benefits. If you want to say that we must revisit the deal we cut with the all-volunteer military, be my guest.

I’m curious what the racial makeup of the police and fire department are. I only ask because there’s no shortage of comments around here blaming SB’s plights on Hispanic immigrants. Yet, it’s the pensions and salaries being paid to folks with last names like “Penman,” “Taack” and “Moss” that have SB in bankruptcy.
Another Matt says:

November 17, 2012 at 12:58 pm

Four things:

1) The “fiscal cliff” SB drove itself off of is the opposite of the Fiscal Cliff that is looming in the federal budget — the federal Fiscal Cliff is immediate austerity. We should be careful to use the term consistently when we use it at all.

2) The federal government controls the currency, so it can’t “go bankrupt.” Any comparison between the fiscal situation of the US and that of a state or municipality just doesn’t carry — nor do any comparisons between the US and e.g. Greece. “Bankruptcy,” when applied to the US govt. is just a metaphor at best, for other possible problems like inflation.

3) A 401(k) is every bit the “pyramid scheme” that Social Security is. Both models are completely dependent on both population growth and the productivity of younger workers.

4) JonF’s point about healthcare as a whole — and not just federal benefits — being the problem is right on. We could balance the federal budget by repealing Medicare, for instance, but it would not solve the economic problems caused by healthcare in the US. Even solutions like “raising the age of eligibility,” while fixing some part of the federal budget, would just exacerbate the industry-wide problem, increasing the net cost per insured individual.
Gerard says:

November 17, 2012 at 2:40 pm

Very few people are aware that there are lots of retired law enforcement collecting six-figure pensions who are working as consultants for U.S. Govt contractors for six-figure salaries. This is work-from-home stuff for DHS (ATF, FEMA, et al.). Even the U.S. State Dept. has generous gigs for retired LE. I knew a long time ago this country can’t go on like this. Paying Air Marshals $160k/year to sit in first class seats (airlines must give up these seats to TSA AM’s) and six-figure salaries to federal officers and agents who have passed the 2-year trial period. Something’s gotta give. That is why I am not overly vexed that our country is being flooded with immigrants from the third-world. Even before the total economic collapse there will be fewer and fewer people who can pay for all this public-sector union generosity.
JonF says:

November 18, 2012 at 7:55 am

Re: Theft is theft, no matter how you pretty it up.

If Social Security is theft then so is every mutual fund, stock fund, bond deal, lottery winnings, and every form of insurance claim payout. All provide people with more income then they invested to start with (in some cases hugely more) and that money can only come from other people who are being stripped of their resources to make those payments.
Of course those people are consenting to the system so we do not call such thing theft, But that’s true of Social security too: anyone who participates in the system has consented to it, hence no theft. Oh, sure you and the glibertarian fringe whine about it– but words are cheap, it’s deeds that matter. If you really do not like Social security then get out of it– which you can do by simply dropping out of society. Don’t like that option? Tough, that’s how life works: there are tradeoffs and nobody gets everything that want served up on a silver platter.
El Mono Liso says:

November 18, 2012 at 8:39 am

In response to the point that immigrants are “a drain on our social services”, I have to say that that is pretty darn rich, as if Mexicans and Central Americans come from an alternate universe where the United States NEVER EVER intervened in the political affairs of these countries for exploitative purposes. As if there was any truth to the idea of “they need to fix their own problems”, as if the United States isn’t the darn problem. And then you are surprised that the victims of these policies turn up on their doorstep and become “our problem”. Yes, because the United States exists in a vacuum, a “shining City on a hill” that can only be corrupted by forces from without. Paisa, please. On the other hand, we don’t live up to the selfish, individualistic, and imperialistic attitudes that we are supposed to adopt when we come to this country: if I get mine, screw everyone else. Or said in a more humanitarian fashion, the best way to help a person when she’s down is to kick her in the gut so she gets back up. Yeah, to the extent that my fellow brown people aren’t buying this, it is because we aren’t freakin’ psycho, and are unwilling to propagate the ethos that “made our country great”: murder, exploitation, greed, etc. But don’t worry, assimilation and the forces of necessity will eventually work their magic (how many Latinos, for example, serve in the military?) But I am hoping that there soon will be no empire to defend, and that it is a soft landing. I am just saying that you Anglos should be thankful that Don Gelasio from some boondock town in Michoacan just shows up at your door begging to trim your hedges, even if he also shows up in the emergency room once in a while with a life-threatening illness. Since over twenty years ago he was perfectly happy subsistence farming on his humble plot before certain trade policies came into effect that forced him off it, you are lucky he doesn’t take those pruning shears and ram them down your throat.
Tyro says:

November 18, 2012 at 2:08 pm

Conservatives really depend on Mexican, Asian, and Central American immigrants to support their national vision. If we had immigrants from France, Germany, and the UK, they’d never put up with our poor public transit system, lack of universal health coverage (until recently), and public universities that aren’t near-free.

Cheap labor, low-quality but inexpensive consumer goods, and poor public infrastructure is what our large masses of immigrants consider “normal.” That fact that our country has gone on so long fulfilling the conservative vision of what a modern country should look like, eschewing the economic development model of western Europe is only possible because of the large immigrant constituency in this country who accepts it as just “the way things are”, because the situation is similar in their home countries.
pjsmoov says:

November 18, 2012 at 2:55 pm

“you are lucky he doesn’t take those pruning shears and ram them down your throat.”

That’s good to know. I’ll pass this along to a friend who owns a landscaping company and others who might be looking for help with yard work. Whitey is hereby placed on notice that this country’s past involvement in Latin America is responsible for Latin America being Latin America. Apparently, many people here resent it and are perhaps waiting for the right opportunity for revenge in an oh-so-bloodthirsty way. You just provided the best argument for ending mass immigration and closing our borders on this thread.

I certainly think Eisenhower’s actions in Guatemala contributed to instability there which resulted in millions of deaths. Americans certainly need to think clearly about the effectiveness and potential detrimental effects of our foreign policy. I’m not sure what the U.S. did to turn Mexico into Mexico, but you really didn’t provide much specific information to go on other than hyperbole about greed, murder and imperialism. Perhaps you never heard of Santa Anna. I had no idea he was such a friend of the Mexican peasantry. That you view America as the sum total of its foreign policy vices says much about you. That you attribute problems related to human nature as unique features of white Americans is likewise revealing.

You don’t really find many people on this site who serve as cheerleaders for American foreign policy. And you might be surprised that many on this site are not-too-fond of NAFTA. I really don’t know enough about the history of Latin America so I’m essentially ignorant of its history as a place of peace and stability ruined by the presence of American economic and political interests. I don’t deny that it may be true to some degree but it appears that you’re also neglecting some other aspects of America’s foreign policy related to beneficial, humanitarian assistance. As someone who clearly hates America and white Americans, I suggest that while you’re in this country, you should only take advantage of all of the institutions created by Latin Americans—private schools, universities, hospitals, museums, sports leagues, charities, social and cultural institutions—and avoid ones created by greedy, imperialistic whites. Viva la raza.
KC says:

November 18, 2012 at 8:25 pm

I think pensions should be made illegal. Promising pensions without setting aside money to pay for them is the root of this evil.

Any company or government that wants to buy secure annuities for their employees or give them lump sums in money laid aside would be fine.

But making promises without setting aside the money to pay them, without even knowing what the costs will be should be illegal.
Tyro says:

November 19, 2012 at 8:37 am

I think pensions should be made illegal.

Funny, I think the exact opposite: we should have a nationalized pension system that is required for most employers to participate in. The pension should be transferable, and no employer should be able to get off the hook by optimistically fudging their pension returns.