Californians Are The New Wetbacks Headed For Mexico

This is called a reversal of fortunes.

California millionaires rebelling from Taxafornia tended to move to the income tax-free states of Texas, Washington and Nevada. But increasingly Californians are headed for Mexico. A Google internet search for “emigrate to the United States” generates 3.3 million hits”; but “emigrate to Mexico” generates 1.3 million hits and the number is rising fast. Besides low taxes, Mexico has six times the beachfront, half the food prices and a third the real estate costs versus California.

Because Mexico officially bans foreign ownership of land, disallows birth-right citizenship and tries to make it difficult for foreigners to find work, there are only 150,000 Americans who live legally in the Empire of the Sun. But over one million Americans live in Mexico illegally. These American Wetbacks can establish property trusts and take advantage of bank secrecy laws to hide assets from the prying eyes of IRS and California tax collectors. American Wetbacks can roll-over six month tourist visas for $25 and vehicle permits for $30. Mexican businesses seldom ask for identification.

While California’s economy is in the doldrums with 10.2% unemployment, Mexico’s economy is booming with only 5.0% unemployment. The Mexican business climate is benefiting from strong production growth and increasing job opportunities. Over 1.4 million Mexicans — including about 300,000 children born in the United States — returned to Mexico from the United States between 2005 and 2010. Net immigration to the U.S. dropped to zero since 2008, while American immigration to Mexico is thriving.

CA RESIDENTS PROTEST ALLEGED CHINESE 'MATERNITY HOTEL'

I've talked about this before. I'm glad the community is up in arms about it.

Chino Hills Mayor Art Bennett said the city's code enforcement investigators have discovered rooms in the hilltop estate "were being rented out as motel rooms to bring in Chinese expectant mothers until they deliver a child" and that "substantial fees are charged."

Protestors are livid that children born at the maternity hotel will have dual citizenship until they are 21 years of age, at which point they can bring other Chinese family members over to the United States.

Rossana Mitchell, one of the group's organizers, said the maternity hotel was morally wrong and noted that her father "came to this country from Peru and left us all (eight children) until he earned enough money to get us visas to come here legally."

"All of us (children) worked in the system and have done really well. There are three doctors among the siblings," Mitchell said.

Manufacturing Jobs Coming Back to America

Nice Youtube video of a large screen TV assembly plant in Canton, Michigan.

SFMade

I don't think this is the answer to bringing manufacturing back to America.  I viewed several of the Youtube videos and this looks too boutique.

Is this the answer to bringing manufacturing back to the US?  I doubt it.  Maybe it's the beginning.

Mr. China Comes to America

There may be hope.  What is interesting is this one statement: " Still, the U.S. economy is so much larger that our manufacturing sector, even in its battered condition, remains the largest in the world."

Down here in Harris County there is a lot of expansion of heavy industrial fabrication going on.   We toured a facility in Pasadena (Ventech) where they are adding additional workspace.  I was impressed.

“I am betting heavily on San Francisco, for its energy and creativity,” Liam Casey told me in China. He didn’t quote Jane Jacobs, but he went on to present a theory that could have come from her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities: national economies are really a collection of vibrant city economies, and cities thrive when they foster a diverse ecosystem of small enterprises whose growth is mutually reinforcing. He felt that his adopted home of Shenzhen was the engine and the success model for China. “When I came here, Shenzhen was a place to make cheap products,” he said. “Then it became a place to make products cheaply. Now, for the work we do, it’s the only place to make certain products, because of the supply base, the logistics, and the workforce.” (He said that my article about his company, “China Makes, the World Takes,” could, five years later, be redone as “Shenzhen Makes, China Takes.”) San Francisco is his model for how the new manufacturing economy would spread in America. When we spoke, he had just leased a 30,000-square-foot building off I‑280, the former home of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and announced plans to establish major PCH operations there. “We look forward to fostering the growing community of makers in the Bay Area who seek to have a massive impact on the world through their dedication to design, brand building, and consumer experiences,” he said in a statement announcing the deal.

Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out Brings Unexpected Costs

I mentioned this article back during the time it came out.  Unfortunately, that blog post no longer exists.  This shows what happens when you take an expensive source of electricity and build your economy around it.

After two weeks, the first letter arrives. The second notice comes a week later. On the fourth week, the bell rings and a technician from the power company, Vattenfall, is at the door. He has a black toolbox under his arm and he means business.

Aminta Seck, 39, has been through this twice before. If she doesn't pay the technician at least part of what she owes the company, he'll disconnect her electricity, leaving Seck and her three-year-old son Liam sitting in the dark in their two-room apartment, without lights, a working stove, refrigerator or TV.

Electricity prices in Germany have risen by more than 10 percent since the current coalition of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) took office. The price hike has been too much for some like Seck, an unemployed decorator from Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district.

"Approximately every tenth household currently has problems paying for rising energy costs," says Holger Krawinkel at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations.

Left in the Dark

About 200,000 recipients of Hartz IV, Germany's benefits program for the long-term unemployed, had their power cut off last year because of unpaid bills, according to Paritätische Gesamtverband, an umbrella association for social movements in Germany.

The consumer protection organization for the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia estimates that number to be as high as 600,000 per year. Ulrike Mascher, president of VdK, an interest group focusing on social justice, uses terms such as "fuel poverty" and a "blatant violation of fundamental social rights," when talking about the issue.

Meanwhile, the next price hikes are just around the corner. "The cost of electricity will rise, there's no question about that," says Jochen Homann, head of Germany's state-run Federal Network Agency. 

Video: Staten Island Hurricane Recovery Meeting Erupts in Rage

Do I really need to say this?  I'll say it anyway: If there were a Republican in the White House there would be 24/7 coverage of his failure....

Individuals still without homes, whom President Obama promised FEMA would help out. FEMA hasn’t helped, and Obama is about to jet off to Hawaii for vacation. I’m not slamming Molinaro, who is the first Conservative to hold his office in New York City. He’s doing his best in an awful situation. He’s already on the record blasting the Red Cross for raking in cash from donors but not helping people on the ground in the hurricane zone.

Being a government official on hand, Molinaro found himself a target.

“You think it’s a joke? You really think this is a joke,” one angry man yelled. “You go home for the holidays. I don’t. But you sit there with your dumb smile. You know what? I wish it was election year, because you’d do better this year.”

Well, it is an election year at the national level and it’s likely that most in the crowd voted to re-elect the malignant incompetent Barack Obama. Staten Island was a GOP bastion but has been trending Democrat in recent years.

In an ironic twist, Conservative Molinaro is likely to pay a higher price for FEMA’s failures than Democrat Obama ever will.

And this is a coincidence?