Is LA recovering from the recession? Why so many texans moving back to CA?

[BarcelonaFan]

Originally Posted by majoun

They consider themselves to be middle class. Who am I to argue with them?

Being able to afford to buy doesn't signify that someone is middle class in Los Angeles. It signifies someone is wealthy. Thanks for nothing Howard Jarvis!

Maybe we are not communicating here, but what college kids see themselves as middle class renting a place with a roomie and working at Starbucks? I could see some thinking of themselves as middle class because they came from a middle class background and go back and forth subsisting off their wages and their parents, so the lack of immediate financial calamity is always kept at bay.

[Ingenere]

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

I know it's not a racial thing and I made it very clear in my post that LA has less of a racial problem and a much more serious elitist classist problem. I said that kttam didn't have to convince me that he or she is not white, I bet you they probably aren't. My point was that there are people of all races and stripes of a certain upper crust I've encountered here that do have any restraint in letting people know of their distaste of lower income people. I've met a Persian lady who is a client of ours and she just last month laid into it about poor people in the area, I've met a liberal Jewish Democrat who is part of the local council who has complained at every board meeting about the homeless and was reputed by the local librarian that the homeless have the right to use the public facility. That made the guy so furious he practically said he didn't want the scum in the library. I've met uppity white people, Russians, Middle Easterners, etc. All in places that have some influence in local area policy, very little influence thank God.

I came from a place where race and class were conflated frequently and that was used as a way to attack lower income people. But here in CA where racism is not that central a problem the issue is fuming hatred for lower income and homeless people.

Stop. Darwin will handle the poor people if we let him.

[disgruntled la native]

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

As long as they stay in their neighborhood? Or if they find assistance and choose to live in your area? I mean to really think that all Section 8 recipients are no goods is a pretty wild thing to believe. Or that people suffering in this economy are all abusing the system. Study after study has shown that people who abuse the system are less than 1% of the problem. It's not a big issue.

The homeless issue is a very structural issue that cannot go away by rearranging some local laws. The number one issue affecting the homeless in the country is a lack of affordable housing, coupled with low unemployment and you get a pretty volatile mix of people who under heavy stress living on the streets become prone to mental health issues and drug abuse. Not all homeless people are drunks or junkies that just lacked gumption and personal responsibility to hold down a job. More often than not it's the other way around, they held jobs, lost them and couldn't get themselves back on their feet and succumbed to drugs and mental health issues living on the streets.

But I attend a lot of neighborhood council meetings and there are always a few nimbys and more affluent folk who practically joined the councils to get rid of low income people and the homeless in their area.

Study after study has shown that people who abuse the system are less than 1%? Please cite at least one study that says that. Preferably, several since that's what you claim.

I never said ALL homeless are drunks and junkies. Never said ALL section 8 are abusers. But a significant number are. As I said, homeless are okay by me if they leave me alone. But when you pay a lot of money to live in a certain neighborhood and you step out your doorstep and some junkie is defecating in front of your lawn, that's when there's a problem!

[BarcelonaFan]

Originally Posted by disgruntled la native

Study after study has shown that people who abuse the system are less than 1%? Please cite at least one study that says that. Preferably, several since that's what you claim.

I never said ALL homeless are drunks and junkies. Never said ALL section 8 are abusers. But a significant number are. As I said, homeless are okay by me if they leave me alone. But when you pay a lot of money to live in a certain neighborhood and you step out your doorstep and some junkie is defecating in front of your lawn, that's when there's a problem!

Of the 10.5 million people, or a third of the people living in poverty or below the poverty line, 84 percent have somebody in the house who is working.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2010.pdf

9/10, 91% of the people who receive entitlements are disabled, elderly or in working households.
Contrary to "Entitlement Society" Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Many have a college degree. Many Young Adults in Poverty Have a College Degree, Report Says - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education
47% actually.

You guys can't get past the idea that the only possible way to fail in America is if you sit back and do nothing. The idea that someone can put out the effort, yet not gain ground is inconceivable to you.

It's an unquestioning belief in the system itself and that it's not faulty. Instead the problem has to lie within the individual. There is a personal responsibility component I agree, but you guys effectively eliminate the collective/social responsibility altogether which makes for some really bad logic and rhetoric.

[BarcelonaFan]

Originally Posted by Ingenere

Stop. Darwin will handle the poor people if we let him.

Darwin is dead, he will not handle the problem. I think you meant Darwin's theory of evolution which is again always conflated by people as Social Darwinism which it is not.

[disgruntled la native]

1. SOMEBODY working - not them!

2. "Disabled", "elderly" are loose definitions

3. College degree means nothing

[Fontucky]

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

The inequality I think is worse in LA though as far as just income goes. Way more people are just struggling to get by as LA is a way more working poor class town than Houston is.

If you include OC in the above, it changes a bit. Section 8 people can live in Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills, even Laguna Beach.

[BarcelonaFan]

Originally Posted by Fontucky

If you include OC in the above, it changes a bit. Section 8 people can live in Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills, even Laguna Beach.

If I include the Woodlands, Sugar Land and Katy, then Houston erases at lot of its income inequality too. I get what you're saying but LA County is pretty bleak in terms of income gap.

[kttam186290]

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

Woah. You know if there was one thing that I liked about Texas for all it's right wing clowns is that they had some modicum of courtesy to fake being polite and grit their teeth if something pissed them off. But in CA, even if you're not from CA kttam, there is absolutely no restraint among the conservatives or uppity minded regardless of political party to literally just act so appalled by lower income or people they perceive to be lower income. I bet you not only think like this and talk about it on forums but you actively show this type of indecent behavior toward others in public like the rest of the rather overtly elitist people I've met in the LA area.

Hold your horses there, Texan! I am from California. I have lived in this state continuously since three months after I was born, which makes me practically a native! So, back off a little on that!

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

You are basically one of the worst things about this city and the only notch I would give against LA; the uppity, overly snooty, NIMBY, have no moral restraint rude right wing types. How can you even generalize a whole group of people like that and without remorse.

I love how preachy you left-wing types get toward those of us who work for a living and pay taxes, while making all of the excuses in the world for the slothfulness and parasitical nature of people who refuse to work but would rather sponge off of the system their entire lives.

Your soap box is a little moldy and worn out and about to fall out from beneath you!

Originally Posted by BarcelonaFan

I tell you even though the most rabid right wing of Texans would probably think this but would never say some of the stuff you said. But for some reason I encounter jerks like you all the time in this city. It's as though you guys just get furious at the thought of low income people (of any race) in your area, just furious like a racist white guy gets furious at a black neighbor moving in his backwoods Georgia neighborhood. You don't even have to convince me that your not a WASP Republican either because the most hateful elitist thing I've heard yet in LA came out of a rich Jewish Liberal Democrat in Toluca Lake. So I know there is a slight elitist, rather classist problem in this town.

Sorry to go off on a rant guys but guys or gals like kttam have been getting on my nerves lately in this city.

And people like you with your left-wing double-standards get on my nerves...BIG TIME!, so I guess we're even, aren't we Tex?