27% of LA County living in poverty (salary, price, manufacturing)

[radiolibre99]

Creative destruction. Many businesses go bust or are swallowed by bigger ones. Its true that small business employs America but its also true that 90% go belly up.

Crises are never solved under this new economy, they're only shifted.

[NyWriterdude]

Originally Posted by disgruntled la native

When you have a huge stream of poor people coming in every year (Latin American and Asian immigrants tend to be the ones already poor in their countries), they're not suddenly going to become rich here. Most of them work hard and manage to scrape by. And a few of their kids move up into the middle and upper classes, through education.

Europe doesn't have all the poor people coming in we do. They tend to be homogenous nations where the people have had centuries of tradition. We really take care of our immigrant poor and make sure they're okay, not dying and starving on the street. Does county hospital turn down an injuerd immigrant with no insurance or money? No. Are struggling families starved because they have 7 kids? No, there's welfare. We're not a bad country.

I do, however, agree we work too hard and the CEOs are overcompensated .

You do indeed have immigrant poor from around the world in Europe. You had a lot of immigrants in Europe from Africa, Asian, and the Middle East. Especially in Britain, France, Spain, Holland, etc. In the 90s boom in European nations, places like Spain which formerly weren't that diverse got huge waves of immigrants from poor countries. England and France had already had established immigrant populations. Sweden and Germany too have immigrant populations.

[NyWriterdude]

I'm the the OP started this thread. There are people who like to pretend everyone in LA lives in Hollywood Hills or Malibu and drives a Mercedes. And pretend that working class and poor people don't EXIST.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

It has been said that in this state, what wealth and economic growth that does exist is found in the coastal urban areas (and relatively speaking, that is true). Now, think a bit about 27% poverty in the preeminent coastal urban area. If that is what is good, than imagine how bad it is in places like Imperial County and Kings County. The Used-to-be-Golden State.

[Tex?Il?]

People move to LA and California in general to BE poor. Because of benign climate, and tolerant laws. Being poor and homeless is much more unsafe and life threatening elsewhere. You can't be homeless in North Dakota. Heck you can't even be homeless on the Gulf Coast with dangerous heat humidity only broken by regular severe thunderstorms.

Besides in cheap areas, with little housing demand you have squatters or people who live in rundown houses you can buy for the price of a VCR. Consequently you don't see the poor because they have some roof over their head.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by majoun

Northern CA and especially the Bay Area is holding up. Southern CA is dying.

You might think so, but even here, the wealth generation is very concentrated in a few "superstar" lines of business. Underemployment is a huge issue, manufacturing crashed and will never return, and even the "superstar" firms place most of their new middle income jobs either in other states or overseas.

What we are seeing here, as well, is hot money driven real estate inflation in the choice areas. That hot money is somewhat from the "superstar" businesses but plenty of it is international hot money. By and large, average people here cannot afford the real estate costs and home ownership by the middle class is increasingly out of reach.

Also, crime is increasing, and often dramatically so, in what used to be deemed "safe" areas. This is particularly true of property crime.

I would have to say the prognosis is not good.

[Tex?Il?]

I do however agree that there are much deeper problems in our era but they are national problems that are due to global patterns.

We enjoyed postwar prosperity from the 50s and 60s because the rest of the rest of the industrialized world was still recovering from being reduced to rubble and thus the US had not competition. American hegemony started to diminish starting in the 70s because Japan and Germany finally rebuilt their countries and economies, (as well as UK, etc.).

Then in the 90s, the rest of Asia woke up one day and decided that this communism/marxism/socialism stuff wasn't working out so well and the US never was the same again.

[chessgeek]

Originally Posted by yby1

South LA. I live in an area called West Athens, near the Gardena border. Paid around $350,000 for a house here. lol. Honestly, I can't complain about where I live. My biggest complaint is that it's not walkable, but that's because of the crime (which is improving) and lack of nearby retail and dining (which goes back to the crime). Everything is about a 5-10 minute drive away. It's getting better though and you are seeing new housing communities and shopping centers popping up. You also have realtors constantly banging on your door to try to get you to sell.

I have never heard of realtors actually doing in person cold calls to someone's house. Hopefully, that does not happen often.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by majoun

And have been poor ever since the riots.

And we're still in massive denial about it.

Has nothing to do with it. LA had major race riots back in the 60s too.

If anything the long term effect probably had a silver lining in that people fled some of those bad neighborhoods to far flung desert towns like Lancaster, Moreno Valley, San Bernardino, etc. The neighborhoods where the riots took place have probably improved slightly since going from Black to hispanic.

The reason why the economy was never quite as strong after the riots had to do with the fact that they coincided with the end of the cold war - thus the end of major defense contract spending which supported the economy.

Military aircraft manufacturing I'm sure either directly or indirectly contributed to a lot of low skill jobs (as well as of course high skill jobs) not too different from the war auto manufacturing provided high pay low skill jobs in the Great Lakes states.

[Tex?Il?]

One other reason small reason I think that could contribute to a higher poverty rate, is that LA County is one of the few places, where people move to without having a job first and live off savings and investments while they seek out gainful employment.

Almost all young adults without families. I was technically slightly below the poverty line last year but had savings and investments that paid my expenses while I was getting myself out there work-wise (this year my income is about three times as much).