Misanthrope - please explain!

[luke]

Well, one week in Mexico, and if it weren't for the fact that I have relatives here to stay with I'd be broke.
I'm having some difficulties understanding the economy and the way it works here. Daily wages apparently start from $6-8 USD (more competitive wages being maybe around 15 pesos/hour, which would be about $20-25 USD a day), but unless there is a very cleverly disguised dual pricing system, I have no idea how the lower class could possibly survive.
In all honesty it seems to be just as expensive if not more so for most commodities and services than it is in Canada. (and people make a lot more than 8 bucks a day and still complain it's not enough). The standard of living seems to be decent- lots of cars, houses are all made of stone, and the people carry a healthy amount of extra weight. I hear the education and health care systems are not quite up to par, but it seems that the bulk of the population fits somewhere into the middle class (mind you I haven't been to any remote villages, yet). The cost of living somehow doesn't correlate to the wages.
One explaination offered to me was that in recent years various sectors have been privatized, and consequently bought by an elite group of rich families who proceeded to raise prices because they have complete control of the market. This would leave the lower middle class almost paralized, earning wages that would barely be subsistance. If this is the case, it's surprising in a country that had such a strong communist movement in the first have of the last century.
Maybe I'm just not seeing things correctly. As it is, I can barely afford to travel here... costs of transport and food alone being somewhat prohibitive, accomadation (can't camp all the time) seems to totally lack the type of establishment that caters to budget travellers. I stayed for one night in Puerto Villarta, in the cheapest dorm in town, for the same price that I can stay in a capsule in any Japanese city outside of Tokyo. And other travellers tell me that Guadalajara and Mexico City are more expensive!!
How do the common people get around here? What am I not seeing?

yoroshiku
luke

 

[Misanthrope]

You are not seeing that the country is in the fucking edge of a full scale revolution. To that you have to add a fucking financial reform that rises the taxes on most things, and will make things like transportation even MORE expensive. O and BTW ive been to puerto vallarta and since is a touristic city its like too nice compared to the cities. Low middle and low class just dont make it, this is why corruption is so high. People always get some short of side bussiness to support themselves, sometimes totally honest but sometimes you rather fuck the rich american artists and burn some cds and having something to eat at night. If you go around washing cars you make 3 times what you make if you work in an entry-line factory as labor worker.

Lets take my family for example, started as mid mid class but as my father loss a couple of jobs we scaled down to low mid, we started paying 200 bucks for the house credit my dad got, 2 years later its around 600 bucks( at month, the average profesional salary its about 800 to 1200 at month and thats before light that its close to 100 food for a family of 4 that neets like 300 and other services and gas that is another 300...that about tells you )and my dad had no job, he was paying the interest of the interest literally, also all credit cards were shutdown to hell and we have debts of a house that its valued at 30 grand for almost 100 grand or more, all because of the insanely high interest rates. My father had like 1700 grand or 5000 in a credit card now is being charged like 60000. He just stopped paying, he joined an organization called "El Barzon" of a bunch of people that get lawyers and literally just stop paying the houses and stop house auctions and take action against the goverment in protest and shit. The only option we had for this was moving into the ghetto and being killed by a dopehead. If you want to dream about having a house that is more than a whole a Professional University degree is a necesity, if you want to be mid or high mid class you got to have a master's degree.

You see people here is corrupted sometimes because its pushed to it, its the only way to survive. And privatization and public services consetions are just bullshit. My gas recive was like 60 bucks at month not long ago, what does an old guy that gets 120 bucks at month its gonna do? its gonna die of a fucking neumonia because all the cold showers it got so ridiculous there was a huge boicot in my city against gas and they scaled the price down just a bit. My theory is that people puts with crap so much here just because they either cheat their way around, or are lost with soccer and beer and cheap ugly whores in dance joints, but even that is starting to not do the trick.

And Mexico is not even considered third world that about tells you how bad the world is right now.

 

[luke]

good for your old man!

So how do the lower class people survive? I'm staying near Chapala now, and admittedly it's all fuckin rich gringo's and club houses for fat cats from Mexico City, but in a poorer part of town the other day I saw a sign on somebody's house selling red corn for 11 pesos/kg. If corn is a staple, isn't that awfully high? People don't look like they're starving, but how could you feed your family when things are as they are? Do people have to cheat each other all the time? I can understand if they want to cheat me, but people in the same boat as they are?

 

[Misanthrope]

Yea cheating and creativity or both at the same time get you around. Low class family survive on tortillas and beans pretty much, and if they look fat its either too much beer ( that is as cheap as piss, if it doesnt looks like it you are getting robbed )or too much intestinal problems. But people usually cheat others is like police man and transits ( transit and police are separated here ) stop you for nothing only to get a 2-50 dollars bribe, police men are under daily quota, cap drivers alter they taximeter to make more, people working on supermarkets as cashiers steel like mad bastards, everyone has a friend of a friend to get a deal on something only rich or idiots pay full price to things like getting your car fixed, you steal cable you steal the power you connect to the neightboor's water pipe you ask for a friend to get you special restaurant prices you get a friend who works in a deposit to get free beer, you steal t.v.s from inventory and go sell them to the flea market, you steal nintendos and psxs in your spare tire spot whe crusing the border and sell them at the flea market, you download mp3s like a mad bastard and sell 6bucks burned copies of music games software and anything, this is how you get around. But no matter how much you tow with resourses the overall resources remain about the same this is why to me a revolution is inminent within the next 10 to 30 years unless something radically changes.

 

[luke]

I was discussing your response with my cousin, and he opioned that if people were a little more contientious with things like family planning, there wouldn't be such a burden on the system/families.
His exact words were something more along the lines of "If they'd stop fucking so much, there'd be more food to go around." He's asked me to post this, to get your opinion.
There does seem to be a fair amount of visual evidence to support the theory that there are many very young women with children, and just a very large population of youth at that.

 

[Misanthrope]

That wouldnt totally solve the problem. There is terrible overpopulation and the lower class seems to commit the same mistakes over and over. Take the family of my aunts pacient ( She is a doctor in a public access hospital ). They are really low class and the Father of the housed bailed ( of course ), the Mother of the house works as a Maid and makes a decent living, But the kids omg. They are all under 19 and they are all married/supporting a partner/pregnat already with no studies or future for that matter. I mean the 17 year old girl threaten living the house if she was not allowed to get married, come on she will have kids at 19, have her husband become a drunken construction worker that spends all the money on whores and beats her at 22, divorced and living with her tired to death mother, remarried at 28, beaten and left alone again at 33 and death at 38 for working her ass off all her life. Leaving nothing less than at least 2 kids per marriage. This is a tipical situation, but i dont think it is the only part of the economical ecuation here, it does not matters if you have a family of 3 or 7 you cant support a family of 3 with the income of an honest single turn job, working double turn or extra hours is amost for the small low class family. If a 3 piece family situation looks bad a 7 piece family puts you over the edge and ready to take the streets and block them to demand higher pays. Over populated situations just make things worst, but a normal or small population wouldnt make them better there is a diference there imho.