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Monterey is Becoming a Very Cold and Cruel Place to Struggle at. by James Mason It has become clear: the economic strategy of pandering to a tourist based local economy works no longer. This region needs a complete turnaround in planning and development. First, we desperately need to become a “backyard of Silicon Valley”. People are suffering because of our planners’ reluctance to face reality. We worry about trivial luxuries, like not being able to speed across the land at 70 mph because of “the others causing congestion.” This NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitude hurts the economy, and that hurts the people most vulnerable to loss and deprivation, the soon to be extinct Middle Class, and the Working Class poor. Monterey has almost no high tech jobs, very little affordable housing, no money for our schools, no service area jobs that provide a living wage, little hope for the working class poor, and a brain drain has resulted from educated adults moving away for work in the bay area (north). One way that the Governments of the Monterey Peninsula maintain the facade of a beautiful and peaceful region, is to manipulate residential zoning in an effort to force it's workers to "store them selves," in a nearby city, where living is not that much easier, less clean, more crowded, and where the despair of each others lives is shared visibly, manifest as crime and alcoholism and other substance abuse behaviors, which aide the individual in dealing with despair. So, if you see a worker, driving a beat up old, used car, toward Monterey, honk your horn and wave to him or her and smile in appreciation of their sacrifice for the tourist industry of the Monterey peninsula. Here is an example of the type of humans that are running city government, in Monterey. It was brought to attention of the officials of the city that a severe labor shortage is coming; this was likely the doing of the local chamber of commerce. The labor shortage they feared was not of college educated professionals, or doctors or lawyers, it was cheap labor exclusively that they feared was dwindling at a rapid rate. And it is true – if you are working poor, and can afford to move to a new apartment, away from an economy based on low wage workers, and rent a U-Haul truck, its best to get out now. One answer the city of Monterey has to this problem is to select under- achieving high school students and offer them a change of curriculum that places them into the Regional Occupational Program class (subsidized by everyone’s tax dollars), which exclusively teaches the Hospitality Industry “skills”. This is unforgivable. To yank a poorly scoring student away from a public school, using our tax dollars, and place them in a class that teaches bed making, phone answering, and other such “career skills”, is unethical, and should be stopped and those responsible fired. These aren’t true vocations. None of these jobs pay a live-able wage, especially considering the cost of living where these jobs are. Public schools are not supposed to give up hope on students, until they are out the door – gone. How can educators give a message to the underachieving child that they are worth only a janitor’s job, or valets, or a maid, or a pizza cook? I see this behavior as political exploitation of child labor for the economic gain of those already prospering. |
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