« World of Warcraft Burning Crusade Expansion | Main | 64-bit Windows Not Quite Ready for Prime-time »
March 6, 2007
See This? This is Sand!
I was reading an article this morning about people who work at Disneyland, but don’t make enough money to afford a decent place to live. It said that some of them live in two bedroom apartments that cost in the neighborhood of fifteen-hundred dollars a month … so they have to pack in three, four, even eight people into these apartments or motel rooms. The article was advocating that Disney should assist with various efforts to create low-income housing near the park.
As I was reading it, all I could think of was the late, great Sam Kinison …
Kinison had a skit where he talked about seeing a commercial advertising ways to help the hungry in Africa or some such. He pointed out that the aid organizations were doing it all wrong. What they should be doing instead of shipping these starving people food is that they should be giving them a few hundred dollars and a U-Haul so that they can move someplace where there is food. The punchline was, “See this? This is sand! Nothing grows here. Nothing’s ever going to grow here!”
And really, the Disney thing is the same situation. We shouldn’t be making low-income housing so that people can continue to live in abject poverty in a hugely over-priced area. We should be giving these people opportunities to move someplace where they can make a living wage with their current skills. Or help them learn new skills so they can make a wage where they can afford to live in the area they want to live in. And if enough people see the situation for what it is and refuse to be treated in this way, then something will happen. Either Disney will have to start paying more for people to work there … or housing prices will go down in the area because nobody wants to live in a place like that. Either way … problem solved!
Update: Here’s a YouTube link to the skit.
Posted by Legion at March 6, 2007 8:14 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.legionrants.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/254
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)