Bingo. And you know how they decimated the drywall industry here, don’t you? Great small businesses, dominated by middle class AA families. Gone gone gone.
My then husband was laid off from a white collar job in a blue collar industry the MONTH Obama was elected. It destroyed our family. It’s been a tough 8 years and winning would be pretty nice.
We barely clung to life after about 2007 - the tail end of the Bush years. Illegals started eating up so much of our retail work, I had to start taking on odd jobs that I would have formerly considered far beneath my status, skill, and experience.
We went from having six full time employees, to just me by my lonesome in my pickup truck. It was devastating. We lost our house, our cars, our motorcycles, fancy toys, bank accounts, credit, and most of all, our security and peace of mind.
Our family lived rougher than I'd like to admit for two to three years, when I finally just gritted my teeth and began fighting on the illegals' terms. I cut our street prices down to a level that was on par with theirs, and finally began getting work again, but at 45% less than what we made before.
The Obama years were hard for us, but we've somehow managed to claw back much of what we lost in that time. We're still not making what we're worth, so we make up for it by hustling like 23 year olds. That's really hard for a guy my age, but I know my stuff, and my eldest kids do most of the heavy lifting on the jobs.
This is why I can't wait to see the illegals begin disappearing from the job sites, one by one. I'm hoping that by the end of this year, we'll finally be able to raise our prices close to something reasonable. I'm sick to death of feeding my family on peon's wages.