[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

Right, that's the old canard about lazy, expensive Americans who can't pick up their own lettuce or tie their own shoes. Meanwhile, our teenagers, who used to be able to make a buck at a car wash or a gas station are wasting themselves doing drugs because the employers can't have enough of those cheap illegals.

[LS]

No, doesn't hold up. We pay (let's use the term) "white" teens $10-12 an hour for nothing work in the suburbs. Know what? They won't do it. There is a cultural view, reinforced by magazines, TV, and so on, that "service" work and hard physical labor is not acceptable. So kids are willing to be lifeguards or work at Kings Island or sometimes wait tables for $5 an hour, but they WILL NOT PICK COTTON.

Now, you can whine about this being a "canard" but this is my area of study, more or less---business economic history---and all the evidence is that there are things much deeper at work than just the DOLLARS.

For example, go to any U.S. high school, but preferably a "white" one. Ask, "If I were willing to pay you $40,000 a year upon graduation, would you work as a maid in a hotel? Or as a dishwasher? Or as a butler?" In many cases, you'd find that these kids would not do those jobs even if they paid double that, because of the SOCIAL dislocations. These jobs are looked down on, they are not "rewarding," they aren't "fulfilling," and all the other stuff, rightly or wrongly, that we are told jobs must be. The work WILL NOT GET DONE.