Haves and Have-nots – a widening gap here too. From Reuters:
LONDON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Just yards from the east London street where riots erupted on Monday stands a house for sale that sums up the depth of division in the area.
With five bedrooms, three bathrooms and its own coach house, the elegant property has been put up for sale with an asking price of 1.7 million pounds ($2.75 million). The main attraction, according to the advert, is the sought-after location.
Many residents of the diverse borough of Hackney said it was this ever widening and very visible gap between the rich and poor that has exacerbated tension in recent years, especially as government cuts to welfare payments have started to bite.
Britain, one of the world’s major economies, has a bigger gap between rich and poor than more than three-quarters of other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, according to a 2008 report. Charities in Britain say that inequality is most keenly felt in London.
“It’s us versus them, the police, the system,” said an unemployed man of Kurdish origin in his early 20s, sitting at the entrance to a Hackney housing estate with four Afro-Caribbean friends who nodded in agreement.
“They call it looting and criminality. It’s not that. There’s a real hatred against the system,” he added, listing what he saw as the police prejudice, discrimination and lack of opportunity that led him and his friends to loot shops, torch bins and hurl missiles at police on Monday.
“There’s two worlds in this borough. More and more middle classes are coming and we’re being pushed out. The shops are pricing stuff like it’s the West End, we can’t afford the rents. We’re the outcasts, we’re not wanted any more.
“There’s nothing for us.”
Those who were out on the streets on Monday night, and those who had gathered amid the debris on Tuesday morning, said there was no interaction between the two distinct communities, even though they live practically on top of each other.
The rioting in Hackney was the third night of violence across the capital, sparked by the fatal shooting by police of a man in another poor borough.
“Youths are frustrated, they want all the nice clothes. They ain’t got no money, they don’t have jobs,” a 41-year-old youth worker told Reuters, stood outside the Pembury estate, the scene of much of the trouble on Monday night and home to mostly young black people.
“To live, to have money in their pocket, they have to thieve, they have to rob.
“The people that run this country, they got money, they are rich, they got nice houses. They don’t care about poor people.”
The statistics confirm the problem.
In 2007 Hackney was ranked the second most deprived local authority in England, behind Liverpool. More than 10 percent are unemployed. Some 11,000 people rely on state benefits to live, meaning some 24 people are competing for every available job.
According to the council, Hackney is ranked sixth out of the 32 London boroughs in terms of crime.
At the same time, small one-bedroom flats regularly cost some 300,000 pounds. On a nearby street, smart cafes are full of young families attracted to the parks and transport links to the nearby financial district. Pricey organic food shops stand next to ‘pound shops’ — where all the items cost one pound.
Professor Mike Hardy of the Institute of Community Cohesion said it was not just the division between rich and poor that caused the problem, but the fact they lived so closely together.
“There is a much greater visibility of the difference,” he told Reuters. “In London, the current troubles are almost focused entirely not on a cause or a protest, but on greed and personal want. ‘I haven’t got something and I can take it’.”
Britain’s coalition government has made deep spending cuts since coming into power last year to tackle a big budget deficit. The poor say they have been hit hardest, with people in Hackney pointing to the closure of many services.
“The only way we can get out of this is education, and we’re not entitled to it, because of the cuts. Even for bricklaying you need a qualification and a waiting list for a course. I signed up in November, and still haven’t heard back,” the Kurdish man said.
One thing you have to remember most of SD anyway, is a relative bargain basement pricing compared to London RE,(or all or 90% of Europe for that matter) and we have a lot cheaper transportation and food cost as well so not the same thing (OK maybe NY), I could see that in NY. Or LA, but they do that in LA every few years for one reason or another anyway.
Some say we should raise the taxes on the rich?
When was the last time you got a job from a poor person?
Not nice Jiji, not nice. We haven’t had a riot in a long time, but you can feel the tension building in some parts of town. My fear is when the stimulus runs out as it kept many people busy and money flowing.
My advice to immigrants: If you don’t like a country, don’t immigrate to it. Problem solved!
“Could It Happen Here?”
No, immigrants are the ones with the jobs here.
US Middle Class has been shrinking for years. The Great Recession which wiped out many peoples home equity (i.e. wealth) hasn’t helped. As more people feel financially unstable with insecure futures, it will certainly make unrest more likely to happen.
As a wise man once said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
“We’ll burn this bitch down – get us pissed”
– T. Shakur
Depends on what you mean by ‘here.’ SD will burn down on its own via forces of nature. I can see the pot starting to boil over in LA though. We invented riots.
People are mad because of economic forces they don’t understand. In the UK gov is growing and becoming more and more invasive. (TSA anyone?) To feed the gov beast UK central bankers are printing money like mad. As more and more money/pounds is available to chase after the same number of assets price inflation occurs. The same thing is happening in the USA but we’re not an island so the effects are more spread out.
Riots wont happen here in SD. To illustrate an apples to apples comparison, as this is an immigration issue vs the Govt.
Huge difference looking at our immigration population consisting of border crossers from Canada…ahem Mexico to work here. They can easily go back to MX to work or live with family etc (which apparently they have).
Whereas in London where many neighborhoods are densified with immigrants in pockets from north Africa and the Middle Eastern countries, mobilization is far easier to achieve amongst each other.
Wrap that up in ridiculously liberal Govt programs for the impoverished with little accountability and voila. Its pretty easy just to show up at someones doorstep and put your hands out for money, but when you tell them there isnt anymore, they get upset because they were misinformed or just plain ignorant. Double edged sword.
The UK has more problems with immigrants than we do. The blending of cultures is not easy, especially when the golden mountain turns out to be an illusion. People do not leave their home countries if there are opportunities for them there, When that fails, they look back to their cultural roots to sustain them. The other day there were Muslims in London who wanted to create Sharia Law zones in London. I suspect that this is part of the same. The said came be said of other religious or cultural groups.
I definitely think what’s occurring in London could happen in the United States. People can only take economic malaise for so long before they become desperate. I wonder how the shrinking middle class caught in the middle of this battle are going to cope or what side they will take. Will they take the side of their formerly middle class brethren or will remain neutral?
If the current economic recession turns into a depression and you have austerity, civil unrest, resentment towards the wealthy, a two-tiered society with a very small middle class, tent cities, homeless etc I don’t think North County Coastal will be insulated from the collapse. Will wealthy buyers from out of state or foreign buyers who are used to doormen in their fancy high rises or large gates buffering their mansions feel safe in the area? Places like the Covenant in Rancho Santa Fe can afford private security but most HOA’s and people in non HOA’s can’t. I sincerely hope and pray this doesn’t occur. It would be awful for everyone. I wish we could return to the 1980’s when a large part of North County Coastal was solidly middle to upper middle class, down to earth, sleepy, not as materialistic or congested.
According to this person’s research and analysis, the top U.S. cities most likely to have civil unrest are Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Philadelphia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U24MbKWGFNM
@Thaylor Harmor: when was the last time the rich pay their fair share and stop raping the economy over and over.
Going to Compton this afternoon. I’ll let you know how the people are doing.
@wah-way. Define fair share. If 50% of income is fair, then I can answer your question. It’s right now.
London and Paris (remember last years riots there?) both have huge immigrant populations that have not integrated in any way with society (excepts perhaps the Indian (from India) community in London). Immigrants here in San Diego have often become middle-class within a few generations – Mexican-Americans have opened businesses,gone to college, married into Anglo families, etc. As someone else pointed out, many poorer Mexicans simply went back to Mexico when the construction jobs ended here. I would agree that NYC, LA, etc. may have some nasty problems, but I think it would be somewhat limited here in SD.
@Aztec: please read these articles
1) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/08/nearly-1500-millionaires-paid-no-taxes-in-2009-says-irs.html
2) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html
Just got back from the hood. You can tell which homes for sale are REOs. They have boarded up windows with a Realtor sign out front. Nice look.
@Wah-Wah…
I read ’em.
The link about 1500 “millionaires” actually makes my point more than yours. Out of the 235,000 people reporting $1 mil or more of income, only 1500 didn’t pay any tax. That’s pretty good. And of those, it said most did so via charitable contributions (aka tax paid willingly). That’s even better. BTW, I put quotes around millionaire because income doesn’t mean they HAVE a million$. It means they earned that much. Huuuuge difference.
The rich are paying a lot. I pay 50% of my income to taxes, and I’m guessing you would consider me rich. Is 50% fair?
Your second link is unrelated to the topic. Unless you think Google is “rich”. And…somehow not paying their “fair” share.