One of our sales reps (Mexican immigrant, natch) was twiddling a twenty-peso note between his fingers just now. I gave him two bucks for it; I figure that’s a good investment.
— Comment I left at Tam’s place.
Incidentally, even in the current economic climate we still can’t find non-Latino workers to work for California minimum wage — that is, unless we want to hire druggies or felons, which we don’t. Say what you like about the Mexican immigrant workforce, but in our experience they are generally not whacked-out junkie criminals like everybody else in our wage price point.
Those of you in America might be interested to know that California’s minimum wage is… wait for it… eight dollars an hour.
From where I sit in Puerto Vallarta David, that 20 Peso note is worth $1.60 USD, but Pesos are holding their vale better than dollars right now.
Down here in Banderas Bay, there is a building boom on. Plenty of work, enough to support a brand new Walmart just up the hotel road out on the new 6-lane National Highway. Real-estate sales have slowed a little bit, but there has been NO value loss as in the USA. New cars are everywhere, I see few of the beaters of a decade ago. Every taxi is air conditioned, and all but the local busses.
Basically, it looks like any other country with a decent cash flow.
Don’t tell the Mexicans that they’re poor, they’ll laugh in your face.
That said, there ARE poor areas in Mexico.
Nayarit isn’t one of them.
Here in Austin, Texas, people doing day labor picking up trash on the side of the road get $10 an hour. If you can speak English and operate a cash register, you can get $12 an hour with some health coverage. Our unemployment did rocket up to 7.2% tho.