BARVENNON.COM
18th March 2004
AUSTRALIAN DIARY
- LOS Angeles -
Los Anglos (City of the
Angels, derogatorily La-La-Land) is, with a population of about eight
million, the second largest city
in the USA. The population of California (30 million) is about
50%
Afro-American or Spanish-American. In LA that estimate
seems
conservative. The Spanish Americans and African Americans together
occupy the support positions in LA. It is they who drive the
buses, sweep the streets and work on the checkout lines. European
Americans have the top end positions in the retail and service
industries. This division reflects the levels of education.
In general the Spanish Americans are immigrants, frequently without
adequate language skills.
The
CBD of LA (what Americans call "downtown") is
about 45 km from the coast. LA is built mostly on flat land, with
surrounding hilly or mountainous regions mostly left undeveloped.
From
many parts of
greater LA it can be seen (smog permitting) that the higher mountain
peaks to the east (around 3,500 meters) are snowcapped. In the 20
days I have been here, there has been an all day fog on at least three
days, although the temperature has been only slightly cooler than
Sydney in the same season.
I arrived in Los Angeles on 2nd March. Many things are
backwards. Not just the water swirling backwards down the
plughole. Angelenos drive on the wrong side of the road, Their light
switches are upside down. Fortunately they seem to shake right
handed, and the hot tap is on the left
Angelenos have a love
affair with their cars. Consequently I was agreeably
surprised to find that there is an extensive (and reasonably reliable)
public transport system called "The Metro". The metro is cheap, a
US$3.00 ticket allows unrestricted travel all over the network all day
by train or bus and for seniors (those older than 62) fares are
discounted. Weekly, fortnightly and monthly tickets can be
purchased at a considerable discount. It is not a small network, about
50KM radius from the center to Malibu in the NE, long beach in the
south. It stretches at least as far as far as say around
Sydney's CBD to Wyong and Woollongong. They seem to achieve these
low prices by cutting costs. Many train stations seem to operate
most of the time with zero staff. The only staff I have ever seen at
Hollywood & Highland was one station
cleaner on one occasion. The only other staff seems to be the train
drivers.
There are no gates onto the platforms, everything seems to operate on
honesty. The penalties for evasion are published: a fine of $250
and community work. Bus tickets can be purchased by putting the
money into a locked steel box on the bus, the driver issues a
ticket. This simple strategy seems designed to render holdups
useless.
Getting back to cars. There is a shortage of refining capacity
in the USA, and since Angelenos have a NIMBY (not in my back yard)
attitude to things like power stations and refineries, they must import
refined fuel from neighboring states. Unleaded Petrol is
currently about
US$2.25 per US gallon, (about 3.8 liters.) That works out to
about 67.5 cents Australian per liter. Normally the price is
around US$1.65 per US gallon, which would be about 50 cents Australian
a liter. Traveling Australians beware. Unlike
Australia, third party personal and third party property insurance in
the USA does
not attach to the car, but to the person. If you drive a car and
hurt someone, you are not covered unless you specifically purchased
appropriate insurance. On the other hand everything not
forbidden is
permitted. So right turns at red traffic lights (= a left turn in
Australia) are permitted unless a sign says otherwise.
The price structure in LA is mixed. Food is mostly the
same price as in Australia. Cheeses are about twice as expensive,
and not to my taste. The high cost of dairy products is probably
a result of the US farm
lobby, which restricts imports of cattle products and sugar. To
my taste the food is bland. LA citizens would obtain cost and
health benefits if competitive food imports were permitted. Cars are
expensive to hire (US$50/day including insurance). Shared
accommodation can be had in Hollywood for around US$20/night.
Hollywood occupies a cultural niche similar to Kings Cross, with lots
of backpacker hostels, strip clubs and signs warning against
"cruising". Apparently the LA police department is using
policewomen to entrap men, and fining them heavily. On
the other hand shared accommodation at the beach side suburbs (Venice,
Santa Monica) costs around $30/night, with single rooms being about 2.5
times as expensive.
There is about as much panhandling (begging) as there is in Sydney, and
, like Sydney, there are people sleeping on the streets. They are
more open about it in LA, reflecting possibly a more permissive policy
by police. The homeless in LA seem organized, their belongings
are stacked in supermarket trolleys, and they are allowed to
sleep in sheltered positions on the well lit roads.
I have mostly talked to the unemployed or marginally employed.
The Californians that I meet seem much more politically aware than
their counterpart Australians. They are more aware of the
European political structure, and fairly uniform in their negative
opinion of the Muslim religion, which they see as being a sponsor of
terrorism.
I met a lifeguard at Malibu. He was critical of the government's
policy of exporting jobs and seemed unimpressed with the government's
argument that exporting those jobs made American businesses more
competitive. On the other hand, immigrants/tourists that I spoke
to are finding it difficult to obtain employment because of the
competition from Spanish Americans.
I have met several would be entrants to the entertainment industry,
young people who seem to be living on the streets, hoping to be
noticed. Some want to be actors, some want to be musicians or
newsreaders. I have met a few in the twilight of their
careers. They were not successful enough to put aside sufficient
funds to retire, and are now near to destitute. Hollywood, like
King's Cross, is a harsh, sad environment. There is a
savage price for the moments of glamor.
Well what is happening to the US economy? I have not been here
for long enough to have a trustworthy baseline, but I get the
impression of an alive economy. Sure there are black spots, like
a huge new shopping mall at Long Beach that is only 30% occupied.
On the other
hand, there are not swathes of abandoned businesses. I know that
the investment managers are concerned that employment data is not
rising to match
the apparently strong economy. As I have speculated before, there
is a paradigm shift away from "capitalism" to
"entrepreneurial ism". Which is big trouble for those investment
managers of superannuation and insurance corporations with capital
to invest
because in whatever industry they invest the loot, sooner or later an
entrepreneur will figure out a way to do it cheaper, for next to no
capital, out of a garage in Idaho (or wherever). And their
investment will
be history.
In LA the talk on the airwaves has concerned gay marriage and
IRAQ. Opinion does seem divided on gay marriages. My own
two cent solution is based in history. Once ecclesiastical courts
managed all marriage, birth, death and inheritance matters. The state
has taken charge of the last three, but still does not actually marry
people, it approves a contract usually undertaken in a church called a
marriage contract. So my solution is to permit gay people to be
married in the eyes of the law, however each church must determine
within it's congregation whether gay marriage is sanctified by God.
My recollection of events surrounding the decision to war with Iraq was
that initially it was decided to displace an evil and wicked regime
just because it was evil and wicked. Somebody argued that being
"evil and wicked" was not a sufficiently concise reason for regime
change. Bush's advisers cogitated, and decided that, since Saddam
had defied the terms of peace, (being an agreement that he allow
inspections as to whether he had WMD) then that defiance was sufficient
reason to go to war.
Apparently Saddam thought it was a bluff. Somebody ran a
disinformation program that conquest of Iraq was logistically
impossible without land support. Apparently Saddam's advisers
(and the Australian Strategic
Policy Institute) swallowed that disinformation program hook, line
and sinker, (although I suppose the ASPI could now reveal that it was
an integral part of the disinformation initiative).
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