LAT: Mexico Runs on Sidewalk Economy

[DeepModem Mom]

Mexico Runs on Sidewalk Economy
By Marla Dickerson, Times Staff Writer


More than a decade after the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement transformed Mexico into an exporting powerhouse, the nation's formal economy of on-the-books businesses and workers who pay taxes is dramatically losing ground to the underground sector.

From 2000 to 2004, the underground economy was Mexico's sole source of employment growth, and it's getting bigger all the time. Some economists estimate that as many as half the nation's workers eke out a living in subsistence jobs such as street hawkers and day laborers because there is nothing for them in the legitimate economy and no safety net for the jobless....

***

The underground sector provides cheap goods and services for millions of low-income people, while giving Mexico an official jobless rate lower than that of the United States. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, mayor of Mexico City and a 2006 presidential hopeful, credits that entrepreneurial grit for easing tensions in a nation whose formal sector is creating far fewer than the 1 million jobs a year needed just to keep pace with population growth.

But business leaders complain that entire industries are being lost to pirates and off-the-books entrepreneurs. It's costing Mexico big-time in terms of lost tax revenue and formal-sector jobs. Mexico's urban areas are also feeling the heat from the explosion of ambulant vendors, pitting residents' quality of life against peddlers' need to scratch out a living.

The friction is most evident in Mexico City, where an estimated 500,000 itinerant vendors ply their trade, hawking phone cards at traffic lights, bootleg CDs in the subway and snacks from kitchens set up on the sidewalks....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vendors9may09,0,6639905.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[shrike]

1. We saw them in Guadalajara last year

They were everywhere. Some beggars, yes, but mostly entrepreneurs of one strip or another.

[Burma Jones]

2. Sounds a little like the EBay economy

People had better take notice, because we're heading this way. But, think of the spin, we could become "A Nation of Entrepreneurs." My head hurts.....

[shrike]

4. Yeah. I said to my husband when we were down there, "That's

our future."

[HereSince1628]

3. Labor unions should bring in some of them as consultants to

American workers. The future of the software industry could be direct sales on the sidewalks of Manhattan! Displaced middle class workers could be educated to the intracies of fencing stolen goods and the retailing of cheap look-alikes on Michigan Avenue.

Personally, I am thinking of taking the 10% penalty on my retirement and opening up the first pawn shop at the Mall. People can trade in those plastic purchases they've grown tired of for real cash to buy needed food like Cinnabuns and Starbucks.

[Toots]

5. America is going to follow suit

:shrug:

[ninkasi]

6. It's been a long time since I was in Mexico

But that has always been part of the Mexican economy. I see the same thing in Houston, little taco stands set up on vacant lots, people selling anything from live goats...for cabrito...to chickens, snow cone stands, you name it.

I already know a few people who lost their jobs, haven't found anything else, and make a little money by selling things at craft fairs, flea markets, just wherever they can think of.

A couple of years ago, there was a Latina, probably in her fifties, who would go door to door selling home made tamales. I'm seeing more and more of it here, but people have to make a living, and they are trying to do it with almost no resources to get them started.

As we export more and more jobs, this will happen more here. The economy always suffers with Republicans in charge, but the administration we have now make the previous ones look great by comparison.

[murray hill farm]

7. Street vendors in Mexico...

are licensed and do pay taxes...those folks u see walking down the street in popular vacation areas in Mexico...are all licensed and do pay taxes on the goods that they sell to you..granted, it is difficult to monitor...but some communities rather than tax, charge a fee for a certain area of selling to a vendor..such as a street or park, etc. and this is collected monthly to sell in a specific area. I am not saying that the economy is super in mexico for the average person, it is not...but when there is not a booming economy..such as there is not in the usa right now, you are correct...one finds a way to scratch out a living..and street vendor is one of the ways to do it...yes...it is coming to a street near you in the usa...maybe already is there.

[ninkasi]

9. Street vendors in Mexico

have my respect. They work hard, are resourceful, and are not asking for anything other that the opportunity to feed themselves and their families.

A couple of years ago, a gentleman from Mexico, or one of the other countries south of us, used to ride a bicycle through the neighborhood selling ice cream and snow cones. He had a little wagon that he pulled with the bicycle.

One day, a neighbor made fun of him with casual cruelty, mocking the way this man was trying to make a living. As I pointed out, he was trying to do something, he wasn't stealing, he offered something the neighborhood children wanted, and the work couldn't have been easy.

It was summer...and summer in Houston is HOT...but still he made his rounds every day, selling something people wanted, and presumably supporting himself, and perhaps a family. I have a thousand times more respect for him, and the lady selling tamales door to door ,than for the likes of Ken Lay, and other corporate crooks.

I will never, ever, look down on someone trying to earn an honest living. People in this country had best come up with some ideas of their own on how to survive the future after only a little over four years of neocon control.

Who knows? Maybe one of these days, it will be you, or me, pedaling a bicycle through the blistering heat of a summer day, in order to put food on the table, and pay the rent.

[DeepModem Mom]

11. Thanks for this post, ninsaki...

your story says quite a lot.

[FlemingsGhost]

8. Take a long hard look, folks. This is our future. (n/t)

Flem.

[burrowowl]

10. May DF's Mayor

WIN THE PRESIDENCY!!!!