Quote:
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Originally Posted by Bill Howell
Some of the info came from this email. Taken from the LA times.
From the L.A. Times
1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County ( L.A. County has 10.2 million people)
are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are
predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
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As a resident of Los Angeles County that number seems extremely high. Assuming that's an accurate quote, I wonder how the LA Times defined "worker." The census data reports a little over 3,800,000 non-farm jobs in LA County in 2003. Now either the census bureau managed to count all jobs held by illegal immigrants for which they are paid in cash - pretty unlikely in my estimation - or the LA Times is claiming there are, in addition to the 3,800,000 reported jobs another over 2,500,000 jobs held by illegal immigrants. For that to be true, however,
every illegal immigrant (regardless of age, etc.) would have to be working two jobs (there are estimated to be about 1,300,000 illegal immigrants in LA County). As industrious as most illegals are, that also seems unlikely.
Two other thoughts, (i) the 40% figure, again assuming it's true, likely misleads how much actual tax revenue is lost, as illegal immigrant employees paid in cash are unlikely actually to have to pay much federal or state income taxes under our progressive tax schemes; and (ii) we conviently ignore the fact that the illegal immigrant employees paid in cash are likely cleaning the homes, mowing the yards and cooking in the kitchens of the favorite restaurants of nice folks who bemoan the illegal immigration problem on boards like this.
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With that, I'm not going to post in this thread any more. It started out with Stuart simply trying to tell a joke; someone was offended he used the contraction "Xmas" (which I've seen used for the more than 55 years I've been able to read and is hardly PC), and then the thread went off on a spree of bashing various groups with whom some folks here apparently disagree.
Sincerely, Merry Christmas to all.