On Saturday, June 3, we had breakfast, then went to the Saturday market at Lazaro Cardenas Park, buying some craft gifts and edibles.
After lunch at restaurant outdoors on the Malecón, we caught our taxi to the airport at 1:30. We mentioned to the driver that I had been to Puerto Vallarta 29 years earlier, and there had been many changes since then. He said that there had, indeed. The city had more people, was more spread out, there were many more hotels, the cost of living was much higher. People had a hard time making ends meet. His wife worked in a hospital and was making 80 pesos (a little over $4) a day. We had earlier talked with a man who had worked in a wholesale butcher shop. He had made 100 pesos (about $11) a day, working long hours with little training. Early on, he had chopped off the end of his finger. His supervisor had told him to wrap it up, put on a glove and go back to work. At the end of the day, he had gone to the hospital, telling them that he had injured himself at home, not wanting to jeopardize his job. At the other end of the economic spectrum in Mexico is Carlos Slim, who bought the national telephone company when it was privatized, and has on-and-off passed Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos to be considered richest man in the world. Mexico is the real world, like the great majority of societies in human history, with a tiny, fabulously wealthy ruling class, while the vast majority of people scratch out a bare living. We in America and Europe live in a bubble that is threatened more and more by increasing inequality, and the fact that globalization and the productivity increases due to automation are controlled by the wealthy and powerful. Xenophobic nationalist populists in many first-world countries are trying to strengthen the walls of this bubble, but the policies of the Trump administration, for instance, are actually increasing the inequality, so that if things keep going the way they have been, some day the bubble will pop and we will join the third world.
Our flight was late getting out, so we didn't get home until after ten o'clock. It had snowed while we were gone. That afternoon in Puerto Vallarta, the temperature had been 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). When I went out to get our paper the next morning in Minnesota, the temperature was minus four degrees Fahrenheit (minus twenty Celsius). This was a swing of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 50 degrees Celsius.
We liked Puerto Vallarta. Mary Joy actually liked it better than Merida, which surprised me. Of course, we ate very well there, and had our favorite hot-chocolate place (Vallarta Factory, where Arnold Schwarzenegger had hung out smoking their hand-made cigars while filming Predator) and favorite ice cream parlor (Lix).
After lunch at restaurant outdoors on the Malecón, we caught our taxi to the airport at 1:30. We mentioned to the driver that I had been to Puerto Vallarta 29 years earlier, and there had been many changes since then. He said that there had, indeed. The city had more people, was more spread out, there were many more hotels, the cost of living was much higher. People had a hard time making ends meet. His wife worked in a hospital and was making 80 pesos (a little over $4) a day. We had earlier talked with a man who had worked in a wholesale butcher shop. He had made 100 pesos (about $11) a day, working long hours with little training. Early on, he had chopped off the end of his finger. His supervisor had told him to wrap it up, put on a glove and go back to work. At the end of the day, he had gone to the hospital, telling them that he had injured himself at home, not wanting to jeopardize his job. At the other end of the economic spectrum in Mexico is Carlos Slim, who bought the national telephone company when it was privatized, and has on-and-off passed Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos to be considered richest man in the world. Mexico is the real world, like the great majority of societies in human history, with a tiny, fabulously wealthy ruling class, while the vast majority of people scratch out a bare living. We in America and Europe live in a bubble that is threatened more and more by increasing inequality, and the fact that globalization and the productivity increases due to automation are controlled by the wealthy and powerful. Xenophobic nationalist populists in many first-world countries are trying to strengthen the walls of this bubble, but the policies of the Trump administration, for instance, are actually increasing the inequality, so that if things keep going the way they have been, some day the bubble will pop and we will join the third world.
Our flight was late getting out, so we didn't get home until after ten o'clock. It had snowed while we were gone. That afternoon in Puerto Vallarta, the temperature had been 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). When I went out to get our paper the next morning in Minnesota, the temperature was minus four degrees Fahrenheit (minus twenty Celsius). This was a swing of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 50 degrees Celsius.
We liked Puerto Vallarta. Mary Joy actually liked it better than Merida, which surprised me. Of course, we ate very well there, and had our favorite hot-chocolate place (Vallarta Factory, where Arnold Schwarzenegger had hung out smoking their hand-made cigars while filming Predator) and favorite ice cream parlor (Lix).
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