I'm dubious illegals are buying homes.

Had a mexican guy come in with no less than 6 kids Saturday and ask me in broken English if he could get a cell phone without a social security number. I was like, uh, no. You can't. Now get outta here. You smell like sweat and dirt.

Racist!

Also dumb on your part you could of given him a walkie talkie and charged him a 100 bucks.

it's trickle-up economics.

Not racist. He didn't have a SSN. And he did stink. And he did have 6 kids with him. Just stating facts.

Steph, could he pay cash for the phone (full price) and pay you in advance 2 years for unlimited service?

it would seem like you wouldn't need a ssn for that.

also, there's lot's of pay as you go plans. do you guys have those?

You can't pay 2 years in advance. And we really don't do pay as you go plans in our store. He could do them at walmart or best buy or somewhere but we're more of a "I'm in a pinch and need some minutes for my already-established pay as you go plan..." and we'll add minutes to their account.

So you're a bona fide hustler.

I'm a hustler baby!

On Friday you'll be able to get Dish Network services like this without the SSN. Tell all your illegal immigrant friends, people!

Fuck it, I'm going to stop giving mine, use a fake name and then when I don't pay, they can't report it to my credit.

I guess the recession is officially over since there has been two quarters of growth. The past quarter the economy grew 5.7! So are we out of the woods? Or will we plunge back into recession this year? A double dip.

I think the recession is over but the recovery will be slow.

All in the news today was that in the last 1/4 the Uk economy grew 0.01% WOOP!! Everyone saying thank fuck for that.....Em, that was called Christmas guys, when people buy any old useless crap presents.

They will revise GDP growth down 2-3% over the coming weeks. They always do. And while that will still reflect a modest improvement unemployment is still on the rise in almost every major metro area. This is primarily because government spending is accounting for most of the rise in GDP. The last numbers I saw was that gov spending will account for 25% of the GDP in 2010. So the real question is: what good is a jobless recovery?

I'm not sure we'll double dip, I have a feeling this will be a "U" shaped rebound that won't show lasting results in the private sector until Q4 or 2011 at the earliest.

good article Zwick. The author sensationalizes the problem but he's basically correct. The US is moving from a manufacturing economy to a service economy and service jobs on the average pay less than manufacturing jobs. All the small manufacturing jobs are being outsourced ,like stamping, textiles and paper. The US cannot compete with the cheaper labor.
But in the long term this will balance out because the workers in the other countries will/are demanding higher wages and transportation costs will always increase as well. So eventually the playing field will level because the labor costs will increase and the transportation costs will increase as well.

Well, I gotta call bullshit on some of the sources though. I agree with the overall message though. Now, let's raise our glasses to more taxes. Here they come.