Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley issued a heartfelt plea to Canadian visitors this week, acknowledging the city’s tourism-dependent economy is suffering from a dramatic decline in international visitors, particularly from Canada, which represents the city’s largest international market.
“As the mayor of Las Vegas, I’m telling everybody in Canada, please come. We love you, we need you, and we miss you,” Berkley said during a press conference this week, where she addressed the multiple challenges facing the entertainment capital’s tourism industry.
The mayor’s latest comments echo concerns she first raised in an August press conference, where she painted a stark picture of the tourism decline.
“International travel is way down. People are not coming to the United States,” Berkley said last month. “’
Great yet ?
Yeah that’s the unfortunate truth. We can argue all day long about what the best way forward is, but most people do not care unless they are actively being hurt right this moment. And that’s ignoring the fact that there is an absurd amount of enthusiastic support for Trump among our neighbors.
I think we have a situation where what used to be “middle class” paths through life, like a high school educated father working a manufacturing job to support a wife and 2.3 kids, are now the “you can probably keep yourself alive if you keep on your employers good side” working poor that feel like indentured slaves.
Filling the actual middle class slot are the highly educated and specialized workers. Like in my case, I am a single income earner for my family and we own our single family home. But, I have three degrees (two STEM) with 20 years of experience and live in a blue collar neighborhood in a house that’s older than me. And we bought the place over 15 years ago.
Then I guess the upper middle class is reserved for your medical specialists, successful business owners, and corporate drones who stumbled their way up to the c-suite.
And somehow, the government and corporations have convinced them all to punch down.