J

une 13, p7

Another public shooting in the US, in Santa Monica shows that the US is a declining nation colored by high unemployment and underemployment, a shaky economy and deteriorating public services. I know so because I live in California, the state where Santa Monica is located.

Despite the well-to-do external image of California as the home of Hollywood in the south and Silicon Valley in the north, it is a state that has been the worst run for the last two years in terms of financial health, standards of living and government services. (By Jennie S. Bev, Santa Clara, California)

Your comments:

Nothing has done more to diminish the quality of life for the middle-class, especially in California, through higher housing costs, competition for jobs, the presence of poverty, increase in welfare burden, medical care fraud, crime, the crowding of schools and the cost of college than the increase of and change in population since 1965, driven almost entirely by immigration.

In many ways, things were better during the great depression than they are today: food, housing, college and even jobs .

Erik Kengaard