I'm sorry but I'm still reading it the same way. The article says quite clearly that they pay "between $800 and $900 a month". I don't see too many different interpretations of that. It says the "bulk goes directly to China" but it isn't at all clear to me to WHO in China. The Chinese government as a 94% tax or as reimbursement for all the wonderful benefits that they provide their workers while they are in CR? Perhaps. But it could just as easily be, in whole or in part, remittances to their families back home (like ID and Captain C have already pointed out). The article also referred to the $52/mo as an "allowance". I don't know how many of you are familiar with the payment practices for migrant labor but I have some experience with this. Admittedly, this is with seasonal Mexican H1B workers in the US, but the way it works for Chinese construction project workers in CR is not necessarily that much different. The company that employs these migrants (in this case the Chinese construction company) provides food, housing, entertainment, telecommunications, medical care, etc. and CHARGES the workers for all of that, DEDUCTING it from the FULL wages they promised. Whether the rates they charge for housing and food are fair or not is another question (OTOH, $10 for 180 minutes all the way to China seems pretty reasonable to me compared to how much time phone cards will cost you in CR for calls to the US). Additionally, the companies that employ migrants often do not pay out the wages in cash directly to the workers while they're on the job. This is partially to keep them out of trouble but it is also because these workers live extremely simply and frugally while they're working and send the vast bulk of what they earn back to their families in China or Mexico or whereever. The other common form payment takes for migrant workers is an allowance while on the job followed by a lump sum at the end or termination of employment. There have been similar setups in domestic US labor history, for example in the mining industry where worker's families often rented their houses from the mining companies they worked for and bought all their food at the "company store". Again, I don't know how much this resembles how the Chinese do it but I saw nothing in the article to convince me it is done much differently.
In any event, the food and housing and other benefits that the chinese provide their workers must have SOME value so while they may not be making $800-900/month in REAL terms, they're still effectively making well more than just $52. How much does the typical tico making $400-500/month have to spend after paying rent and buying food and such?
BTW, 500 parking spaces for a stadium that seats 35K DOES seem a bit outrageous but that is not quite as outrageous as you make it sound. Most Ticos don't own cars and get around on public transportation, so a good portion of the potential audience probably wouldn't be getting to the stadium by car anyway. A more critical question would be: will the public transportation system (buses) be able to handle the crush? To get anywhere close to handling 35K people, will take an awful lot of buses making multiple trips. If they even have that many buses in SJ, it will mean diverting them from covering other routes on game days, creating a lot of havoc all over the city. Presumably they'll create some sort of staging area some distance away from the stadium, but not too far, where people can park and feeder buses can let off, and than provide shuttles to take everyone the rest of the way to the stadium. No matter how they try and do it, it looks like it is going to be one great big clusterfuck.
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Captain Cohiba,
What you wrote is exactly what I was implying and I agree with you completely. China isn't making this "gift" out of the kindness of its heart and I'm sure CR's signature on other contracts dealing with natural resources and such was the quid pro quo. There are a lot of things CR could use a helluva lot more than a new stadium, such as more funding for police, sewage treatment, road repair, etc. I'm sure CR is getting some of that stuff from the Chinese too, but bringing in a bunch of Chinese laborers to fix CR's roads, is not the visible and impressive reminder of Chinese largesse that a huge new stadium would be. More money for roads and law enforcement would have been a helluva lot more useful. It looks like CR was bought off really cheaply in terms of value for value.
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, and anything else they think they can credit to the stadium. At least in the case of this stadium, none of the costs of building it is coming from the local pockets, so ANY benefits will be pure profit. The Chinese are picking up the tab and that entitles them to spend the money and manage the project any way they see fit. What I wonder about is exactly what the CR government promised China in exchange for this "gift". The Chinese government never do anything just to be nice.
