Maybe when she gets back she will ask Harper why he has put the lives of so many at risk by shutting down the Kitsalano coast guard station.

What I am wondering is whether the province was the first to know before the feds went public on that decision.

If not, I think there is something wrong with the system.

According to Alex Tsakamus she did a little “Bev Odaing” over there as well. Seems her hotel room wasn’t up to her standards and thought she deserved an upgrade just because she is better than the rest of her staff.

So she does understand that she is the Premier of BC and should be looking after the interests of the BC Worker ?

She is looking after the BC worker who is about to retire in the next 10 years and needs to be assured that those BC workers who are left, and those who are about to join the workforce have enough other workers to join them in keeping the provincial economy moving rather than slowly starting to decline because no company can survive here without their most important resource …. people ready and able to work.

Of course, we can always continue to outsource.

Or we can draw back those who went to Alberta to get higher paying jobs ….. as in drawing them back by offering them the same and higher paying jobs in the GVRD … and live in the most costly area of the country.

Fun to run a province in a free market economy, isn’t it?

If we are imagining that BC workers about to retire in 10 years or so are ever going to be kept by those in the workforce still working, even if their numbers weren’t declining, we are dreaming in financial technicolour.

With a country whose citizens, on average, are already personally $ 1.53 in hock (at last reckoning, it’s probably more now), for every $ 1.00 of disposable income left them, it should be quite obvious to anyone with eyes to see that they’re not even able to keep themselves, let alone retirees.

Add in government and corporate indebtedness, both of which are also steadily rising over time, and it’s more than apparent that not only is the present financial system currently incapable of being fully financially self-liquidating, (as it’s supposed to be, as ongoing overall ‘production’ becomes ‘consumption’), but the addition of more workers, and more jobs for them, is NOT going to touch the real problem.

We continue to delude ourselves if we think we can cure an insufficiency (of ‘money’) by re-distributing it. We can’t. No one can.

There has to be a way of better relating ‘money’, in its overall quantity, with the ‘price values’ of goods and services EXPRESSED in ‘money’. And keeping them in proper nexus with one another.

Finding new export markets is always laudable in the sense that international trade allows for the diversification of consumption, both here and abroad. But as a cure for the supposed problem of funding retirees by a declining, stationary, or expanding workforce, that just isn’t going to cut it. So far as our politicians, of any stripe, are concerned, the first question we should ask all of them is whether they know the difference between inflation and prosperity, and if they say they do, describe that difference to us.

Hey, socredible, you are obfuscating the issue.

The issue here is keeping the circle of life moving.

I want to buy a hamburger…. I have the money to buy a hamburger …. I can’t find a hamburger stand that is open because there are no workers.

Your problem of some people not having the money to buy a hamburger, even if there was one available is a different problem.

Harper had promised the jobs to the Chinese people already. Out of revenge he shut down the coast guard station.

I don’t think so, gus. If someone could make a living selling hamburgers, they’d open a hamburger stand. Just try and stop them. Look at all the things that people try to make a living out of now. And tell me that they ALL do. I don’t personally buy the ‘worker shortage’ scenario, when applied to the economy as a whole.

Now there’s likely many individual reasons why the living they do make is often far less than their expectations when they went into the business they went into. And many individual reasons why they try to stay in those businesses, in spite of that, rather than moving into other fields in which there are supposed to be worker shortages, and incomes are supposed to be better.

But assuming there IS an actual Consumer demand for their product, be it hamburgers or anything else, the one thing that’s universal to all is that there always has to be a way to make that demand ‘effective’.

In other words, what’s been put out in ‘costs’ has to be fully recoverable in ‘prices’. Plus a sufficient profit to make the whole process worthwhile, if it’s going to be a continuous process over time.

But in any case, disregarding for the moment that profit, ‘prices’ can not, for any length of time, ever be less than ‘costs’.

In any economy where virtually all ‘costs’ are CURRENT labour ‘costs’ (‘incomes’, of someone, received in the SAME period of time in which the ‘production’those costs are attached to becomes ‘consumption’), the orthodox conception of economics that Costs=Incomes=Spending from Incomes would still hold true. And the economy could be said to be fully capable of being financially ‘self-liquidating’.

But this ISN’T the situation that attends today. ALL ‘costs’ are NOT CURRENT labour costs. Many, and an ever increasing many, are what we call Capital costs. These are PAST labour costs, that distributed an income to someone AT THAT TIME. In the PAST. An income that has been, for the most part, already spent. But the (Capital) ‘cost’ has NOT been liquidated by that spending, and carries forward into FUTURE ‘prices’.

When those Incomes were spent, BEFORE the Consumer goods they had a hand in eventually providing were ever available for sale, it raised the prices of Consumer goods already on the market AT THAT TIME that were for sale.

There was an ILLUSION of prosperity, at that time. Since the profits of businesses selling Consumer goods at that time generally rose. But following that rise in prices and profits came the demands for greater incomes.

And when that demand was acceded to, the ‘costs’ those incomes are a PART OF also rose, and with them the ‘prices’ they must be recovered from IN THE FUTURE. And the illusion of prosperity is quickly replaced by the reality of inflation. Where everyone works with progressively bigger money figures, but nobody really ever gets ahead.

Efforts to solve this apparent dilemma have always ended in failure. Primarily because they are efforts of re-distributing, through taxation, or by other means, something that is collectively insufficient ~ total ‘money’ itself in the hands of the public, AS PURCHASING POWER, when compared to the total ‘price values’ of all goods and services that money is supposed to, but does not, completely equal.

“I don’t personally buy the ‘worker shortage’ scenario, when applied to the economy as a whole.”

That’s fine … I really do not care …. There are others who do, and I am one of them.

We agree to disagree … let’s move on. It is not worth my time typing.

“what’s been put out in ‘costs’ has to be fully recoverable in ‘prices’. Plus a sufficient profit”

If you wish to have a discusssion, I am game to discuss that there needs to be a “profit” to continue the cycle.

My argument is simple. If you need a profit, then you have not considered all costs, especially the cost of excessive compensation.

I call excessive compensation greed. And we all know without people being greedy, it is difficult to get some people to do anything.

Well, then, gus, perhaps you can answer me this. Why would anyone do anything that is NOT, in some way, profitable to him?

Two things provide the incentive to do anything. One is ‘Inducement’. And the other is ‘Compulsion’.

The first is internal to the individual, it could be equated to the power of ‘love’. The second external to him, and equated to that of ‘fear’.

The first is the hallmark of a free society, the second that of a slave State.

“Profit”, in its most fundamental, physical form, is something that exists in nature. It’s fundamentally the excess of energy available to every individual over and above the energy he has expended meeting his most basic needs for survival. Without ‘profit’ material progress would be impossible.

Attacks on ‘profit’, and its two financial homologues, ‘interest’ and ‘savings’, are invariably mis-directed attacks that DO tend to obfuscate any solution to the real reason we have advancing financial poverty for so many in the midst of a growing, and potentially even greater, physical plenty.

“Why would anyone do anything that is NOT, in some way, profitable to him?”

I do not know about you, but having a viable business that will keep me going for life or for as long as I want to is my profit.

Let me keep the example simple. The case of Jane Doe …

She provides an engineering design service under an incorporated company in her name.

The company charges for that service to cover such “costs of doing business” as:

1.All the costs the company has to pay to others – let’s call them payables ;-) – rent, cell, paper, equipment, travel, advertising, operating loan interest, accounting – you can fill in the rest, I am sure

2.An annual salary payable on a monthly basis to the principal of the company and which are her personal gains

3.Business and other company taxes

4.Company operating re-investment reserve

5.Company wind down reserve

Jane has the opportunity to bid on a project which would take her one year to complete. She arrives at a fee based on the above costs which she estimates.

She is relatively comfortable with the figures she has assembled and submits a bid based on

B1.The above one year operating costs, let’s say $300,000

B2.A contingency based on the probability of having some unknown that needs to be covered, let’s say 5%.

B3.Disbursements for travel, printing, communications, etc. reimbursable at cost.

B4.Total bid is $315,000 for the project. For a 37.5hr/week and a work year of 1,725 chargeable hours by the principal to the company, the external charge out rate is $185/hour rounded to the nearest $5.

Let us say that the salary included in the bid is $100,000/year. That works out to roughly $51/hour gross income for the principal, adding in the paid vacation and holiday time.

I know that items such as 4 and 5 are rarely included in anyone’s small business plan and are likely the key applications of profits people build into their pricing structure. This is, of course, where greed comes in and rather than applying the profits back into the business, they pay themselves dividends which should really be included in an excellent employee recognition program.

Well, you are not wrong, but what you’re doing is looking at it from a ‘micro-economic’ perspective.

Whereas I’m more concerned about the ‘macro-economic’ one.

Where, unfortunately, because anything to do with money ‘macro-economically’ has to do with rates of flow, where it’s dynamic, in other words, and not static, the whole is a little different than just the sum of all its parts taken as recorded in the books of each individual Firm at some point in time.

For instance, in an individual Firm it often makes great sense to re-invest profits rather than pay most of them out as dividends.

But if ALL Firms were to do this, what would happen would be each Firm would be creating a NEW set of costs with each re-investment, while leaving an existing set of costs unliquidated.

And unliquidatable, unless someone borrowed an equivalent sum of money ~ which currently has the downside in that because it has been borrowed it has to currently be ‘costed’ into some OTHER ‘production’ and go through the ‘price’ system, to get back to its place of origin, the Bank.

Even so-called Consumer credit has this drawback ~ the recipient must have some part in the overall ‘productive’ process, a ‘job’, to be able to access it. Because it is always ‘loaned’, and never ‘given’.

So what seems to make perfect sense ‘micro-economically’ ~ the re-investment of profits ~ and does so far as many individual Firms are concerned, creates some difficulties for us all in the economy as a whole.

There is a solution. One that accomodates such re-investment by ‘crediting’ an equivalent amount to Consumers. Maintaining a balance between costs and incomes in the economy as a whole.

Socred, I see your argument and would like to one up it.

The bankers essentially print money by inflating the value of assets, paper, or commodities, and then further print money by collecting interest on loans and even changing the risk cost to those loans depending on the borrower. This is alright as long as intrinsic value is increased in tandem. I think you argue that it does not. I would agree that the value of the dollar should have its genus related to the value of all assets, commodities, human labor, and value added by technology and innovation… but it rather gets its value from ponzi trading that is not self liquidating.

I would further the argument by saying that we also have an issue of polluter pay that is not self sustaining for future generations economically… it makes the so called baby boomer shortage for health care and old age pension look like small time stuff.

We see the polluter subsidized in all aspects of our economy these days… all in the name of filling that monetary gap you always speak of. I wonder why you never mention this aspect of the monetary problem as well.

I think we can all agree our forest companies currently do not replant all the trees they harvest sustainably, the mining companies proposing lakes as their tailing ponds for economical reasons, the horrendous tailing ponds of the oil sands industry and their pollution of our rivers and unsustainable use of fresh water, the oil spills by pipeline companies or Exxon Valdez type incidents, the polluting of our airshed by pulp mills and refineries, the harm done to employees and the world by the nuclear industry, and all the above and more enabled through our free trade policies. These things are free in inflating the reported profits (printing money backed by the environmental destruction) of these industries and help to sustain a ponzi economy… but they have real costs and those costs are just downloaded to the next generation and their economies in the future. These are the costs that a PM like Harper is ignorant of through the design of greed for the industries that support him.

IMHO

The Philippines is a good source for foreign employees for a number of reasons.

Most importantly they speak the English language as their official language for government and business, so they can adjust to life in Canada that much quicker than other sources of potential employees.

In addition to shared language they are also mostly a Christian nation of people with good values that are shared values with most people already here in Canada… they are people willing to work their way up the ladder of life the old fashion way through hard work, and not just buy their citizenship like the Chinese do. The Filipino’s respect the value of a job and potential future life in Canada, where as some of our other immigrants feel entitled.

Also considering the Philippines is Americas main ally as a protectorate and former colony it makes sense to enable an ally (the only true natural ally in South East Asia where 60% of world trade takes place).

Why don’t they go to Europe to recruit skilled workers? At least they wouldn’t be dragging down the wages of the locals.

Going to be interesting when the Euro zone collapses with Germany holding the debt of numerous countries.

Quite a large proportion of Spains and Portugals problems stem from chasing the renewable energy fallacy.

The idea IS to “drag down the wages of the locals”, my2bits. How else could we be ‘globally competitive’? But what is it we are really competing for, and why? Winning a ‘race to the bottom’ might do wonders for “full-employment”, for a time, but if the collective incomes of those employed still won’t fully liquidate the overall costs of production of what we consume through prices, what have we really accomplished? A trip to the “bottom”, and that’s about it! Of course we can always say then we’ve made BC number one again. Counting from the bottom up!

What the government wants to do is bring them over and have them work for less wages and the government can say to us, hey these guys are working for less, why doesnt the rest of the province.

Bankers are traditionally ‘deflationists’, Eagle. Because it makes the value of their commodity ~ money ~ more valuable over time in terms of what it will buy.

If you think of a long-term loan, the interest paid on it over time has to be sufficient to meet the ongoing costs of banking over the term it is being collected. And in an inflationary environment those costs, like all others, are going up. Banks actually do poorer in a time of high inflation than otherwise, even though the dollar figures they’re working with are continually rising.

This is one reason why Banks are traditionally adverse to long-term loan commitments, and would much rather deal with relatively short-term financing.

It is why the largest amount of current bank issued credit nowadays, that for home mortgages, did not really come into its own until the advent of government agencies like CMHC here, and its equivalent in the USA. Mortgage guarantors who effectively backstopped longer term lending for new home mortgages, and enshrined a planned inflation into our economies to seemingly raise the value of what is, in reality, a continually depreciating collateral.

What needed to be asked then, and still needs to be asked now, is WHO is it that is ever really advantaged by continually rising prices? Certainly NOT anyone that I can discern, not really, when you think about it. Even the so-called ‘rich’, if they hold their riches in ‘money’ (which they do not, they hold them in Assets valued in money), are not really advantaged.

The purchasing power of each unit of their money declines just the same as it does for all the rest of us. And it is the filching of this purchasing power that should be of greatest concern for all.

It is why, IMHO, we have and will continue to have an inability to mitigate the costs of pollution being charged against those who cause it.

It is also why the best laid plans of sustained yield forestry, physically sound as they were when made in the early 1950’s or before, could never be followed effectively. Costs rose, and incomes, too. But the former continually outpaced the latter, and couldn’t be fully realised and liquidated through prices WITHOUT CONSTANTLY RISING DEBT. Which, in its totality, can never be fully repaid

We are all compliant in this socredible!If we were not, the conversation would be much different! If people took a little time to educate themselves financially, a lot of our problems would not exist! But like sheep to the slaughter we go because that’s where the Jones’s have gone! “AFFLUENZA” explains a small part of the problem!

Well in any event, we can blame it all on Harper. Seems he wasnt around except for the past five years, but we can blame him for all our problems.

John Chretian, Paul Martin, Dion, etc; they all get a free ride.

Who will we blame if (Heaven forbid) the NDP get elected. Hmmmmmm lets blame Harper.

Yes, cougs78, “affluenza’ explains a small part of the problem. And a lot of people are not very well educated in financial matters. Partly because the education they do get in such matters doesn’t go much beyond telling them, on the one hand, the need to save more and spend less, and not live beyond their means, individually; and on the other, if Consumer spending doesn’t increase the economy is headed for rack and ruin, there’ll be increased unemployment, and collectively, hard times for all!

It might be interesting to see if the public’s intuition, that sixth sense human beings are supposed to possess, holds true in their perception of money matters. For instance, if someone were to ask each individual in a cross-section of the general public, “What do you know about money?”, and just see what they say.

I’ve never done that, but it sure wouldn’t surprise me if the most common answer received was, “Never seem to have enough of it.” And if there’s anything to the theory of intuitiveness usually being correct, maybe that financially uneducated public is smarter than it seems.

“Going to be interesting when the Euro zone collapses with Germany holding the debt of numerous countries”

Been there twice before within the last 100 years.

The first time gave rise to Hitler.

The second time the “Wirtschaftswunder” primed through the Marshal Plan.

The third time?

Bail out from China …… :-)

and China holds the U.S. by the curlies.