Hike In BC UE Rate Has Both Parties Talking Jobs Plan
Prince George, BC – The loss of almost 12-thousand jobs in BC last month has both the provincial government and official opposition pointing to the Liberal’s BC Jobs Plan…
Minister Responsible for Labour, Shirley Bond, says at 6.7-percent in July, BC’s unemployment rate still remains below the national average of 7.2-percent. But New Democrat finance critic, Mike Farnworth, points out that rate rose from 6.3-percent in June and remains the worse among western provinces. "(The) job losses were mainly in wholesale and retail trade, suggesting a decline in consumer confidence," says Farnworth.
"The Liberals campaigned on a successful jobs plan and spent millions advertising it to British Columbians, when in fact BC has now lost a total of 19,400 private sector jobs since the plan began." He says the disappearance of those jobs, along with cuts to critical services like mental health programs, and an expected rise in hydro rates is putting a squeeze on BC families.
For her part, Bond says BC is third in the country in terms of job creation since the launch of the jobs plan. "While we’d like to be first, job losses across the country remind us that global economic recovery is fragile and we much continue to focus on the long-term picture," she says.
Bond, who is also Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training, says that long-term picture includes five mines that are under construction, expansion plans at six others and five proposed liquefied natural gas plants expected to deliver $1-trillion in GDP benefits to the province by 2046 and 75-thousand new jobs once they’re fully operational.
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wow that’s looking ahead some.2046 and 75000 new jobs.how many new immigrants will be in the province by then,all looking for jobs.
What’s $ 1 trillion going to BUY in 2046 if the purchasing power of our money continues to decline at an accelerating rate as it has been over the last three decades?
Can we expect that considerably before that date the lowly looney will have long gone the way of the penny? That if any coinage is still around we’ll then have a hundred dollar coin our government will be telling us costs more to make than it’s worth? Or maybe even a thousand dollar one?
It always amazes me how all the politicians continually talk about the issue of ’employment’. And, almost as a matter of their personal survival, what THEY’RE going to do to create more of it.
While those in businesses who actually do most of this employing, and those great gurus of business acumen and all things economic who advise them, from such think tanks like the Conference Board of Canada on down, are continually pressing the need for ‘more productivity’ and ‘greater efficiency’.
Which is simply another way of saying businesses have to displace more labour, i.e, unemploy as many as possible, in their quest to cut costs and survive in business.
Do none of these people have enough functioning grey matter to see the irrationality of this situation?
Why do they not realise that it is NOT, nor has it ever been politicians, or even the ‘economists’ that advise them, that make business decisions ultimately affecting employment levels, but rather cost ‘accountants’?
These decisions are made on the basis of projections of ‘costs’ and whether or not they can be fully recovered in ‘prices’.
And between the two is a little something called ‘incomes’. Which they equate as being the same thing as ‘jobs’, but they certainly are NOT.
I have asked myself for as many years as I can remember… “how high can wages and prices go before everything just falls apart?” Everything, and I mean everything is driven by wages. When wages go up, product prices go up, then wages have to go up to cover the increase and prices go up again, and on and on it goes. Anyone who says wages are a small part of a products increase are not looking at the big picture. A piece of ore in the ground does not get more expensive over the years, BUT, extracting it does. Ask yourself why. Because way back to the very first step of extracting that ore, getting the raw materials to make the tools to extract it are price driven by wages. And really, the only reason wages or prices ever have to increase is because some people, maybe most, who knows, seem to NEED more that the next guy. Talk about irrational actions.
projections to 2046 now?
That is 33 years from now!
33 years ago was 1980.
We were living in an era when the projections were still for 200,000 people to be living in PG by the end of the millennium.
I consider projections like that to be fairy tales.
Lets talk about the next 5 years. The Major Projects inventory has some shorter term projections of 5 and 10 year windows. Those of us who follow those know what flights of fantasy they have been over the decades.
This government is in for 4 years. I would like to see four year projections so that we can see whether they have accomplished their objectives.
But, wages and prices could advance to infinity so long as they remain in the same overall RATIO to one another.
When that ratio changes, when the overall rate of price generation advances faster than that of overall income distribution, we have a problem. And this is what’s happening, and we do.
It changes through ‘labour displacement’, in a variety of forms. In so far as the replacement of ‘labour costs’ by ‘capital costs’ are concerned, the consumer/worker is increasingly charged as a component of prices with sums representing capital depreciation, i.e. the wearing out and obsolescence of machines, (which is entirely right and proper from an accounting standpoint). But is never simultaneously fully credited with overall capital APPRECIATION. Which is always greater, (barring some natural disaster or war, etc., that actually makes it more difficult to produce or provide REAL goods and services). This means that financially we have to increasingly mortgage tomorrow’s income to meet today’s prices of yesterday’s production.
“The Liberals campaigned on a successful jobs plan and spent millions advertising it to British Columbians, when in fact BC has now lost a total of 19,400 private sector jobs since the plan began.”
Maybe the Liberals should just call their jobs plan a success and wrap this initiative up… I just don’t think we can take much more of this kind of success!
People#1: “Maybe the Liberals should just call their jobs plan a success and wrap this initiative up… I just don’t think we can take much more of this kind of success!”
You say that as if the NDP would have done any better. I doubt they could even spell ‘jobs’.
Maybe we need to acknowledge the limited influence the government has on direct job creation and come to grips with the fact that the government doesn’t control everything.
I have asked myself for as many years as I can remember… “how high can wages and prices go before everything just falls apart?” Everything, and I mean everything is driven by wages. When wages go up, product prices go up, then wages have to go up to cover the increase and prices go up again, and on and on it goes. Anyone who says wages are a small part of a products increase are not looking at the big picture.
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Working people, for the most part, don’t just raise their wages. It sure would be nice if we could just raise our wages in lock step with the price of gasoline, natural gas, hydro prices or even the carbon tax. Have you ever compared the rise in your wages in relation to user fees at the banks, or govt agencies….if wages don’t keep rising we will all be living below the poverty line in a few years.
Any person who truly wants to work and better themself can in B.C.
Cougs nailed it. If you are unemployed right now then you either can’t work or don’t want to…
Gus says, “Let’s talk about the next five years’. Hey, Gus. The way this country is run, I don’t even buy green bananas. That’s how much faith I have in our future. So there.
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