I like Quesnel a lot. However, the devastation caused by the pine beetle and subsequent loss of wood for the mills has scared away potential employees. Its also difficult to recruit tradespeople who can make much higher wages elsewhere. If you can’t properly maintain a mill then its just not going to perform.

Tourism is not the answer. If you can find year round tourist jobs that pay 20 to 40 bucks an hour then you’d better hang on to it. It just isn’t going to happen. Mining is OK, but they go up and down all the time and usually have extremely finite lifespans.

Lets see the effects if or when minimum wage reaches $15.00 an hour.

Just trying buying a car..a house or try even renting a place to live 10.50 an hour… all these people complaining about a wage hike…

Maybe Tim Hortons and McDonalds should open the books and show what their profits were. Time to start paying a livable wage and you won’t have any problems finding workers.

Any benefits accruing from raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour will be quickly overwhelmed by the rise in prices that raise has to be paid from.

All ‘costs’, and any increases to them, have to flow through and be fully recovered in ‘prices’. Or the business incurring those costs is out of business.

It is just that simple.

And no amount of pretending that there’s going to be some diversion of profit within those businesses that pay minimum wage and are still profitable, and this will go towards paying for a 50% wage increase, and that the prices of whatever they’re selling will still stay the same, or that a rise in volume of sales because minimum waged consumers have more to spend and this will cover the raise without increasing prices, etc., is pure delusion.

Most of those businesses will be found to have a heavy debt load, and it is from the continuance of the existing level of projected profit that the principal of that debt will be amortised as originally scheduled, and the owner will see some return on his own investment and/or active participation in the business, if there is to be one.

People that argue for increasing the minimum wage are missing the main point about ALL wages in the modern world.

That is, current wages are only a PART, and OVERALL a continually declining PART, (even when occasional wage increases are granted in individual businesses), of all the costs that go to make up prices. Of all the things we need or desire to BUY with those wages.

Today, a far greater and ever rising portion of those costs are NOT ‘labor’ costs (paid out as somebody’s current income), but are rather ‘capital’ costs, which WERE, at sometime in the PAST, paid out as incomes. And were, for the most part, SPENT AT THAT TIME.

When they were spent they tended to RAISE PRICES. Which is exactly what your BC Liberal government is trying to do in its continual push to have mega-projects. Whether it’s a Winter Olympics, LNG pipelines and plants, Site C dams, or whatever, the goal is exactly the same. Raise prices, and through them, the level of profit business will supposedly book, and supposedly from which wages may also be raised. It is a flawed and foolish economic prescription that can not succeed.

It’s akin to a dog chasing its tail. And for poor Fido, accomplishes just as much. He gets some exercise. We get some work. While it lasts. Some good things are occasionally even accomplished. But it gets ever harder for us to be able to afford to enjoy them. Prices continue to rise FASTER than incomes, and the displacement of waged and salaried incomes accelerates. Those still working find they are being called upon ever more to support those who aren’t. In a multiplicity of ways. Higher taxes and fees, the former often hidden to a greater extent in the form of consumption taxes, extending the years before retirement, ever greater fees for getting permission to do anything, etc., etc. It is a recipe for failure. And the only difference between what the BC Liberals are doing and the NDP would do is in the ‘order’ in which they are done ~ one raises prices first and lets wages follow, the other wages first and watches prices race past them. Surely we can do better than that?

Lets look at the physical facts surrounding the whole economic issue. And structure the finances to properly REFLECT them. After all, that’s really the only thing any financial system can ever be. A numerical ‘reflection’ of physical reality. The reality of ‘production’ and ‘consumption’. Can that really be so hard?

Couldn’t agree more socredible. Awesome insight!

You know Socredible, I kind of followed that, and I kind of figured out awhile ago there’s a huge ponzi scheme going on, where current workers are sharing their income with retired workers, and the scheme works as long as there’s enough smucks coming up behind you, but we all now know there isn’t, and every penny we’re paying into pension plans, is likely going to current pensioners, and we will see little if anything at all. In other words, probably the wisest and albeit most selfish financial plan at this time is eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow – you will still have to go to work. And anything you don’t save, but consume, you manage to use for yourself, rather than give it to someone else.

What I would like to hear from you, just what is the answer to this mess? For example, one thing I never found making any sense, is Canada always seems to want a trade surplus – we send out more, than we take in – why???

Wouldn’t you want a trade deficit – people send more in, than you give out? Isn’t that what Greece did, and think of all those years they got to sit on their butts before someone finally realized they were essentially paying welfare to a whole country.

BTW = in the 80s, the gas station I worked at was on the way to a pulp mill, and a lot of well payed union guys filled up there, and kept telling me and the other two guys we needed a union so we could get a decent living wage. So one day, when the guy who pushed this the most, started up about it again, I told him the company had already agreed to double our wages, they just needed a commitment from all the union mill workers that they would pay 5 cents a litre more for fuel, than the other stations with minimum wages were charging. We never talked about unionization again.

The problem is that companies that are making huge profits want more which is nothing but greed. If the minimum wage is not raised the whole community will be living off the food banks. Speaking on gas prices, PG residents certainly saw how the individual(s) was gouged at the pumps until Costco opened a gas station. If Costco had a diesel station, the prices at all other stations would certainly fall – another example of PG residents being gouged by large corporations for greed.

No company should be allowed to employ an adult full time on wages that cannot support a financially independent life. Anything less is relying on the taxpayer to anti up.

Corporate greed is the number on problem. There is never enough profit to satisfy these large corporations. The system itself is part of the problem, and so are consumers.

As an example, they put in bank machines and we do our own banking, we pay our bills on line which saves companies huge dollars. We pump our own gas, clean our windshields, check our oil, etc;

In some stores we pack our own bags, and supply our own bags, and they are now putting in systems where we can pay for our purchases ourselves, without going through a till.

That’s just a few of the freebys that companies get. They say that this keeps down the cost of the product, but don’t buy that HS.. This allows them to reduce staff, pay less, and contribute to their bottom line.

Those people who think that a minimum wage of $10.00 per hour is ok, are the very people who do all this work for these corporations for nothing.

Don’t kid yourself, when you pump your gas, bag your groceries, pay on line, and bypass the checkout, you are in effect working for nothing.

Ski51, we strive to have a so-called “favorable” balance of trade internationally, (where we export MORE in actual real wealth than we import in alternate real wealth), to try to make our money system seem as if it’s properly working. It’s a fool’s game, and one where there can really be no winners.

No modern industrial country can buy ALL its own production at the accounted for costs of its making and fully pay for it from all the wages, salaries, and dividends (profits) distributed as incomes in the course of its making.

It doesn’t matter that we, in Canada, for instance, would never want to buy ALL our own production, (which we wouldn’t ~ it’s more than we ourselves could ever consume). Financially, under the current set up, we COULDN’T.

Neither could any other modern industrial country with theirs. They all have to try to gain what could be called ‘export credits’ to even be able to try to pay for that part of their own production, let alone any imports, that they DO buy.

And the ever rising levels of debt, in all sectors of our economy, and elsewhere, bear witness to just how well that ‘globalist’ notion of ever expanding international ‘trade’ as the ticket to prosperity is actually working.

Those countries with whom we enjoy a surplus of trade have to ‘buy’ Canadian dollars to make up the difference in the trade balance. Dollars which the Bank of Canada creates, and are spent into the Canadian economy without any debt, or debt charges, (to Canadians), attached to them. Without these ‘export credits’ the only way the present economy could be financially ‘self-liquidating’ (to the limited extent that it can, which is progressively less as time goes on), is through a greater increase in ‘loan credit’.

Loans which would escalate ever faster, and which would quickly become apparent to all we could never pay off, nor for very long even be able to service (pay the interest on them).

It’ somewhat akin to a ‘ponzi scheme’ in a sense.

What happens with the CPP and other pension plans is that they were predicated on the basis that the money contributed could be invested at a profit.

What is forgotten is that every dollar paid into a pension plan, like CPP, where another matching dollar is paid in by the employer, is that there are now two dollars ‘costed’ into the price of the company’s product that were never distributed to those who might have consumed that product. Assuming we’re making something for sale here.

Now the Pension Plan invests those two dollars, but when it does so this investment creates ANOTHER two dollars worth of ‘costs’ that have to be recovered in some future prices, while the diversion of that money into the Pension Plan has already left two dollars in previous ‘costs’ incapable of liquidation. Unless someone somewhere ‘borrows’ two more dollars to do it.

With this set-up debt rises exponentially, and continually inflates prices as companies try to get enough money (that’s been diverted from consumers) to meet their costs. It will eventually end up like the ‘ponzi scheme’. Like you say, it has to be continually propped up the same way, by finding (importing them, if necessary), more and more schmucks to pay in.

Palopu, and others in a similar vein:-” Corporate greed is the number one problem. There is never enough profit to satisfy these large corporations. The system itself is part of the problem, and so are consumers.”
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No, I don’t quite agree, Palopu. What you see as ‘Corporate greed’ nowadays is all too often a necessity for corporate survival.

You, and others, are looking at the dollar amount of corporate profits that are reported. Which often seem to have grown excessive.

But when you take those same corporate (and bank) profits as a PERCENTAGE of their OVERALL SALES, I think you’re going to find that they are far more often actually FALLING over time rather than rising.

Corporations, and banks, as businesses that have to ‘earn’ money, (as opposed to banks in their alternate role as ‘banks’ ~ which actually have the ability to ‘create’ money), have to be profitable to continue in business.

The recovery and cancellation of the credit that banks create for corporations (and for themselves) hinges entirely upon this profitability. When it falls, it becomes much more difficult for banks to continue to lend. And without that source of credit continuing, which is currently (aside from ‘export credit’) the ONLY source of credit available, the economy grinds to a halt.

The solution to this is to make the economy what it currently is not. FULLY ‘financially self-liquidating’. So that ‘money’ in the hands of consumers OVERALL is in continual balance with the ‘price values’ of goods and services for sale EXPRESSED in money, overall.

To do this we have to employ a technique of credit which augments consumer incomes without such sums entering the ‘costing’ process of industry. Picture it as necessary, ongoing accounting adjustments. Essentially no different than the accounting adjustments every business makes to keep the figures in its books in sync with the physical realities of its ongoing operations. The only difference is we do in the WHOLE ECONOMY exactly the same thing.

At present, for instance, governments act in a manner that tends towards a continual rise in prices. The use a technique of credit to provide necessary stimulus whenever corporate profitability in those ‘dollar amounts’ reported generally begins to fall. Deficit spending transfers the otherwise unrepayable ‘floating debts’ of the private sector into the permanently unrepayable ‘fixed debts’ of the public one. We get to pick up the interest tab through our taxes. An alternate technique of credit could be employed more effectively to lower prices of virtually all consumables to Canadian consumers. And this could be done without any increase in public debt whatsoever.

I also have to agree with socredible. People who always cry ‘corporate greed’ have never run a business and have no clue about what’s involved.

If you feel so strongly about the proliferation of a self serve world, vote with your wallet and shop only at mom and pop stores and patronize gas stations which employ people to pump gas for you.

You guys, how did you spin yourselves so far away from the subject of the article. Go for a walk. Talk to some real people.

Yes the middle class worker is disappearing, no raise in pay to keep up with inflation. Need to beat you down so we can get control of you. No more 40hr work week,benefits etc. I see in some places they are charging ten to fifteen cent a litre more in fuel than other places- wonder if they uped the wages for the employee pumping gas?

Thank you Woodlot. Quesnel is a real town with real people, and don’t need to hear from these Pie in Sky jackasses.