New Year Expects to See B.C. Job Growth Continue
Prince George, B.C.- Last year was very good for employment growth in British Columbia, as the Province led the country with a job growth rate of 3%.
That translates to more than 69 thousand jobs being created in B.C. in the first eleven months of the year.
Private sector financial analysts with RBC, BMO, Scotiabank Desjardins and the Conference Board of Canada, are all predicting B.C. will continue to see job growth. Although the rate may be modest, they predict that B.C. will, once again either lead the rest of the nation, or at the very least, be close to the top.
The analysts are also predicting B.C.’s unemployment rate will continue to slip, settling somewhere between 6.1% and 5.7%. The unemployment rate in November was 6.1%, the lowest in the country for the sixth straight month.
Comments
So according to this, statistically at least, we’re already producing 100% of everything we need and want with an average of around 94% of the workforce working. And if we are, then why do we need the other 6% working? Oh, I know. It’s that ‘Biblical thing’, that moral dictum from St. Paul way back in the 1st century A.D., “Let no man eat who has not first worked.” Great advice in a world as it was then. One of impending scarcity unless every shoulder was shackled to the plow. But in the 21st century? Economically? We still cling to life by the skin of our eyelids unless “everyone” is not only working, but working harder and longer? Maybe we’d feel better if we gave everyone of that 6% a piece of bare earth and a pick and shovel and made them all dig a hole and then fill it in again. That way they’d all be ‘working’, and we wouldn’t feel any pain in letting them eat.
your commie ideas have worked well in other parts of the world. Yeah right. What is wrong with allowing people the ability to strive for a better life? By your way of looking at things once we have met the low bar for needs cut everyone off? Who sets that low bar? You? What you may desire in life could vary greatly from what I desire. Take away the incentive to achieve and what your left with is an unmotivated workforce with their hands out looking for anything for nothing.
We live in the best nation on earth, have some of the very best living conditions, have great lives compared to most, but their will always be somebody whining.
@Stompin Tom
Precious coming from someone who, obviously, was lucky enough to be one of the winners in the present system. I wonder if you would still feel the same if you were one of the “working poor” who couldn’t get ahead in this system no matter how hard you worked?
Judging from your words, you are one of those types that actually believes the Horatio Alger nonsense that everyone can succeed if they work hard enough.
You only think we live in the “best nation on Earth” because you don’t have to sleep under a bridge and wonder where your next meal is coming from. Canada’s “Best Nation” status would rapidly slip if you ended up homeless and hungry.
“Commie ideas?” There is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing anyone to “strive for a better life.” I’m all for it. They don’t get that under communism, they just get to ‘strive’. In fact, they’re ‘compelled’ to.
Where do you get the ridiculous notion that “once we have met the low bar for needs” we should cut everyone off? Certainly not from me.
You seem to hold the screwball notion that if EVERYONE was made to work, (which is, by the way, a ‘commie idea’ ~ can’t have a Worker’s Paradise without ‘workers’, don’t you know?), everything would be perfect.
Right now we can’t even SELL all the stuff we produce with only 94% of the workforce (officially) working. When you’ve got 100% of it working that’s only going to add to the glut!
Right now, could the people of any country, anywhere, BUY and FULLY PAY FOR all the stuff they’ve made in say, two weeks time from the total amount of wages and salaries paid them in those SAME two weeks? Or any other same given time period?
And if they can’t buy and fully pay for everything made from the total amount of wages and salaries distributed to them in the same time period it took to make it, how then, can they buy and fully pay for the ‘exchange’ of that production through an export/import ‘trade’?
You and your ilk need to wake up, Stompin Tom. Or you will get the equivalent of some very real ‘commie ideas’, and all the enforcement apparatus that goes with them. We produce way more than enough in this country for every single one of us to have a far higher material standard of living than we currently do. And we don’t have to take a dime off anyone who’s already living well to do it. But we do need to make some changes in a money system that mis-represents wealth and causes much of that wealth to be wasted.
No mention in this article about the quality of jobs / employment. Who cares about the number of people working if they still have to use food banks?
“Shawn Pegg, the director of policy and research at Food Banks Canada and the author of the report, said the increase in B.C. food bank use is tied to the high cost of living and the disappearance of high paying jobs. “We see people working two or three part-time jobs and still being unable to make ends meet. We also see people transitioning back and forth between low paid work and social assistance,” he said.”
ht tp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/food-bank-use-in-b-c-at-an-all-time-high-1.3851098
Strange days indeed when we can have nearly full employment yet have food bank use at an all time high in this province.
And who amongst our politicians proposes a solution to this growing problem? A REAL solution, not just a ‘sound good’ one that only ends up making the overall situation worse by extending the poverty it’s supposed to be curing?
Nice try at spin but BC is still doing well compared to other provinces. We are at 3.4% over last year and didn’t even get a mention nationally
ht tp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/food-bank-report-2016-1.3850897
ht tps://www.foodbankscanada.ca/getmedia/6173994f-8a25-40d9-acdf-660a28e40f37/HungerCount_2016_final_singlepage.pdf
45% of the people who use food banks are on social assistance,18% receive disability, and 8% receive income from a pension. 7% helped by food banks have no income at all. 2% of food bank users are students. That makes up 80% of food bank users.
The percentage of the population helped by food banks in BC remains stagnant at just over 2% of the population since 2008.
There is an interesting sidenote that surveys not completed by food banks were estimated using 2015 figures as a guide.
Survey participation was 100 food banks in BC with 324 not submitting information. That is less than a quarter of the food banks that gave actual data, the rest was estimated for BC and Alberta whereas most of the other provinces had 75-100 percent surveys returned.
What is the actual data for BC?
Sorry slinky your statement that the percentage of the population helped by food banks in BC remains stagnant at just over 2% of the population since 2008, is flat out wrong!
“Food bank use in B.C. is at a record high, with 103,400 people receiving assistance as of March 2016, according to Food Banks Canada’s annual hunger count. That’s an increase of 3.4% since 2015, making 2016 the third year in a row that food bank use in B.C. has increased. Children accessed food banks at disproportionately high levels, according to the count, which reported that 32 percent of B.C. food bank users in 2016 were minors.”
ht tp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/food-bank-use-in-b-c-at-an-all-time-high-1.3851098
Can’t say as I blame you for misrepresenting the “truth” in an attempt to make this uncaring incompetent government look good. There really is not much good or positive to say about them, so why not resort to spreading some positive spin lies?
Sorry not wrong or a lie, BC is on page 22 of the report on food banks in my link above. each province has a detailed page on food bank usage.
2016 – 2.2% of the population accesses food banks in BC.
2009 – 2.03% of the population accessed food banks in BC.
“We have about 1500 families in Prince George each month who rely on the food bank” says Glasgow. That translates to about 4300 people says Glasgow “The sad statistic on that is that about 43% of those using the food bank are under the age of 16.”
ht tps://www.250news.com/2016/05/11/food-drive-collects-more-than-2-tons/
4,300 people use the Prince George food bank every month, that would be about 6% of PG’s population, and then there is Fort St John… “In June, 3,446 people turned to food banks at the Salvation Army, the Women’s Resource Society’s Poverty Outreach Program and the Friendship Society in Fort St. John, a city of 21,000.” That’s over 16% of that city’s population!!!
ht tp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/hunger-growing-in-fort-st-john-amidst-downturn-1.3730273
That is the reality of the situation slinky, and no amount of fantasy right wing ideology is going to make that reality go away!
Not saying it will go away, nor did I imply it.
Canada is a big country, BC is doing well when compared to the rest of the provinces in our vast country. No amount of dipper spin changes that fact.
And there you have it, 4,300 people in PG and 3,446 people in Ft. St. John using food banks is now considered lefty “spin” by the reality challenged right wing loonies!
People use the food bank for many reasons, it is not a touche moment, these are people’s lives.
Biggest question you have to ask is – if the NDP was in power how many more thousands would be in the same boat? If you think less than that is probably because they left the province and weren’t counted.
Then people would have to put things into an overall context, stay with a current government that lurches from crisis to crisis (Housing, Fentanyl, Poverty etc.), or vote in a government that knows how to avoid it. Simple really.
Boy those NDP supporters really hate when the province does well as compared to the other provinces in Canada.
But don’t sweat the big stuff as there are enough youngsters who weren’t around the last time the NDP was in power to woo and get to vote dipper. It has been a good 16 years now and people see the need to bring the province back to last place, maybe seeing long time businesses close up shop in Alberta might sway a vote or two but que sera, sera
Generally, people only change the government when things start going badly. Then people like you can continually blame the new government for everything that economically goes wrong, even though those economic hard times started well before the new government ever took power.
It is also funny when “free market” Cons complain that the government should quit interfering and let the “market rule; then complain that the government couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything when “free markets” dictated that a depression or recession is needed to correct for the greed and corruption that invariably distorts the “free market” mechanism.
Not necessarily at all. But funny that you mention things starting to go badly, BC has improved greatly after the 2000 election. Populations vote for change when they forget why they changed in the first place, every party has scandals as they are humans trying to make the best for themselves. What the populace is forgetting is how BC was doing worse than even the maritimes while the rest of Canada was booming – which is why they turfed the last party running the province. Or maybe you are a teacher or closely related to one.
Not sure why the personal attack – “people like me”? Maybe “people like you” have forgot what the 90s were like in BC.
Or maybe you are peed that Trudeau is messing up federally spending more time traversing the globe than working on issues at home? Who knows, might be time to get yourself a punching bag for the basement.
This “Province” may be said to be “doing well” compared to the other Provinces of Canada, but what about the “people” who make it up as individuals? Is the purchasing power of each dollar they earn rising or falling? A cumulative deficiency of consumer purchasing power from earnings is reflected in a rise in average personal indebtedness. And in which direction is that headed, up or down? According to a head of the Certified General Accountants Association in some testimony he gave a Parliamentary Committee more people are finding they have to borrow, not just to acquire the ‘big ticket’ items it takes too long to save up for, but now more so, “…just to live.”
People are not taught how to “live”, that is the deficit. Instead of wait until they can afford it like in the “old days” they borrow heavily to get it now. Once you lose your discretionary income you are a slave to payments and any little hiccup on the earning front drives one deeper into debt.
But that has nothing to do with the province doing better than other provinces, unless you are saying that is only happening in BC
@Slinky
I’m sure you bought your house and cars for cash, right? You’ve never had a car loan or taken out a mortgage? Don’t bother trying to claim you haven’t. I wouldn’t believe you anyway.
I really love it when people who had long term steady employment, that allowed them to service their debts, tell other people that they are monetarily undisciplined because they are borrowing money to buy what they want or need.
Man, Slinky, you must be one of the Nouveau Riche of Prince George since, apparently, you have 300 grand in the pocket of your jeans to buy a house or a condo for cash.
Slinky:-“People are not taught how to “live”, that is the deficit. Instead of wait until they can afford it like in the “old days” they borrow heavily to get it now. Once you lose your discretionary income you are a slave to payments and any little hiccup on the earning front drives one deeper into debt.”
—————————————————————–
Well, now, Slinky, just how many people do you think we’d be employing if everyone was taught how to “live” like they did in the old days? I’d wager you right now we’d be headed straight for a depression that would make the one of the 1930’s look like a mild recession!
They’ve LOST their discretionary income long ago, when you take the averages. What is it now, $ 1.67 in hock on average personally for every $1.00 left to spend after taxes?
And then there’s the government’s debt. That’s on top of that. And business debt. But we give businesses a kind of a cruel break. Cruel to us, that is. For when it gets to the point where defaults of the ‘floating ‘ debt of the private sector rise a bit too high, to where the banks might restrict further lending, then the government deficit spends. On stuff like infrastructure, and converts that ‘floating’ debt, otherwise unrepayable, into the ‘fixed’ debt of the public sector. On which our taxes can always pay the interest, even if never the principal.
But we go on pretending that if everyone just “lived within their means” all would come right. It’s a nice fantasy. One that will ensure we DO get the very kind of socialism we hoped to avoid. It won’t matter much whether it comes in via the NDP, in high gear, or via Christy’s crowd, in low. It won’t work either way, but that’s what we’re headed for.
Only in BC hey socredible?
Hahaha… do you even know what discretionary spending is? I know you are just digging, or trolling but here goes…
Mortgage has spending rules, one cannot spend more than certain percentage of income on a mortgage.
Service their debts? Of course you will have rent or mortgage and associated costs, food and clothing, vehicle and associated costs. Those are not discretionary – although the vehicle may be if you do not require it for a specific reason. If you have a vehicle just to have one in the driveway it is discretionary, housing and food and clothes are not.
If you have to dip into the credit card to make a car payment then your finances are in trouble and I am sorry.
And what I am talking about is buying a new 4k TV because the old one is only 1080p, or laptop because the old one is slow or you just can’t do without one – on credit. The money spent on servicing those discretionary debts removes the money for future discretionary spending unless that is too put on credit and the circle continues.
If one does not have any money for discretionary spending then one has to look at either another job or more education for a better one.
If one has debts beyond their ability to pay they should immediately go for a debt proposal, not consolidation or bankruptcy – there is a difference.
No, not only in BC.
“It’s a structural issue that reflects the fact that there is a significant mismatch between the skill set that is available and the skill set that is needed,” Tal said in an interview.
ht tp://www.250news.com/2016/12/19/job-vacancy-rate-remains-highest-in-b-c/
I copied and pasted those same words from the following MacLean’s news article; “CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal believes it’s far from an easy fix, particularly since quality has largely been headed along the same course for decades. “It’s a structural issue that reflects the fact that there is a significant mismatch between the skill set that is available and the skill set that is needed,” Tal said in an interview.
ht tp://www.macleans.ca/economy/canadian-job-quality-hits-25-year-low-due-to-structural-decline-cibc/
So here we have two vastly different articles quoting the same person on the same topic, yet one story has a positive (pro-LibCon) spin titled; “Job Vacancy Rate Remains Highest in BC” the other (the original) has the more realistic bad news story titled; “Canadian Job Quality Hits 25 Year Low Due to Structural Decline”. So which is the correct version? The answer is the MacLeans story is the original version, the 250News version is something of a rework by Christy’s Clark’s Propaganda Machine spun to be BC specific, where the original MacLeans story was Canada general. Isn’t it nice seeing our hard earned tax dollars being used to spin news in favour of the current government?
ht tp://theprovince.com/opinion/dermod-travis-b-c-government-propaganda-machine-is-hard-at-work-for-you
Two completely different stories on two different data sets, the MacLeans story was a spring of 2015 on Benjamin Tal’s CIBC study. The 250News article was on the CFIB report from Richard Truscott.
In a nutshell Richard Truscott says those people looking for work lack the required skill set for the jobs available that is why they remain vacant. BC has the most vacant job positions in Canada which is good if you have the right skills and looking for work.
The CIBC report is about job quality not quantity. The basis is self employed jobs are not as high a quality as salaried positions. Self employed jobs rose 4 times higher than paid employment. Low paying positions rose faster than those higher paying. While they do overlap in areas the two reports focus on quite different data.
Speaking of our economy where did our economic savoir fly off too for a winter vacation? While imposing another tax on Canadians, carbon tax, dear leader is off leaving a carbon trail to warmer climes. Why is his location a secret? Did he carbon trail off to Cuba to worship Fidel’s grave considering his admiration of that murderous dictator?
Could you, possibly, remain on topic or at least close to it? We all know you have an obsessive, insane, hatred for Justin Trudeau but could you, for once, keep it to yourself. This topic has nothing to do with the Feds, the Federal carbon tax or Justin Trudeau.
Completely funny, you changed the topic from BC to Canada as a whole in an earlier reply. “People like you can continually blame the new government for everything that economically goes wrong” when I did nothing of the sort, my comment was completely NDP-Lib BC. Last time I checked the NDP were not a “new government” to blame things on.
I do appreciate your hatred of everything blue, but tit for tat
I know you would like to think that I was referring to the Fed Lib government. I wasn’t. I was referring to the change in government, that took place in BC sixteen years ago. Slinky was doing the usual obsessive slobbering Con monologue about a government that hasn’t been in power for over 16 years. The reign of a twenty year old government is so fresh in his brain that I used the term “new” as a reference to that BC NDP government, not the federal Libs.
Since when have I blamed the new government (Libs 16 years ago) for everything that has gone wrong? Nice try though, first rule of being a dipper – everyone who is not a dipper is always wrong.
Whoops, didn’t realize it was Slinky that I was replying to. This commenting software needs an edit function.
Also, I’m going to have to retract the earlier comments I made to you vis a vis the NDP loss from sixteen years ago. In that case, it was not an economic problem that resulted in their defeat, it was the manufactured scandal surrounding Glenn Clark that helped cause the implosion of the NDP. I had to refresh my memory on that.
And the fact that BC was in the proverbial toilet from their leadership, but carry on
@Slinky
Well, I guess Jimmy Pattison, a penultimate Capitalist, didn’t see any issue with Glenn Clark’s leadership abilities. He hired Clark to run one of his divisions and doesn’t ever seem to have regretted the decision. So, as much as I have no particular use for Pattison, his decision shows how little talent you have in judging leadership ability.
We are now on to Pattison? He hired Clark in spite of his political life not because of it. The NDP wrote off and ridiculed Clark for taking the job but “his family has to eat”. That was almost a full two years before the election, his casino scandal alone wasn’t what sank the NDP in the 2001 election
Sounds like seamutt is planning his own John Wilkes Booth moment.
How come liberal left self entitled progressives like DI always head over to the violence spectrum?
Actually Ezra, I’m a centrist. Are you a Libertarian or a conservative with a small “c” ?
slinky states; “BC has improved greatly since the 2000 election”… really? I guess if you think British Columbia (BC) having the worst unsecured environmental liability for mine site clean-up costs in Canada is an improvement.
ht tp://www.marketwired.com/press-release/new-analysis-british-columbia-ranks-worst-canada-unsecured-environmental-liability-mine-2129404.htm
How about improving B.C. to the point where we have the longest waiting times in Canada for MRI imaging tests, according to a Fraser Institute study.
Maybe BC is improving as the province with the lowest student funding in the Country!
ht tps://ca.news.yahoo.com/student-funding-b-c-worst-162949153.html
Wow, if we are improving since 2000, why is British Columbia the worst place to be in Canada if you’re a child, and it being so for all but one of the past 13 years? The latest numbers released by Statistics Canada indicate that in 2011, British Columbia once again slipped into last place among the provinces, tied at the bottom with Manitoba.”
ht tp://www.vancouversun.com/business/2035/Daphne+Bramham+worst+place+Canada/8632354/story.html
Take off those rose coloured glasses slinky and join the rest of us in the real world.
Now who is misrepresenting the facts?
Your link compares 3 provinces, not Canada – since when is Canada BC, Ontario, and Quebec? Maybe read your link, miningwatch has BC at 3.1 billion, Quebec at 3.1 billion and Ontario at 5.9 billion in unsecured liability. Why even provide a link if you haven’t even read it?
ht tp://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/2016-05-30-bcminingliability-analysis_0.pdf
Bottom of page 1
Weak… trying to muddy the water again? “BC’s total unsecured liability amounts to $1.5 billion, compared to $1.4 billion for Ontario and $1.2 billion for Quebec (see Table 1 in analysis, using provincial figures).”
The above provincial figures are listed first, yet you intentionally ignored them and used the lower Miningwatch figures, spin, spin, spin. Yes BC is compared to the other two “main” mining provinces, what difference does that make? BC’s unsecured liability is still the highest in Canada, go ahead and research the other provinces if you want, but they are minor players in mining so of course their liabilities will be lower.
Is this a strategy that you would resort to again in future debates with me? You playing dumb or feigning ignorance?
At any rate, I will call you out every time when you make grandiose, fantasy, statements about BC being the best ever under this incompetent and uncaring government… and I will use reality based facts to counter your right wing ideological fantasy claims.
Miningwatch is all about spin, here they say Ontario is the worst just 5 months earlier:
ht tp://miningwatch.ca/news/2015/12/9/wake-call-ontario-ranks-worst-canada-environmental-liability-mine-sites
Ummm… that’s because during 2015, Mount Polley liabilities for environmental cleanup costs were ongoing and not included until 2016. Read the footnote on the last page of the 2016 report analysis where it mentions estimated costs for Mount Polley, it was the largest environmental disaster in Canada’s history… but not to worry, that was the NDP’s fault according to the loonie right on here. Yeesh!
Socredible, keep the comments coming, learning from you. Common Sense.
You have produced plenty of copy laying out what the problem with the system is SoCredible, but you have never offered any solutions. So what IS your solution already? And try to put the solution into plain English that normal people, who don’t have degrees in economics, can understand or is that somehow beyond your ability?
According to you:
1) increasing wages is no solution.
2) using debt is no solution.
3) avoiding debt is no solution.
4) full employment is no solution.
5) government spending is no solution.
6) eliminating debt is no solution.
7) providing employment is no solution.
So exactly what is your solution?
Come on SoCredible, I’m waiting. What is the solution to our present economic system’s problems? Or are you not responding because the question has been put directly to you and you don’t really have any answers? Just meaningless economic gobbledygook.
I haven’t responded sooner because I’ve been busy with other things and just now come back to read the latest offerings here.
The solution to our economic problems is actual ‘social credit’. Not electing some political party that calls itself that, as we did with very good results in the 1950’s and 60’s, and somewhat more mixed ones in the 1970’s and ’80’s.
To take your list from the top:-
(1)Increasing wages is no solution.
Increased wages only flow through as increased costs that have to be recovered from increased prices. We all get to work with bigger figures. But nobody really gets any further ahead. Your mob wants to bump the minimum wage up to $ 15. And anybody making that, or less than that now, will want increases, too. And then those making over that. All those increased wages will be are increased costs that will increase prices we all have to pay for everything. No solution at all.
To be continued,
Continued:-
(2.) Using debt is no solution.
Debt has to be repaid. If it can be repaid it’s merely a financial tool that funds what we want to do. If it can’t be repaid, and in its totality it currently can’t be, it’s a tightening noose around our necks with the rope held by those who hold that debt, and already can prevent it’s repayment any time they so choose simply by refusing to ‘monetise’ further the real wealth of the community.
(3). Avoiding debt is no solution.
We cannot avoid debt. All ‘growth’ in our economy is paid for ultimately by an expansion of credit, i.e. increased debt. The key is to make it so that this debt IS always FULLY REPAYABLE in its totality, not just shifted around from one sector of the economy, or one level of government, to another.
How do you make it fully repayable when the nature of the debt system is to make incurred debt unrepayable? I mean individuals can choose to repay their debts and not incur further ones by curtailing their consumption, but in that event the entire economy grinds to a halt.
In my own case, I would like to do some additions to the house, but I’m unwilling to incur any costs that I cannot repay almost immediately. Since I’m not willing to incur a bank debt, I’m just not going to do any sort of additions which acts to reduce economic activity in a small way; however, if everyone thought the way I did then we would be in a depression.
Hahaha:-“How do you make it fully repayable when the nature of the debt system is to make incurred debt unrepayable? I mean individuals can choose to repay their debts and not incur further ones by curtailing their consumption, but in that event the entire economy grinds to a halt.”
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Yes, that’s what would happen, what you’re describing in your second sentence. In regards to your first, shortly, we have to ‘augment’ earned consumer incomes with debt free credit sufficient enough to equate the overall flow of prices reaching the point of final retail with the overall flow of incomes people are receiving. Currently, total collective incomes won’t equal total collective prices of goods and services at the consumer level unless we constantly engage in the production of increasing amounts of capital goods. This we can not sustain. No one can. It’s inflationary, and even if we get wonderous capital improvements, as some of what’s created no doubt will be, we pay for them at a cost far in excess of what we ever should. Eventually it impoverishes us further financially while all our physical wealth increases, and much of it goes to waste.
—————————————————————–
More:-
(4). Full employment is no solution.
We obviously don’t need full employment when we already have unsold everything we need or desire, or can easily created it with less than 100% of the workforce working. Making people produce more just to provide an excuse to pay them an income is stupid if the additional amount they’re going to produce still can’t be sold ~ and currently it can’t be. It more often than not is wasted. Something the enviro nut cases that are all screaming about all the adverse effects man has on his environment never seem to clue in on. Ever hear of ‘planned obsolescence’? Making things with the shortest life between store shelf and landfill, that’s what you get when you want ‘full employment’.
More:-
(5). Government spending is no solution.
Not when it’s done with the primary purpose of ‘making work’.
(6). Eliminating debt is no solution.
We can’t ever eliminate debt, but we can make the financial system far more fully self-liquidating than it currently can be. To do this requires the creations of ‘debt-free’ money paid directly to CONSUMERS ~ all of us, because we are all consumers~ to augment earned incomes. These payments are in the nature of ‘macro-economic’ accounting adjustments. Necessary to make the figures of finance properly fit the physical facts of modern, labor displacing productive processes. We produce to consume. That’s the PRIMARY reason for all production. NOT to ‘make work’, nor to ‘make a financial return’. Those latter things we’ll do, too. But when we make either of them the primary reason we’re going way off track.
More:-
(7). Providing employment is no solution.
CONSUMER DEMAND is the origin of all economic activity. Right now most people get their incomes either solely or mainly from employment. But ‘jobs’ are being constantly displaced by technology, even in countries that have wages way lower than we do, where a lot of other jobs have been outsourced to. Before the Industrial Revolution, and for a considerable time after, production was labor intensive. Now it increasingly isn’t. Look around you. How many in a modern logging crew compared to a few decades ago? How many in a modern sawmill now? In 1900 half of the whole workforce was engaged in agriculture. Down on the farm, trying to grow enough grub to feed themselves and the other half that worked elsewhere. Today that’s down to less than 3%! And we’re growing more grub for more people than ever before in history. Countries where famine was a regular occurrence are now net food exporters! The world is working itself out of work. Is that a good thing or a bad one? It’s only a bad one if unemployment is accompanied by unempayment. And that’s where we’re at now. No one benefits the way we all should from this. Not those of us in business, not workers, no one. Time it was changed. The alternative? Well, you can have full employment whenever you have a good war.
So what are you proposing? A guaranteed minimum income supplement backed by a central bank that has it’s mandate to create the nation’s money reinstated?
Not exactly. A “guaranteed” income infers that people would be paid some fixed amount, which probably still wouldn’t be enough for most to live on. What actual ‘social credit’ proposed was quite a bit different from that. Under a ‘social credit’ system increasing payments in the form of National Dividends and Compensated (rebated)Prices would be made as labor and labor incomes continue to be displaced by technology.
Also, that last line. That’s coming. The blocks for that eventuality have been being set down ever since the Reagan era and his ludicrous “trickle down” economics. Production isn’t produced just for consumption. It is produced for consumption in service to making a profit. And what creates more consumption for profit than war itself? Only one thing: the rebuilding of destroyed infrastructure after the war itself.
You need to recognise that a profit in business accounting is far different from most people’s conception of profit. In business accounting profit is primarily ‘information’. It’s a feedback mechanism that tells the producer what the consumer wants made. Whether he prefers Kokanee beer to Lucky Lager, or a new Chev pickup to a new Ford one. Without profit there would be no way of consumers expressing their choice for what should, or should not, be made. That was the failure of communism. The communists outlawed profit, and in doing so there was no mechanism available to determine what their citizens wanted made. So an all powerful bureaucracy had to make those decisions for them ~ and the people hated it. And the store shelves ran bare, because even in their system people were reluctant to buy things they didn’t want, unless as was the case more often than not, there was nothing else available.
Under ‘social credit’ new money wouldn’t “trickle down” from the top, as Reagan tried to arrange, but rather would “percolate up” from the bottom.
That is true that it is a partial feedback mechanism. However, there are plenty of goods made for a profit that consumers don’t necessarily want. Jet fighters are not wanted by the average consumer, but they get produced to serve the needs of the state, independent of the wishes of the state’s population.
Plus you still haven’t described what mechanism you would use to ensure that total collective income would equal total cost of goods at retail. You mention using interest free credit, but do not describe a delivery mechanism or what entity would backstop a credit system with no profit in it. How is the build-up of interest free credit liquidated as it is converted into interest free debt? Debt is debt whether you pay interest on it or not. It still has to be repaid. It doesn’t self-liquidate.
I mean the difference in total cost to produce versus sell price is the profit. Since worker’s incomes are a cost of production they always have to be less than the sell price at retail, otherwise there is no profit. Since total income always has to be below selling cost of goods in a Capitalist society, how do you liquidate the imbalance between the two?
We’d be paying it, the unearned ‘social credit’ consumer augmentations, right to consumers directly. They, we, because we’re all consumers, are at the bottom of the heap.
With “trickle down” that money is first ‘earned’, (and that’s using the term loosely, very loosely), as profit by the financial services sector, (big banks, in other words), and then is distributed ‘downward’ as incomes, dividends, interest payments, etc. Banks did this in conjunction with the government through what’s known as “churning”. They create, and buy and sell securities amongst themselves, and each time a trade is made they create the money to pay themselves a “commission” on it. The money from those commissions is what “trickles down”.
That should have been how is the build-up of interest-free debt liquidated as it is converted from interest free credit?
In no place did I use the term “INTEREST free credit”. I said “DEBT free credit”. In other words, credit which has NOT gone through the ‘costing’ mechanism of industry, and will NOT be charged into prices at the point of final retail.
I’m still not seeing where this pool for direct subsidization of consumers is coming from. This all still sounds like a modified “guaranteed minimum income” supplement to me.
It would come from a National Credit Account maintained by an agency of the Federal government, such as, possibly, the Bank of Canada. Or separate from it. The debt free payouts would come from the Bank of Canada in all likelihood, though we could also pay any or all of the private banks to do the same thing. it’s simply a matter of bookkeeping, as virtually all of banking already is.
It’s NOT the same as a “guaranteed income supplement” since such a supplement would only be available to low income earners, and, as such schemes are presently put forward, paid from taxation. They are therefore an attempt to ‘re-distribute’ what is already an insufficiency overall. This does nothing towards equating the flow of prices, overall, with the flow of incomes considered also in total. You can’t make a sufficiency by redistributing an insufficiency. Everyone might get an equal piece of pie, but they all go away from the table still hungry, too.
Time for socredible to change his handle to socommunist.
In a time when most are asking for less government, he proposes a naive system which is pretty much total government control. Instead of a paycheck, you get food stamps.
Your financial ignorance is showing again, Stompin. Pity, that is, because such an ignorance is the ‘Achilles’ Heel’ of all right of centre political advocates. It’s already well established amongst the left of centre ones.
What I’m explaining, or trying to, has absolutely nothing to do with “total government control”. It’s the complete antithesis of that. What it would do would be to give CONSUMERS control over what should be produced. Each of us, as individuals. That’s certainly NOT communism, nor is it socialism. You could probably best describe it as “free enterprise” that works for ALL, the way it should, but currently can’t.
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