All the chip hauling contracts were announced in the last few days and that should give some of the remaining saw mills a little bit of reassurance. The pulp mills are counting on a certain tonnage level from each saw mill. Still with road bans coming off the remote chipping plants will be able to swing into full production in the next few weeks as well making the saw mills not so critical....

Look at the bigger picture. If the world is not currently advantaged by the continued 'production' of those now unemployed, how then can the world be disadvantaged by the continuing 'consumption' of those same people?

It can't be. That's the 'physical' reality. But that reality is distorted by a financial system that's supposed to, but currently can not, accurately reflect it.

The people who have lost their jobs at Rustads, and the thousands of others who've also been either permanently or temporarily displaced, really need INCOMES. Not to be back cutting more lumber, when what's already been cut can't even be sold at a price that covers the costs of making it.

That is their priority, ~ getting an income ~ as it should be ours. For if they don't have those incomes they can't 'consume'. And if they can't continue to 'consume', it won't be long before those whose 'production' currently is still needed to fulfil the requirements of that 'consumption' won't be working either.

We'll have a genuine, actual 'poverty' in the midst of a potential 'plenty'. Not just a phoney financial poverty in the midst of an actual plenty.

But do we focus on that priority? We do not. Instead we're still mired in some ridiculous moral argument that dates back to the 1st Century dictum of St. Paul, that "no man should be allowed to eat unless he has first worked." It might have applied perfectly then, when everyone's shoulder was genuinely needed to turn the wheel of such industry as then existed. But we have long passed that point. And each year we further distance ourselves from it through automation, technology, mechanisation, etc. etc.

Our problem today is not one of 'production'. Potentially, we could create a glut of virtually everything maufactured that's needed on planet earth. Without even having 'full employment'. And we have, in a variety of industries, done so already.

Our problem is one of 'distribution'. And the first part of that problem is to get 'money' in the form of an income into the hands of all who need it.

When sums so large that we couldn't begin to relate to the number of zeros behind the other numbers are being bandied about to try to subsidize 'producers' ~ something we all know will be done at the cost of the dollars those figures represent largely being 'written off', why can not the same thing be done, and done far more effectively, too, to subsidize CONSUMERS?

To bring the price of the products that we all need and want, the products which can be made, for which CONSUMER DEMAND is the only sane driving force behind their continued production, into the buying range of the general public more fully.

It can be done, and done with far better overall effect than the current efforts being made to prop up selected industries while others whither and die.

In my opinion, one has to be very careful when using job multipliers. It goes far beyond mathematics. It also goes far beyond boundaries. Thus, for each primary sector job lost, it affects induced jobs within the City, within the region, within the province and within the country, and even internationally.
When one uses a multiplier such as 3.5 for a basic industry such as forestry is, it means that for every job lost or created (3.5-1) = 2.5 jobs are lost or created. Thus, if 205 people are laid off, and the multiplier is a correct one, then a total of 205 x 3.5 = 717.5 jobs are lost – 205 direct jobs plus 717.5 – 205 = 512.5 indirect jobs.
I am wondering where the multiplier of 3.5 comes from. I looks very high to me.
Maybe someone can point me to a multiplier analysis for the Prince George CMA specific to the forest industry. In the meanitime, the linked page to the Columbia Shuswap regional district will serve to explain.

They have an analysis of their economic multiplier on the web page. It states that “the highest multipliers at the regional level are found in the forest-based sectors (1.50 to 1.79), while somewhat lower multipliers are found in other sectors. The lowest multiplier is found in the tourism industry, at 1.17.”

http://www.csrd.bc.ca/ecdev/PDF1/Multiplier%20Analysis.pdf

In my opinion, the analysis bears reading.

Along a similar matter, here is a report on forest dependency in BC. The City of Prince George is still very dependent on the surrounding regions since they are heavily dependent on the direct jobs in Forestry while PG is still dependent on the induced jobs of those Central Interior direct forestry jobs.

http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/pubs/econ_dep/2006/2006_fd.pdf

BTW, an excellent example of an international impact of job losses in the Construction Industry, and a very special sector of that industry - low rise residential construction - is to look at the muliplier of a job lost in that industry in the USA. Construction generally has a higher muliplier than forestry.

If one looks at the full multiplier of that industry in the USA, the induced jobs go beyond the border of the country and reach right into each region supplying that industry with construction material - and lands in places like Prince George.

So, the job losses at Rustad and other mills are also induced job losses related to direct construction jobs in the USA.

Socredible .... to say that I agree with you 100% is an understatement. You have written about that notion on here at least once before.

I wonder whether anyone of any influence is looking at that or whether we are doomed to live out our lives running in circles and never getting to enjoy the wealth that has been created by humans over the many centuries that got us to where we are.

It is difficult to wean oneself off a habit.

Socred Australia just did that last month with something like $30 billion distributed to each citizen of Australia in the form of a check for something like $1500 per person. Lots of debate down there on the pro's and con's of it.

Essentially its a savers tax because they inflate the monetary supply to create the funds for dispersement thereby undercutting the value of savings as more money is printed and circulated.

The importance of the multiplier effect is how many round trips you get before the money leaves the community. If it is just profits that go to a foreign corporation, then we get no multiplier effect on those profits in our community... however if profits are made by those in the community and they pay for services in that community with those profits and the recipients of those service expenditures also shop and spend in the community, then the multiplier effect can be specific to a community as per its loyalty to their fellow neighbors.

Understanding the multiplier effect of the various industries IMO is very important, but little studied and understood. The economist (corrupted all of them) like to limit it to the multiplier effect of wage earners, but almost never do they want to talk about it on resource royalties, or multinational profits, and the effect that capitalist structures can have on a local economy.

IMO Northern BC should have an investment fund that invest in and promotes industry in the North owned by northerns. This would see the multiplier effect creating wealth and economic growth that is natural and sustainable IMO, built on the loyalties of Northerns to our own northern economy.

"IMO Northern BC should have an investment fund that invest in and promotes industry in the North owned by northerns."

Nothing wrong with that. NDI is supposed to do some of that I thought.

"This would see the multiplier effect creating wealth and economic growth that is natural and sustainable IMO, built on the loyalties of Northerns to our own northern economy."

Cut up a country, a province, a regional district, a city, a neighbourhood, a family into several fiefdoms who invest only in themselves, and you have stopped trade. You have gotten rid of the so-called "economy of scale" and everyone is making their own prodcuts for their own consumption.

Putting people on their own little one acre island is actually not sustainable from the perspective of the population. even so called "caveman" would not be able to survive for very long.

It is through "community", the community of humans, that we have gotten to the point where socredible says we are. We are rich to the point of it not likely being believable by many who came before us. But we are stupid because we do not understand how to maintain and share that wealth without us toiling more and more rather than less and less and creating a greater divide between the have and have nots.

Don't worry Gordon Campbell promised he would fix the economy!!

"Essentially its a savers tax because they inflate the monetary supply to create the funds for dispersement thereby undercutting the value of savings as more money is printed and circulated."

Yes, the money supply is inflated if the amount of production stays unchanged. However, the system is not static. If everyone is like the saver and puts it under their mattress, nothing actually happens other than there is more paper with strange printing on it under the mattress.

If 50 people get together to invest in a small business making widgets to sell to New Zealand, they will create new jobs and get foreign money into the Aussie economy.

As more products are added to the inventory, and the money supply stays the same, we get deflation. We are seeing the results of that right now. Better deals on big ticket items such as cars and not absolutely necessary ticket items such as vacations. Hotel rooms at the start of tourist season slashed as much as 20 and 30%. Pay for 2 nights, get a third free. Buy a seven day week stay for the price of 5 nights.

If inflation is seen to be a tax on the saver, then deflation is a tax on the non saver. Why? because the saver can take advantage of the deflation offers without penalty. The non-saver needs to borrow to take advantage of the lowered prices. The interest on the borrowed money is the "tax" the non-saver pays.

Remember, in every closed system, there is an equal and opposite reaction to every action.

Everything socredible said (and that gus later agreed with), is true IMHO. There is no reason why we cannot produce and distribute the things we need to ensure that we have a healthy and productive society WORLDWIDE.

Most everything we've implemented in our modern economy is artificial. Our money isn't really backed by anything, most of us don't receive cash when we get paid and most everything we accumulate resulted from a transfer of make believe property. I buy a car with make believe money, the salesmen gets a make believe commission, the gal working at the finance company gets to write up a finance agreement to facilitate the deal backed by make believe money and the guy doing the oil change gets paid in make believe money when the car needs serviced.

The only major flaw we still have in our society is that we believe there still has to be "winners" and "losers", as measured by who has the most make believe money and tangible property. If humans weren't so inherently greedy, just imagine how good we could have it?

Just a further word about 'money'. The real backing for our money is our ability to 'produce'. In reality, it always has been, even when our paper money was supposedly backed, or freely exchangeable into, gold bullion or gold coins of an equivalent face value.

'Money' can be a "medium of exchange", a "unit of account", a "store of value", and a "measure of value" ~ at various times past it has performed all of these functions ~ but in our modern world its most important function is no longer any of these things. Rather it has become what is known as "EFFECTIVE DEMAND" for goods and services.

It is no longer primarily a "medium of exchange" simply because modern productive processes are co-operative in nature. And "wealth", something which is actually useful or desirable to us all individually for our 'well-being', is more often than not now the result of the efforts of a multitude of people and a massive division of labour. To a mill like Rustads, for instance, their lumber output is only 'wealth' to them in the sense that there is not only a Consumer Demand for it, somewhere, but also to the extent that that Consumer Demand can be made "ffective

(Sorry about that, the "Post Comment" button got in the way! Getting too long anyways! I'll try to continue briefly.

"ffective" above should have read, "effective demand.")

If Rustads are stuck with lumber that has to be sold at a loss to move it, their "wealth" rapidly diminishes.

When modern day "credit" is issued to stimulate the economy by pledging the assets of the nation to those institutions charged with issuing it, (the Banks, or banking system as a whole), we are collectively mortgaging our future to try to sell the products of our past. At a 'price' that reflects the FINANCIAL 'costs' of making those products.

There is no 'physical' reason this should ever be necessary. Actual 'production' is entirely 'physically' PAID FOR AS IT IS MADE. Or it COULDN'T BE MADE. There is no such thing as a "debt" in physical reality. You can't put windows in a house you're building 'today' if those windows have not yet been made, and aren't available 'today'. 'Tomorrow's' lunch might be little or nothing, but it can't be eaten 'today' without becoming 'today's' lunch.

We need a financial system, not a whole lot different from the one we currently have, properly regulated, of course, just as we would regulate any other 'monopoly' (and it is a 'monopoly' simply because it works best as one ~ we want the 'credit' issued by one Bank to be 'fungible' at every other Bank, and in the community as a whole), which accurately reflects the physical realities it's supposed to reflect. Not as now, where it increasingly distorts them.

The 'real' cost of production, of virtually everything, has been continually falling for years. But the true 'cost' is NOT accurately reflected to CONSUMERS in 'price'. Which, more often than not, is rising. Were it, and it is not particulary difficult to make it so, to the benefit of ALL, an enormous number of the current problems that have long bedevilled us, social and environmental would be well on their way to a solution.

I disagree... socred is talking about too big to fail, which breeds corruption. That is where we are heading now and it is wrong and driven by hidden banksters who want to have a bankpire of evil ruling over the herd of humanity. That would be wrong and mankind would forever live in their bondage.

IMO we need more currencies. A BC currency, an Alberta currency ect each currency directly tied to the fiscal responsibility of that governments finances. Its called using credit for the public good and financial sovereignty from banksters that use their bankdoms to pick winners and losers (regional, institutional ect) with monetary policy. Whats good for Ontaio isn't always good for BC, and whats good for Alberta isn't always good for Quebec. We need multi levels of currencies where we have provincial currencies as well as baskets of provincial currencies that make up the national currency.

Why should BC forest industry workers support policy to print money for bailouts to Ontario auto workers that in effect devalues (taxes in a hidden way) the value of the private pension savings of the BC forest worker and passes the interest costs of 'free money' on to the next generation for the next generations tax problem?

Gus is looking at the small picture IMO as per a Northern National Consortium that invests in economic activity in the north. I would have no intention of that meaning we isolate ourselves to economies of one... thats small time thinking lol... trade is good, and trade would for sure be the purpose... the key is the royalties from resource value added enterprise and how those royalties and profits are spent or reinvested... a foreign multinational takes all that home to disperse to their home country shareholders... a Northern National Consortium would see those profits and reinvestments flowing through northerners back into the northern economie adding a level of multiplier effect to the economy from the operating cash flow of the enterprise as well as its eventual profits....

If one dollar earned is reinvested in the same local economy it becomes two dollars earned for that local economy. If that one dollar is spend ten time before it levels a geographical boundary defining an economic zone, then that economic zone saw ten dollars earned rather than one. True economics would not need to print more money, but rather see the money that is already printed turning over at shorter intervals meaning more cash flow turn over and more a faster multiplier effect in the economy. In a true free enterprise economy the rules would be fixed and equal to all including the money supply, but this requires a tax policy that encourages cash flow turn over through eliminations to the barriers that keep people from engaging in economic activity that is local. A stable currency self governs the capitalist economy and ensures no generation carries the burden of the previous ones greed.

In an age of globalization we have bankdoms of manipulated prosperity financed by over leveraged debt that drives a policy of dependence on the cheep subsidized foreign goods, which not only under cuts the true cost of producing local, but it also removes cash flow from the local economies. Foreign cheep subsidized goods and services are not only subsidized by lax environmental regulations, slave labour, or tax favors, but also heavily through currency manipulation in the futures market and from shear printing money from nothing. Once that money leaves our economy it is no longer proving a multiplier effect in our economy making each exported profit or dollar a negative multiplier of its own.

Printing money to give everyone a free check sounds great, but it is nothing more than perverting the true economy to socially engineer generational wealth transfers. Much better IMO to enable the ability for free enterprise economic activity to take place unhindered from wealth transfers as much as possible so as to increase the turn over of dollars.

I think we need regulation, but regulation on the tariff levels needed for goods and services to be sold in our country where they are subsidized in the source country through all the means mentioned above. Those that unite with shared regulatory values that don't subsidize (almost impossible at a global level) could trade freely. If third world countries took this seriously they would become first world countries a lot faster than they ever will following the monopoly capitalist ideals of the IMF and the Council on Foreign Relations (both political zionist front outfits bent on their financially unaccountable NWO).

The only way I could conceive at this time a way for my free enterprise thinking and the wealth transfer fiscal/monitary policy thinking of socred would be if we had such a local economic consortium that was majority owned by government, and used to exploit economic opportunities in those regions and that each year dispersed shares equally to all stake holders or citizens in the economic zone it is defined by.... Things like the GM shares the Canadian government now owns could be dispersed equally to each individual Canadian citizen. Maybe one share in GM for everybody. Maybe a municipal saw mill that has shares issued as per property value to all property tax payers in the municipality? Things like that? but printing money to give away is a sure way to a banana republic IMO.

Eagle, whether you realize it or not, what you're proposing is really not going to be a 'nationalization (provincialization?) of banking', but rather the 'bankization' of government. To which, I'm sure, the "Banksters" wouldn't have the slightest objection.

Under the current set-up, you still have a choice of Banks, Credit Unions, Finance Companies, etc. to help you fund your needs and desires.

Some, like the Business Development Bank of Canada, and the Alberta Treasury
Branches (ATB Financial, now), are even 'government' owned.

When the current 'monopoly of credit' becomes absolute by being vested entirely in 'government' your choice is gone.

When the bureaucrat in charge of banking turns you down for a loan, that's it. You don't go make your pitch elsewhere, because there is no elsewhere.

It would be a Banker's paradise (to the extent that the overall aim of 'banking' is CONTROL ~ which at its uppermost 'zionistic' echelons it most definitely is), but a Producer's AND Consumer's purgatory!


I've nothing against a provincial currency for any Province. And an interest rate which reflects the business conditions and risks present in that Province, rather than the nation as a whole, (which usually means "Ontario".)

But any such currency is going to be subject to the same overall rules and conventions of double-entry cost accountancy that all present currencies are subject to now. Or you'll very quickly find your new currency is just about as useful (-less!) as the 'Green Dollars' or 'Ithaca Hours' of a glorified LETS scheme.

These things, and the people that advocate for them, are out of sync with the realities of modern production.

They're "make work" schemes based on the outdated idea that 'money' is still primarilly a 'medium of exchange'. Something that facilitates 'barter', by allowing for the differences in 'time' in simple exchange type transactions.

In the modern world, as I mentioned previously, most production is no longer 'individualized', but rather co-operatively 'industrialised'.

Many of the things most of us involved in some productive process make are only of use to some other producer as a component of something which will, only after all its component parts come together, finally serve some human consumptive need.

The wheat that a farmer grows, for instance, is not in any way 'wealth' to that farmer or anyone else until it is transported and ground into flour, and thence packaged and transferred to your kitchen or a bakery, and later on finally made into some baked goods or bread. That we might CONSUME through eating them. ('Wealth', in the final analysis, is not what we 'save', it's what we 'spend' ~ on our 'well-being'. No one ever was nourished from a roast of beef in the freezer, while it's still in the freezer. It's only after it's been thawed and cooked and eaten that you get any 'well-being' (nourishment) out of it.)

It would be hard to imagine all the people who have had a hand in getting wheat from field to mouth, for they would include those who have made or provided everything which makes the whole process possible.

If you view what is indeed the reality of our times from this perspective, then all 'wealth' can be imagined as flowing into a common pool from which we all are, or should be able to, draw through the means of 'money'. Modern 'money' is the 'EFFECTIVE DEMAND' for goods and services.

Money is no longer primarily a 'medium of exchange' because increasingly more and more people have less and less, or nothing at all, to 'exchange'.

Essentially, in the processes of production, their 'labour' is no longer required. It's been 'displaced'. But their NEED to CONSUME has NOT. Now rather than our fearing this 'unemployment' because it's currently generally accompanied by 'un-', or at best, 'under-emPAYMENT', we should be looking at the possibilities it affords us.

The idea isn't to simply print up money and hand it out. It is to recognize, first of all, how the present financial system tries to work, and why it repeatedly can not.

Fundamentally, so long as most people derive their incomes mostly from 'employment', in any economy with ongoing 'labour displacement' OVERALL INCOMES are continually FALLING in ratio to the OVERALL 'financial' COSTS OF PRODUCTION continually being carried forward into Prices at the point of final retail.

Since, in the whole economy, the re-payment of the credit issued as bank loans depends on Sales being at least equal to the overall Costs of Production, Incomes which are collectively falling in ratio to those Costs can NOT FULLY LIQUIDATE those loans through Sales into final consumption.

This results in periodic contractions of credit, as we are now witnessing, as the Banks try to 'protect their position' as defaults become larger. They are certainly NOT going to write new loans when it's becoming increasingly apparent that the ones they've already written aren't going to be repaid.

The current governmental solution is to attempt to transfer the unrepayable 'floating' debt incurred by the 'private' sector into unrepayable 'fixed' debt that will be held by the 'public' sector. In essence, all of us. Our taxes will pay the interest. For ever and ever, or so long as there's still anything left to tax. It is an inane solution. And what's worse, it won't, over the longer term, ever work.

There is a much better solution, one which enables us to fully access the 'production' we have already worked for, businesses to maintain Sales levels and profits not choked off periodically by credit contractions, automation and mechanisation to release us from 'drudgery', and Banks to do what Banks should do ~ provide 'financial services' ~ not use 'credit', which really belongs to us all, to enhance and maintain THEIR control.

Eagle, in regards to your second post, and I'll try to be brief, look at it this way. Right now, when you buy any manufactured product at whatever price you're paying for it, you are PAYING for BOTH the 'product' and the 'plant' that made it. But you're only getting delivery of the 'product'.

That's okay, so far as most of us are concerned, we don't really want the 'plant' anyways. But since we're paying for it, we should have something back for our contribution towards what we've just paid for.

We are, properly under the rules of accounting, currently fully charged with "Capital Depreciation" ~ it is how investors recover the 'capital' costs of their investment as it depreciates, wears out, becomes obsolescent, etc.

It is a component of the price of every product. And it is growing in ratio to the 'labour' cost as a compenent of that price as our industries continually become more 'capital', and less 'labour', intensive. All this is right and proper.

But we are NOT, as Consumers, currently ever FULLY credited with "Capital APPRECIATION". Which is generally much larger than its opposite. It is the increase in "effciency", which 'physically' results in an actual FALLING Cost of Production.

And if we are NOT so credited, how then, in the economy as a whole, can the 'product' AND the 'plant', which we have to pay for, simply because there's no one else TO pay for it, ever BE fully paid for? C'este impossibe, mon ami.

(The 'money' to credit us, as Consumers, does NOT come from taxation. It is created just as 'money' is created now. By the Banking system. We'll even pay them for their trouble. Only instead of being created as a 'debt' ~ instead of being 'costed' into some production ~ it is in the nature of periodic credits created as a macro-economic "accounting adjustments", and distributed by the Bank of Canada, partly as a 'dividend' to each of us, and partly as a 'rebate' paid to us on each retail purchase.

What this does is to effectively lower the price of our purchases, while leaving the present retail price collected by the merchant unchanged. The increase in Sales volume stimulates the economy, and employment, and allows the merchant a profit sufficient enough to more fully amortize his bank loans, and those loans of those who supply product to him. It's 'Social Credit', and it WILL work.)