Wonder who is paying for the mayor's son?

why would you plant a bigger seed? why not water the seed that has already been planted? if the seed has actually been planted, can it not be watered from here?

Norm: that would make too much economic sense.

So our provincial government is giving the Chinese govt earthquake relief funding (Global reported on this when the premier opened the pavilion in China. Campbell and others were shown dropping donations into a box and Campbell was quoted as saying, "We will match all monies donated between now and September, to earthquake relief") and now is spending our money to send many many "delegates" to remind them our resources are up for grabs? What does Rio Tinto have to do with the lumber industry? Amazing how there isn't anyone there actually from the lumber industry going...

Think Campbell might be moving to China?
IMHO
They can have him....free!

There is no end to the dream world of our poitians when it comes to spending our tax dollars.

We have homeless people here in PG why are we giving our money to the chinese. Is that not a Federal responsibility. We have about 32 million people in Canada and China has almost a billion. Where are they spending their tax money? Maybe they could stop building armaments.

Cheers

I note that today is tax free day that is Federally.
When is tax free day in Prince George?
Who is paying for the trip to China?
Not me, I hope?
Naive, yes?

WOW!! Look who the travellers are ? Treasure Cove / the Mayor's son -
What business will they bring back to PG?Gambling ??
Oh, when they all get to China - maybe they can look up Pat Bell - he is there trying to convince the Chinese politicians that our manure is better than theirs!!

I bet the mayor's son is paying for himself, or maybe his dad is paying. Why do you all assume that he's going on the city's dime?

I bet the mayor's son is paying for himself, or maybe his dad is paying. Why do you all assume that he's going on the city's dime?

The mayor is a good buddy of the person who owns the casino.

100% total waste of taxpayers money sending any of these guys to China! Mackenzie's Council is doing the same thing as our town is DYING they are off to try to form ties with China.
BIG JOKE!!!

Can mahjong be far behind at the Casino?

;-)

Read this about the effect of rising oil prices on the cost of transportation.

http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/feature1.pdf

"Higher energy prices are impacting transport costs at an unprecedented rate. So much so, that the cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today. In fact, in tariff-equivalent terms, the explosion in global transport costs has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades. Not only does this suggest a major slowdown in the growth of world trade, but also a fundamental realignment in trade patterns."

Perhaps a trip to Mexico would be more appropriate.

For those who do not click through to the linked pages, here is one more interesting excerpt:

"Exactly how much trade, soaring transport costs divert from China (or for that matter anywhere else) depends ultimately on how important those costs are in total costs.

Goods that have a high value to freight ratio carry implicitly small transport costs, while goods with low value to freight ratios typically carry significant moving costs.

A surprisingly high percentage of Chinese exports to the US fall in the later category. Furniture apparel, footwear, metal manufacturing, and industrial machinery—all typical Chinese exports, incur relatively high transport costs.

And there is already evidence that Chinese exports of freight-intensive goods are already beginning to slow under the pressure of rapidly rising transport costs."

Lets all quite buying chink stuff.
Maybe its to late as we all seem so dependent on their imports.

Owl says: "Perhaps a trip to Mexico would be more appropriate."

Precisely, if it would be for business purposes!

In the meantime there are a lot of potholes that still need to be fixed all over town!

Too mundane a problem, no glitz, no headlines !

How about getting some technical information from the Chinese about permanent pothole repair?

Permanent pothole repair you say? Have I got just the thing for you......

http://www.envirosnowmelt.com/asphalt.htm

;-)

Holly cow I think I'll use the $100.00 bucks from Gordo and buy 5 gallons of Traffix for a demo for the Mare when he gets back from China.

I swore I wasnt going to vote for you when you ran for Mayor but I have changed my mind.

Cheers

Until we can become part of the USA(State) this trip to China is an awesome idea!

Sitting around bitching about some mills shutting down is getting us no where!
Lets all remember BC is not just PG and MacKenzie........

Bridge ... send me an e-mail ... the address you gave me was an Elvis special .... "return to sender ... address unknown"

;-)

You know ..... I was just looking at the group mug shot above and realized the Chinese are going to have a hard time telling those people appart ... they all look the same....

;-)

Nice to see the mayor taking engineered drawings to China so they can copy them and make their own houses for 10% of the cost. Good idea Youroner.

Owl: "Permanent pothole repair you say? Have I got just the thing for you......"

To think that this stuff to make really permanent repairs has been available for decades! I hear that the city tried this or a similar hi-tech product - it worked like a charm, but.......they deemed it to be too pricey and reverted back to the old no-good basic mix again, the one that lasts only a week or so at best!

Giterdun, I was thinking exactly the same thing! Why buy from Canada when Canada gives you the instructions how to make your own?

Ever seen any of those drawings???? Only someone conversant with North American wood framed construction can use them to stick frame them or build them in a factory. The drawings are actually quite schematic.

You can buy a few hundred layouts in a book at your local news stand, or find them on the internet for nothing.

Or you can buy as many drawings as you want off the internet. http://www.jenish.com

Some more typical modern Chinese housing. As it says, notice the solar panels on the roof for heating water. So, who is more advanced?
http://flickr.com/photos/slavers/2332250677

here is a “small” city ..
http://flickr.com/photos/slavers/2348109972

Wanna live in Paris? … don’t have to go to Paris, or the knock-off in Las Vagas … just move to China …
http://flickr.com/photos/jacksonlowen/2430130635/in/set-72157604651419788

Number of privately owned housing unit starts in USA in the 21st century. The numbers have gone up and down quite substantially over the last half century with the dive it has taken recently not that uncommon. Dropped under a million in 1966 after about 3 years of an average of 1.5million. It rose to 2.4 in 1972, dropped back down to under a million in 1974, back up to 2.1 in 1977, down to 0.9 in 1981 (same time as the crash in BC) back up to 1.9 in 1985, 0.97 in 1990 … and did not reach or approach the 2 million mark till the 2003

2007 – 1.00 million (0.78 million single units)
2006 - 1.65 million – (1.25 million single units)
2005 – 1.99 million – (1.63 million single units)
2004 – 2.04 million – (1.71 million single units)
2003 – 2.06 million – (1.65 million single units)
2002 – 1.79 million – (1.44 million single units)
2001 – 1.57 million – (1.29 million single units)
2000 – 1.53 million – (1.23 million single units)

So, the US single units market, which is the primary generator for stick framed housing, is typically in the 1.2 million range. 10% of the Chinese housing annual housing construction at the current pace of 10million would be virtually as large as the total US market.

No can do ….. ALL of Canada would not have that capacity. Our forests would be decimated. We would be making the same mistake of putting all our eggs in one basket.

Of course, China builds primarily multiple, not single units. Primarily high rise. I would think that if we got ALL of the single unit + up to 3 storey walk up market in China we may not have any more than 10,000 units per year.

There is no way we should be promoting North American type of urban sprawl in a country like China. Want to see oil depleted even faster? Can anyone think this through? These are the kind of ideas we are taking to them? God help us!!!

Finally, a bit more context. China is urbanizing like crazy. While I have not been to China, I would think that when people leave the small towns to go to the big cities that they do not need to build new housing in the small towns they leave behind, unless they are looking to “improved” housing in those communities. The housing is being built to accommodate not only the population growth, but also the geographic population shift. China is realizing this and is attempting to build new “small” communities of 20,000 to 50,000 people.

Reminds me of a similar move in the West in the 1960’s. I don’t know how well that effort by the Chinese is doing.

The Chinese traditionally have an aversion to 'stick frame' houses built from wood. They like the permanence (except in an earthquake!) of brick and concrete construction, and the wood they do use is generally for second floor joists, rafters and support beams. Heavier material than the 2x4s and 2x6s coming out of our nothern mills. There is little likelihood of the Chinese building North American style communities. The conception we have of 'privacy' is far different over there.

As to giving financial aid to China to aid its recovery from the recent earthquake, that 'money' will never leave Canada.

Canadian dollars are only 'effective demand' for Canadian goods and services, not Chinese ones, nor any other country's. That money will be spent or invested right here, though it may be spent on Canadian goods that will be exported to China to aid in its intended purpose.

Canadian dollars are only 'effective demand' for Canadian goods and services, not Chinese ones, nor any other country's. That money will be spent or invested right here ..... "

Thanks for reminding me and others about that.

I think we should extend that a bit and see what other parts of both Canada and the world we can help at this time and future times in order to both prop up the forestry industry and help those who could benefit from such help. That would, then, not be looked at by countries we have trade agreements with as subidizing the forestry or other industries that could benefit from similar assistance.

"I think we should extend that a bit and see what other parts of both Canada and the world we can help at this time and future times in order to both prop up the forestry industry and help those who could benefit from such help."

Precisely, Owl. That's exactly what we SHOULD be doing. We often seem to forget that it's CONSUMER DEMAND that drives production. In Canada, with the growing number of homeless that now seem to be a major attraction in every large urban centre, and an increasing number of smaller ones, too, one would certainly think that there is definitely a 'consumer demand' for housing. And there is.

Yet somehow, no matter how many more 'efficiencies' we introduce into the productive processes involved in manufacturing all the materials that go into a house, including ways to prefab things like roof trusses, wall panels, etc., or even the whole house , we are not only unable to make that very real 'consumer demand' fully an 'effecticve demand', we become LESS able to do so with each passing year.

To say that all these homeless people are simply shiftless lazy bums who won't work, and who wouldn't be in the position they're in if they got off their butts and exerted themselves is a general assertion that doesn't bear upon the specific facts.

To give them all 'jobs' we'd have to subsidize PRODUCERS, or have public 'make work' projects, whether the results of that 'work' are needed or not.

When we do the former, we run into all the problems we've witnessed over 'softwood lumber', and a host of other products that we've exported en masse to try to 'capture' some other country's markets.

Not to get THEIR goods in trade for ours, but to get THEM in debt to us so that OUR Banking system can create an offsetting 'credit'to the amount of that debt, and leverage future loans based on it to US in the ratio of aprroximately 10 to 1.

To do the latter, and have endless 'make work' projects, is as ridiculous as it got in Fascist Italy after Mussolini had done all the 'sensible' public works projects that needed doing, and made the trains run on time, etc.

'Work' became there almost as much of a fetish as it did in the Soviet bloc countries. Only the Fascists were sensible enough to retain 'profit' in their set-up, so at least there still was some feed-back for what was wanted from actual 'consumer demand'.

They weren't like the 'profit' despising Communists, who, when they ruled East Germany, apparently had a plant operating there that made ball-bearings. When there was no demand for them, which was more often than not, they simply took the finished product back around to the blast-furnace and melted it down. To become the feedstock for MORE ball-bearings!

The plant never shut down, no one was ever laid off, but what an utter waste of both human and natural energy simply to say they had 'full-employment'. Not to mention the effects of such a process, repeated endlessly in other industries operating under their system, on global pollution.

The point is, if we properly 'credited' CONSUMERS, all of us, with augmentations to our 'earned' incomes sufficient for us to fully draw on the productive capacity we HAVE ALREADY CREATED, but CANNOT FULLY USE, primarily because it has 'displaced' the labour incomes that are needed for it to fully recover its costs from what it hopes to sell, we'd be in a perfect position to not only end 'poverty in the midst of plenty' in our own country, but also to aid and assist other lands when they require our help.

We could do that simply by having a National Capital Account, similar to that of any business, which would record our (ususally)ongoing excess of overall national 'capital appreciation' over that of overall 'capital depreciation'in any chosen fiscal period, and from which distributions of that difference could be paid to CONSUMERS (either directly, as a national dividend, or as a rebate on all consumer prices).

No taxation, or change of ownership from private to public, or vice versa, is necessary. The process works exactly the same as it does now when any Bank grants a loan. There, 'money' is created to initiate production and cancelled when the loan is repaid from incomes received via prices on final consumption.

Only with ongoing 'labour displacement' prevalent throughout the whole economy, overall consumer incomes are declining in ratio to the overall costs of production constantly coming forward into prices. Currently the system can only continue to function by ever increasing creations of bank credit recorded as debt. Debt which, in its totality, is completely impossible to repay. If we create new credit in the proper ratio to the deficiency and distribute it to Consumers 'debt-free', it then becomes possible for the system to become more fully 'financially' self-liquidating. And the real benefits of ongoing productive efficiencies can be enjoyed by all.

If the foregoing is as clear as mud, perhaps a little illustation might remove some of the opaqueness. (Or make it worse!)

Take a plain piece of paper and draw on it a large letter "L". Label the verticle leg of the letter L "$", and the horizontal one "Time".

Through the intersection of the verticle and horizontal legs draw a diagonal line, say, at 45 degrees (or any other angle you choose). At any distance along the horizontal, or "Time" leg of the "L" draw another diagonal parallel with the first.

The first diagonal represents the flow of loans from the banking system, in total. The second, the repayment of those loans, in total. The only thing separating the two is "Time", (because loans were made for some purpose, and it takes "time" for that purpose to be achieved.)

If you shaded in the area between the two diagonals that represents the volume of 'money' in existence ~ which, in actuality, means NOT that "Time is Money", but rather the opposite. "Money is Time". The time between its creation and issuance and its repayment, and cancellation. Don't let the fact that the process is continuous confuse you. In any modern money system loans create deposits, the repayment of those loans cancel those deposits.

Now imagine a tank of water with a pipeline coming out of it. The amount of water that enters the pipe will be exactly equal to the amount that exits it, ONCE THE PIPE FILLS. The AMOUNT RETAINED WITHIN THE PIPE is always LOST IN "TIME" to the system flow. If the pipeline expanded in diameter, or in length, a greater amount of fluid will always be retained within it over any given period of time between its entry and exit.

Now with this in mind, draw another letter "L", with the labels as before on its two legs. Only now instead of two parallel diagonals, draw four. The spacing is not important. The first diagonal, the one intersecting the corner of the "L", label "Costs". Costs are made up of sums that are paid directly to employees as incomes, and to other Firms for raw materials, overheads, etc.

Label the second diagonal "Incomes", the third "Sales", and the fourth "Expense". You now have a model of an economy which is in a condition of Quasi-Steady State Expansion.

Everything in that model economy is 'expnding' over time, but everything in it is also proceeding through time exactly parallel to everything else. "Costs" are the money received by Firms via Bank loans and recorded as debt that is being constantly spent into the economy to initiate and carry on Production.

"Incomes" are the portion of those "Costs" accumulating into the account balances of Consumers through the medium of wages, salaries in payment for making that Production.

"Sales" is the return of those "Costs" to the Banking system from the spending of those Consumer's "Incomes" as the goods made are purchased for consumption.

And "Expense" represents the 'pushing forward' in time of those "Costs" through the conventions of double-entry cost accounting to allow for the computation of operating 'Profit'. Which is "Sales" minus "Expense".

In this model, a verticle line that is placed anywhere along the horizontal "Time" line so that it will intersect the four diagonals shows us that at any point in time there is always enough money being distributed from "costs" as "incomes" to allow "sales" to exceed "expense".

In other words, in such an economy, Firms in general are always spending MORE on a 'cash-flow' ("Costs") basis than they are receiving back in "Sales" at ANY POINT IN TIME, yet under the conventions of accounting they are also "booking" a 'Profit' on those "Sales", since "Sales" constantly exceeds "Expense".

"Profit", in double-entry cost accountancy is NOT analogous to CASH, but is rather an accounting computation that has as its primary purpose the indication of the correctness of some entrepreneurial action.

Now "Costs" will ALWAYS parallel "Expense" because the latter is the mirror image of the former. And, as a general matter, "Incomes" will always parallel "Sales". When Consumers earn more, they spend more. Whether it's for goods, services, or securities.

So long as the four diagonals are parallel to one another everything in the garden is rosy.

But introduce the element of "labour displacement", and the "incomes" line falls out of its position of parallelness with "costs". For now the flow of money from loans is analogous to the flow of water through that pipeline whose diameter is continually expanding or is being ever lengthened. What's going in is still equal to what's GOING to come out, only more is retained in the pipeline for a longer period of time before that happens.

In the economy's case, to fund the installation and operation of machinery that displaces labour, more money is being retained longer in Firms' account balances as working capital needed for 'overheads' rather than being paid out directly as "incomes".

When "incomes" fall due to this time lag increasing, so do "sales", and the decline in angle of the "sales" line means that it will no longer be parallel to the "expense" one. And will, when it intersects it, represent the point where the business is no longer profitable.

If you can understand this, which is a simplification of a more complicated process, admittedly, you might realize the results. We put in plant to produce. There may well be, and probably is, a continual Consumer demand for the product. But even though the plant may be made more efficient physically, by achieving more product output with less labour input, the displacement of the labour "income" results in a falling rate of "Profit" vis a vis "Sales" over time when computed against "Expense".

The solution is to augment "Incomes" with new credit created in the quantity necessary to maintain the four lines in continual parallelity.