Some unemployed people moved to Fort St. John.

Take a look at it backwards. We're getting 100% (or more) of virtually everything we need in the way of actual goods and services with only (nationally)94% of the workforce 'working'.

Think of all the useless, redundant 'jobs' many people now have to do to be able to claim an income. Is this really, in any 'economic' sense, either sensible or necessary?

Think of all the factors that impede real 'efficiency' in any workplace. People taking longer than what is necessary to get the job done, just to "get the day in". How many of us have been, or are, in that position on a daily basis? Wishing we were elsewhere, not particualarly because we "hate our jobs", but because we have to put in so much time at doing something in a manner we know is really accomplishing nothing.

And think of the 'cost' all this useless labour adds to the 'price' of every product and service it will be added into, and have to be recovered from.

The only difference between more 'unemployment', which is viewed as the curse of the modern age, and more 'leisure', which is the desire of all, is an 'income'.

Whether we like it 'morally' or not, the trend in the world today 'economically' is to put the world out of work. Isn't it about time to put less emphasis on bucking that trend, and modify things financially so that 'incomes' and 'employment' are seen as they really are ~ TWO separate things, not ONE and the same? If the 'machine' will do 100 men's work, what's really the point unless it will also pay 100 men's wages? For we 'produce' to 'consume', and 'financially' only humans can do that.

as one of the newly unemployed from a decently paying job that is great to see. Be nicer if the jobs came with a salary that would help make ends meet.

In school at an early age they should teach the concept of earning a wage no matter how small the wage is so as to create value for the business that in turn should allow for higher wage rates of future compensation. There are a few gas stations and fast food chains I will not spend my money at any more because of this lack of service and in time they will have no jobs if others are of the same opinion.

Why do they call them service stations when you do everything yourself? They just empty your open wallet. That's service? Ya right.

At least if you have a trade, you know what kind of job you're out of.

Most workers have moved to Alberta. Remember Campbell whern he was a loaner? Blaming the NDP for workers having to move out of province for work? Seems like the other way around now. It all depends on the economy. But Campbell has always said he has changed the economy for the better, what a crock. It's the price of commodities that run the economy.

Corporate greed runs the economy.

No, "corporate greed" doesn't "run the economy", lostfaith, "consumer spending" does.

If more and more consumers have less and less income to spend relative to the ever increasing prices they're being told they have to pay, "corporations" may seem like they're being greedy in charging such prices, but the dollars THEY receive will be buying THEM, and their shareholders less and less, too.

It's the 'purchasing power' of each individual dollar that we should be looking at. Not the number of dollars the corporation, or its workers, or shareholders, actually receive.

Wages in the forest industry are around 10 times higher now on a dollar per hour basis than about 30 years ago. But the workers receiving them, are they 10 times better off now than they were then?

As for the corporations, how many that were around and profitable then are still around and profitable now? And of those left, is their profit as a percentage of sales volume higher or lower?

We are really on the horns of a dilemma in our economy today. We're able to lower the 'unit cost' of virtually every product by increasing the volume of its production. Largely through the advances of science and technology, with the attendent displacement of labour.

But what we've forgotten is that there's really no savings unless ALL the multitude of additional 'units' made actually SELL. For it's the TOTAL COSTS of production that have to be liquidated fully in each productive cycle. If they're not, and increasingly they are not, they carry over into the next productive cycle RAISING its costs, and making the whole situation worse.

Eventually the "greedy corporations" have to sell at a loss, and while somebody may indeed get a "buy" when they do, fewer and fewer corporations will be able to survive endless repititions of this process. And when they go, their workers, and their incomes, go with them.

The answer to the dilemma is one that may surprise most people. Fundamentally it's to INCREASE the 'rate of profit' by augmenting consumer incomes, (which, relative to the OVERALL costs of production, are in continual decline ~ despite the wage increases that may be received by unionization and other methods).

Corporate greed shuts down business in this country and sends the jobs to foreign lands. People out of work don't spend money because corporate greed took their jobs away.

Consumer spending is reduced due to corporate greed.
So yes corporate greed runs the economy.

Reverse the situation, lostfaith. Suppose they didn't send any jobs to foreign lands, and we had 100% full-employment here. Do you think that we'd then be able to pay the price for "everything" on the market from the total "incomes" distributed in the course of making it?

Whether there's 'outsourcing' of "jobs" and the "incomes" from them to foreign lands, or not, the FACT remains that today's consumer "incomes", in total, over any given fiscal period, will NOT cover all the "costs" entering "prices", in total, over that same period.

This would be true even if we had 100% fuill-employment, at wage rates even the most arden trade-unionist could only dream about. Labour incomes are only a PART, and a decreasing PART, (in spite of wage increases over the years, and on into the future), of overall costs/prices.

Even if it were possible to totally outlaw all corporate profit, and have all goods delivered "at cost", there still would NOT be sufficient incomes in the hands of the public to totally liquidate those costs.