Helping Canadians Get Back To Work

[The Green Barbarian]

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[ferri]

*back on topic! thanks!

[The Green Barbarian]

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[The Green Barbarian]

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Which of course begs the question, what needs to be done to either create work, or create a new paradigm for living now that the era of jobs is over?.
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It's hard to respond to a question that includes a false premise. "The era of jobs is over". This is an untrue statement.

[Partmanpartfish]

Come on! Help Canadian Citizens go back to work? Get real - we don't have money for that - we need that money to bring more people here that have no or little skills for jobs we don't have.

I know this is a common right-wing meme, anyone who suffers through facebook has seen it a zillion times from their Harperite friends, but that doesn't mean it makes sense. What does a program that assists people escaping war and refugee camps, have to do with people who find themselves unemployed due to a crash in commodity prices?

Do you really think we don't already have dozens of programs to help unemployed Canadians? Do you really think we're too stupid to handle several problems at once?

I'm just going to guess that those Syrians will be out taking the jobs those ex-$500 per day oil patch workers will thumb their noses at.

Oh and Brad, how about next time there's an oil boom, collect the clean up costs up front? Then you won't have to go whining to the Federal govenment when the cycle goes bust again.

[I Think]

Productivity and Compensation: Growing Together
By James Sherk

Conventional wisdom holds that worker productivity has risen sharply since the 1970s while worker compensation has stagnated. This belief rests on misinterpreted economic data. Accurate and careful comparisons show that over the past 40 years measured productivity has increased 100 percent and average compensation has risen 77 percent. Inflated productivity measurements account for most of the remaining 23 percentage point difference. An apples-to-apples comparison shows that employee compensation continues to closely follow productivity. American workers continue to earn more as they become more productive. To help Americans advance economically, policymakers should seek policies that will increase productivity.

If you continue to increase productivity by 100% every 40 years, (and this curve is accellerating) pretty soon you run out of the need for people to produce more goods, after all how many televisions, cars, washing machines and lawn mowers do you need?

The era of jobs is over, get used to it.

[logicalview]

The era of jobs is over, get used to it.

just because you keep repeating a mantra, doesn't make it true.

[I Think]

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So assuming the curve is not shortening, and productivity continues to increase only at the rate of 100% every 40 years, how soon before the era of jobs is over?

Note, so far the curve has been exponential.

[hobbyguy]

I see a focus here on short term stuff. What is really needed is long view that allows Canada to go forward in a way where reasonably secure jobs at reasonable pay are available. Yes, infrastructure spending will help in the short term, but that is not something that will give a big bang for the buck long term, unless it is things like the site c dam.

Firstly, we need to return to the theme that many prime ministers emphasized in building this country. That being "We do not want to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water". Diversify the economy away from that.

Notley seems to moving in that sort of direction by offering a subsidy for building petrochemical plants (don't sell oil, sell what you make from oil).

Tax policy, which would cost us nothing, can be used to direct corporations into actions that would benefit and diversify our economy over the long haul. Jack the income tax rate for big corporations, then offer them an equivalent rebate for R&D done IN Canada. Etc.

We have been able to, under existing agreements, place an export tax on lumber. Why not place an export tax on "raw products"? Raw logs, raw ore concentrates, raw bitumen, etc. Give notice it is coming. "2018 we will be implementing a 1% tax, 2019 2%, 2020 3%, rising to 7% in 2024." Combine that with an income tax credit (5-7 yrs?) for those who build "value added" facilities in Canada.

So yes, there are things that can be done.

By the way, James Sterk (of the Heritage Foundation lol) is an outlier in what he says about productivity and wage gains. To the point where one can say he is just spewing propaganda for the super rich.

[Pat-Taporter]

Global News

Oil and gas group asks for federal money to clean up inactive wells

By Lauren Krugel The Canadian Press

March 14, 2016

http://globalnews.ca/news/2577430/oil-a ... ive-wells/

CALGARY – An energy industry group wants $500 million in federal infrastructure funding to clean up inactive oil and gas wells.

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada says its members don’t typically ask for government money.

The group also acknowledges that it’s a company’s responsibility to decommission wells that are no longer producing.

. . .

PSAC says as of January of this year, Alberta had more than 75,000 inactive wells that needed to be decommissioned and the sums being requested would cover a fraction of that work.