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» babble   » walking the talk   » labour and consumption   » There's unemployment, lots of it.

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Author Topic: There's unemployment, lots of it.
bruce_the_vii
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posted 06 April 2008 07:05 PM      Profile for bruce_the_vii     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I’ve been reading government reports and I was perusing Statistics Canada’s “Labour Force at a Glance”. It details how the employment rate varies all over the country and is not captured by the official unemployment statistic but states that they think only 1% of the missing workers are thought to want a job. That is very conveniently for the government as people in the regions where there are no jobs don’t actually want a job. Survey says. It admits that little is known about these missing workers.

The situation in Canada is bad as the employment in best cities is about 10% above the biggies of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. However the real cesspool turns out to be Europe. France and Germany employment is about 10% below Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver while Italy is about 10% below France and Germany.

The percent of working age people with jobs (the "employment rate") would be 71% in Calgary, 62% in Canada, 53% in France, 52% in Germany and the bring up the rear is Italy with 45%. The data is for 2004.

I checked my files and Nfld and Labrador's employment rate is 50%. That's some thing like Germany and France. Italy is well behind. The news media on N. Italy is they have a robust economy, equivalent to Germany and Nfld and Labrador.

[ 06 April 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Dec 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 06 April 2008 07:49 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sure, and if there was full employment in even the Northern hemisphere, we'd strip resources bare in nothing flat and choke on the pollution. Like some of those European countries, we should be paying people to stay home until this capitalist system can be scrapped and replaced by something sustainable. I think electoral reform would be a good place to start in creating some interest in democracy in this northern Puerto Rico.

[ 06 April 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
bruce_the_vii
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posted 06 April 2008 11:52 PM      Profile for bruce_the_vii     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Don't look now but industrialization of Asia is proceeding apace. The 21st Century is going to be about a crowded world. The awful wars of the 20th Century have been surpressed by the bomb and the issue of resources for the billions may now become the focus of history. I don't see why the concern with Gobal Warming instead of the world population. The point with that is that with funding birth control programs is effective so this is really a priority for everybody. I don't know much about it but the birth rate has come down.

[ 06 April 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Dec 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 April 2008 10:01 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I don't see why the concern with Gobal Warming instead of the world population. The point with that is that with funding birth control programs is effective so this is really a priority for everybody.

And the industrial-capitalist model has never worked well for the vast majority. We are using up resources at rates which will guarantee absolute poverty for hundreds of millions of human beings down the road. 25 years ago, there were 500 million living with chronic hunger. Today the number is 850 million and anywhere from four to 13 million human beings dying of the capitalist economic long run each and every year like clockwork. It's planned and enforced genocide. Nouveau Liberal capitalism is the disproportionate sharing of misery and unspeakable human suffering in order that much can have more. Capitalism has managed to breed compassion out of the gene pool over the course of centuries. Capitalism is a monstrous ideology.

Socialism or barbarism? That was decided long ago behind closed doors by shadowy, megalomaniacal figureheads possessing neither souls nor basic human decency.

[ 07 April 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
bruce_the_vii
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posted 07 April 2008 03:59 PM      Profile for bruce_the_vii     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think the correct term for our system is "the mixed economy". This means that government runs much of it. In Canada taxes are 40% of the GDP and this is considerable.
From: Toronto | Registered: Dec 2006  |  IP: Logged
bruce_the_vii
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posted 07 April 2008 04:01 PM      Profile for bruce_the_vii     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was thinking about Italy's 45% employment rate (compared to Nfld. and Labrador's 50%) and recalled that 30 years ago when the country was not developed it had an infamous underground economy that everyone participated in. This might be still there although I have not heard about it for years.
From: Toronto | Registered: Dec 2006  |  IP: Logged
scooter
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posted 07 April 2008 04:42 PM      Profile for scooter     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
...start in creating some interest in democracy in this northern Puerto Rico...

You've got a long history of being pretty nasty towards under developed countries. Could you please put a stop to it. You come across, at time, of being a racist bigot.

From: High River | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 07 April 2008 05:55 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I think the correct term for our system is "the mixed economy". This means that government runs much of it. In Canada taxes are 40% of the GDP and this is considerable.

Canada is middle of the pack in terms of overall taxation. By what I've read, there is no link between significant economic growth and lower corporate taxes. Our economies grew at 5 and 6 percent when corporate tax rates were higher.

quote:
"Policymakers must take DR[Dominant Revenue] claims into account when assessing any economic theory, no matter how wonderful it might be or sound! The crisis of modern-day economics springs from a quixotic attempt to understand a mixed economy in which profit is no longer the DR- in terms of a theory based on the assumption that it is. - William Krehm, Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform, Canada

From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Doug
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posted 08 April 2008 06:50 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I was thinking about Italy's 45% employment rate (compared to Nfld. and Labrador's 50%) and recalled that 30 years ago when the country was not developed it had an infamous underground economy that everyone participated in. This might be still there although I have not heard about it for years.

It is, especially in the south of Italy. Something that also has to be considered in the numbers for France/Germany/Italy is that women aren't employed at anything like the rate they are in the US/Canada/UK/Scandinavia. To the extent that's a choice, it can't be considered unemployment.


From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 April 2008 07:43 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Northern industrialists tend to take advantage of cheaper labour in the less affluent south. Italians have been divided for a long time over politics, the economy, the Savoys, and the Church. Viva Italia!
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
bruce_the_vii
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posted 08 April 2008 09:11 PM      Profile for bruce_the_vii     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was chatting to a guy from Paris about the statistic and he mentions that people not working get benefits there.

The more people working is a big advantage. It pays for the social programs. It keeps taxes down.

While the nunber of adults working in Canada is 62% - 64% in the Toronto suburbs in 1990 it went up to 74% -75%.


From: Toronto | Registered: Dec 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 08 April 2008 10:31 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't think they're what will happen with the global casino economy faltering the way it is. A few months ago the IMF was calling for fiscal restraint among countries with large deficits like the U.S. And now the Fund is applauding $150 billion dollar deficit spending to boost U.S. economy.

We're following a model for economic growth based on indebtedness. If our economy doesn't grow, the country goes further into debt. If we as individuals don't work, we, too, go into debt or lose our homes and cars and end up camping outside in January. Whether it's bubble boom times or time to bail our deregulated banksters from the their gambling losses with taxpayers money, banksters win every time. Us ordinary people wish we had those kinds of guarantees in life. It's socialism for rich people. They aren't even trying to make "this" work anymore. Capitalists have run out of new ideas to fix what will always be broken.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 17 April 2008 04:55 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This story from Foreign workers leave mussel farmer in the lurch
is a laugher.

quote:
Stewart paid $21,000 in air fare, renovated a house for them, and bought a van for them to get around. In all, it cost him about $50,000, and in return they signed an eight-month contract.

The workers arrived on May 6 and a month later, Stewart believes they hired two taxi vans to take them to Ottawa.

Paul Snow, an immigration official in Charlottetown, told CBC News Tuesday he can't comment specifically about the case, but he said it is a very rare for temporary foreign workers to leave before they have fulfilled their contracts.


Our stoogeocrats and industry friends are so good to foreigners. HA HA!


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Doug
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Babbler # 44

posted 18 April 2008 12:33 AM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wonder what a taxi from PEI to Ottawa costs?
From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged

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