Canadian workers fired, Croatian workers imported to work on Imperial Oil's oilsands project. Not an isolated incident as I reported here.
"McGowan said, despite the changes, the program is being exploited. And the government isn't doing enough to stop it.
"This is not an isolated case. Increasingly, this is becoming business as usual."
McGowan has heard complaints from two other groups of oilpatch workers in the past month that they have been replaced by cheaper, foreign labour.
"The (government) is allowing employers to use the program as a tool to drive down wages and displace Canadians, despite all the reassurances to the contrary.""
My message to my students. This your country - you can demand that government change or you can do nothing and let the elites of this country politically engineer economic inequality. The choice is yours - but if you take a class from me you can't say you haven't been warned. Do nothing and you will wake up be 40 years old a mortgage 2 kids and a car payment and they will be coming for your job.
I may come off as at preachy on the topic of inequality. It is because technology, globalization and crony capitalism (tax havens, tax cuts for the rich, regulatory capture) will blow up inequality to unprecedented levels.
From 'The Economist' January 18-24, page 9, Coming To An Office Near You
"Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information (“big data”), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people. Clever industrial robots can quickly “learn” a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors. One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades.
If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to widen.
Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.
The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work."
LET ME CLEAR: THE ECONOMIST IS WRONG ON BOTH BOLDED ASSERTIONS. EDUCATED YOUNG PEOPLE ALL OVER THE OECD CANNOT GET JOBS. MORE EFFECTIVE JOBS TRAININGS PROGRAMS WILL HELP BUT WILL NOT BE A PANACEA. IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN LONG RUN GROWTH, RISING INEQUALITY WILL HAVE TO BE FIRST STOPPED AND THEN REVERSED.
IF COUNTRIES CAN GET TOGETHER AND MULTILATERALLY NEGOTIATE TRADE AGREEMENTS (UNIFORM -HARMONIZED TAXES ON GOODS) THEN THEY CAN GET TOGETHER AND MULTILATERALLY SET HARMONIZED TAXES ON LABOUR AND CAPITAL.
YES IT WILL BE DIFFICULT, YES THERE WILL BE SIGNIFICANT PUSH BACKS FOR THE ELITES, AND YES THERE WILL BE ATTEMPTS TO CIRCUMVENT THESE LAWS.
BUT IT THIS IS WHAT IS NECESSARY IF THE NATIONS STATE, AS WE KNOW THEM, HAVE ANY HOPE OF SURVIVIAL.
Inequality, the Great Recession, and Slow Recovery Barry Z. Cynamon Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis Steven M. Fazzari Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract:
Rising inequality reduced income growth for the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution beginning about 1980, but that group’s consumption growth did not fall proportionally. Instead, lower saving led to increasing balance sheet fragility for the bottom 95 percent, eventually triggering the Great Recession. We decompose consumption and saving across income groups. The consumption-income ratio of the bottom 95 percent fell sharply in the recession, consistent with tighter borrowing constraints. The top 5 percent ratio rose, consistent with consumption smoothing. The inability of the bottom 95 percent to generate adequate demand helps explain the slow recovery.
Title: Explaining Slower Productivity Growth: The Role of Weak Demand Growth
presented by Someshwar Rao S Rao Consulting Inc. and Jiang Li University of Victoria
Abstract:
Using panel data on Canadian industries and OECD countries, this article examines empirically the role of growth in domestic and external demand in labour productivity growth. The findings suggest that most of the post-2000 slowdown in business sector labour productivity growth was the result of weak demand growth, which impacts productivity directly by reducing economies of scale and scope and by affecting key productivity drivers such as investment and R&D. With an expected slowdown in both domestic demand growth in Canada and external demand growth for Canadian exports, the medium- to long-term outlook for productivity growth, and hence for real income growth of Canadians, is expected to be weak.
"McGowan said, despite the changes, the program is being exploited. And the government isn't doing enough to stop it.
"This is not an isolated case. Increasingly, this is becoming business as usual."
McGowan has heard complaints from two other groups of oilpatch workers in the past month that they have been replaced by cheaper, foreign labour.
"The (government) is allowing employers to use the program as a tool to drive down wages and displace Canadians, despite all the reassurances to the contrary.""
My message to my students. This your country - you can demand that government change or you can do nothing and let the elites of this country politically engineer economic inequality. The choice is yours - but if you take a class from me you can't say you haven't been warned. Do nothing and you will wake up be 40 years old a mortgage 2 kids and a car payment and they will be coming for your job.
I may come off as at preachy on the topic of inequality. It is because technology, globalization and crony capitalism (tax havens, tax cuts for the rich, regulatory capture) will blow up inequality to unprecedented levels.
From 'The Economist' January 18-24, page 9, Coming To An Office Near You
"Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information (“big data”), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people. Clever industrial robots can quickly “learn” a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors. One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today’s jobs could be automated in the next two decades.
If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to widen.
Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites’ protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.
The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work."
LET ME CLEAR: THE ECONOMIST IS WRONG ON BOTH BOLDED ASSERTIONS. EDUCATED YOUNG PEOPLE ALL OVER THE OECD CANNOT GET JOBS. MORE EFFECTIVE JOBS TRAININGS PROGRAMS WILL HELP BUT WILL NOT BE A PANACEA. IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN LONG RUN GROWTH, RISING INEQUALITY WILL HAVE TO BE FIRST STOPPED AND THEN REVERSED.
IF COUNTRIES CAN GET TOGETHER AND MULTILATERALLY NEGOTIATE TRADE AGREEMENTS (UNIFORM -HARMONIZED TAXES ON GOODS) THEN THEY CAN GET TOGETHER AND MULTILATERALLY SET HARMONIZED TAXES ON LABOUR AND CAPITAL.
YES IT WILL BE DIFFICULT, YES THERE WILL BE SIGNIFICANT PUSH BACKS FOR THE ELITES, AND YES THERE WILL BE ATTEMPTS TO CIRCUMVENT THESE LAWS.
BUT IT THIS IS WHAT IS NECESSARY IF THE NATIONS STATE, AS WE KNOW THEM, HAVE ANY HOPE OF SURVIVIAL.
Inequality, the Great Recession, and Slow Recovery Barry Z. Cynamon Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis Steven M. Fazzari Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract:
Rising inequality reduced income growth for the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution beginning about 1980, but that group’s consumption growth did not fall proportionally. Instead, lower saving led to increasing balance sheet fragility for the bottom 95 percent, eventually triggering the Great Recession. We decompose consumption and saving across income groups. The consumption-income ratio of the bottom 95 percent fell sharply in the recession, consistent with tighter borrowing constraints. The top 5 percent ratio rose, consistent with consumption smoothing. The inability of the bottom 95 percent to generate adequate demand helps explain the slow recovery.
Title: Explaining Slower Productivity Growth: The Role of Weak Demand Growth
presented by Someshwar Rao S Rao Consulting Inc. and Jiang Li University of Victoria
Abstract:
Using panel data on Canadian industries and OECD countries, this article examines empirically the role of growth in domestic and external demand in labour productivity growth. The findings suggest that most of the post-2000 slowdown in business sector labour productivity growth was the result of weak demand growth, which impacts productivity directly by reducing economies of scale and scope and by affecting key productivity drivers such as investment and R&D. With an expected slowdown in both domestic demand growth in Canada and external demand growth for Canadian exports, the medium- to long-term outlook for productivity growth, and hence for real income growth of Canadians, is expected to be weak.
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