United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

[metalman]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

Wow, I thought we Americans had a sense of entitlement! Storming the national assembly demanding the government absolve you of your personal debts?

(I know someone will come in with a comment about the various mortgage bailout proposals here and how that's no different, but... I dunno, it's not like Americans are marching in the streets demanding the government pay off their car loans, credit cards, payday loans, etc. across the board.)

this is where the bailouts lead... to expectations of perpetual bailouts. they become an entitlement, as they have for wall street. watch what happens when the price of oil falls.

[rj1]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

Wow, I thought we Americans had a sense of entitlement! Storming the national assembly demanding the government absolve you of your personal debts?

(I know someone will come in with a comment about the various mortgage bailout proposals here and how that's no different, but... I dunno, it's not like Americans are marching in the streets demanding the government pay off their car loans, credit cards, payday loans, etc. across the board.)

Americans no longer know the power of "raving mob with guns" and what it can do to scared politicians. If they did...well, the National Mall would become interesting.

Daniel Shays had that power. And because of him came the Constitution.

[GRG55]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

...Like any banana republic that depreciates its currency to give the economy a temporary boost, as the private sector–especially the goods producing sector–of the economy shrinks the UBRA government employs more of its citizens directly and through companies that contract to the government, especially as elections approach...

...There is one fly in the tropical rum drink. Today's labor department report also showed: "Wages, meanwhile, rose solidly."

Suppression of wage increases has been the centerpiece of monetary and government policy to manage inflation in the Production/Consumption Economy since 1980. Given the difficulty in acquiring legitimate measures of actual inflation rates in the US economy, there is no way of telling whether these wage increases translate into increased purchasing power. Given the rise of oil and other commodity prices, it seems doubtful. In fact, it looks like the UBRA is going full-bore banana republic, including wage and price inflation to maintain employment going into an election year...

The UBRA is but an amateur at this game. Check this out.
Inflation? What inflation??


Consumer relief as gov't unveils food subsidies

by Wael Mahdi on Sunday, 09 December 2007

zoom
King Abdullah, pictured, orders government to take action to ease inflationary pressure on citizens. (Getty Images)

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Saturday intervened directly in the kingdom’s war on inflation, ordering the government to pay subsidies on two major food items to ease consumer concerns about the rising cost of goods.

Saudi finance minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf said the government will pay 1,000 Saudi riyals ($266) in subsidies for each metric tonne of rice, and will increase the subsidy for baby milk sixfold from 2 riyals to 12 riyals, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

SPA did not give any further details about the subsidies or when they would come into effect.

International rice prices have risen 8.7% since the beginning of the year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Saudi Arabia is the largest importer of rice in the Middle East. The kingdom imported little under half of India’s total rice exports of 1.01 million tonnes in 2006-2007, while the rest of West Asia imported 291,000 tonnes, according to data from India’s Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS).

The Saudi government is also looking at raising public sector wages to fight inflation, which accelerated to 4.8% in September, the highest level in at least a decade.

State employees are expected to receive a 30% salary increase, with a decision set to be issued shortly, according to a report by Arabic news channel Al-Arabiya.

The news follows reports last week that several high-profile Saudi companies such as Saudi Aramco and Mobily plan to raise wages by 15-40%.

Saudi Arabia is just the latest Gulf Arab state to look at hiking public sector wages as part of efforts to limit the impact of inflation.

Kuwaiti MPs approved a draft law last week urging the government to raise public and private sector wages for employees earning less than $6,385.

Bahrain has approved calls for a 15% hike for government employees, and the UAE recently announced it will raise public sector wages by 70%. :eek:

[jk]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

having just come from the thread discussing subsidized energy prices in oil producing countries [e.g. venezuelans pay $0.07/gallon for gasoline], i far prefer subsidized food if the gov't feels it must intervene.

i love the idea of big raises in income to "combat" inflation. of course these countries are suffering from inflation because they link their currencies to the dollar, so they do have another alternative....

[GRG55]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

having just come from the thread discussing subsidized energy prices in oil producing countries [e.g. venezuelans pay $0.07/gallon for gasoline], i far prefer subsidized food if the gov't feels it must intervene.

i love the idea of big raises in income to "combat" inflation. of course these countries are suffering from inflation because they link their currencies to the dollar, so they do have another alternative....

Theoretically yes. But they are no more likely to exercise that alternative than the Fed is likely to exercise its alternative in support of that same dollar.

Why not?

Well, here's one reason. The massive money printing here has spawned one of the biggest real estate booms on the face of the planet. The scale of the projects here is rivaled only by China. As usual in this region, the enormous financial benefits accrue almost entirely to an extraordinarily privileged slice at the very upper tier of these societies. They aren't going to stop the music voluntarily - not as long as they can keep the incredibly lucrative game going, and buy public peace if necessary by sprinkling a bit of largesse.

[GRG55]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

Today we roll out our United Banana Republic of America (UBRA) flag as we dig into the Labor Department's numbers to see where all these jobs came from, but the fact is that our projection yesterday of today's payroll numbers was wrong.


The good news: unemployment is only slightly up. The bad news: the banana republicization of America is proceeding apace...

And here's the latest installment from north of the border. The media and their preferred commentators express surprise at the number of jobs created while the economy has slowed so dramatically. However, one can be quite certain that Canadian governments at all levels, flush with cash from the recent economic boom, and ever desirous of finding new and creative ways to control their citizen's lives, are hiring like mad.

Calgary labour crunch getting worse
StatsCan data sees no relief for employers

Geoffrey Scotton

Calgary Herald

Saturday, March 08, 2008


Unrelenting economic growth has pushed Calgary's jobless rate further below three per cent, indicating that widespread labour shortages aren't only here to stay -- they're getting worse.

Backed by Statistics Canada figures Friday, experts said competition to find workers is tougher than ever.

"It's not an easy market," said Jack Gregory, co-owner of Tuxedo Source for Sports. "You really have to listen to your employees and try and find ways to give them little perks. We've been very, very lucky with the people we've got," Gregory added about his 25-person sporting goods operation. "Employees will go to other places if they don't think that you care."

Calgary's jobless rate for February was 2.8 per cent, down from 2.9 per cent in January and materially lower than the mark a year ago, when the unemployment rate in the city was 3.3 per cent. Record lows were set in December 2006 and January 2007, at 2.6 per cent.

"I'm a little bit surprised to see it down below three per cent," said Adam Legge, vice-president and chief economist of Calgary Economic Development. "It's a continued bellwether that labour shortages are not a flash in the pan, they're not a short-term thing -- they're here to stay.
"This is an employees' market and they can pick and choose, they can drive the contact. If you want to retain them, you've got to be compensating well, you've got to have a great environment, you've got to be offering challenge and opportunity," said Legge.

Analysts say the tightened job market in Calgary indicates the economy is once again performing more strongly than anticipated. Record oil prices and strengthening natural gas prices are buttressing Calgary's prosperity and that's keeping the labour supply tight.

"There's quite some potential for Calgary to outperform," said Legge, suggesting 2008 growth in the city may be closer to four per cent than the low three per cent range he forecast in December.

At the national level, a U.S. economic slowdown and signs of one north of the border have done nothing to cool Canada's red-hot labour market -- even in the beleaguered manufacturing heartland of Ontario -- StatsCan said, as the nation added 43,300 jobs in February, keeping the jobless rate at a 33-year low and pushing the employment rate to an all-time high.

Analysts are mystified by the ability of the Canadian economy to crank out tens of thousands of jobs when growth on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border is slowing.

Canada's economy expanded by an anemic 0.8 per cent annual pace in the fourth quarter of 2007, prompting the Bank of Canada on March 4 to slash interest rates by half a percentage point.

"To say that today's employment numbers were stunning simply doesn't do the outcome justice," said TD Bank Financial Group vice-president and deputy chief economist Craig Alexander.

"We've run out of superlatives to describe the remarkable strength in the labour market at a time that the other monthly economic reports are signalling slowing economic growth."

Although Ontario accounted for most of the new jobs in February, Alberta has helped to elevate the national performance.

While there were few additions to jobs in Alberta in February, the province has added 58,000 new employees in the last year; a stellar, three per cent job creation rate. It also maintained its participation rate (those adults who are working or looking) at an all-time high of 74.5 per cent, by far the highest in Canada.

Nonetheless, in February, as more people -- about 1,100 -- entered the Alberta labour force and employment fell by 5,000, the jobless rate edged up from the rock-bottom rate of 3.2 per cent in January to a still drum-tight 3.5 per cent, still the lowest in Canada, as it has been generally for roughly three years.

The robust performance of the job market nationally, and in Alberta and Calgary, comes at a time when there has been a slew of indicators that the Canadian economy's pace of expansion slowed considerably as 2007 drew to a close.
"It seems that the slower the Canadian economy grows, the more workers it needs to hire," said Avery Shenfeld, managing director and senior economist with CIBC World Markets Inc., noting the February gains came on top of 46,000 jobs added in January.

Shenfeld cited Canada's "tepid" average economic growth rate in the second half of 2007 of just 1.9 per cent. "It should take a boom in output to need all those new hires . . . this simply defies logic," said Shenfeld.

In Alberta and Calgary, there are few signs things will slow, particularly among operators of small and medium-sized businesses. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said Friday that 6.3 per cent of Alberta firms had jobs go unfilled for at least four months in 2007, estimating that a total of 54,000 positions across Wild Rose Country went unfilled.

Moreover, one half of all businesses had trouble hiring new staff.

"For years, we've been talking about the shortage of qualified labour," said the CFIB's director for Alberta, Danielle Smith. "Even with the current economic uncertainties, our demographics suggest that the shortage of qualified labour is a problem that is not going away any time soon."
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...5d&k=80563&p=2

[Nicolasd]

Re: United Banana Republic of America: Government and Service Jobs for All!

It would be interesting to know the split between Governement related job creation (including municipal,public services like transport,hospitals,para-public ,etc.) vs private sector.

Just eyeballing the saturday adds in "La Presse" , it seems to be at least 70/30 for the public jobs offers.