Other Manitoba and Saskatchewan Developments

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by Simplicity

This whole comment is dumb, I'm sorry.

Firstly, to correct your assertion that healthcare workers and teachers contribute to economic production, you're really out on a limb here. They are simply utilizing taxation already awash in the economy. If your argument was that they're contributing to the economic productive capacity of a future generation or that their service allows people to be back at work, then you might have a point. But you weren't making that point. You were implying that money that we can redistribute in an economy is as valuable as somebody who can create value from outside by creating increased aggregate demand and that's simply not true. We have no idea what the value of a teacher is. There's plenty to suggest that might be 'not much' outside of a glorified baby-sitting service given that a teacher is a fixed cost regardless of how far back Manitoba students fall relative to the rest of the country - and they're falling - but they get raises and large pensions at early ages, regardless.

I can fairly clearly see your politics and they're clouding your judgment. You need to quickly disabuse yourself of the notion that money in anybody's hands is money in good hands; that isn't how economies work. Bureaucrats - which I will happily call them, thank you - don't 'reinvest'. They might save (bad), they might retire earlier (bad), they may take an extra vacation (bad), but they definitely aren't building anything. They are 'risk-averse' by the very nature that makes them good government employees. That resources are being diverted into these hands and out of the private, productive economy is bad. The simple transaction here is that money is taken from a small/medium sized business and put in the hands of a government employee who will get a raise because - well, because. And that might be fine if government had a history of being more productive than the private sector, except we know very well that the opposite is true. The bureaucracy keeps growing, creating needless regulation to justify its size, and then continually giving itself raises to ensure it's always more comfortable than the private sector. And this isn't a political statement. That the NDP is currently in power is irrelevant to me. But there are no such thing as natural government monopolies outside of what some professor might tell you. Rigid, unionized bureaucracies are by their very nature too unaccountable and completely at the mercy of an engrained lack of innovation and flexibility otherwise required of large enterprises in order to succeed. That comes along with guaranteeing the middling and unambitious employment for life. I would love to hear the rationale for a natural monopoly on liquor sales.

I always love coming across comments from people who have obviously never spent a day working in the private sector. It's always so obvious because this idea that resources are infinite and that you're entitled to them is always so pervasive. And the contempt is never far behind. It's not unlike the rich-kid who hates his parents for their bourgeois taste but would never consider working a part-time job because that's below them. Your little comment about 'pro-business' couldn't be anymore tone-deaf. We all have to be 'pro-business'. Without business, there's no government (or did you forget how an economy works?). Even in your socialist utopia there's business. This idea that a lazy bureaucrat completely divorced from the consequences of their productivity or total lack thereof is somehow just as value to our economy as a private sector entrepreneur is something only somebody who thinks like you could leave as a comment and not feel embarrassed about.

You can see clearly what 15 years of the speNDP has done to the mindset of Manitoba youth, god help them when reality confronts them!

[Stormer]

Originally Posted by Authentic_City

You have to calculate the percentages yourself, but here is the link to the relevant Stats Canada tables:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tabl...abr66h-eng.htm

Here is my quick arithmetic:

Percentage of Total Employment by Public Sector
(% change Nov 2013-Nov 14)

BC 17.5% (+0.9)
AB 16.4% (+1.8)
SK 24.1% (+0.6)
MB 26.3% (+6.2)
ON 19.2% (+0.9)
QC 22.3% (+1.2)

I stopped at QC, but you get the idea. MB and SK have by far the largest public sector workforces in this part of the country. Growth in public sector employment MB over the past year is high to be sure.

To clarify, the number in parenthesis is the % increase in the number public sector employees year over year. It is not the increase in percentage of the total workforce that are in the public sector. So for example although the SK % appears to have increased 0.6%, the private sector increase was 2.5%. Therefore the ratio of public sector workers actually fell significantly in SK.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Authentic_City

I stopped at QC, but you get the idea. MB and SK have by far the largest public sector workforces in this part of the country. Growth in public sector employment MB over the past year is high to be sure.

Thanks for that. Hopefully that doesn't come as a shock to Stormer who seems to be under the impression that Saskatchewan has suddenly become a Texas-style bastion of free enterprise.

Kidding aside, I wonder how much MB and SK's numbers are skewed by the fact that they each have large publicly-owned insurance and energy companies which most provinces do not have. SK also has a publicly-owned telco. Each of these companies is engaged in a productive pursuit and I'm not sure why anyone could conclude that a business analyst at, say, MTS, went from being a lazy bureaucrat to a sharp-eyed businessperson the day that company was divested by the province.

I wonder what the comparison would look like if you removed the commercially oriented crown corporations from the provincial comparison that distorts the actual figures?

[Arts]

Simplicity, economic production is the making of a good or service for consumption. As long as there are students in schools, and patients in hospitals, and as long as teachers and nurses are being compensated for their efforts (regardless if that comes from private fees or from provincial expenditures), then it counts toward the economy.

I am not trying to make this about pro-anything, nor is anything I'm saying political (though it will certainly reveal parts of my own political leanings... centre-left FTR). As for your last paragraph, I'm not even going to spend any more words rebutting anything in there because it is chock full of faulty assumptions.

[Stormer]

Originally Posted by esquire

Thanks for that. Hopefully that doesn't come as a shock to Stormer who seems to be under the impression that Saskatchewan has suddenly become a Texas-style bastion of free enterprise.

Kidding aside, I wonder how much MB and SK's numbers are skewed by the fact that they each have large publicly-owned insurance and energy companies which most provinces do not have. SK also has a publicly-owned telco. Each of these companies is engaged in a productive pursuit and I'm not sure why anyone could conclude that a business analyst at, say, MTS, went from being a lazy bureaucrat to a sharp-eyed businessperson the day that company was divested by the province.

I wonder what the comparison would look like if you removed the commercially oriented crown corporations from the provincial comparison that distorts the actual figures?

No surprise at all. In fact you will see my post below says:

I think you will find that Saskatchewan also has a large % of GDP and employment in the public sector, but that growth in the private sector has been faster for at least 10 years.

My point is merely about sustainability and trends.

[1ajs]

rural manitoba sure is doing good these days

theres changes in the north happening.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by Arts

Simplicity, economic production is the making of a good or service for consumption. As long as there are students in schools, and patients in hospitals, and as long as teachers and nurses are being compensated for their efforts (regardless if that comes from private fees or from provincial expenditures), then it counts toward the economy.

I am not trying to make this about pro-anything, nor is anything I'm saying political (though it will certainly reveal parts of my own political leanings... centre-left FTR). As for your last paragraph, I'm not even going to spend any more words rebutting anything in there because it is chock full of faulty assumptions.

This is considered economic activity. Yes, money is changing hands.

But an economy is not sustainable without growth. And that doesn't come from the government creating the demand, creating the service, and then purchasing it from itself which is what you're implying. That's a closed loop. That growth comes from the private sector. It's then taxed, and added to the public sector. I have no idea how your mind allows you to conflate that the economic value of a bureaucrat is equal to that of a private sector employee. You may have noticed the government carrying deficits. That's because the government is not creating enough value to justify its expenditures. And you know how we know that? Because if they were, the taxation created by the labour output and the value gap created by the output - the profit, we'll call it - and the taxation applicable to that or even the net social benefit if you want to get really arcane, would be covering those costs. But they're not. And as we go - because money is being siphoned out of the productive private sector and into the public one - there's less taxable capacity. Why? Because that money isn't growing. The opposite, in fact; the value is being eroded. And since we're doing it on borrowed funds, we don't only lose the taxable capacity, we lose the interest and fees required of the debt. And that's how deficits turn into structural debt - we're now at a point where 15 years of running straight deficits has gotten the provincial government to a point where even at their best efforts and in the interest of an election, they have no means to close it.

So tell us again about economic production all being equal.

[Arts]

Originally Posted by Authentic_City

You have to calculate the percentages yourself, but here is the link to the relevant Stats Canada tables:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tabl...abr66h-eng.htm

Here is my quick arithmetic:

Percentage of Total Employment by Public Sector
(% change Nov 2013-Nov 14)

BC 17.5% (+0.9)
AB 16.4% (+1.8)
SK 24.1% (+0.6)
MB 26.3% (+6.2)
ON 19.2% (+0.9)
QC 22.3% (+1.2)

I stopped at QC, but you get the idea. MB and SK have by far the largest public sector workforces in this part of the country. Growth in public sector employment MB over the past year is high to be sure.

To me, cross-provincial comparisons are unreliable because the scope of services varies. But the one glaring question about MB, is why the sudden increase year over year? It is clear that there is new job creation - the bulk of the 9200 jobs in healthcare and education according the the WFP. So shouldn't it be readily apparent where these new jobs are coming from? Are these previously underfilled vacancies that have finally been filled, or are these new positions? Or is it simply that the methodology for reporting these figures has changed somehow?

What are we missing from the picture that accounts for the increased public workforce? Are there new hospitals and schools that have recently opened? New social assistance programs that have been created?

[Arts]

Originally Posted by Simplicity

This is considered economic activity. Yes, money is changing hands.

But an economy is not sustainable without growth. And that doesn't come from the government creating the demand, creating the service, and then purchasing it from itself which is what you're implying. That's a closed loop. That growth comes from the private sector. It's then taxed, and added to the public sector. I have no idea how your mind allows you to conflate that the economic value of a bureaucrat is equal to that of a private sector employee. You may have noticed the government carrying deficits. That's because the government is not creating enough value to justify its expenditures. And you know how we know that? Because if they were, the taxation created by the labour output and the value gap created by the output - the profit, we'll call it - and the taxation applicable to that or even the net social benefit if you want to get really arcane, would be covering those costs. But they're not. And as we go - because money is being siphoned out of the productive private sector and into the public one - there's less taxable capacity. Why? Because that money isn't growing. The opposite, in fact; the value is being eroded. And since we're doing it on borrowed funds, we don't only lose the taxable capacity, we lose the interest and fees required of the debt. And that's how deficits turn into structural debt - we're now at a point where 15 years of running straight deficits has gotten the provincial government to a point where even at their best efforts and in the interest of an election, they have no means to close it.

So tell us again about economic production all being equal.

because a nurse is not a bureaucrat, nor is a classroom teacher, nor is a social worker that deals with clients. This is not a closed loop, it's a service we choose to pay for - if we paid no tax, then hired nurses and teachers directly out of our own pockets, it's still nearly the exact same amount of economic activity.

The reason you don't see eye to eye with me is because you are dismissing the value of the service you (we) receive for our tax dollars - you refuse to acknowledge that indeed most public sector workers count towards productivity, and that public sector employees also pay taxes at the same rate structure as private sector workers.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by Arts

To me, cross-provincial comparisons are unreliable because the scope of services varies. But the one glaring question about MB, is why the sudden increase year over year? It is clear that there is new job creation - the bulk of the 9200 jobs in healthcare and education according the the WFP. So shouldn't it be readily apparent where these new jobs are coming from? Are these previously underfilled vacancies that have finally been filled, or are these new positions? Or is it simply that the methodology for reporting these figures has changed somehow?

What are we missing from the picture that accounts for the increased public workforce? Are there new hospitals and schools that have recently opened? New social assistance programs that have been created?

The scope of services shouldn't vary; that's the point of equalization. And where it comes to healthcare and schooling, these are done through Canadian Health Transfers and Canadian Social Transfers, so Manitoba shouldn't, theoretically, require greater per capita costs - labour or capital.

Unless, of course, Manitoba was an aging population or one that was inherently unproductive on a per-capita basis. We happen to be both. Largely because we've existed at a negative natural growth rate over many years, only recently focusing on immigration to bolster our population. Manitoba's bell-weather trait is its efficiency in chasing our most productive out of province.

The concern with all of this 'added economic productivity' is that it was hired in the time of $100/barrel oil and underwritten by increased transfers produced by resource-rich provinces. Now that those transfers are nearly certain to by cut in half, who sustains these professions given that we don't pay for healthcare or a large portion of public school/daycare expenses outside of our property tax contribution?

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by Arts

To me, cross-provincial comparisons are unreliable because the scope of services varies. But the one glaring question about MB, is why the sudden increase year over year? It is clear that there is new job creation - the bulk of the 9200 jobs in healthcare and education according the the WFP. So shouldn't it be readily apparent where these new jobs are coming from? Are these previously underfilled vacancies that have finally been filled, or are these new positions? Or is it simply that the methodology for reporting these figures has changed somehow?

What are we missing from the picture that accounts for the increased public workforce? Are there new hospitals and schools that have recently opened? New social assistance programs that have been created?

It is called duplication of service. It is the NDP way to ensure the largest unionized workforce possible ahead of the next election. This is also the reason for the increase in the PST which was supposed to be used for infrastructure, but isn't.

Presently, government has deflected criticism of itself by starting a phoney leadership race, with candidates campaigning in the media like they would in an election. A perfect Manitoba style election, with only NDP candidates.

[Bdog]

Originally Posted by Authentic_City

You have to calculate the percentages yourself, but here is the link to the relevant Stats Canada tables:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tabl...abr66h-eng.htm

Here is my quick arithmetic:

Percentage of Total Employment by Public Sector
(% change Nov 2013-Nov 14)

BC 17.5% (+0.9)
AB 16.4% (+1.8)
SK 24.1% (+0.6)
MB 26.3% (+6.2)
ON 19.2% (+0.9)
QC 22.3% (+1.2)

I stopped at QC, but you get the idea. MB and SK have by far the largest public sector workforces in this part of the country. Growth in public sector employment MB over the past year is high to be sure.

Thanks for this AC.

The 6.2% is alarming - I wonder what that number was like the past few years.

Also, Esquire makes a good point. Lumping Hydro (regardless of what we think of the way they're managed) and MPI, for example, with regional health authorities/school divisions/CFS etc. make it hard to compare province to province. It would be interesting to see the similar numbers, but just for core services (and not Crowns like Sasktel or MPI).

[Komatiite]

No man, you just don't get it, we can sustain this growth if we keep raising taxes and spending it on asphalt. Steady blowjobs, good gropes, you'll see.

This shit reminds me of Pawley's plan back in the 80s where a crew of guys would shovel gravel from the pile into the bucket if a front-end-loader, drive it 50 yards to the site where another crew of guys would shovel it out. Made in Manitoba solution.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by Arts

because a nurse is not a bureaucrat, nor is a classroom teacher, nor is a social worker that deals with clients. This is not a closed loop, it's a service we choose to pay for - if we paid no tax, then hired nurses and teachers directly out of our own pockets, it's still nearly the exact same amount of economic activity.

The reason you don't see eye to eye with me is because you are dismissing the value of the service you (we) receive for our tax dollars - you refuse to acknowledge that indeed most public sector workers count towards productivity, and that public sector employees also pay taxes at the same rate structure as private sector workers.

You've obviously missed the entire lesson.

Social workers are bureaucrats. A nurse, is a bureaucrat. They're part of a large bureaucracy. Do you see the etymology of the word? Good.

Now, a nurse, for instance, is stuck in a closed loop. The government sets the pay, the government sets the demand (infinite - no ceiling), and the government sets the rate of service - or the supply. There's almost literally no market intervention within the province. If we were to hire nurses and teachers out of our pockets, we'd pay attention to their value. We wouldn't just set a rate and pay it perpetually ignoring all of their performance. Our ability to pay may actually enter the equation. We would probably discourage the unnecessary usage. In fact, we almost wouldn't have a free-rider problem at all; like induced demand for anything, the more you hire, the more you'll use them. Their productivity is only measurable by how productive they make others. That's their value. So their value would be considered break-even to the government up to a point, and then any extraneous productivity they created in others would be considered the marginal benefit, if any. But they are paid out of taxation receipts generated by the private sector. And given that nursing and most medical costs are generated in the latter parts of one's life where they are mostly unproductive, your argument falls mostly flat. In fact, one could very easily argue that nursing costs economies more than it gives back taking into account the ridiculously expensive procedures that are done near one's end of life in the interest of extending the most economically unproductive years of one's life at the highest cost - an argument for another day.

But again, a nurse and a social worker are not 'productive' for the most part. The argument is that over the long-term they are supposed to save economies money by being 'social goods' - something we can't prove. The same argument could be made for paying people to dig holes and fill them. Technically, we're redistributing income. You think that's great. I know it to be otherwise. Unless there's a marginal benefit to a service, that service is a loss leader, especially when governments go into debt to pay for them. The idea that only government employees spend money and that's why we should give them more always is dumb. They aren't generally productive - they're services we can't properly value who are always receiving wage increases at the expense of the private sector. That they're not producing enough value to justify themselves is evident by recurring deficits and growing debt. Especially given that our economy has been 'growing' when we know otherwise.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by Riverman

It is called duplication of service. It is the NDP way to ensure the largest unionized workforce possible ahead of the next election. This is also the reason for the increase in the PST which was supposed to be used for infrastructure, but isn't.

Presently, government has deflected criticism of itself by starting a phoney leadership race, with candidates campaigning in the media like they would in an election. A perfect Manitoba style election, with only NDP candidates.

The increase in PST netted the province an extra $470 M but then the speNDP went and spent another $500M which they didn't have added to the provincial debt. in 2014. There is no amount of taxation revenue that this regime wouldn't squander, it really does't matter what the PST rate is, this govt. will spend it and double that in debt. I feel for people who will unable to leave this province in the future because it won't be pretty for those still left. Anyone read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, think of that....

Can any of you speNDP fans explain how we even begin to pay the excessive pensions and benefits for all those bureaucrats when they begin to retire with such a small ageing provincial population.

[Arts]

Originally Posted by Simplicity

The scope of services shouldn't vary; that's the point of equalization. And where it comes to healthcare and schooling, these are done through Canadian Health Transfers and Canadian Social Transfers, so Manitoba shouldn't, theoretically, require greater per capita costs - labour or capital.

Well that is a feature of equalization program, is that it's not based on expenditures, its based on revenues allowing the provinces to continue administering the programs they see fit. Every province has different industries, resources and is autonomous when it comes the the creation and management of crown corporations, just as they should be.

Unless, of course, Manitoba was an aging population or one that was inherently unproductive on a per-capita basis. We happen to be both. Largely because we've existed at a negative natural growth rate over many years, only recently focusing on immigration to bolster our population. Manitoba's bell-weather trait is its efficiency in chasing our most productive out of province.

I disagree with the "inherently unproductive" part, and tend to hold a higher brighter view of the picture, but do agree that the growth rate has been negative there for far too long.

The concern with all of this 'added economic productivity' is that it was hired in the time of $100/barrel oil and underwritten by increased transfers produced by resource-rich provinces. Now that those transfers are nearly certain to by cut in half, who sustains these professions given that we don't pay for healthcare or a large portion of public school/daycare expenses outside of our property tax contribution?

So your concern then isn't about the health of the public sector but the susceptibility of the private sector? Well that is the nice thing about the stability of the economy there, while you didn't get the full benefits of $107/barrel oil, you are at an advantage to tap into the benefits of $50/barrel oil - there is a solid base of private sector manufacturing and transportation industry there, as well as a solid financial and cultural base so MB will fare just fine while AB, NL and SK struggle forging new books. I think it is most important for you MB folks to remember that you are not dependent on the large public sector, you have chosen to utilize it that way, and I personally find that very prudent.

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by esquire

Thanks for that. Hopefully that doesn't come as a shock to Stormer who seems to be under the impression that Saskatchewan has suddenly become a Texas-style bastion of free enterprise.

Kidding aside, I wonder how much MB and SK's numbers are skewed by the fact that they each have large publicly-owned insurance and energy companies which most provinces do not have. SK also has a publicly-owned telco. Each of these companies is engaged in a productive pursuit and I'm not sure why anyone could conclude that a business analyst at, say, MTS, went from being a lazy bureaucrat to a sharp-eyed businessperson the day that company was divested by the province.

I wonder what the comparison would look like if you removed the commercially oriented crown corporations from the provincial comparison that distorts the actual figures?

Presumably the moment MTS privatized the unionized portion of the workforce was phased out.

And there's nothing to make somebody into a sharp-eyed business-person. It's the fear of management sussing out and acting on your lack of productivity that generally tends to light a fire under one's ass.

If anybody seriously thinks that the cocoon of union employment within government or a crown doesn't breed a certain complacency that leads to laziness, then they're only being dishonest with themselves. I have family members who are bureaucrats that are highly educated and voluntarily-underemployed. Their aversion to work and the institutionalized sense of entitlement is what keeps them there. In the meantime, the government has already invested hundreds of thousands into their education for it to go almost completely unutilized.

[rrskylar]

Every time I open the Freep there's a story about the speNDP coming up with new ways to spend yet more money, today's announcement from brainiac Oswald has her wanting to boost the welfare housing benefit, cost to taxpayers another $22M a year. SO yet another disincentive to actually work, spoke to a friend with a small block where one of his tenants is a single mother with a kid, monthly cheque $1200./month someone working a low level job at say McDonalds would probably make about $1100./month. How does this make sense?

[drew]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

Every time I open the Freep there's a story about the speNDP coming up with new ways to spend yet more money, today's announcement from brainiac Oswald has her wanting to boost the welfare housing benefit, cost to taxpayers another $22M a year. SO yet another disincentive to actually work, spoke to a friend with a small block where one of his tenants is a single mother with a kid, monthly cheque $1200./month someone working a low level job at say McDonalds would probably make about $1100./month. How does this make sense?

How would a single mother afford to both work and put her child in daycare full time working at McDonalds or some other minimum wage job? Daycare would be a minimum of $400 per month. Obviously there will be abusers of any system, but welfare is there for a reason, especially when there are kids involved.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by drew

How would a single mother afford to both work and put her child in daycare full time working at McDonalds or some other minimum wage job? Daycare would be a minimum of $400 per month. Obviously there will be abusers of any system, but welfare is there for a reason, especially when there are kids involved.

How is it society's responsibility to pay for someone's spawn? Why would someone with child want to work a low wage job at say McDonalds, isn't it the goal of every parent to provide the best for their child. Sadly this just isn't the case in Manitoba where more kids means more govt. dollars!