Working

During the two hour ferry ride across Georgia Straight, I was doing some people watching and making general observations. Travelling the ferries is not cheap so the people on board are either well off or are travelling out of some necessity. But as I observe the people around me in the seating area, I see mostly young people, student types. They appear to be 20 something and most of them have a laptop, cell phone, ipod, and a backpack full of books and papers. They might be 'walk ons' but the car decks are full of vehicles.

As I see the employment figures today, I wonder where all these people are working or will work. Unemployment is down slightly in the latest report, but when one looks closely at the numbers, it is evident that the gains are almost all in civil service jobs, at a time when governments are threatening to cut jobs in the civil service. When there is high unemployment, there are fewer people paying income tax and because they are not working, they are not consuming so they are not paying sales taxes either. The government can only pay the salaries of these civil servants with our tax dollars or borrowed money, therefore this does not bode well. I look south of the border and see the massive increase in their civil service and shudder. This has to come to an end. These types of jobs are typically not productive, in that they do not produce goods or wealth, but drain money from government revenues which are now almost all coming from the lenders. We hear reports of an improving economy, and for Canada it is a half truth. For the USA it is a falsehood.