Premier Gordon Campbell said that if the NDP were to win the election next month, small business payrolls would increase by 25 to 30 per cent.
But NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston accused Campbell of playing loose with the truth.
Campbell’s remarks, made at a BC Liberal event last weekend, were based on the NDP’s plan to increase minimum wage from eight to ten dollars an hour, said BC Liberal spokesman Chad Pederson.
The effect such a raise might have on the payroll costs of any business, small or large, will range widely, depending on how many low wage workers they employ, argued Ralston. Campbell’s blanket estimate of 25 percent or more is “completely false,” he said.
“I think it’s a serious matter when the Premier of the province five or six weeks from an election campaign doesn’t tell the truth about the policies of the opposition,” added Ralston.
“The premier has been making this claim in a number of places, but it’s actually quite misleading” and “desperate politics,” said Sara Goldvine, communications person for the NDP Caucus.
Goldvine said the minimum wage increase does not target small businesses specifically, as the Premier implied. Pointing to Wal-Mart and McDonalds, she said: “Most businesses that pay minimum wage are not small business.”
Said Pederson from the Campbell camp: “Typically we do let the premier’s comments stand for themselves. I think we have to leave them at that.”
Morgan J. Modjeski is a reporter for The Hook
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Fiat lux
3 years ago
If wages had risen parallel
If wages had risen parallel with the 1000+% inflation of living costs in the past 35 years, the minimum wage should be at least $50/hr. Or more.
I received .75 cents minimum wage, as a 28 year old apprentice in 1955, my wife was making around the same in various odd jobs.
But our rent was $35/mo. our weekly grocery bill under $20. and we could even run a small car with gas at .27 cents/gallon.
We bought our first bungalow in Vancouver in 1966 or 67, for $500. down and $45/mo mortgage.
As if the $8,/hr. minimum wage wasn't bad enough, many of the jobs are part time, so the the employers can "save" certain benefits.
Meanwhile the top 100 CEOs in Canada have taken in over $10. million each, last year, with the top guy "earning" over $50. million and the CEO of the Royal bank over $44. million, or almost $23,000 per hour.
Heaping these monies on these jerks, controlling our economy and fixing prices, is also a form of taxation on our necks, as it all comes out of our pockets for whatever we buy, yet nobody complains? What do we get for it?
What this government represents is a disgusting and morally bankrupt system of exploitation and they may just win again, promoting the same fraudulent theory, with people lapping it up, that brought us into this mess to begin with.
What we're witnessing is not a "recession" that will go away in a year, but the beginning of the collapse of a totally fraudulent and criminal economic system forced on the world by bought and paid for governments, and still being taught in our universities as "economics".
Ed Deak.
realisticman
3 years ago
Unfortunately
In those days we were more wealthy in the West - relative to the poorest places in the world. These days, the wealth of the planet, and as Ed well knows and says, this is finite, has shifted to others in Asia and elsewhere. The result is that we, as a Western society, are not as rich as we used to be. There is competition now. We cannot force other countries to pay their workers higher wages yet we have to compete with them.
We are all a little poorer as our trade has helped the third world develop a middle class.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Why do we have to compete,
Why do we have to compete, when competition drives up costs? A we can see what's happened since this criminal theory took over.
I've been competing in many sports in my younger days, in 2 internationally, but I don't know any competition that doesn't demand ever higher energy inputs, driving up costs. Look at the training costs of Olympic competitors 50 years ago and now, for fractional and marginal improvements.
Of course, there always was and will be some healthy competition, but systems built on competition must burn out. As our system is self destroying right now.
In any case, Canada, being one of the 2 richest countries on Earth, with Australia, has been establishing an excellent, self sufficient economic manufacturing and economic system in the post war years, which has been wrecked by the FTA and NAFTA, wiping out tens of thousands of real wealth creating businesses and hundreds of thousands of good, well paid jobs, replaced by part time minimum wage crap, called "jobs,jobs, jobs", by this screwballer government. .
Now we're a "service" and "resource" based economy, like a factory, where the production workers have been fired, but the office and janitorial jobs doubled, paid for from the sale of equipment, infrastructure and the land from under the buildings.
So, what are we competing for? Tto sell more of the country to "foreign investors", and call it "boom"?
Since when is the sale of capital accounted as an income? Which means the sale of resources, the real capital?
I've been a private enterpriser all my life and a business owner in BC since 1957, former employer, so I do have some idea on how businesses can and should work.
What I can see in these multinational monsters now controlling the world's economy and resources, is just another form of the deadly hand of forced communist collectivization and intend to fight them to the last.
Ed Deak.
Moonbug
3 years ago
Thanks Ed
Your comments are fierce and well placed. Your presence here is appreciated.
This is a bankrupt system, a failing system.. and what is the end product of this "competition?" -- WAR.
Scarce resources... ever more people seeking them... the result will not be pretty. We need to radically change our system before we destroy ourselves.
Van Isle
3 years ago
Economies were developed to
Economies were developed to serve their communities, but now we've got it ass-backwards; communities are developed serve economies.
Van Isle
3 years ago
Oops, should have written in
Oops, should have written in 'TO' serve economies. Sorry about that.
G West
3 years ago
Third world middle class
I don't think so.
The past 30 years have been a pointless waste for the average worker in Canada - furthermore economic disparity in Canada since 2000 has increased at a greater rate than even in the USA.
As for that fictitious growing middle class in the 3rd world; perhaps we could consider the Mexican example.
Rod Smelser
3 years ago
Looks like the NDP is prepared
From what Bruce Ralston and Sara Goldvine have to say, it looks like the NDP is actually prepared to argue this issue in detail, a good sign.
I hope they are similarly prepared to argue the general economic situation, the response to a recession.
realisticman
3 years ago
Why shouldn't the third world...
...have some wealth too?
Why should the west be wealthy and give foreign aid to the poor? Why shouldn't they be able to trade, and compete, with us? They have products we need but we just throw aid at them and this kills their own industries. Would you just ignore them, so we stay rich and they stay poor?
http://www.dambisamoyo.com/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123758895999200083.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
realisticman
3 years ago
"that fictitious growing middle class in the 3rd world;"
Things have to change. Many countries in Africa have been independent for half a century and throwing them the bone of aid so that they do not develop their own industries, so that we in the west can protect our weaving, agriculture, etc., will have to end.
Things will change and the west will have to become used to less wealth as the third world takes their due portion of the pie.
Clinging on to colonial power plays is going out with the worst of that era.
Those that keep repeating something are doomed....
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/165086b4-045c-11de-845b-000077b07658.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/26/international-aid-capitalism
alive
3 years ago
check it out!
Anyone in doubt about how a capitalistic society works should spend a few hours playing the boardgame Monopoly.
It shows exactly that this is not a system that can last!
Jeffrey J.
3 years ago
Money as Debt
In order to understand economics, one MUST understand how money is created. Quite simply, it is 'made up' by banks when they deposit a mortgage or loan into your bank account. Thus, when banks aren't repaid, they in fact have lost nothing.
This may be hard to believe but as the following video production (by Canadian Paul Grignon) makes plain, money is highly manipulated substance and financial and political elites know this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
All Canadians have the right to help decide how our monetary system is 'managed' and for whose benefit. This includes minimum wage, along with all the other social constructs like reducing corporate tax and other government interventions in the economy. Great coverage.
Jeffrey J.
3 years ago
Money as Debt
In order to understand economics, one MUST understand how money is created. Quite simply, it is 'made up' by banks when they deposit a mortgage or loan into your bank account. Thus, when banks aren't repaid, they in fact have lost nothing.
This may be hard to believe but as the following video production (by Canadian Paul Grignon) makes plain, money is highly manipulated substance and financial and political elites know this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
All Canadians have the right to help decide how our monetary system is 'managed' and for whose benefit. This includes minimum wage, along with all the other social constructs like reducing corporate tax and other government interventions in the economy. Great coverage.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
The purpose of globalization
The purpose of globalization is to "create" incompetence and total reliance on a few politbureau like mega corporations who see to it that all forms of self reliance and governance is extinguished, e.g. NAFTA and TILMAm and everybody is enslaved by them.
Like the world's food supplies now controlled by 2-3 of the corporate mafia, destroying farmers everywhere, while raising prices in he stores, through disgusting price fixing no government dares to question, or disclose.
I'll never forget the words of the ambassador of one of the impoverished African countries to Taiwan on one of the World Bank's worldwide economic forums some years ago, talking about the actions of the WB and the IMF: "We were always poor, but we always had something, now we have nothing".
" The purpose of competition is to eliminate competition" J.K. Galbraith
These collectivizers see to it that no society can stand on their own feet, develop their own diversified industries, as Canada's have been destroyed, but stay as deeply indebted colonies in their service.
The US has some 360 military bases in 130 countries to protect this colonizing, exploitation racket.
By all means, let's help Africans, Chinese and Indians develop their own economies and industries for the benefit of their own peoples, but not to ruin us.
When I see an Indian businessman laughingly declaring on TV that they intend to pull 50 million jobs out of North America and Europe, the intent of this whole capitalist/communist crime wave becomes quite obvious.
Ed Deak
mcccarthy
3 years ago
minimum wage
It is odd that Gordon and the Liberals and coalition of BC businesses continue to bash the minimum wage on grounds that are factually untrue. They were quoted as stating that raising the minimum wage would result in job losses, hurt small businesses and be economically ”reckless and irresponsible”. Repeated studies have found no job losses resulting from minimum wage increases. Two years ago, more than 650 economists, including five Nobel laureates and six past presidents of the American Economic Association, called for increasing the minimum wage, finding that it “significantly improve(s) the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed.” Further, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago economists confirmed that minimum wage increases boost consumer spending substantially more than tax cuts. This spending goes directly into local businesses and the local economy. As well, increasing minimum wage is one of the few forms of stimulus that does not worsen deficits.
Ten years ago, Washington increased their minimum wage plus guaranteed cost of living increases. Despite national economic troubles, over the last year, jobs in Washington increased much faster than in the nation as a whole. What’s more jobs rose in both retail and restaurants, the two largest employers of minimum wage workers.
and not a peep of this in media..hmm........
kootenay
3 years ago
Corporations and Corrupt Gov'ts
As Ed points out in his last point; why not help developing countries build their own economies so they too can benefit from the development of their resources.
I recently attended a conference at York University with speakers from around the world who spoke about the impact mining companies are having on developing countries. Two main points came out of the conference.
1. Canadian mining companies are the worst offenders with regard to the destructive impact they have on communities, the environment and indigenous culture.
2. Those regions with mineral resources benefit the least from mining ventures in their countries as very little revenue is returned to the region. Their water is polluted with chemicals and heavy metals, and the people lose their land with little or no compensation.
Powerful Corporations and Corrupt Governments contribute nothing but misery and abject poverty to people in developing countries. Our Canadian Mining Companies have absolutely no conscious when it comes to operating outside of Canada. We also have many examples of the dirty work being carried out by the garment industry throughout Asia and India as well.
Realisticman, if you really believe in developing a world economy, the first thing we need to do is level the playing field where all people, their resources and cultures are treated with the same respect we demand for ourselves. The current world economic theory is designed to drag us all to the lowest common denominator so we can all be enslaved.
G West
3 years ago
Things do have to change
Lets start right here in Canada...as for the magic of globalization realisticman, are you aware that the world bank now says YOUR NEOCON ECONOMIC meltdown is directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of According to World Bank estimates, the global economic crisis will cause an additional 22 children to die per hour, throughout all of 2009.
And that’s the best-case scenario. The World Bank says it’s possible the toll will be twice that: an additional 400,000 child deaths, or an extra child dying every 79 seconds.
Furthermore, the 500 richest people in the world earned more than the 416 million poorest people. I think that the first group bears a measure of responsibility for the global economic mess but will get by just fine, while the latter group has no responsibility and will suffer the most.