We have some pretty significant challenges in North America. The biggest challenge is how are we going to pay all of our bills? Our governments are spending like drunken sailors and when the hangover is done someone has to pick up the tab.
I have bad news, you will have to cover the bill. The sailors will have already left with whatever money is left over.
Today I had a very interesting conversation with a business owner Mike who provided me with the chart above. It shows what has happened to manufacturing in North America. This has serious consequences for us all.
Mike spoke to me how as a professional engineer he had missed the boat by not working for the government. How his friends in government make more as janitors than him as a business owner. When you consider the pensions they have and the fact they can retire as early as age 55 he is not far off.
We agreed that the system is broke and the only solution is bankruptcy. Our society needs to start over and restructure in a way that is sustainable. The sooner the bankruptcy comes the better, the sooner we can start over.
The Impossible
There was an excellent article this week from the Globe and Mail; Can Ottawa tame its deficit beast?
The article has some interesting stats about the value of public sector wages and salaries. These have surpassed manufacturing in Canada as the largest single industry.
The article shows that the total value of the public sector compensation package in Canada is $176 Billion. Statscan shows that manufacturing had a GDP of only $150 Billion in 2009. This makes the public sector employment the secound largest industry in Canada, next only to the financial and real estate industry.
The problem is that the secound largest industry in Canada does nothing to drive our economy in fact, it has the opposite effect. As Ross Perot aptly described Free Trade, "you can hear the sucking sound", the same can be said about the public sector in Canada. It adds nothing productive to our economy. It is only a consumer of the nations wealth
When the secound largest industry in our country is the public sector payroll, we are in big trouble.
How can 75% of the population (private sector), who make less money, have less pension, continue to support the 25%(public sector)??
ReplyDeleteThere seems no rationale to this as should the numbers alone not be enough if everyone stood up and said, "We are not paying for this glutony anymore!"
The system is so corrupt, who makes their own rules different than the rules for everyone else, self-serving government.