Which industry best creates wealth and reduces poverty in Canada? Resources (as usual)
Which is where a caveat should be added to the Statistics Canada commentary that “high resource prices” explain significantly increased incomes. High resource prices — be they for oil, gas, lumber or minerals — help, but only if a province or region allows its resources to be explored, extracted and then shipped to market.
What a dangerous article … Gaia weeps. The ONLY way for Gaia to be healed, is for the white man and his capitalist economy to be smashed. Gaia NEEDS man to become impoverished. The machinery of Capitalism which runs on the resources of our beautiful planet must be smashed. The white man (and his FAKE brown and yellow imported peoples) must learn to live in poverty … like the First Peoples who lived in harmony and love with mother Gaia. Poverty is Healing. Poverty is Good! /sarc.
You’d almost think that resources are the definition of wealth.
Don’t forget that only socialism is harmonious with Gaia. Only socialism prevents climate change. Socialism is the natural way of living.
Or is it only Islam that’s this way?
My comments were tongue-in-cheek, by the way.
Anyone who isn’t living naked in a field using stone-age implements is guilty of gross hypocrisy by arguing against the resource sector. Thanks to urbanized ignorance, green theocracy, partisan media cheer-leading, and mal-education, PC conventional thinking is that the faith-based delusion of “alternate energy”, and “New Economy” transcends all rational thought. Our betters like Jerry Butts have decided our future and it’s based on such flawed religious tenets. As proof, read some of the comments from the linked article.
Anyone ever think about what North America would be like if the White Man had never arrived here? The continent was mostly populated by nomadic tribes that spent much of their time fighting with and killing each other. Their mobility consisted of dragging their belongings around loaded onto two sticks connected by animal hides. They were probably many many years away from inventing the technology called a wheel. Every year disease and starvation took their toll,do you ever wonder what their life expectancy was before the evil White Devils arrived?
There is no doubt that there were abuses and wrong doings, but would most of the aboriginals that are alive today be here if the evil White devil had not come along? I doubt it!
we could all live in harmony like the so called first nations if only we would give up minor inventions like the wheel, written language, cement, oil, farming, electricity, modern medicine, no point in going on, we would all die living like that. primitive tribal cultures have little to nothing to offer modern society.
They wouldn’t be dragging those two sticks connected with animal hide using a horse. The Spanish brought them those.
I love the resource sector. It has been great for us for a long time and will continue to do so for a lot longer.
However, with some exceptions (forestry and agriculture come to mind), resources do not last for ever. There is a finite amount of ore you can get out of the entire volume of crust under our feet, and while market conditions and technology keep changing what is profitable to extract, eventually we will bottom out. How many lifetimes? I can’t say.
Nevertheless, it would seem prudent to put in place those policies that promote (that should read, remove those that discourage) the development of the industries that convert those resources, and others we can import, into saleable products. If you can make stuff regardless of where the raw materials come from, then you have an economy.
Its not that manufacturing is better than resources in any particular way. Its more that having our eggs, or a majority of our eggs, in one basket, as big and convenient as it may be, strikes me as less than ideal over the long haul.
Looking at which industry is ‘best’ at reducing poverty is the completely wrong way to think about it. All that matters is the system, and the system of FREE MARKET CAPITALISM is clearly what reduces poverty and creates wealth best. Socialist Venezuela has lots of oil and no regard for the environment. Hong Kong has capitalism and no natural resources.