1975 Pay= 2015 Pay

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/minimum-wage-jobs-pay-roughly-the-same-as-they-did-in-1975-1.2708717

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/140716/dq140716b-eng.htm

When our working poor are making the same amount as they did 40 years ago, but the price of everything from homes to vehicles has been marked up at least 100%, how do you expect the working poor to get ahead at all?

My children are making the same amount as their grandparents and great grandparents did in the '70s, They do not have to deal with the cost of a home being $15,000-$30,000 to purchase and rent it isn't $100-$500 a month but having to deal with the housing of $150,000-$500,000 to buy and to rent being as high as $3000 a month.

We have stopped producing low earners. 

This may sound like the stupidest thing anyone has heard, but I began to wonder why someone would have to work 3 jobs. I understand the money situation and that there are that many low paying positions available, but I also started considering WHY?

Baby boomers parents came from a generation where their parents were sometimes having 7 to 20 children. For instance, my grandmother came from a family of 13 children with the loss of twins at the start of the family. That is a lot of workers and while they are retired now, some are still alive.

My grandmother’s generation, because many families grew up with so many children, did not have a lot of extras, so they tried to install in their children how important it was to earn a good wage, not work at those jobs that you are only making minimum wage; which is important. She and grandpa only had 4 children and that was called the Baby Boomer years. Now that is Funny.

So we went from 7-20 children in a poor to middle base incomes to 3-6 children in that same class base.

Baby Boomers, how many children did you have? I believe if you look at the average household of baby boomers that are on the verge of retiring at an income of $75,000+/year at this time in their life they will have 0 to 4 children.

Again, a drop in the procreation of the working poor/middle class, why?

Two things happen when we do this. The first, because the working poor do not make much, we teach our children from an early age that they need to get into a profession that will make them money, eg. Get into politics, lawyer, dentist, doctors, professional sports, a trade…something that is going to support them and their family better than how they lived and how their parents lived and so on.

Because minimum wage is only a quarter of what a lowest paid professional would make, NO ONE wants to do those jobs.

So what happens, many of those baby boomer children and many of those children of the baby boomers become professionals.

We are left with minimum paying jobs that instead of having 7 to 20 workers doing we now have 2 to 4 workers doing, which is actually less because many of those 2 to 4 workers have become professionals and are in the middle to rich classes.

Two…

We know children cost money, so we don’t have as many. We don’t have as many so we are not repopulating the work force.

Those who are living in the working poor are not able to do things like:

·        Pay bills on time many times

·        Buy any type of home

·        Have our cars fixed so we can get to work safely without going into debt or putting aside another bill

·        Save for our retirements

·        Save for a rainy day

·        Go on vacations…which does not bother us, it is just a point I want to make clear that if you can do this, save, and pay bills…you aren’t poor you are middle class.

·        Pay for extracurricular activities for children

My generation, Generation X and the last of the Baby Boomers, have been accused of flooding the work  force with working poor who are now living off the Middle/Rich class taxpayers. If that were true we wouldn't need immigrant workers now would we?

I have 2 children and two step children that I helped support. My older two have a different mother. They are in their early 20’s. Their careers, for the most part, rely on the oil industry.

My daughter has been laid off. She was on maternity leave last year so will get nothing from Employment Insurance, or at least very little. Her significant other has been laid off as well, but they will be making a quarter of their income on Employment Insurance, if not less. That is working poor.

Could they better themselves, you bet, but who will be doing their jobs? And really, Why should they have to? Their jobs are just as important as anyone other persons. A lawyer could not do my daughter or my son-in-laws jobs properly without the training, so why are they paid such a great deal less? Is their job easier? You don’t have to be as “educated”, but that doesn't mean it is easier.

My son says he will be fine he is still working, but I still worry because not long ago he was in a car accident where he was rear ended and he had to live off his savings for a while, which is now gone.

My son, 17, is graduating this year. He really enjoys welding and we have encouraged him to follow that career. It doesn't guarantee he will be middle class, but it does mean he may be one of those higher paid working poor, so instead of making $10 an hour he might make $30.

Will they have children?

My daughter is 13, but she is adamant that she in no way shape or form wants children, which can change, she is young.

But again…This means less people going into the work force if she still feels this way in 10 to 20 years.

Yes, some in these generations have had more children. While I only helped support and raise 4 children, my best friend has helped support and raise 9 in total in some way shape or form. But on average, we are not having as many children.

We are doing it to ourselves.

We are allowing our working poor to live on less because we believe they deserve less.

So those who are the working poor have fewer children to fill those working poor jobs or teach their few children to go for professional jobs to get out of the rut of being the working poor, not a bad thing but still causing a shortage in the number of people working those teaching, nursing, janitor, bus driver, Wal-mart, fast-food positions.

I will give you a hint, if Costco can pay their workers a living wage and benefits and if other countries can make businesses pay living wages…our “democratic” governments can make Wal-mart and McDonalds as well.

What are the benefits of companies like Wal-mart paying living wages and benefits?

Your tax dollars do not go to paying for the working poor living off the system…BONUS!

Those children that my generation and the generations of working poor after me would not need your tax dollars for the basics of life like groceries and utilities so that we can fix our vehicles to get to those jobs without having to worry about the car dying, the furnace quitting or the toilet plugging up if they were paid a living wage.

Your tax dollars should then be put into Canada Pension Plan/Social Security, education, taking care of our military peoples, health care, transportation, job creation, Right?

The working poor are not expecting or asking for enough to take elaborate vacations, $50,000 vehicles or even $400,000 homes.

They are asking for enough not to have to worry about the car, the baby or the house, the food, the utilities...and they shouldn't have to.

Ebola: Wanna help? Stay There!

We know deadly viruses go missing from the CDC.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/fbi-case-missing-guanarito-virus-texas-biolab/story?id=18817744

Another case of missing deadly virus in France…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10768179/Vials-of-deadly-SARS-virus-go-missing-in-France.html

We handled the SARS epidemic well; air traffic was contained even though Toronto was going to lose millions. Canada and Toronto made sure that the spread of SARS was controlled, but that was when it came from another wealthy country. China had physicians and money to get control on their end of the epidemic.

But what happens when a deadly outbreak happens in a poor, forgotten country like Liberia?

Do bleeding hearts break? 

I may be getting a little off topic here, but I still don’t understand why Thomas Duncan was allowed to come visit family in the United States during this outbreak. Why after he helped a sick, dying woman he would even think to hop on a plane…ONLY to start showing signs 5 days later AFTER arriving in the United States.

Now if air traffic has been contained as well as it had been for SARS, would this man made it to Texas through Brussels?

We have our own people, like Jesse Jackson and John Wiley, yelling out racism for a man who jumped on a plane from a country that is disease ridden after carrying a woman who died from Ebola home who couldn't wait even just one week to see if he had contracted the disease. A man who HAD to be in the United States of America within 4 DAYS of helping this dead woman to and from a hospital that would not help her either. 

You would understand this wasn’t a race thing; this was a screw up and a perfect example of the United States spending too much time sticking their noses into other people’s business and not enough time protecting their own. I am not going into a rant about how money finds its way back to itself in the pockets of the rich and not enough into protecting and caring for hospitals and schools, doctors and teachers, patients and students.

There were stupid and unforgettable mistakes made in Dallas. Mistakes that can NEVER happen again, but we still do not have air traffic containment to affected countries in Africa and that is a huge mistake as far as I am concerned, not JUST because legitimate immigrants/refugees/tourists/doctors and nurses can spread Ebola, but because terrorists could have used it to spread this disease. Remember, the Canadian government knows of at least 80 people in Canada who have links to terrorist groups in the Middle East and we just let them back in whenever they want.

As long as you can get on a plane before showing symptoms you can make it to the country you can spread the disease in that country.

Our doctors and scientists are working to control Ebola on different continents now because we have had no air traffic control coming out of the infected countries with quarantine times of at least 3 weeks of symptom free we have doctors and nurses whining about being put into quarantine because they made a decision that could affect our countries? Wow, conceited much? How dare they have the right to decide that they get to go to infected countries then turn around and come back because they have been symptom free for a few days, they do not get to decide to come back to Western civilization for their treatment either if they get sick. Stay there until the outbreak is finished or don’t go at all. This was your decision, not ours.

Putting our lives at risk is not your call, when you have been symptom free for as long as you’re supposed to be, then you can come out of quarantine. As far as I am concerned, you should never have made it on a plane to come back to North America if you were in an affected area of the world.

What are royalties for?

When Alberta’s Premier Ed Stelmach chose to up the amount of royalties companies were going to have to pay Alberta for extracting oil and gas the companies were outraged and Saskatchewan took advantage of that by opening its oilsands.

I have become more enlightened about what royalties are used for over the last few years. Only because the area I now live in has become swamped with pump jacks over the last five or six years.

Many people are making a great deal of money off of this venture, land is becoming very expensive and housing even more so. There are those who will and are taking advantage of this situation, oil and gas companies are in the lead.

What is not happening is the care to the system with the extra people coming into the province.

With more people, come more expenses. New housing developments take new sewer, new power and new development while older areas are overlooked. This always happens no matter where you are.

With more people there is more use of infrastructure and services.

http://www.oilandgasinfo.ca/wp-content/uploads/PW_august_2010.pdf

http://www.oilandgasinfo.ca/wp-content/uploads/PW_sept_10.pdf

Several examples of this are easy ones, like roads.

this was shortly after they "fixed" the pothole.

Sask. Transportation warns people of a danger spot with the "red flag"

Oil companies hauling the oil from the rigs take a toll on the surfaces of the roads and reconstruction/maintenance is always needed. This road is far from the worst in Saskatchewan, it is just one of the main roads I use. 

(Please notice the large chunks of asphalt that could be caught in a semi trucks tire and spit up at a vehicle following...that could cause one hell of an accident and who would know what caused it if there was no survivors. My last blog about the roads in Saskatchewan talks about this.)

Another is power.

With the rigs sucking the power out of the grid, I am sure that wouldn’t be the cause to peoples and businesses appliances burning out and break down with the surging and constant cutting in and out? No one is responsible for paying the cost of our refrigerators, freezers, washers and dryers, etc. being replaced or fixed because of this is there?

But adding more power to the grid will not do any good if the older infrastructure is not updated; something a government should have thought about 5 or 10 years before allowing companies to come in and suck the power right out from under their current customers...ahem... 

Updating the power lines and poles before allowing the rigs into the area would have made more sense. 

But sense doesn't always come into play when cents are involved.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/20/2187071/federal-government-charges-lower-royalties-than-many-states-for-oil-and-gas-drilling-taxpayers-lose-out/

(It looks like this is not just a Canadian issue…Go figure huh…yes, sarcasm)

Many people forget things like schooling and health care.

The men and women who work for these oil companies are not all single.

Many have families and these young children need schooling. It is no wonder the government cannot afford to pay its teachers more, but maybe had they demanded a better deal from the oil companies when it came to royalties your teachers would be getting paid a better raise over the next four years.

Some think that the teachers are asking for too much. I think those people are crackers!

Our teachers have to deal with 20 to 35 children in one class each day, some teaching more grades then one and teaching more than one subject. Many of those children have learning disabilities or are just downright disrespectful and should be dealt with by parents or police not by teachers.

We ask teachers to teach our children things that we as parents should be teaching our children; “we” do not have time to teach our own children anymore. Teachers, who are accused of not working enough days, getting too many long weekends during the year, having summer holidays and only having to work from 9 am to 3 pm…if only people knew.

Shadow a teacher for one 24 hour period and you will be sorely surprised at what they do in one day for our future!

Back to my original point,

Royalties are to help with the influx of people using the services and infrastructure in your communities. If you do not demand that the companies pay those royalties, they are not going to be generous and give them to you.

They may donate a little here and a little there to make themselves look good to the general population, but it NEVER amounts to what they should be paying to offset the cost of what their companies and their workers are using.

Health care is another biggie.

In the area I live there is a clinic that used to be a hospital. Not anymore. The closest hospital with an emergency is approximately 34 kilometers away and it isn't exactly what you would find in a larger center either. The doctor that comes to our little village once a week comes from that town. Once a week we can see this doctor or once a week we can see a RN.

With more people there is more demand on the doctor’s time.

The doctor out here is the only one, he deals with several small villages and towns in the area. He works his butt off in a very large area, so when I am sitting in his office I tend to bring a book…it could take awhile.

With the influx of people in the area this doctor’s office has a habit of double booking. I can understand many people can be rude enough to either demand to be seen immediately or they just don’t show up so staff get to know who might be a no show.

On one occasion, being as polite as I could, I had to remind a jerk that there were children present as he was complaining to another patient with the F-bomb every other word that the doctor’s office was double booking his appointment time.

Here is my point;

Once again, the overflow of people with jobs from the rigs has caused a massive amount of strain on services like doctors and teachers. It has caused substantial damage to infrastructures like roads and the power grid.  

Without the extra investment of royalties from the oil companies that are bringing in these issues, the issues are going to keep getting worse…not better.

Oil companies love free. They will rape Saskatchewan and move on. It might take years, but it will happen and in the mean time, it is the pee-ons that suffer. 

Land owners that rent to the oil companies don't suffer, they are getting well paid for the pump jacks being on their land. The government isn't suffering, they do not have to deal with cranky children or disrespectful patients. 

The lowly taxpayer who has new neighbors disrespecting his property, the doctor who has to deal with hundreds of patients with very little time off and the teachers who do not receive the respect and pay they deserve are the ones who suffer. 

http://desmog.ca/2013/02/28/if-canada-oil-rich-why-are-we-so-debt

(Our government is doing the taxpayers no favors. They are not working for us, they are working for the wealthy oil companies.)

Making any company pay to use the infrastructure and services that a province has only makes good sense.

Companies are not going to “take their business elsewhere” they have nowhere else to go! They need our resources, the longer the resources are in the ground the more they are worth.

If Norway can get 70 cents of each dollar an oil company makes, then why are we in Canada begging for pennies? 

There are many things that Norway does that Canada could follow examples of. Not having any foreign debt and having a "rainy day" fund sure does go to show they are a country worth watching and learning from, but will we?

Any company that wants to work in our country, take our resources, use our resources and bring workers into our country that use our infrastructure or our services need to start paying royalties.

That is where the royalties come in, they go to help alleviate the extra costs in fixing the roads, upgrading the power grid, hiring more teachers and doctors…

The important things that are needed and used.