[Toro]

C.M. Burns wrote:

I wrote about GM needing billions in handouts from the taxpayer and all you've got is more charts from... suprise, suprise, surprise! - the Fed.

Ugh!

You said that manufacturing has been gutted in America, which wrong as usual. You use one example - GM - to back up your argument, which is bad logical reasoning as usual. Facts are presented then you attack the source without offering any empirical evidence as usual.

Have you ever taken a stats class? Just curious.

[Toro]

Further

I know how facts and figures bug Burns so much, so I went to check the data over at the OECD on industrial production since the title of this thread is "What ever happened to Canadian industry?"

Well, what has happened to Canadian industry is that it has grown over the past few decades. Since 1989, total industrial output in Canada has risen by 42%. Total production of manufactured goods has also risen by 42%.

http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/Index.aspx?q ... eryname=90

It has been flat since 2000, which isn't surprising given how strong the loonie has been against the US dollar. But that's a far cry from the implication in this thread that there is something wrong with Canadian industry.

Facts are an inconvenient thing.

[bootlegga]

C.M. Burns wrote:

I've been thinking about this for a while and recently read a post by herbie pretty much bemoaning the same thing:
What ever happened to Canadian Industry?
Are we forever doomed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water?

Yeah, we have Bombardier... thank god
But where is the Canadian car? the Canadian TV... cell phone... not even a god-damned Canadian washing machine!

Sweden, for example, with a population of 9.25 million people, has TWO huge car companies: Volvo and Saab. Saab also makes fighter jets that defend their small country. Do we even build ships any more?

Sweden's engineering sector accounts for 50% of output and exports.

They are hewers of silicon and drawers of blueprints!

I guess we are more accurately described hewers of double-entry accounting and drawers of fossil fuels.

Comparing Canada and Sweden is like comparing apples and oranges. For example, both nations have very different attitudes on national defence. Sweden, a non-aligned nation, tries to be more self-sufficient. That means the Swedes maintain aviation and auto manufacturing industries as a possible hedge against the dya when someone refuses to sell them planes/tanks/ships/ etc. Taiwan does the same thing, for very similar reasons. Canada, however, can and does buy equipment from allies, be it planes from the Americans, or ships from the Dutch (if Harper is to be believed).

That's one reason. Another is that labour tends to flow to the cheapest locations, be it on a national or international scale. I'm sure in the beginning of the industrial revolution, factories were set up close to supplies of raw materials, sources of energy, customers, etc. These day, with our vast global transportation and communication networks, factories can be located hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from all of that.

North America was Europe's sweatshop at the tail end of the 19t century. We probably would have lost that title sooner had there not been two world wars. But by the 70s, our labour costs were high and manufacturers started looking overseas for opportunities. Where possible, labour jobs (making TVs for instance) flowed to places like Taiwan and South Korea. Five minutes after Mao died, Chinese investors in Hong Kong started building factories across the border in China. Labour costs in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are getting so high that the factories where people used to work are closing down and companies are shipping them to China. In a decade or two, labour costs in China will be too high and the factories will go somewhere else. Of course, trade deals like NAFTA made it even more economical for companies to move their factories there instead of keeping them in Canada or the US.

So far, based on Western experience, the business cycle roughly is: agarian economy > resource extraction/industrial economy > service economy.

[LIVdb]

What's wrong with being the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" along with holders of a significant portion of the world's oil supplies not including vast resources of minerals and agriculture lands.

I'll agree 100% that there is nothing sexy or cool about natural resources but in today's global economy I've gotta say Canada is looking pretty good. We have all the resources that growing economies like the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have a heavy thirst for at the moment.

[PluggyRug]

LIVdb wrote:

What's wrong with being the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" along with holders of a significant portion of the world's oil supplies not including vast resources of minerals and agriculture lands.

I'll agree 100% that there is nothing sexy or cool about natural resources but in today's global economy I've gotta say Canada is looking pretty good. We have all the resources that growing economies like the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have a heavy thirst for at the moment.

Shush, please do not confuse Burnsie with facts.

[martin14]

LIVdb wrote:

What's wrong with being the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" along with holders of a significant portion of the world's oil supplies not including vast resources of minerals and agriculture lands.

I'll agree 100% that there is nothing sexy or cool about natural resources but in today's global economy I've gotta say Canada is looking pretty good. We have all the resources that growing economies like the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have a heavy thirst for at the moment.

Nothing wrong with it, except we should be smart enough to also
be pushing out finished products to these countries.


Too many stories of us exporting raw wood, and importing finished furniture.
That should not be happening.

[OldChum]

Yes it is time to let some of our own be employed to produce the things China needs