Make work
Some telling comments on the CBC story concerning Our Dear Area Play, from a variety of online personas, not one of whom is a member of an organized torquing effort running around the intertubes spouting anti-PNC talking points:
johnnykarate: At the very least, some of the $20M will pay wages, rent equipment, and development some expertise in our workforce.“Regardless if they find oil or not.”
Sud_Newf: With Nalcor spending Nfld & Lab money, they have their own scientists carrying out the work (who are in most cases from the province) and have a choice to contract out to local companies because they know that these people are in turn, going to spend their wages in the province.
DB333666: Considering the need for jobs on the west coast, how can they question the potential for finding oil in the area? To say that the possibility of finding jobs for the area is not a priority at this time shows a total lack of understanding of the needs of the area.
tducey: Oil is where this province is headed and at right now. We need to invest lots of energy into oil because people in Alberta who want to come home (And there are many who do) aren't coming home to work in a fish plant or go fishing they're going to want to work with big oil.
JoshTaylor: This is an important investment in the regions future.
Waabooze: All of this money (not to mention the money other investors will contribute) will get spent right here in good old NL - creating good oldfashioned jobs. Basic economics suggests that even if they never pump a drop of oil on the West Coast, the Province will reoup its investment many times over in taxes alone. Not to mention the secondary or spin-off benefits.
MarkMorrissey: I would like to see Mrs. Jones explain her party's thinking to the people of the West coast who will benefit directly from the work and spinoff benefits this money will create, regardless if they find oil or not.
Well, we should give these folks their due. (And boy, the great economist Waabooze could certainly use a due or two.) As out-to-lunch as their knowledge of economics or the oil business might be, there is a fundamental, if inadvertent truth in what they have collectively written.
This latest NALCO(R) gambit has nothing to do with energy policy, nothing to do with petroleum geology, and everything to do with putting even more people on the public payroll.
It is the youngest, coolest province’s youngest and coolest equivalent of moving rocks.
posted by WJM @ 12:01 AM
2 Comments:
"Considering the need for jobs on the West Coast"?
Clearly, someone hasn't been reading the Globe and Mail. According to DW, the place is "booming".
Of course, I can never remember if I am supposed to be reading or disbelieving that paper. It's getting harder and harder to obey the regime with any degree of consistency.
What is really funny is that most of these people are using the same lines used to justify every project that went tits up and helped boost the ddebt to 12 billion.
"It's all good, sure, b'y. We spend a buck to make a buck. People need the work. Government gets it all back in taxes..."
Not one wondered why government was doing this instead of the local private sector, like the local private sector companies already there.
Not one wondered why government leaped in six months before the licenses expired and bailed out leprechaun with a deal no one (including some of the project partners) knew about apparently.
And in Sud_Newf's case (short for Sudbury Newf apparently) he spewed off a couple of paragraphs that were completely, totally, wrong. Stuff that happened five years ago he got every single thing wrong. i had to read it twice because it was almost impossible to beleive that someone could be so completely, utterly, obviously, he-said-the-sun-didn't-come-upthis-morning kinda wrong.
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