So you havn't considered the reason no one moved into the pre fab housing market (either here or for export) might be because it wasn't profitable?
no, because there is HIGH demand for it in a country that has multigenerational mortgages. Even if it wasn't profitable, it's better than handing billions of dollars a year in tarrifs to the US economy while the surplus rots in the yard, and former tax payers begin drawing EI while looking for employment elsewhere.
the reason that the small lumber yard companies did not do this is they lacked the startup capital, weren't willing to risk shareholder ire, and felt their shareholder interests were better served closing their canadian operations in favour of focusing elsewhere. Their revenue stream was the profit off the sales of soft wood only, the Crown would have stopped a reduction of tax revenue directly from it's workers, and indirectly from the supporting local economy, directly off of new workers and indirectly off the supporting economy from those new workers, and potentially of a new revenue stream provinding exports to a high demand market.
Why would a private firm front the capital when for all intents and purposes it looked like the Canadian government would quickly solve the problem, it's easier to harvest raw resources and sell them for profit, than it is to provide finished products, however, the profit margin on finished products reflects that.
We sell our raw resources to the US at 10% profit so they can sell them right back to us as finished goods at 50-100% profit.
The number of doctors might be constrained because people considering medical careers might not want to deal with complex bureaucracies or have their salaries/hours/conditions of work dictated to them and therefore never enrole in medical school (or drop out)?
could be applied directly to the CF, is the solution to deprive areas of the CF just because some people would not rather work there?
Not to mention, this happens in the private industry as well, for example pilots need to get their hours in doing puddle jumps up north before they get their cushy milkruns in the bigger planes on main routes.
As I mentioned in my post, I think the shortage of doctors is due to lower pay than competing employers and lower standard of living here, I'm all for paying doctors more to keep them in Canada and even poach some from other countries. the more Doctors we gain, the less overtime they will have to work, resulting in a better standard of living for them.
Selling the infrastucture to a private firm will not solve that problem, private firms will simply reduce services and/or charge more because just like every other privitization, they take 15% off the top, lay off a few of the more expensive employees and continue with business as usual.
Are you implying that in the US doctors put up with less bureacracy? keep in mind litigation against doctors is much higher, they have to directly deal with insurance companies to determine if the patient is covered for a particular treatement and prove that said treatment is required, rather than just let the front desk do card check before applying treatment.
And are you implying that doctors have no choice in their postings in Canada and have complete control in the US?
That any taxpayer funded entity has no incentive to become efficient, and indeed has perverse incentives to become more inefficient in order to capture more tax dollars and expand the power and presteige of the bureaucrats who run it?
Some how SaskTel a crown corporation is managing to not only be profitable, it's expanding outside of Saskatchewan and Canada and proving that a crown corporation competing against private industry can be efficient, effective, and reduce the tax burden on the governments constituents. I certainly also don't hear residents of Alberta complaining about how the provinces oil concerns are a waste.
That any taxpayer funded entity which only breaks even or runs at a loss is a net drain on the economy
hogswash, this is simple arithmetic, if the government applies 10 million, and the crown corp returns 10 million, then there is a net cost of ZERO, and the employees taxes are gain for the local government, especially if those are new jobs that reduce the unemployment rate or draw workers from other areas.
if the government collects 1 million in tax revenue from new jobs, or from jobs that otherwise would cease to exist you have a 10% return on investment.
this provides an incentive to a government to attract workers to increase it's revenue collection, rather than charge more for less services.
(and workers "paying taxes" on incomes that are just tax subsidies from people in the productive economy is simply recursive.)
you can hardly exempt crown corp employees from paying incometax just so you don't have to tax them later. IF the crown corp can't make money while it's private competitors can, it's time to shut down the crown corp, regardless if there are tax revenues collected.
Indeed the monies diverted to these stagnet areas of the economy are directly subtracted from the pool of available resources that could have been invested to create real jobs
I fail to see how a job working for a crown corp that makes a profit is any different or less real than a job working for a private corp, other than in the former the shareholders are the people of that government and in the latter they aren't
(this means that these subsidized jobs you advocate would result in a net job loss in the economy)?
not quite sure what you are asking here, by doing nothing, several lumber firms closed down, packed up and left Canada, this resulted in those jobs being lost, and a loss in the economy.
I proposed that a crown corp be stood up to look into alternate markets for Canadian Softwood lumber, and suggested the highly lucrative prefab housing market, though in many european markets dimensional lumber and raw lumber go for a nice high price.
The goals would have been:
-to keep the workers employed and paying into the public purse rather than drawing from it. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it is better for both the worker and the government to keep them working.
-preventing a local economy down turn by the workers continuing to spend their disposable income, rather than save every penny.
-reduce the likely hood of workers leaving the area in search of new work thus impacting the local economy and the public purse in a negative way - the fewer people working in an area the fewer people purchasing other services and goods, and the fewer paying taxes.
When I am Imperator, economics will be taught in primary school to stamp out this sort of nonsense once and for all!
I fail to see what nonsense you are talking about, perhaps if you re read my previous post a little slower and comprehended that I don't want to replace private industry with crown owned industry but pit them against eachother to prevent either from resting on their laurals.
the real nonsense is that unchallenged private industry can be trusted to provide the most efficient products and services anymore than unchallenged government organizations can be.
when private industry is small and compartmentalized it is more likely that it will compete, when it is large and monolithic it is more likely it will come to an understanding with it's competitors via the language of market actions to create a larger profit for all of them.
The difference between a crown corp and a private corp are their shareholders and the shareholder's desires.
Private corp's shareholders are interested in ROI.
Public Corp's shareholders are interested in the best products/services at the cheapest cost possible.
Pitting them against eachother should result in a modest ROI with very good products/services if there is a market for them to begin with.