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Comment by moonshinefe | Hacker News Reader

I'm not necessarily convinced oil investment leaving Canada is a major blow after all. It will leave some unemployed, but most of that oil from what I've read was being exported abroad and the profits pretty much exclusively went to private businesses and the elite. The employment benefits locally were a drop in the bucket.

It wasn't like Canada was living in a golden age during this 'boom', in fact housing prices across most of Canada and costs in general have skyrocketed. If there was a 'boom', it wasn't being felt in most of the country.

With globalization I just fail to see how it helps the average person, it just seems to mainly help the extremely wealthy. The rest of us are just left in a race to the bottom.

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This analysis misses the knock on effects of the oil economy. In Calgary or Edmonton for instance, the centre of the oil economy in Canada, all jobs depend on oil. If you don't work in oil but work in a geographic region fuelled by oil profits, your profits will drop as well. All retail and most all service industries are being hit.

Canada was absolutely enjoying an oil boom. It can be hard to see the connection between a new highway or hospital and oil prices at 100, but rest assured they are intertwined. Yes people who owned oil production facilities benefit most as they took on the most risk, but all of Canada benefits when they do well. It is sort of like being a cafe owner in Silicon Valley saying, "I'm not sure how I, as a normal hard working person, benefits from all these rich programmers around."

Further, oil revenues are a major component of the tax base to Federal and Provincial governments. With those revenues drying out, transfer payments to non oil provinces, and social programs across Canada are threatened. Oil is absolutely fundamental to the Canadian economy at this point.

The "average person" helped by globalization doesn't live in North America.

I have no problem with improving the prospects of the poor in China/India. The issue is the savings in salary costs doesn't go to the consumer, it goes to the executives.

> The issue is the savings in salary costs doesn't go to the consumer, it goes to the executives.

This is a bit simplistic. Some of the savings do and some go to the consumer by way of competition among firms.

Inflation has been pretty flat in recent years and that's not because governments stopped printing money. It's because prices on goods and services have been under a lot of pressure due to globalization. That means consumers are paying less than they would be if that weren't the case.

Granted, those at the top are raking in the cash. But money is worthless unless you spend it and when they spend it, somebody has to do the work that the money is being spent on. That creates jobs.

Certainly everybody wishes they were making more money and in some cases, the grievance is legitimate.

Trickle-down economics is a failed theory. The wealthy only spend a small percentage of their income. They re-invest most of it. True, sometimes they invest in businesses (VC, IPOs, Business expansion, etc.), but most investment dollars go to the secondary markets (Stocks, Derivatives, etc.), which does not create any jobs and produces no value.

> But money is worthless unless you spend it and when they spend it, somebody has to do the work that the money is being spent on. That creates jobs.

The issue is that the rich spend a smaller proportion of their money than the middle class.

So while globalisation does increase the prospects for some poor people, it definitely does take wealth out of the global economy and into the hands of the '1 percent'.

that is so not true. the benefits of globalization and such benefit all. the cost in hours of work you to buy most common goods continue to go down. even many services have dropped in real hours cost for people because the equipment needed and supply chain over all has seen reduced cost.

that trite line is great for politics but not for anyone who thinks for themselves

Research a little more about NAFTA and then get back to me.

>pretty much exclusively went to anyone with a retirement account.

Your retirement fund was part of that "Elite."

No.

My retirement funds have, as some of their holdings, a comparatively small handful of shares in companies, as part of a fund managed by an institutional investor, whose goal is to deliver shareholder value to people who hold shares of the managing organization, which may be completely separate.

Saying "Your interests should be aligned with exceedingly wealthy individuals because you hold shares in some companies which they control." is wrong at best, and disingenuous at worst.

and the profits pretty much exclusively went to private businesses and the elite

That's not true. The Alberta gov't (where most of the oil is) has a royalty system. One of the reasons why the Alberta gov't ran a surplus most years was because of all the oil royalties. That money was spread around a lot in Alberta and it had one of the lowest tax burdens and generous welfare benefits.

Oil industry has a ton of trade jobs associated with it.

My sister was complaining about it when I saw her. Wasn't getting much work.

housing prices going up usually means there is a boom

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