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Roy Brander's avatar

Everything's running badly now because of people, and Prasad's Law.

https://boingboing.net/2019/12/06/lobby-rinse-repeat.html

During the pandemic, we worried about McJobs, the service folks behind the register. But people who need background to do their job, training and time-in-job to know it, are not replaced merely with money, it takes time and experience. Businesses lose, what, 5% of them every year, to retirement and babies and career change? But we probably lost 15%-20% of them in a lot of businesses, during the two years, not 10%.

And did almost no hiring. Why? The airlines were closed. No need. There WAS money, at least in the States; in 2020, the airlines were handed a $19B in federal funds - not long after they'd handed out about $19B in stock buy-backs. But, why not just keep the money? Always the investor preference.

Prasad's Law suggests there's always a stickiness to hiring, a tendency to stretch existing staff. Now our ERs and our airlines all have so many missing files, and it's hard to train staff when the would-be trainers are going 110% to keep up 75% service.

A good free market, with many airlines that were smaller, might have shown some real free market action: a few airlines would have kept staff, would be running at full, investors would notice, good behaviour rewarded, better service would come. But, they're an oligopoly. It's not really a free market, no more than Canadian telecommunications is. (The Rogers screwup will likely be found to be systemic employee errors, where there were several of them that collided into a 'perfect storm', from their own pandemic personnel losses.)

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Patricia's avatar

I returned to Canada during the Orewellian common sense thingy. There can be no denying the visciousness with which the least powerful Ontario population was attacked. The changes being demanded came at breakneck speed. Municipalities of all sizes suddenly had social housing dropped in their laps, along with an envelope of the only pittance they would get to keep people housed. Income assistance became workfare which hit women with children with full force. Etc…. The ‘winners’ were the taxpayers who, instead of paying for the needs of those in dire straits at that time, have continued to pay for them and their trickledown results to this day.

The Wynne government ended up with an inherited debt with a significant number of zeros, and an opportunity to undertake a policy of investment rather spending. Instead of fixing the things that needed fixing, and still do, it took a road that went nowhere really good, with a lot of scenic side trips. The fact that they continued to use Mike Harris as a reason to avoid fixing things was just sad. Not incorrect but useless, since it doesn’t matter how the patient broke the leg, it still needs attention. I expect this lead to the complete loss of support amidst a lot of anger. And this is an excellent example of what happens when you refuse to take responsibility for something when it is in your court.

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