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[salmonrook]

Does our welfare not depend on a healthy economy? Why should we not think economy first?  Where would we be with out it?  Just asking. The economic thinking of some posts are not making sense to me at this time.

Of course everyone needs a healthy economy ,not against growth and revenue for our province.
We need to be careful about the goals of big business .They are not the same as our own.To blindly trust them to do the right thing for our beautiful province I think is naive.
 We cant compare the past and present, back then they didnt call it development or progress.It was called nation building.
There was lots of fish, wood ,minerals all ready to be harvested.
 Things have changed now, we have to look for sustainability and realize that we have finite resources that could be depleted forever. We have to be more careful managing what we have.I think this is were "big business " can be shortsighted,only realizing a short term balance sheet over people and environment.

[Fisherbob]

Of course everyone needs a healthy economy ,not against growth and revenue for our province.
We need to be careful about the goals of big business .They are not the same as our own.To blindly trust them to do the right thing for our beautiful province I think is naive.
 We cant compare the past and present, back then they didnt call it development or progress.It was called nation building.
There was lots of fish, wood ,minerals all ready to be harvested.
 Things have changed now, we have to look for sustainability and realize that we have finite resources that could be depleted forever. We have to be more careful managing what we have.I think this is were "big business " can be shortsighted,only realizing a short term balance sheet over people and environment.

So very true. We have to also see how the "big business" has improved over the years. As one poster said, anti every things are needed and I feel big business has responded with improvement. I sure do not see things being done today that was done even forty years ago. There is always room for improvement also. There are jobs for that also. Be an anti every thing or work and make an improvement in your chosen profession.

[absolon]

To attempt to obfuscate the discussion with a dissertation on Reagan's and Thatcher's economic policy is not really commenting on my post. Or, in fact, relevant to the thread. I stated that your comment was not a fact but a political statement and you came back with some diatribe meant to show how incredibly well versed you are in economics and, conversely, how sadly deficient I am and then to completely discredit my post you attacked my claim that I like the concept of critical thinking.
I didn't have to go search very hard to find that HBC and the CN or CP didn't very often put social values or the welfare of citizens ahead of the "economy" 150 years ago so I am not really sure where this "sea change" you speak of came from but I am willing to concede your point.  Hey, wait a minute, didn't big corporations hunt whales to near extinction? How was this societally beneficial? Was that a "sea change"?
Maybe I gave in too easily?
I would suggest that governments have always catered "to the needs of business" or nothing would ever have been done. Of course there would be a lot more beavers. And empty land. "Hey lets build a railway to the Pacific Ocean so that our citizens can vacation in Vancouver" isn't a rallying cry that resonates through history.  They built the railway to make money.
And I stand by my analysis of your statement that "Though you may disagree with the people you say are against everything, without them, the corporate world would run roughshod over governments beyond what they currently do and we as citizens would end up bearing all the risk and and all the consequences while subsidizing corporate profit taking." is political.

You can call it whatever you want and you can interpret what I said however you like. As someone pointed out not to far back, not understanding something has never stopped anyone from having a strong opinion. But critical thinking does require that one steps outside one's box to follow up other lines of thinking one is not familiar with before rejecting them outright. A good argument against anything is based on facts rather than aspersions about motives or one's unfavourable impressions of the messenger.

[absolon]

The people, him, her, them and us, are the economy.  No us, no economy.

The people are the members of society. The economy is the summary of the transactions between the members of society. The received wisdom is that facilitating the transactions benefits society as a whole. The reality is that it benefits a segment of society much more than the rest; that it is the root of the increasing levels of inequality found today, of stagnating middle class wages and higher structural unemployment. Providing support to corporations as engines of the economy concentrates those benefits to corporate management and to investors who may not even be members of the society and cuts support to education, social support nets, the medical system and those other government functions that provide broad societal benefit. That support comes at cost to the broader society both in terms of benefit foregone and actual out of pocket costs. Corporate society returns the favour by importing cheap labour to displace the members of society and sending profits and dividends out of the society.

The oil pipelines are a good example. Society in BC will pick up the cost of the risk, transnational oil companies operating in Alberta will pick up the benefits and profits of moving product to market. Run of river power producers are another good example. BC consumers will pay artificially high power prices in order to subsidize the development of a private power production infrastructure operated by transnational corporations who will profit by operating that infrastructure.

It isn't that development is bad; it is that use and development of publicly owned resources should return a real and tangible benefit to society to justify that use or risk and that all the short and long term costs and risks associated with earning a profit must be covered by those who are receiving that profit before they put any money in their own pockets.

[bigblockfox]

well said. not all of us are against all development. i just for one am against Alberta's dirty oil and how much are Conservative government promotes it. one world hits hardest for me. SUSTAINABILITY.

[chris gadsden]

Going to this today as I spent time with the film crew on the Fraser this summer, not sure how much I will be in the final cut. https://www.facebook.com/#!/Raincoast/photos/a.210258749010459.52055.206766672693000/775521699150825/?type=1&theater

[troutbreath]

Going to this today as I spent time with the film crew on the Fraser this summer, not sure how much I will be in the final cut. 

Wear something loud so your easy to pick out.