(no subject)

I found this article this morning, which I found quite amusing. There's been a lot of right-wing crowing in some corners of the punditsphere about how the economy's never been better, on the grounds that it's creating jobs. A Toronto investment expert, admitted a certain scepticism in a Canadian Press story:

"Gardner noted that while the jobs number may look impressive to foreign investors, a closer look would show that most of the gain was in government and social service jobs. As well, the market views Canada as an oil superpower, "when we're really more of a natural gas producing country," he said.

In the same story, a bank economist admitted:

"All and more of the additional jobs came in the service sector, which gained 66,200 jobs, particularly in health care services and public administration. This boosted this sector's job growth to 3.2 per cent in the past 12 months, but so far this year, the goods producing side is actually down 0.5 per cent.

As well, public-sector employment growth outstripped the private sector by a ratio of six-to-one last month, or 38,000 to 6,500, some as a result of one-time additional hiring for the Ontario provincial election.

Meanwhile, the dollar-battered manufacturing sector registered another poor month in October, shedding an additional 3,500 jobs."

So we're only getting more jobs because -- in spite of twenty-five years of small-government rhetoric -- governments are expanding. And now we're going through another tax-cut delirium, meaning that we won't be able to pay for any of those new jobs.