Imagine if you woke up to a headline this morning that said GENERAL MOTORS WILL ELIMINATE MORE THAN 19 THOUSAND JOBS. The markets would panic, the economists would be falling over themselves to read the entrails to offer their post-apocalyptic predictions, and we’d all be squirreling our cash away in mattresses and socks. Oshawa would be a virtual wasteland in no time.
The kids might call it an epic fail! You might consider it a disaster – the kind of disaster that could prompt governments to step in and offer some kind of support or bail out.
The good news is neither you nor the folks in Oshawa woke up to that headline, never mind the hysteria and hyperventilation that would have come with it.
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With that in mind, I find it curious to see how the top line conversation about the Federal Budget has focused on the elimination of the penny. More people are talking about Ottawa’s decision to drop the coin from our currency than the 19,200 jobs that are going to be cut from the federal public service in the next few years.
Whether you agree or not, there are well stated arguments that favour eliminating the production of the penny and to downsize the public service. But what does it tell us that we seem so impassioned about the former and seemingly indifferent to the latter?
No matter the argument, the fact remains that more than 19 thousand jobs are being lost. Most of those jobs are all in Ottawa. They are job losses that could affect 60 or 80 thousand people if you assume that one or two people directly depend on that income. Extend that to the shops, restaurants, and retailers who would serve those people on a daily or weekly basis and you start to see a significant ripple effect.
It seems we’re okay with governments pinching pennies even if it means lost jobs but we’re ready to fight the retailer who might round up to the nearest nickel at the checkout counter.
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