Canada BS Thread

Part of that clan is up here as well.

 

The oil price nose dive should eliminate a lot of that brodozer crowd here due to bank repo.

 

Meh. When all you have is a GED and a prayer it's not like you have much of a future to burn.

 

Is Larry in that movie ?

 

I get your point but I think the age of hard work yielding a great income is pretty much over. My dad has nothing but his highschool education but he worked his butt off, acquired a ton of on the job knowledge, and is retiring with a very sizable savings account from being able to sell off his own business. He didn't have a ton of luck, just the odd luckily break, but now a days I feel like without the right education and starting point you need more than a little luck to end up in the same spot my dad did.

 

I think it depends on how you quantify financial success. Is it living in a 1 bedroom basement unit for all your life driving 5 year old cars and never making any major expenditures on trips or other luxuries. Is it living with the modern standards (smartphone, fast internet, cable/sat, computer, at least one newer car, etc etc)?

The first is very possible on a sub 50k, before taxes, income. The second option is not. At least not without living past your means. When your best prospects are a near minimum wage job because you never went to college and went to the patch instead it's not hard to see why these guys blow there money. Even making 100k a year an oilfield worker can maybe only bank 10-20k per year comfortably from the really good years, which are maybe only half the time anyways, to cover the years upon years of layoffs they may have to cover. It's a tough world out there now, and when times are good it's hard not to give in when you know you are sentenced to a pretty mediocre living standard if you live within what the previous generation would define as your means.

BTW I'm not defending or arguing anything. I'm simply saying it's easy to see why people do what they do and I have some pity for them even if it's their own fault. I don't fault people for wanting things that our society says they should have. Nor do I hide there failures behind a perceived lack of work ethic.

 

Oilpatch worker is not a field I would go into if I was a young guy now , I would still stick to more conventional trades

 

Sadly most of the trades here rely on oilfield construction. If things keep going the way they are I'm sure a lot of electricians and plumbers will leave to bigger cities where there may still be work. They won't come back. Sadly, I don't think pipe fitters, welders, or mechanics have as many options in Western Canada for other opportunities.

I honestly don't know any carpenters but I'm sure with growth slowing down they will be feeling the pinch here too. If things stay hot in BC though I suppose they could move to the west coast too.

 

I meant trades that apply to residential construction

 

For a long time residential construction has been tied to the success, or failure, periods of the oil field in Alberta. Unfortunately, other than Agriculture and the Oil Field, there aren't many economic drivers here for people to come here and buy new homes. Maybe in the future someone will figure out something else we can gain a competitive advantage in, but I doubt it will be realized quickly or easily.

I know a friend of mine that works for a fair sized home building company. They've laid off about 30% of their staff and may lay off even more depending on how next year goes.

 

I forgot to mention if I was a young guy in Alberta I would move to BC

 

All good.

I think guys your age and OZ's age, mid forties if I remember, even had more opportunities for moving up without education like you mentioned then my generation 15 years behind does. Don't get me wrong, I have a good education and I've set myself apart with a good reputation that have let me led a comfortable life by making a comfortable living so I'm not pessimistically saying that the opportunities have totally dried up. It's just that the opportunities need more and more education now and not everyone has the tools to complete that education no matter how hard they work. Trades will always have demand at some level though and I agree if you don't have the tools to complete higher education for a degree in an employable field then a trade is the best course of action. Selecting a trade with the broadest application and finding an apprenticeship can be tricky though.

 

A lot of guys do. I like it here though. We can't all live in your little slice of Nirvana .

 

In my construction experience , an interested , good worker will still progress faster than somebody that has a higher " educational " background with less motivation in the same field

 

No shipbuilding here. So when the work dries up you move and hope you can find a job. I personally don't like that option. Maybe we should all live in BC and Ontario. I personally wouldn't want too, and I'm glad for my industry I'll likely never have to chose to live in either of those places.

 

Kinda speaks to diversifying the Alberta economy

 

Sure does. Have any ideas?

Qatar was supposed to be a new financial giant, they spent billions on attracting investment firms and other money industry businesses to their country... and this year they are running a 40 billion dollar deficit.

I have this bad feeling that Alberta will go the way of Atlantic Canada if oil stays low.

 

Wind, though I'm not sold on wind power. It's not nice to live near and there aren't any great storage solutions to deal with the fact that the wind doesn't always blow.

Biofuel wise, if someone could perfect a way to convert large quantities of cellulose to sugar from wheat then that could happen. Unfortunately about a decade ago there were over a dozen ethanol producing facilities on the drawing board here and none were ever built. I think only two out of the dozens that were planned in Alberta were ever built. All because someone figured out that the big step in ethanol production, the cellulose to sugar to alcohol conversion, wasn't coming soon.

A lot of people lost investment money in those plant plans too which could sour future developments should the technology become available.

 

You see that idea where they store compressed air in bags underwater to store energy from wave energy to release it at night ?

 

Actually, if you can get bio fuel to the point where all the energy consumed making the fuel comes from bio fuel and more fuel is produced than is consumed Bio fuel would be carbon neutral. The carbon dioxide in the bio fuel comes from the air, so in reality you'd just be recycling carbon rather than adding more carbon to the system.

Things like NOx and other pollutants though would admittedly still be a problem but a very manageable one.