Via Rail to lay off 1000 workers
Via Rail will be temporarily laying off a thousand workers and the south shore’s RTL transit commission will be cutting services and beginning layoffs in September.
The feds just brought in their biggest ever deficit at $343 billion. CERB is costing $73B and the emergency wage subsidy $82B according to the numbers here. Comparisons are made to both the Great Depression and the cost of World War II.
JaneyB 10:21 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
These are frightening times. No question. At this point, I’m trying to limit my exposure to economic news as much as to medical news and covid vectors. I notice the papers are already starting to add some climate crisis news to that already malefic cocktail. All real but I will be listening to radio dramas instead while I focus hard on doing my tiny bit to keep the economy humming and my neighbours healthy. Can’t do that from under my blankets. Thankfully, every other country is staggering with the same problems so maybe we’ll get some international coordination on this…after November, of course. Shit has happened before and societies recovered.
Kate 10:48 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
This is the thing, JaneyB. The whole world is facing this problem. The debt is amounts owed to each other. It seems far-fetched, but if Joe owes $20 to Fred, and Fred owes $20 to Jane, and Jane owes $20 to Joe, they should be able to scrub out the debt because it’s self-cancelling. There must be a lot of this debt that could be forgiven in this way if it could only be sorted out.
The problem would be that bankers want to get their cut, so they would put up a lot of obfuscation to make sure it couldn’t happen.
Raymond LUtz 12:00 on 2020-07-09 Permalink
J’acquiesce à ces sages paroles… But just one point: “Shit has happened before and societies recovered.”. Shit like wars, economic depressions, pandemic… yes, societies recovered. But we can’t recover from the coming runaway climate and systemic global ecosystems collapses. The first shoe to drop: ice free arctic summer (in 10 years?). Then, every thing will go south real fast.