6 - Sunday, October 12, 1986 — North Shore News — ; News Debate Viewpoint debate HY SHOULD the Social Credit party take part ina debate? Various polls agree that Premier Bill Vander Zalm and his colleagues have already won the election. By poing head to head against the other pro- vincial political parties in public debate, Vander Zalm and his associates are simply opening themselves up to a lot of low blows and political finagling by candidates desperate (o do anything to blunt the Socred’s lead. Any leader in his right mind would never open up a public platform to allow himself to be harassed into giving details on his policies that he and his cabinet have barely had time to formulate. The NDP’s Bob Skelly, too, has nothing to gain by a public debate. Party members have admitted that Skel- ly is a party liability. With his nervous spasms, Skelly would be laid low under the verbal guufire of the premier’s eloquence. As long as history can be recorded, the public has been deiuged by ramblings in political campaigns — two more hours of debate on television would not establish any new truths. Besides, the Social Credit leadership campaign gave the public enough insights into the premier’s policies and goals. Why repeat the banter? So Bob Skelly, Art Lee and the rest: stop harassing the premier! He can answer your questions, probably better than you could answer his, but let’s wait until the research and paperwork backs the statements, in- stead of listening to yet another empty political prom- ise. THE VOILE OF NOH TM AND WEST WANCOUVEN o rar ere SUINEIAY » WEDNESDAY + FINDAY 1139 Lonsdale Ave. North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 57.686 serge er enene Display Advertising 980-0511 Classitied Advertising 986-6222 Newsroom 985-2131 Distribution 986-1337 Subscriptions 986-1337 Norn Shore Ne Publisher: Editor-in-Chiet Managing Editor Advertising Director Peter Speck Noel Woon Bartett Fioher Linda Stewart Entire contents 1986 North Shore Free Press wid Ail rights res At ha A NEWS photo Stuart Davia ENJOYING A sunny Sunday afternoon, two-year-old Neil Westra feeds the ducks at Ambleside Park. The ‘service industry growth’ illusion THE TROUBLE with the world, said the American humorist Josh Billings, ain’t ignorance, it's the stuff folks know that ain’t so. Nowhere is this insightful comment more apt than in the case of econom c subjects and in particular those which emerge from the so-called futures gurus. The current concern of the sucietal soothsayers is the evolution of what has been called the post-industrial society. So the story goes, North American society is headed for a fundamental crisis because our people are increas- ingly employed in service type oc- cupations. From farming, during the last century, we gradually moved to industrial occupations during the beginning of this century and with the supposed decline of industrial ac- tivity, have been moving toward more and more service jobs during the last several decades. These apparent developments lead to the painting of some very alarm- ing pictures of the future. For exam- ple, how are we going to maintain our standard of jiving when we are increasingly employed in taking in each others laundry — the most used analogy for service employments. Or, even more bleak, what will hap- pen to our society when we are ail employed as either hamburger flip- pers or computer operators. MICHAEL W Its easy to see why casual observers might have these concerns and come to those conclusions. After all, by last year about eight million Canadians were employed in service occupations of one kind or another and service employment is growing faster than any other category. Add to that all of the hype generated by the computer revolution and you have a picture which looks very like the grim future envisaged by the high priests of the crystal ball. The only problem is that it is com- pletely misleading. First of all, the apparent transition to the services economy hasn't reai- ly occurred. While it is true that more and more people are being classified as employed in the services industry, that is in part a statistical illusion. In the 1950s a person who spot welded the parts which went into an LETTER OF THE DAY Tax by any other nar Dear Editor: It is beginning 10 Jook as if the tax reform proposals mooted by our federal finance minister are going to revolve around the in- troduction of a new tax, a value added tax, under the nom-de- plume of business transfer tax. Whilst it is claimed that this will replace some unspecified existing fax, it is clear that the effect on the individual taxpayer will be equal to the addition of a few more leeches, as even more money is bled out of the system. Now that we are suffering the after-effects of the free-spending Liberal administration, i: would automobile frame, was classed as an employee in the auto industry. To- day much of that work is done by robots and the person who writes the programs or designs the electronics for the robots is counted as being in the computer services industry. But, from the point of view of the economy as a whole, we should regard those people as being in the auto industry since the effect of their services is embodied in the auto- mobiles produced. Economists cail this development an increase in the roundaboutness of production, In other words, instead of welding, we spend more time and knowledge to build a machine which will weld. The computer program- NOEL mers who program the robots are stages removed from the assembly plant, but they are still employed in the production of autos. As time passes, we can expect even more roundaboutness of production. Moreover, the firms which supply the computer services which are us- ed to build autos don’t only employ computer programmers. They have the same need for a mix of employees as do the more conven- tional firms that they are replacing. Secondly, there has been a phenomenon of vertical disintegra- tion in many industrial enterprises. Whereas they used to have their own printing department, many firms have spun off those service jabs in- RIGHT ON ASSIGN seem thar the only thing the Con- servatives can see to do to bring this under control is to increase taxes. Under the normal course of events a return to a Liberal major- ity would mean a return to more and bigger spending. Thus the taxpayer is whipsawed between the spenders and the taxers. We need to break this vicious 22 cycle before it is too late by em- bracing the Libertarian policy of reducing government expenditures, the root cause of our problems. Less spending by government would bring about the need for less taxation, and give us the freedom to decide for ourselves where the money we have earned should be spent, and free us from the tyran- s still to sub-contracts with other firms who specialize in the delivery of the service. Therefore, people employed in the printing business who used to be classified as being employed by mining companies or farm equip- ment manufacturers are now Said to be in the services industry. Evident- ly, such reclassification of employ- ment ought not to lead us to an im- pression of fundamental societal! change. By the way, what we are seeing in Canada as a country is also happen- ing on a global basis. Countries are beginning to specialize in particular stages of the productive process and import some of the things they used to make at home. This international disintegration of the stages of nanu- facturing can lead to the same hysterical response that has attend- ed the domestic service sector developments. But, it is no more valid there. The only aspect of the gurus’ bleak tale about the service sector that seems to stand up under careful scrutiny is that what we call the ser- vice sector is getting bigger. Whether we are governments planning policy, students making career choices or in- vestors trying to find the next boom, that fact is enough to cause us to find out more. a tax ny of an ever-increasing taxation burden. A rose under any other name may smell as sweet, but a tax under any name will also bear its own distinctive pungent odor. Bill Tomlinson North Vancouver