Thoughts on Oregon's Future (Clackamas: rental car, rental, hotels)

[Ryant]

What can you do, if the demand for timber isn't there anymore? Things modernize too and fewer people/factories can do more work. Should we try to force everyone to use hand saws and water for mills to create jobs?

That would be something, a lot of jobs for making pulp because the product isn't worth much especially among all these people. They'd probably have $10 to divide among themselves.

Oregon can't live in the past.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

You're lacking quite a bit of perspective there - you need to look at historic levels, BEFORE the supply of timber was cut off and the Canada-US timber war started. Historically the timber industry provided a huge percentage of the jobs in rural areas. A drive down any highway outside the metro area will show you the crumbling remains of mills and drying sheds and sawdust burners.

Still, that's 14.5% of the labor force actually doing something productive instead of sucking off of other people, and that's not counting farm employment. That's over 3x the percentage of productive workers that you see in the national work force. I'm really quite impressed. I would never have guessed it that high.

[Ryant]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

High tech and IT (which are not necessarily the same thing) can be part of the picture, but a lot of people counted on high tech to save the PDX metro area and it didn't and won't - Plan B is going to have to be more diversified.

I'm not sure a lot of people depended on high tech to save PDX. It was at it's peak around 80k jobs and lost at most 20% as far as I could see(correct if you need). It does bring in some good money.

It's interesting actually I didn't know it was so big here.

TechAmerica Foundation : Oregon

-Oregon Ranks 6th in the Nation in High-Tech Exports
-High-tech exports account for 49 percent of total exports in Oregon

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Ryant

What can you do, if the demand for timber isn't there anymore? Things modernize too and fewer people/factories can do more work. Should we try to force everyone to use hand saws and water for mills to create jobs?

That would be something, a lot of jobs for making pulp because the product isn't worth much especially among all these people. They'd probably have $10 to divide among themselves.

Oregon can't live in the past.

But the demand is there. The Canadian mills are working at 100% employment, because the Canadian government sells saw logs to the mills at $25 (CDN) a ton, while the US government won't sell saw logs at all. The only Oregon mills still running are the ones who own their own timber.

The Canadians are dumping lumber in the US, but the gummint doesn't want to enforce trade agreements because of all the crude oil coming out of Alberta. We get more oil from Canada than we get from Saudi Arabia. DC is scared to death to rock the boat, so rural Oregon gets screwed.

[Ryant]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

Still, that's 14.5% of the labor force actually doing something productive instead of sucking off of other people, and that's not counting farm employment. That's over 3x the percentage of productive workers that you see in the national work force. I'm really quite impressed. I would never have guessed it that high.

You probably have to redo your math:

Total nonfarm employment 1,607,700
Mining and logging 7,300

Take 7,300/1,607,700 = .0045406 = that's the part of the Oregon employment, less then half a percent.

[Ryant]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

actually doing something productive instead of sucking off of other people.

I think the word you're looking for is GDP. I don't know if they have an indicator for "something productive instead of sucking off of other people".

The economy of Oregon has grown from a $112 billion economy in year 2000 to a more than $160 billion economy during this decade.

[Fiddlehead]

I am not for mining or logging or grazing that destroys our resources. However, I believe that trees are renewable and cover millions of acres in Oregon (and no I am not talking about public lands old growth). They are an obvious resource that should be part of our economy. Moreover, we have the best forestry program in the WORLD at Oregon State University. Although I will admit the OSU gang have often been far too cozy with big timber, so much that they have betrayed the trust of Oregonians, I believe we have the potential to do forestry sustainably in Oregon. So, I do not at all see it as a trivial sector of our economy. Especially in some rural communities. The current statistics give it too little weight, because of the reasons mentioned upthread (recession, Canadian timber,etc.). . I cannot speak to grazing, but I would imagine it is a smaller slice of the pie. Still, it is probably quite important to many smaller towns in E. Oregon. I think the conservation concerns of Oregon are well-founded, but sometimes they lapse into NIMBYism. Many in Oregon, especially newcomers do not understand and value rural land uses nor the larger ecology of their resource consumption. We want our environment to be perfect, whereas we consume resources from other places with a fraction of the conservation regulations or know how. I personally want to pay my own freight. If I use wood, or eat beef, or vegetables, I want to know where it came from and how. If it was done in a sleazy way, I want to see it done better. Our logging, mining, grazing, other agricultural activities should be closely watched and regulated, but we have the brain power to get them right. To eliminate extractive activities from Oregon just creates the illusion of preservation, because they will be harvested from somewhere, and likely with much less care.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Ryant

You probably have to redo your math:

Total nonfarm employment 1,607,700
Mining and logging 7,300

Take 7,300/1,607,700 = .0045406 = that's the part of the Oregon employment, less then half a percent.

I was adding up all the productive occupations, like construction, manufacturing, etc. to come up with the percentage of people who actually produce something.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Ryant

I think the word you're looking for is GDP. I don't know if they have an indicator for "something productive instead of sucking off of other people".

The economy of Oregon has grown from a $112 billion economy in year 2000 to a more than $160 billion economy during this decade.

No, the GDP includes all sorts of worthless money shuffling like Goldman Sacks and destructive retail operations like Wal-Mart that produce nothing, not to speak of the hourly take of millions of lawyers. I was specifically talking about people who create new wealth rather than drain wealth from the productive people of the nation. Oregon has a surprising number of productive people, which is probably why so many of them are unemployed.

[Ryant]

That's all fine. I was just giving stats. If you think Oregon's government should bend over backwards to support a rather insignificant industry(less then half a percent) that makes our state look like **** and meanwhile takes away a lot of the charm that draws people here. I see it all the time that they do it "with more care" here. All the clear cuts while driving to the coast, 90%+ of the land already logged etc.

This "something productive instead of sucking off of other people" stuff. I hardly think you'd tell a plumber this if you were face to face. Trying to convince him that he is "just sucking off of other people". Same way with the restaurant/small business owner, or 85.5% of the other people in this state.