Boom Times
For those who don't know it, Calgary is booming. House prices are skyrocketing, and if you don't have a place to rent, good luck finding one with the very low vacancy rate. Inflation is high, but people don't seem to care as the oil is flowing and the money along with it.
There are a couple of problems attached to this boom though. It is almost a super-heated economy, and definitely a worker-centred one. This means many small businesses have problems finding staff and paying them enough to keep them. Stories abound of stores having to close mid-day because they just can't find the staff.
It also leads to staff becoming less than reliable. Want a day off? Take one. If they fire you, there's plenty more that will hire you. This seems especially pronounced with the generation known as the Echo Boomers. Not to paint them all with one brush, but there seem to be more than a couple out there who fit the stereotype.
My generation (Jones, remember?) is an interesting one. We haven't really seen a true boom economy. I'm fairly lost in all this - only seen inflation, recessions and jobless recoveries in the past. So dearth and a standpoint of scarcity, not abundance, is what I have always known. Rampant inflation and wage and price controls in the 70s, not to mention an oil crisis. Stock market panic and recession in the 80s. Rumours of a dotcom boom, but nothing tangible in the 90s. (In fact, I spent the early 90s in the UK, where inflation was again running rampant.) Twenty-first century starts well, but 9/11 changes all that.
I feel as if everyone around me is making wildly outrageous sums of money, while I sit idly by on the sidelines quietly counting and saving my money, just in case. There are some who are with me, saying, "Just you wait. We've seen boom times before... and bust times." There's even a bumper sticker sold here in Calgary that reads, "Please Lord, let me have another oil boom and I promise not to piss it away this time."
As another Stampede season looms, I have a feeling there will be a fair amount of pissing away going on in Cowtown over the next 10 days.
Wonder where can I buy one of those bumper stickers?
For those who don't know it, Calgary is booming. House prices are skyrocketing, and if you don't have a place to rent, good luck finding one with the very low vacancy rate. Inflation is high, but people don't seem to care as the oil is flowing and the money along with it.
There are a couple of problems attached to this boom though. It is almost a super-heated economy, and definitely a worker-centred one. This means many small businesses have problems finding staff and paying them enough to keep them. Stories abound of stores having to close mid-day because they just can't find the staff.
It also leads to staff becoming less than reliable. Want a day off? Take one. If they fire you, there's plenty more that will hire you. This seems especially pronounced with the generation known as the Echo Boomers. Not to paint them all with one brush, but there seem to be more than a couple out there who fit the stereotype.
My generation (Jones, remember?) is an interesting one. We haven't really seen a true boom economy. I'm fairly lost in all this - only seen inflation, recessions and jobless recoveries in the past. So dearth and a standpoint of scarcity, not abundance, is what I have always known. Rampant inflation and wage and price controls in the 70s, not to mention an oil crisis. Stock market panic and recession in the 80s. Rumours of a dotcom boom, but nothing tangible in the 90s. (In fact, I spent the early 90s in the UK, where inflation was again running rampant.) Twenty-first century starts well, but 9/11 changes all that.
I feel as if everyone around me is making wildly outrageous sums of money, while I sit idly by on the sidelines quietly counting and saving my money, just in case. There are some who are with me, saying, "Just you wait. We've seen boom times before... and bust times." There's even a bumper sticker sold here in Calgary that reads, "Please Lord, let me have another oil boom and I promise not to piss it away this time."
As another Stampede season looms, I have a feeling there will be a fair amount of pissing away going on in Cowtown over the next 10 days.
Wonder where can I buy one of those bumper stickers?
Comments
$50 ? ! ? !
What, does money grow on trees in this town?
Apparently...