• Less than 4% of people enjoy their jobs

Key factors when locating new industries in a particular location are:

• Infrastructure
• Educated workforce and effective training programs
• Coherent environmental regulations

Some facts about the USA economy

• Some of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy are corrections and imprisonment, at an annual growth rate of 6.2 percent per year throughout the 1990s; one in every 150 Americans is now behind bars
• The O. J. Simpson trial alone added $200 million to the U.S. economy
• The Oklahoma City explosion and Littleton massacre fueled the booming U.S. security industry, which now adds $40 billion a year to the economy
• Gambling is a $50-billion-a-year business in the U.S.
• Divorce adds $20 billion a year to the U.S. economy
• Car crashes add another $57 billion
• Diet and weight-loss industries add $32 billion a year more to the U.S. economy
• Obesity-related health problems add another $50 billion, while at the same time 20 million people in the world, mostly children, die every year from hunger and malnutrition
• The Exxon Valdez contributed more to the Alaskan economy by spilling its oil than if it had delivered the oil safely to port
• The amount of money spent on security and the war on terrorism after September 11, 2001, not only by the U.S., but by other countries as well, is certainly in the billions of dollars
• You contribute to the GNP when you run your car into someone else’s; your contribution is still greater if you hurt the people inside
• The richest 1 percent of American households now owns 40 percent of the national wealth
• The Yugoslav War stimulated the economies of NATO countries to the tune of $60 million a day

If we take a few moments, we would realize toxic pollution, sickness, stress, and war all make an economy grow., because the cleanup costs, lawsuits, and media coverage added to the growth statistics., and economies will benefit even more by rebuilding what has been destroyed. Just think about the fight over who is going to rebuild Iraq.

Some facts about the Canadian economy

• If the GDP counted voluntary and household work, we would see they add $325 billion a year to the Canadian economy
• Today the average Canadian couple puts in 79 hours of paid work and 56 hours of unpaid household work a week, for a total household workweek of 135 hours
• GPI Atlantic has already found that crime costs Nova Scotians $1.2 billion a year, or $3,500 per household, including $312 million in victim losses; $258 million in public spending on prisons, police, and courts; and $46 million in home-security expenses
• Nova Scotian households pay $800 more a year due to in-store retail theft and business crime prevention costs, and $200 more per household in higher insurance premiums due to insurance fraud
• Canadians are three times as likely to be victims of crime as their parents were a generation ago
• If crime was still at 1962 levels Nova Scotians would be saving about $750 million a year, or $2,200 per household
• Canadians currently spend $102 billion a year on their cars, $11 billion more on highways, $500 million on car advertisements, and billions more on hospitals, police, courts, and funeral costs for the 3,000 killed and 25,000 seriously injured in car crashes every year
• Funerals on Cape Breton Island cost $6,500 to $10,000. A funeral co-op from mainland Nova Scotia offers a first class but basic funeral for an all-inclusive price of $2,800. It is free for children under 12.
• Failure to protect and conserve a valuable natural resource resulted in the loss of 40,000 fishery jobs in the region
• In 1989, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously vowed to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. Since 1989 child poverty has increased by 47 percent
• If the GDP counted voluntary and household work, we would see they add $325 billion a year to the Canadian economy
• GPI Atlantic found that Nova Scotians have the highest rate of volunteer activity in the country, giving 134 million hours a year, the equivalent of 81,000 jobs, or $1.9 billion in services, equal to 10 percent of our GDP
• Working mothers put in an average of 11 hours a day of paid and unpaid work on weekdays, and over 15 hours of unpaid work on weekends. According to Statistics Canada , the average working mother today puts in a 75-hour workweek
• Child care workers in Nova Scotia only earn an average of $7.58 an hour
• GPI Atlantic found that single mothers dependent on the household economy put in an average of 50 hours a week of productive household work. If it were replaced for pay in the market economy, this work would be worth $450 a week.

Hope for the future

More and more people are beginning to realize they are also major players in the giant financial markets that create and eliminate jobs. Through pension plans and mutual fund investments, many average workers own a piece of multinational corporations and other huge publicly-traded businesses. With this realization of power comes a strong demand for socially responsible businesses—businesses that demonstrate responsibility toward workers, the environment, and communities.

The reality is, there is no end of work to be done. Our ability to create jobs is limited only by our imagination and our willingness to make work a priority for investment. Unmet social needs in our communities abound. We need teachers for our public schools, preventive health care, affordable housing, environmental cleanup, and safer neighbourhoods.

Successful Examples of CED

• New Dawn Enterprises was the first community business development corporations in Canada. It was founded in 1974 by a group of local people concerned with the economic decline of the region. New Dawn started out providing affordable housing for people on low or medium income, job creation projects, a senior citizen home, a community resource center, and home nursing and dental centers. It now has over twenty million dollars in assets and has a business structure with sufficient flexibility to respond to a variety of community needs.
• A more recent example is BCA Holdings , a community finance corporation with over a million dollars in assets. It raises investment money, invests in local job-creating businesses, and pays a return on investment to local investors. BCA has come to the aid of a number of near-bankrupt companies, such as a high-tech rope company and a radio station. It is now in the process of building a four- to five-million-dollar high-rise condominium in downtown Sydney.