Faced with the lowest unemployment rate in decades, U.S. businesses are turning their eyes toward the large prison population for labour. The most compelling reason employers are attracted is the prospect of cheap labour.
Prisons take deductions for room, board and other costs from inmates' pay checks.
This is nearly as many as the 47 per cent who have changed jobs to earn more money. On the issue of tax fairness, nearly three out of four Americans say that it is unfair. Projections over the next five years indicate a loss of up to 10 percent of sales tax revenue because of a substantial increase in Internet sales on which sales tax will not be collected. Earlier studies suggested that Canada had been lagging in its use of these more sophisticated technologies. Canadian firms were slow to adopt such technologies during the first half of the 1990s, however, this situation was likely due to recessionary pressures on the economy.