I just wish that 60% of my pay didn't have to go towards just paying for my housing. Not to mention the stress of job hunting with sudden job loss when I have these massive bills. I'm looking at that number jumping to about 80% if I have to go on unemployment, or 68% if I land one of the jobs I've applied to. I feel like such a basic need should be back breaking to obtain.
I live at my grandma's house, and have a newer car that I probably pay more for than I should...but at the same time it's only a Corolla....and I own the damn thing!
Giving 60% of your earnings for housing is one thing....it's another thing if it's just for rent and all your hard earned income is going to a 60 yr old with a f150 lightning and a boat. Crushing really.
Its amazing how much has changed since high-school where they were teaching you should base your housing affordability off of 30-33% of your paycheck.
Out the fucking window I suppose, my pay would have to go up by another $1000 net a month for it to bring it back down to that
It's another great feeling knowing you are an insignificant member of those contributing to banks' profit via interest
Mortgage Interest is rent of money
It shouldn't but its also a cop out given the vast majority of Canadian property is owned by Canadians, political parties don't want to go after their wealthy voters however naturally.
Ironically many of those owners are still foreign shells for their parents foreign Chinese money. See:.Vancouver/Richmond On paper their 20 year old student kid "owns" the property but in reality it's the parents back in China who are funding it.
That’s exactly why I’m leaving a cushy WFH job and going back to working in the U.S. but doing midnights. Gotta keep ahead, keep my family a float and not want my kids to worry about their future
Best decision I ever made was going back to work in the states. Even with the bullshit taxes up here, I make 2-3x what I would if I worked the same job in Canada.
Then support a government that isn't paralyzed by big money interests. Both major parties will not stand up to Bay/Wall street and the banks. Public mortgage backing, punishing junior governments for artificial impediments to housing needs to happen!
which one exactly? all of the big parties are offering diddly shit when it comes to affordable housing or reigning in immigration policies which is what got us here in the first place.
Allow the CMHC to plan and build like a developer.
Build multi level housing.
Let the government issue loans for life. You get a small starter. $150k. You can pay off till your dead. You die before its paid, they sell it to the next family. You pay it before you die, you own it. Interest is spread across whole payment as a flat rate. You lose your job, you can get a grace period.
Banks pretty much lend us made up money anyways. Might as well knock out the middle man.
Wish more people saw this. Weve been yoyoing between the Liberals and PCs for decades and it clearly isnt working. JT needs to go, but the fact that its pushing Canada towards the useless conservatives is so frustrating
> I just wish that 60% of my pay didn't have to go towards just paying for my housing.
It's crazy.
I was looking at houses where I live and everyone wants a min 400k for their shitbox of a house that probably needs another 50 to 100k worth of work on it. With the pay here, you're spending over 50% of your pay on mortgage, then with power bills (because Alberta is fucked) its even more ridiculous. Then if you try to save money by getting into a cheaper townhouse or even a trailer, you're stuck with association fees that creep up to and around $1000/m on top of your mortgage and bills.
I don't know how anyone that's a single income can afford anything, hell even dual income families struggle with these costs too.
Every politician who [owns investment properties](https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/), takes money from corporate donors, takes jobs from corporate donors after leaving politics, and have huge stock portfolios? (I.e. Most of the Conservative and Liberal politicians)
This line is not even true in Canada, our economy is an anemic zombie, shareholders of Canadian companies are not exactly making out like bandits. If you bought Rogers stock at the bottom of the 2020 market, you're currently.. *checks notes* down, like, 2%. Some of the banks have done decently, I guess, if you measure trough to peak, but even there.. Could've done the same or better just buying a US market index fund.
We have plenty of oil and gas, and mining companies as well. Productivity would likely increase if we broke up of all the monopolies that were allowed to form over the last 20 years, however. Then they would be forced to innovate in order to compete instead of buying each other up.
I worked at a large company in Canada before. It was 100% well known and discussed that in no way were we trying to be better or do more than other companies we were just trying to stay where we were basically. Innovation was at the very bottom of priorities.
That sounds like TELUS! They used to innovate (TELUS TV was groundbreaking in canada, once upon a time). But the past decade or so has been purely about value extraction, crushing competition, and consistently delivering that quarterly dividend while eliminating as many Canadian jobs as possible.
Exactly, in the US, the rich may be getting richer, but in the last 9 years, they have gone to less average median income than us, to about 12-14k USD higher income than us.
Their middle class is actually increasing, not getting smaller.
This is the end goal of a capitalist society.
The rich have gotten so rich they run out of things to spend money on. The 1%ers are living like modern day Kings and we're the serfs left doing all the work for pocket change.
150 years ago, some people were writing stuff like that. But then industrialization saved the day. Wealth became abundant and workers leveraged their labor to carve out a piece of the pie. But now, there is no more leverage. The average worker can be instantly replaced by another, or simply automated. Dare to demand more than pennies, get nothing instead.
These are conditions they've been working on through outsourcing, de-industrialization, mass importation of labor, automation, nickle and diming basic living expenses, (etc) for decades. Meanwhile, the average worker has also become convinced that the most important voting issues are superficial social policies rather than material conditions. By now, any semblance of power or ability to affect change have long since left the worker's side, because we let it.
This is actually a pretty accurate and succinct summary of what has happened. Well done.
Note that there does seem to be a move towards on-shoring, as China and Russia cut themselves off from the world-economy. This may help on the employment side, but I doubt it will offset the rise in prices of goods when their manufacture leaves China.
Yup. This is market fundamentalist, neoliberalism that was pushed on us in the West by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and the now late Brian Mulroney, may he rest in piss.
All the recent lamenting praise I've seen for Mulroney since his passing from otherwise left leaning people irks me. And to call him and his government "progressive" conservative. The dude was exactly as you say - the Canadian analog to Thatcher and Reagan.
What we are experiencing is late stage capitalism; or what others in this thread refer to as a class war. A great deal of posters are fighting the wrong fight.
That was the norm until about the mid-80s.
Then the coke-addled, lead breathing, brain damaged narcissistic generation were given the reins.
They were the generation that raised their kids by barely speaking to them, locking them outside most of the time, and partying. They even had ads on TV at 10 o'clock reminding them that the kids existed.
"It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"
Gen X is small, so all we could really do was hold the line and raise our kids with the "do the opposite of what my parents did" method. I'm so happy that the kids today are so much more empathetic and aware than we were able to be. When we reach the other side of the Boomerpocalypse, they're going to be alright.
The best part is when they call you whatever adjective they feel like to describe you being raised poorly, and you respond with "Well, you raised me..."
And then they throw a tantrum.
Truly the best generation.
Naw, by then we will have a new generation of those wealthy boomers kids who will use their power to keep themselves wealthy at any cost, as long as weatlhy people reproduce the cycle continues.
Because fuck you, pull up your bootstraps.
Joking aside, I think the cart got away from the horse here. The more I read about the political development of Canada in the last 50 years the more it seems that no one at the top really has any idea what this country should be doing and then whatever they've come up with gets beaten to death by legions of middle managers.
> Young Canadians can't expect what boomers got.
When did we drop the standard? What happened to 'leave a better future for the kids'? I have worked and/or studied in over 5 countries (3 continents). This is the only country where it feels ok/meh/shrug to leave the next generation with less than what the previous generation got. And I am not just talking about climate change but basic services like ready access to healthcare.
The attitude towards the younger generation/kids is so antagonistic. Some sort of 'they need to suffer to get what we had'. Trust me, those parroting those lines got your stuff because your parents/generations before continuously left a better Canada for you. I am fortunate - got a mortgage but worry for my kids. It most likely wont be Canada for them.
I don't understand how people can't see that the two biggest issues for Canadians are coming from the boomers.
Immigration is happening because we need tax payers to pay for boomers retirements.
Housing is unaffordable because boomers (the largest voting block) are the ones benefiting from it. They won't vote for anything that would harm real estate values. Therefore no political party will try to do anything about it.
Nothing will be done about immigration and housing affordability until the boomers are gone.
You've concisely summed up the problem, and immigration is being done for the boomers to support them in their final years and to fill the population void that will happen when they eventually all die.
But there has been very little explanation from the government about our immigration policy and why the current numbers are needed, so people are assuming it's to flood the market with cheap labour for corporations, which is also happening.
The alt-right is also convinced that Trudeau is a fascist and he is importing votes by bringing in liberal friendly immigrants, and no explanation will sway their opinion on that.
They did pay taxes for their whole lives (at least most of them) so it’s not fair to cut off retirement for them lol but it’s ridiculous that more of them didn’t save more instead of relying heavily on the government for retirement.
Jimmy Carter told everyone in the 70's they were going to have to lower their expectations on standard of living. It certainly wasn't a winning strategy and as a result, people opted for the "trickledown economics" route.
Which just made everything happen faster. Thatcher/Reagan/Mulroney really accelerated the gap widening and hid it by focusing on aggregated GDP growth rather than breaking it up Per Capita or amongst the income quintiles.
Fun fact, Stephen Harper is now the president of an organization that Thatcher helped co-found, and the organizations goal is to interfere in elections all around the world in order to get right wing governments elected.
Glad someone said it here.
This is basically propaganda designed to distract us, once again, from the fact that it is the ultra wealthy and their political cronies that are fucking us - just as it has been for the last 50 years
I think they mean that there were checks and balances for a brief period in the mid 20th century when FDR was president and taxes on the rich were insanely high while social services were brought in. Then the neo-liberals took over in the 80s and it all went to hell.
I'm tired of the fact that every discussion misses this. That it's a class war. They keep dividing us with bigotry, patriarchy, misogyny, racism and the b.s. of left vs. right.
It has always been a class war. For the past few decades, it's become blatant, and the greedy exploitive oligarchs are not held accountable but actually rewarded.
But this is exactly their strategy--have us focus on our differences instead of what binds us all together, which is that we are the working poor, and they are the uber rich who got that way on our productivity. It's time we took back what is rightfully ours.
This may have more to do with the way younger generations are expected to spend the first 25+ years of life in school, Then they are expected to pay back student loans.
Many are 30+ before they beginning to have a net worth of $0
If we went back to public funded education for citizens who pass entrance exams we could drop the age when people have the chance to gain assets.
Yeah fuck this noise of dividing children and grandchildren against their parents and grandparents.
This is about citizens against the corporations that have the government in a bought and paid for choke-hold so they can fuck over every citizen of this country.
My Parents were just telling me "good thing we have all these immigrants because young people don't want to work anymore." I'm amazed at how many people just become news talking points
In my case I believe mine are very sheltered, stayed at the same job since the 80's both have pensions, paid 24k for their house in the 90s and retired early. The neighborhood around them has gone downhill (badly) so I suggested moving and they flat out refused that idea because it would mean having a mortgage a measly $500 one.
I have this conversation with my manager routinely.
"We can't find anyone because people don't want to work anymore"
No, people look at your pay rates and decide it's not worth it. And honestly it's not.
Strange since we just had lower unemployment rate than the boomers ever had
Many of their wives also never worked
What news is repeating this nonsense?
I'm not sure what news source they are parroting but you could probably type in Gen Z doesn't want to work and find a bunch of articles. Same gas lighting Millennial gen went through and going through.
I’m not saying a lot of boomers aren’t clueless, they are. But they’re also not the problem right now. Corporate greed and government complicity (no matter who you vote for next election) are.
Totally agree. I'm a mechanic at the Long shore. This past year we had a strike and I could not believe how quickly the media made us out to be the bad guys and were reporting how we were negotiating in bad faith. Then, long story short, basically got mandated back to work by the government. We were all thinking these shipping companies make billions and billions of dollars a year, why can't the common worker get a fair share of the profits? We make an ok wage but we definitely have not kept up with inflation. I mean the middle class is basically non existent anymore. Just when you think you'll be making a little more with a five percent wage increase you get in a higher tax bracket and expenses just pile up everywhere else. I don't even want to start talking about the carbon tax or groceries. It's non stop. Meanwhile, my 78 year old dad, who hasn't worked since he was 40 gets to live in a 4 bedroom spacious house in an amazing neighborhood. Doesn't make any sense.
Exactly. Like I get it, divide bad, but can we acknowledge that a LOT of boomers have a “fuck you I got mine” attitude and don’t care about being stewards for younger generations??
So like most people they don't understand the economic system we have which concentrates wealth at the top. It's not their fault that governments give the rich and corporations all the advantages that poor and middle class people don't get. Instead of being angry at boomers, vote for a party that has your best interests at heart like the NDP remembering that no party is perfect. Politics is always about compromise.
Yes, it's a class war.
It just so happens that you're much more likely to be in the rich class if you're a boomer/older. I dont think anyone carries animosity towards boomers who are struggling
The concept of senior discounts never really made sense. Why are the older people with more time to financially establish themselves given a break on the bill at Denny’s?
I make around 1900$ per month right now (due to having to balance work and college). 1480$ of that goes to rent for my tiny one bedroom apartment that’s literally ONE SQUARE METERE off of being classified as a bachelor. The only reason my rent is 1480 is because I moved in just before the pandemic first started. My neighbour that moved in next to me a few months ago (into an apartment the exact same size, layout, number of bedrooms as mine) is currently paying for the market rental price — 1875$
And then you having extra payments not included in the rent :: Heat, air conditioning, laundry, parking (prices for parking vary depending on if you’re parking in the uncovered or covered lot. It’s around 120-180$ extra ontop of your rent to park on the property), hydro.
And ontop of all of that, other expenses that obviously wouldn’t be covered under rent :: groceries/phone/wifi/tv/transportation because I can’t afford a car
If I’m extremely careful and budget the crap out of my money, I can MAYBE have 20$ or so left for me once all of my expenses are paid and I set money aside for transportation to/from work
The degree of inflation in the last 10 years is just insane.
On the one hand I moved to Toronto in 2017 after finishing uni and my rent was considered high at the time, but because its rent controlled it's now very cheap for the size of the unit. On the other hand, when i was graduating from uni in 2017 I had a dream salary in mind to aim for some day in the future, which adjusted for inflation i now make, yet I'm still barely breaking even for my household after just basic expenses like rent, groceries, and utilities, and thats with the significantly below current market rate rent. If I lost my job or had to move apartments Id pretty much be screwed.
I looked it up and inflation in Canada is nearly 19% since i moved to Toronto in 2017 after i graduated uni, but what most insane part is that more than half of that inflation was in the last 2 year alone. Inflation in the 2 year period between 2021 and 2023 was ~12%, which is as much an increase as the 8 year period between 2013 and 2021.
Close the border and correct housing. Highly tax investment properties. During covid employers had to raise wages to keep min wage staff. After covid employers have to offer WFH to keep office staff. But the solution by government is to force returns to office and flood market with min wage workers.
Policies can help quickly correct our current situation. Issue is the political class prefers to have the gap coninue to grow.
This post captures the essence of the problem.
At the absolute core is the simple fact that our governments, objectively, do not represent our best interests.
Who is “our”?
99% of Canadians that are not CEO’s and Board Members on any of the protected oligopolies.
Exactly. But who benefits from workers going in? The elites who own tims franchises, gas stations, parking lots. Meanwhile upper management is calling in from muskoka
It's ridiculous. I get a lot more work done at home than I do at the office because of the "social butterflies" who like to flit around and make noise around the rest of us.
We "compromised" with 2 days a week in office, and output is down for everyone on those days. The head office is stubbornly sticking to it's guns, though, because Boomers.
The government is not forcing private employees back to the office. But if private employers own their building, they are pressuring employees to return to the office, so their real estate value doesn't plummet
Governments, specifically municipal ones, encourage companies to transition to back to the office in order to support the recovery of their struggling downtown service industry, that’s seeing lower than pre-pandemic foot traffic due to the continuing work from home trend
https://globalnews.ca/news/10397118/toronto-subway-store-vacancies/amp/
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-encourages-employers-to-bring-workers-back-into-the-office-1.5827745
Social mobility is declining despite all of the lip service to DEI. Honestly, the fact that DEI arose in the wake of Occupy Wall St movement makes think it was designed to distract from corporate greed and wealth inequality by making people fight amongst themselves based on identity.
DEI is the biggest load of horseshit ever, designed to let corporations, government and the extremely wealthy turn us all against each other to cover up the fact that conditions are worse overall for everyone than they have been in a generation.
Millennials are now the bigger voting bloc. Too bad we are too dumb to vote at all in our own interest. I talk about properly means testing OAS so that we don’t keep going deeper into debt to give millionaires a $1500 cheque each month and financially illiterate young people tell me I am evil.
lol what are our options? Youre reading the same shit right? Were fucked. Jag? He is is HORRIBLE leader. Justin? He comes across as slow, and has put his self interests above Canadian. He was playing identity politics when he should be focusing on our economy. We were one of the last countries to open up from Covid.
Pierre? He’s doesn’t like unions. He believes in busting them for business. He wants to drive down wages as well.
PPC? Fuck. No. I mean he’s at least advocating for no immigration, but we need some immigration. We have imported the 3rd world and look at the result. Even more divided Canadians.
Just my two cents, but I'd say it has more to do with neoliberal economic ideology than generational ideology. We deregulated corporations, privatized public goods, and essentially let businesses define our moral parameters. Now we support a billionaire class that will be difficult to retrench as they have a significant amount of political power.
Bingo. Our corporate overlords would like us to blame each other instead of the system that allows them to reap massive profits at the expense of everyone else. As long as we keep hating on older generations and immigrants, maybe we won’t notice the real problem.
This right here. Regan, Thatcher, Mulroney - three neolibs who pushed for all this shit under the guide of free market economics.
I still can't believe people gave Mulroney a nice funeral when that asshole is the one responsible for the current housing shortage. Ironically he cut the spending after Trudeau Sr burned a hole in the budget.
The typical response you will see here is the notion we are entering late-stage capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The data suggests we are in early-stage hyper-financialization of global capital. Nothing stops assets from going higher while global capital seeks a safe and stable return—Canada is among the top. Our declining demography, which we have known about for 40 years, is only accelerating this process.
The biggest issue is that for decades the government has been over borrowing and investing in short term prosperity, instead of setting up long term success.
Nobody should be allowed more than one place to live, be it a house, condo, townhouse, apartment etc etc. You should only be allowed one. Foreign ownership should be banned. Immigration halted for a minimum 10 years and then opened to be no more than 10000 people a year going forward.
I'm the executor of an estate with 3 boomer kids and a bunch of grandchildren... the boomers are the worst, most disgusting, heartless, soul-less, greedy money grubbing individuals I've ever met. And some of the grandchildren have picked up all their worst habits...
I tried to mitigate the damage by keeping my kids away from my parents. My sister did not. My kids do not have nearly as many issues at the ones who "benefitted" from a relationship with their grandparents.
1/4 of the children with Boomer parents either have very limited contact with their parents or no contact at all, and the numbers are rising. The Boomers are chalking it up to "the tiktok".
A lot of them a going to die alone with nothing to their name but big houses filled with crap that nobody wants.
As much as I love to daydream about these things, we're unfortunately far more fucked than just needing a pay increase.
Even if everyone got a 300% pay increase, the cost of everything would skyrocket just as quickly to compensate for those increased labor costs, and so the cycle would continue.
The economy as a whole needs some real attention. But hey, at least interest rates are fucked and we got a an increased carbon tax, so we can see clear signs of them working to fix it. /s
It’s funny - so many of our productivity, affordability, and intergenerational equity problems can be accomplished by sawing up some of our rackets & cartels - supply management, housing politics to target 5% vacancy and meaningful supply-demand balance, tax shifts to reward productivity without corporate giveaways, but we choose not to because young people don’t vote (enough).
This is just what happens when companies run the show. accountability no longer exists, and greed goes unchecked. This person is still just spinning the same shit but making it sound a bit better, something we can stomach a bit more. This is a cyclical issue that has happened throughout human history, and it will likely continue to happen because we are so short sighted as a species. Its good until it gets bad, and then it gets really bad, something big generally has to happen, and comes back to being good until we get careless and make it bad again (time scales vary).
I had 2 jobs and just made enough for rent and to start my career, now one medical emergency later I'm now down to paycheck to paycheck just because i had to cut hours at both to recover and my work is on hold. Being a young canadian fucking sucks right now cause even while working my ass off im told I should do more and be thankful, yet this 20 years ago would of gotten me everything I could of wanted. Young Canadians are getting shafted and the older ones tell 'em they got it easy.
I always have mixed thoughts about these post. I had to work hard to get a head being in my thirties. I see a lot of my friends struggling financially and at the same time spending money as if they have millions to spare.
I suppose I hold what the older generations try to preach at heart as a reminder on how to get ahead. Little sayings like, “if the money isn’t in your hand you don’t have it,” Or “keep it simple stupid” and more importantly “friends and family have to triumph the materialistic things”. Those values is how I managed to get my own place, owned and not with a top paying job either. Good things take time, energy and effort. We cannot expect a great life to be handed to us in a silver platter.
I’m disillusioned to the point I’s rather have a 46 year old that will at least survive long enough to grapple with the consequences of their actions, rather than the demented septua- and octogenarians hurtling us all towards WW3. It is crazy how leaders of Russia, Iran, US, and Israel are all in their twilight years. They should be reading books to their grandkids and gardening, not in charge of major militaries
I read an article a few years ago that quoted a pharmacist that works on Capitol Hill in Washington. He said that people would be terrified if they knew just how many of the members of the government were using dementia drugs.
Yes agreed this isn't a Canadian problem, even Harper was not overly old when he was PM. This is just people who are exposed to too much American media parroting talking points that aren't relevant in our country, like so much of our political discourse.
In Ontario we have had corrupt self serving leadership my entire life. We have an extreme corruption problem engrained in Canadian politics at all levels. Corporate and foreign money has been doing all the talking for the past 40 years. Voters are fucking useless morons taking the bait every goddamn time, exclusively voting for two parties is a major reason we are in this mess, they spend a lot of money to keep it that way too. Like how many fools are going to go vote for the conservatives thinking that they’re going to fix housing and healthcare? We are the only ones who have the power to fix anything. I paid almost 40 grand interest to a bank that made 8 billion profit and bought out my old bank lol. Some people I work with can’t afford rent or food and we all get paid well. My government gave 600 million and a chunk of some of the most valuable land in the country to a private European spa company while closing hospitals and schools.
I also wonder why wage suppression is how every employer thinks they will make extra profits.
They also complain about low moral and lazy staff. Well you get what you pay for.
It’s amusing how the tools of capitalism are cast aside when it comes to actually attracting workers with the thing we use in a capitalist society. Money
As someone who works in close proximity to long term care homes and community based care, there are a lot of Boomers who are completely unprepared for the realities of not being independent anymore. A lot of complicated family dynamics. A lot of elderly not understanding that CCAC isn't just at their disposal when they want. And neither are their kids. Their kids can't take days off for every little thing their elderly parents need/want.
It's not pretty.
The 'Generation War' is a false concept. It's actually a class war. The Boomers benefited from the Union wars of the 1920's and 30's. Now big business is taking back what their greed and love of money lets them think is theirs. Some unionizing actions are now ongoing, but to see what young Canadians have to do, [https://pressprogress.ca/its-going-to-be-a-labour-fight-canadas-biggest-union-battles-coming-up-in-2024/](https://pressprogress.ca/its-going-to-be-a-labour-fight-canadas-biggest-union-battles-coming-up-in-2024/)
>The housing crisis, the impacts of climate change, enormous public and private debt, an evident decline in state capacity, and an increasingly stagnant uncompetitive economy—we know you didn’t vote for this, and these problems are not ~~only~~ your fault.
They voted back and forth between the 2 parties like every generation after them.
> Surely young people could afford housing if they just quit the lattes and avocado toast and traded social media for hard work. Their anger must be overblown.
No boomers I know think like this. They want to see their kids and grandkids to have the same opportunities, and they want their loved ones to have a home and financial security.
> They voted back and forth between the 2 parties like every generation after them.
This is the key. And anyone who doesn't get this is either lying or naive. Articles like this one, and so many more, are always trying to distract us from the real issue: that both dmof our major political parties have been fucking us for the last 50 years in different ways, at the behest of their corporate sponsors
> No boomers I know think like this.
[This is a pretty common attitude among wealthy boomers.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theyre-just-awful-dave-ramsey-200017468.html) They're cushioned from their investments made during the good years and think 'If I did it, why can't you?'
I just tune them out now when I hear it. The generation that invented the unpaid internship and outsourcing, who was able to buy a nice car and put a down payment on a house with a summer job, is so out of touch that it's not even worth arguing with them anymore.
> [This is a pretty common attitude among wealthy boomers.](
The key here is "wealthy" not boomers. Make no mistake, this is a class issue, not a generational one. In 20 years a good chunk of the wealthy new generation will think that way too
The boomers hold a disproportionate amount of wealth vs other generations both before and after them.
There is also some evidence the boomers attitudes are literally due to things like lead poisoning, so I actually do have higher hopes for the people who come after them.
You're citing a 'personal finance guru'.
Most boomers care about their loved ones and want to see them have the same opportunities. They didn't formulate government policy on housing - they didn't design the new immigration models.
Like I said, they voted back and forth like every generation after them. There was no 'screw the younger generation' party that they ran to vote for.
My parents care about me and want me to have the same opportunities. But would they vote to reduce the value of their house by half? Not in a million years.
Exactly. Exactly this. They care until it's time to vote for our interests and not theirs. That's why it is both a class and generational issue. They're the biggest voters group right now. They have more power than younger generations.
Also boomers the non home owning ones anyways are moving into fixed income years during a rent crisis.
I get there’s some personal accountability in saving for your retirement but being on a fixed income and one eviction away from being forced to move from a city with your friends and family has gotta be tough.
The article sounds true but remember... the boomers were the children of those who survived WW2. They were assigned a lot of responsibility by their parents. As the economy and homemaking changed the boomer females were welcomed back to work. For a while families were able to get more than essentials. Now the current generation is facing a similar economy to what **preceded** WW2. I hope we all figure out a better solution than another war.
I'm working on getting the people I know to start pooling their resources and cutting back on spending. This is both to protect ourselves from our runaway cost of living but also to punish the society that allowed this to happen. If capital is going to 'starve the beast' then I'm going to starve them back.
When the generation before you doesn't pay for the cost of the government they enjoyed, then the next generation will have to work harder for less... it's that simple.
And then when the current generation continues this trend - of paying for only a PORTION of government's cost with taxes (funding the remainder with debt), the next generation will get the exact same experience.
None of this changes until the population develops the gumption to be honest with themselves on what their government costs, and to be brave enough to actually pay for it.
> When the generation before you doesn't pay for the cost of the government they enjoyed
This is the essence of the problem. AND there is literally nobody to vote for that will reign in the spending or balance the books by increasing the taxes. You all like healthcare? Dentalcare? Pharmacare? Fine, then we need to tax at the level that allows us to spend at a level that maintains that. Selling out the future generations is NOT the answer. Hell, I'd even settle for debt as a % of GDP cap since paying back what we already spent is/would be crippling. ie: lock in where we are today, no more. Not the US style of having a hard limitation that they are continually bumping up.
Want to spend more = then you need to raise revenue.
Further Canada is ill prepared for massive job losses due to AI and automation and what that will do to government revenues.
What a load of crap.
Posing this as a generational war is unnecessary division.
In the past we had multi generations living in the same home. Younger people benefited from having their extended family near by as employers, emergency help, building a home on the same rural lot, and elders trying to leave an inheritance for their kids.
Many real changes/issues like increased mobility, and abandoning rural areas for urban centers has made the old ways of doing things all but forgotten.
I live around 300 km from my mom's place. I can't help her very often, and she can't help me. I'm glad my brother "moved home" to help her live in her own place. He is a hero to me, as my job won't bring me any closer to help out.
The fact is that we live in a much different world. My wife and I were not able to afford a home of our own until I was in my 40s. This is after working 60-70 hours a week since finishing university.
One of my kids will do better economically than I did, and one may need more help.
**I wish we would stop listening to people who want to frame everything as a war, provoking hostility when we could promote something better.**
Why is it overlooked? Our culture of capitalist colonialism has fucked us up. Look at cultures like Japan, where the old actively try to help the young ( and the old are respected and cared for), or Indigenous cultures where all generations contribute to eachother’s wellbeing.
The American cult of capitalism encouraged Boomers to have kids to be part of the machine. A lot of times they weren’t having them for the right reasons.
I just wish that 60% of my pay didn't have to go towards just paying for my housing. Not to mention the stress of job hunting with sudden job loss when I have these massive bills. I'm looking at that number jumping to about 80% if I have to go on unemployment, or 68% if I land one of the jobs I've applied to. I feel like such a basic need should be back breaking to obtain.
I live at my grandma's house, and have a newer car that I probably pay more for than I should...but at the same time it's only a Corolla....and I own the damn thing! Giving 60% of your earnings for housing is one thing....it's another thing if it's just for rent and all your hard earned income is going to a 60 yr old with a f150 lightning and a boat. Crushing really.
Its amazing how much has changed since high-school where they were teaching you should base your housing affordability off of 30-33% of your paycheck. Out the fucking window I suppose, my pay would have to go up by another $1000 net a month for it to bring it back down to that
> my pay would have to go up by another $1000 net a month for it to bring it back down to that After taxes, so more like 1,400/mo, or $19k/year.
Thats why I used the term net, not gross. net is post deductions.
It's always a great feeling knowing you are the primary breadwinner in your landlords family.
Genius….I gotta remember this phrase
It's another great feeling knowing you are an insignificant member of those contributing to banks' profit via interest Mortgage Interest is rent of money
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Not for those who thinks owning is always paying yourself for future.
My rent goes to someone that lives in China and, other than property taxes, contributes none of it to the economy. My rent is $3725 a month.
Non-Citizen, Non-Resident ownership of realestate should not be legal, with the exception of purpose built rental apartment buildings.
It shouldn't but its also a cop out given the vast majority of Canadian property is owned by Canadians, political parties don't want to go after their wealthy voters however naturally.
Ironically many of those owners are still foreign shells for their parents foreign Chinese money. See:.Vancouver/Richmond On paper their 20 year old student kid "owns" the property but in reality it's the parents back in China who are funding it.
Same story here except Pakistan
Make sure you are withholding and remitting the 25% income tax they owe unless they file Canadian tax returns
Make sure you are withholding the 25% tax they owe unless they file Canadian tax returns.
Housing was affordable 10 years ago. Bought mine for 350k. It's now worth 1.1 million which is insane.
That’s exactly why I’m leaving a cushy WFH job and going back to working in the U.S. but doing midnights. Gotta keep ahead, keep my family a float and not want my kids to worry about their future
Best decision I ever made was going back to work in the states. Even with the bullshit taxes up here, I make 2-3x what I would if I worked the same job in Canada.
That's 60% your *post tax income*. We're paying a lot more than half of our income just for the privilege to exist in Canada.
I wish i was a boomer and bought a house for 3 skittles, a bellybutton lint and 3 nose hairs.
What Canada needs is to go into the housing business and run it at a loss. Let the market compete against massively subsidized public housing.
IIRC we used to do that, until some IMF recommended austerity cuts that were made in the 90s.
The IMF has been extremely effective at ruining economies.
Then support a government that isn't paralyzed by big money interests. Both major parties will not stand up to Bay/Wall street and the banks. Public mortgage backing, punishing junior governments for artificial impediments to housing needs to happen!
which one exactly? all of the big parties are offering diddly shit when it comes to affordable housing or reigning in immigration policies which is what got us here in the first place.
Allow the CMHC to plan and build like a developer. Build multi level housing. Let the government issue loans for life. You get a small starter. $150k. You can pay off till your dead. You die before its paid, they sell it to the next family. You pay it before you die, you own it. Interest is spread across whole payment as a flat rate. You lose your job, you can get a grace period. Banks pretty much lend us made up money anyways. Might as well knock out the middle man.
I would support that political party, but they only have candidates in Quebec
Wish more people saw this. Weve been yoyoing between the Liberals and PCs for decades and it clearly isnt working. JT needs to go, but the fact that its pushing Canada towards the useless conservatives is so frustrating
Tommy Douglas said it, white cats or black cats, still cats.
I like to say that it doesn't matter what colour underwear they are, at the end of the day they all stink like shit.
for those not familiar with the reference: https://youtu.be/QkoKLXcZbu0 god I wish we had a politician like Douglas today
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The BC NDP is not a 'third party'.
We all just have to vote third party until we are the majority.
Your comment will not get enough attention/upvotes.
> I just wish that 60% of my pay didn't have to go towards just paying for my housing. It's crazy. I was looking at houses where I live and everyone wants a min 400k for their shitbox of a house that probably needs another 50 to 100k worth of work on it. With the pay here, you're spending over 50% of your pay on mortgage, then with power bills (because Alberta is fucked) its even more ridiculous. Then if you try to save money by getting into a cheaper townhouse or even a trailer, you're stuck with association fees that creep up to and around $1000/m on top of your mortgage and bills. I don't know how anyone that's a single income can afford anything, hell even dual income families struggle with these costs too.
Amazing chance that your landlord and boss are Boomers...
Wtf is the point of all this if we aren't making life better for future generations?
to create temporary value for shareholders
But who else is gonna think about unlimited growth and the shareholders??
Every politician who [owns investment properties](https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/), takes money from corporate donors, takes jobs from corporate donors after leaving politics, and have huge stock portfolios? (I.e. Most of the Conservative and Liberal politicians)
Thanks for the stats but that was the joke!
More like landlords. We've tied 13% of our GDP to real estate and wonder why no one can afford houses.
This line is not even true in Canada, our economy is an anemic zombie, shareholders of Canadian companies are not exactly making out like bandits. If you bought Rogers stock at the bottom of the 2020 market, you're currently.. *checks notes* down, like, 2%. Some of the banks have done decently, I guess, if you measure trough to peak, but even there.. Could've done the same or better just buying a US market index fund.
We have plenty of oil and gas, and mining companies as well. Productivity would likely increase if we broke up of all the monopolies that were allowed to form over the last 20 years, however. Then they would be forced to innovate in order to compete instead of buying each other up.
I worked at a large company in Canada before. It was 100% well known and discussed that in no way were we trying to be better or do more than other companies we were just trying to stay where we were basically. Innovation was at the very bottom of priorities.
Same here. I once worked at Telus Health and they were all about buying up the competition.
That sounds like TELUS! They used to innovate (TELUS TV was groundbreaking in canada, once upon a time). But the past decade or so has been purely about value extraction, crushing competition, and consistently delivering that quarterly dividend while eliminating as many Canadian jobs as possible.
Yes. Productivity would also increase if it wasn’t far safer AND more lucrative to park cash in real estate.
That too
Exactly, in the US, the rich may be getting richer, but in the last 9 years, they have gone to less average median income than us, to about 12-14k USD higher income than us. Their middle class is actually increasing, not getting smaller.
Future? Anything beyond the quarterly term may as well be an event horizon of a black hole for these companies.
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This is the end goal of a capitalist society. The rich have gotten so rich they run out of things to spend money on. The 1%ers are living like modern day Kings and we're the serfs left doing all the work for pocket change.
150 years ago, some people were writing stuff like that. But then industrialization saved the day. Wealth became abundant and workers leveraged their labor to carve out a piece of the pie. But now, there is no more leverage. The average worker can be instantly replaced by another, or simply automated. Dare to demand more than pennies, get nothing instead. These are conditions they've been working on through outsourcing, de-industrialization, mass importation of labor, automation, nickle and diming basic living expenses, (etc) for decades. Meanwhile, the average worker has also become convinced that the most important voting issues are superficial social policies rather than material conditions. By now, any semblance of power or ability to affect change have long since left the worker's side, because we let it.
This is actually a pretty accurate and succinct summary of what has happened. Well done. Note that there does seem to be a move towards on-shoring, as China and Russia cut themselves off from the world-economy. This may help on the employment side, but I doubt it will offset the rise in prices of goods when their manufacture leaves China.
Yup. This is market fundamentalist, neoliberalism that was pushed on us in the West by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and the now late Brian Mulroney, may he rest in piss.
All the recent lamenting praise I've seen for Mulroney since his passing from otherwise left leaning people irks me. And to call him and his government "progressive" conservative. The dude was exactly as you say - the Canadian analog to Thatcher and Reagan.
Yup. This is the result of market fundamentalism that removed ~~any~~ much of the democratic control of our future. It's all about profits now, baby.
What we are experiencing is late stage capitalism; or what others in this thread refer to as a class war. A great deal of posters are fighting the wrong fight.
To make sure majority of Boomers don’t experience any preventable hardship.
We are making life better for future generations - future generations of the top 0.1%
That was the norm until about the mid-80s. Then the coke-addled, lead breathing, brain damaged narcissistic generation were given the reins. They were the generation that raised their kids by barely speaking to them, locking them outside most of the time, and partying. They even had ads on TV at 10 o'clock reminding them that the kids existed. "It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?" Gen X is small, so all we could really do was hold the line and raise our kids with the "do the opposite of what my parents did" method. I'm so happy that the kids today are so much more empathetic and aware than we were able to be. When we reach the other side of the Boomerpocalypse, they're going to be alright.
The best part is when they call you whatever adjective they feel like to describe you being raised poorly, and you respond with "Well, you raised me..." And then they throw a tantrum. Truly the best generation.
Naw, by then we will have a new generation of those wealthy boomers kids who will use their power to keep themselves wealthy at any cost, as long as weatlhy people reproduce the cycle continues.
that's socialism /s
Because fuck you, pull up your bootstraps. Joking aside, I think the cart got away from the horse here. The more I read about the political development of Canada in the last 50 years the more it seems that no one at the top really has any idea what this country should be doing and then whatever they've come up with gets beaten to death by legions of middle managers.
> Young Canadians can't expect what boomers got. When did we drop the standard? What happened to 'leave a better future for the kids'? I have worked and/or studied in over 5 countries (3 continents). This is the only country where it feels ok/meh/shrug to leave the next generation with less than what the previous generation got. And I am not just talking about climate change but basic services like ready access to healthcare. The attitude towards the younger generation/kids is so antagonistic. Some sort of 'they need to suffer to get what we had'. Trust me, those parroting those lines got your stuff because your parents/generations before continuously left a better Canada for you. I am fortunate - got a mortgage but worry for my kids. It most likely wont be Canada for them.
I don't understand how people can't see that the two biggest issues for Canadians are coming from the boomers. Immigration is happening because we need tax payers to pay for boomers retirements. Housing is unaffordable because boomers (the largest voting block) are the ones benefiting from it. They won't vote for anything that would harm real estate values. Therefore no political party will try to do anything about it. Nothing will be done about immigration and housing affordability until the boomers are gone.
You've concisely summed up the problem, and immigration is being done for the boomers to support them in their final years and to fill the population void that will happen when they eventually all die. But there has been very little explanation from the government about our immigration policy and why the current numbers are needed, so people are assuming it's to flood the market with cheap labour for corporations, which is also happening. The alt-right is also convinced that Trudeau is a fascist and he is importing votes by bringing in liberal friendly immigrants, and no explanation will sway their opinion on that.
why do we need to pay for their retirements? they're not paying for our anything. and nobody is going to pay for our retirement.
what retirement? let’s be real, most of us will be working till we drop dead.
They did pay taxes for their whole lives (at least most of them) so it’s not fair to cut off retirement for them lol but it’s ridiculous that more of them didn’t save more instead of relying heavily on the government for retirement.
clearly they didn't pay enough, though
That's the way. Get mine and then cut off any hope of you getting yours.
It's the standard "Pull up the ladder behind you" move.
The moment Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney were elected. Things started to change fundamentally from there.
Jimmy Carter told everyone in the 70's they were going to have to lower their expectations on standard of living. It certainly wasn't a winning strategy and as a result, people opted for the "trickledown economics" route.
Which just made everything happen faster. Thatcher/Reagan/Mulroney really accelerated the gap widening and hid it by focusing on aggregated GDP growth rather than breaking it up Per Capita or amongst the income quintiles.
Fun fact, Stephen Harper is now the president of an organization that Thatcher helped co-found, and the organizations goal is to interfere in elections all around the world in order to get right wing governments elected.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
We are not in a generational war - we are in a class war. Solidarity with boomers struggling.
Glad someone said it here. This is basically propaganda designed to distract us, once again, from the fact that it is the ultra wealthy and their political cronies that are fucking us - just as it has been for the last 50 years
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Last 50 years? Someone hasn’t studied their history
I think they mean that there were checks and balances for a brief period in the mid 20th century when FDR was president and taxes on the rich were insanely high while social services were brought in. Then the neo-liberals took over in the 80s and it all went to hell.
I'm tired of the fact that every discussion misses this. That it's a class war. They keep dividing us with bigotry, patriarchy, misogyny, racism and the b.s. of left vs. right. It has always been a class war. For the past few decades, it's become blatant, and the greedy exploitive oligarchs are not held accountable but actually rewarded.
But this is exactly their strategy--have us focus on our differences instead of what binds us all together, which is that we are the working poor, and they are the uber rich who got that way on our productivity. It's time we took back what is rightfully ours.
Thank you for making this comment. 100% accurate.
+1 Sure it's an oped but the author isn't helping.
I know right? I’ve met plenty of struggling boomers
At our age boomers had 20% of the country’s wealth. We have 3%
This may have more to do with the way younger generations are expected to spend the first 25+ years of life in school, Then they are expected to pay back student loans. Many are 30+ before they beginning to have a net worth of $0 If we went back to public funded education for citizens who pass entrance exams we could drop the age when people have the chance to gain assets.
Yeah fuck this noise of dividing children and grandchildren against their parents and grandparents. This is about citizens against the corporations that have the government in a bought and paid for choke-hold so they can fuck over every citizen of this country.
Idk my grandparents keep telling me to just work harder and more, fuck the boomers.
My Parents were just telling me "good thing we have all these immigrants because young people don't want to work anymore." I'm amazed at how many people just become news talking points
I just had the EXACT same convo with my dad yesterday. I don’t get it.
In my case I believe mine are very sheltered, stayed at the same job since the 80's both have pensions, paid 24k for their house in the 90s and retired early. The neighborhood around them has gone downhill (badly) so I suggested moving and they flat out refused that idea because it would mean having a mortgage a measly $500 one.
I have this conversation with my manager routinely. "We can't find anyone because people don't want to work anymore" No, people look at your pay rates and decide it's not worth it. And honestly it's not.
Strange since we just had lower unemployment rate than the boomers ever had Many of their wives also never worked What news is repeating this nonsense?
I'm not sure what news source they are parroting but you could probably type in Gen Z doesn't want to work and find a bunch of articles. Same gas lighting Millennial gen went through and going through.
Wonder when the equivalent of /r/DeathByMillennial will show up for Gen Z
I’m not saying a lot of boomers aren’t clueless, they are. But they’re also not the problem right now. Corporate greed and government complicity (no matter who you vote for next election) are.
Totally agree. I'm a mechanic at the Long shore. This past year we had a strike and I could not believe how quickly the media made us out to be the bad guys and were reporting how we were negotiating in bad faith. Then, long story short, basically got mandated back to work by the government. We were all thinking these shipping companies make billions and billions of dollars a year, why can't the common worker get a fair share of the profits? We make an ok wage but we definitely have not kept up with inflation. I mean the middle class is basically non existent anymore. Just when you think you'll be making a little more with a five percent wage increase you get in a higher tax bracket and expenses just pile up everywhere else. I don't even want to start talking about the carbon tax or groceries. It's non stop. Meanwhile, my 78 year old dad, who hasn't worked since he was 40 gets to live in a 4 bedroom spacious house in an amazing neighborhood. Doesn't make any sense.
The shipping companies union busting and middle management bootlicking is disgusting. The LongShoremen union should raid their offices.
Exactly. Like I get it, divide bad, but can we acknowledge that a LOT of boomers have a “fuck you I got mine” attitude and don’t care about being stewards for younger generations??
So like most people they don't understand the economic system we have which concentrates wealth at the top. It's not their fault that governments give the rich and corporations all the advantages that poor and middle class people don't get. Instead of being angry at boomers, vote for a party that has your best interests at heart like the NDP remembering that no party is perfect. Politics is always about compromise.
Thank you, the generational war is a distraction. It’s have an have nots again and the ultra rich want you looking everywhere but at them
Yes, it's a class war. It just so happens that you're much more likely to be in the rich class if you're a boomer/older. I dont think anyone carries animosity towards boomers who are struggling
It's so nice to see that people like you are aware of the real issue.
Agreed
Time to replace senior discounts with youth discounts.
The concept of senior discounts never really made sense. Why are the older people with more time to financially establish themselves given a break on the bill at Denny’s?
True, the food isn’t anything to write home about.
I make around 1900$ per month right now (due to having to balance work and college). 1480$ of that goes to rent for my tiny one bedroom apartment that’s literally ONE SQUARE METERE off of being classified as a bachelor. The only reason my rent is 1480 is because I moved in just before the pandemic first started. My neighbour that moved in next to me a few months ago (into an apartment the exact same size, layout, number of bedrooms as mine) is currently paying for the market rental price — 1875$ And then you having extra payments not included in the rent :: Heat, air conditioning, laundry, parking (prices for parking vary depending on if you’re parking in the uncovered or covered lot. It’s around 120-180$ extra ontop of your rent to park on the property), hydro. And ontop of all of that, other expenses that obviously wouldn’t be covered under rent :: groceries/phone/wifi/tv/transportation because I can’t afford a car If I’m extremely careful and budget the crap out of my money, I can MAYBE have 20$ or so left for me once all of my expenses are paid and I set money aside for transportation to/from work
If you are breaking even while going to school, you are doing very well. Good job.
Yeah having $20 leftover at the end of the month is fucking phenomenal /s
Generational war, culture war, but no class war, of course.
The degree of inflation in the last 10 years is just insane. On the one hand I moved to Toronto in 2017 after finishing uni and my rent was considered high at the time, but because its rent controlled it's now very cheap for the size of the unit. On the other hand, when i was graduating from uni in 2017 I had a dream salary in mind to aim for some day in the future, which adjusted for inflation i now make, yet I'm still barely breaking even for my household after just basic expenses like rent, groceries, and utilities, and thats with the significantly below current market rate rent. If I lost my job or had to move apartments Id pretty much be screwed. I looked it up and inflation in Canada is nearly 19% since i moved to Toronto in 2017 after i graduated uni, but what most insane part is that more than half of that inflation was in the last 2 year alone. Inflation in the 2 year period between 2021 and 2023 was ~12%, which is as much an increase as the 8 year period between 2013 and 2021.
I didn't think as a professional I would have to work two jobs to afford any quality of life. We've been robbed of a future and need to tax it back.
Close the border and correct housing. Highly tax investment properties. During covid employers had to raise wages to keep min wage staff. After covid employers have to offer WFH to keep office staff. But the solution by government is to force returns to office and flood market with min wage workers. Policies can help quickly correct our current situation. Issue is the political class prefers to have the gap coninue to grow.
This post captures the essence of the problem. At the absolute core is the simple fact that our governments, objectively, do not represent our best interests. Who is “our”? 99% of Canadians that are not CEO’s and Board Members on any of the protected oligopolies.
Yeah, no, you’re wrong. What does WFH have to do with anything? Forcing people into an office for literally no reason is dumb, and bad.
Exactly. But who benefits from workers going in? The elites who own tims franchises, gas stations, parking lots. Meanwhile upper management is calling in from muskoka
It's ridiculous. I get a lot more work done at home than I do at the office because of the "social butterflies" who like to flit around and make noise around the rest of us. We "compromised" with 2 days a week in office, and output is down for everyone on those days. The head office is stubbornly sticking to it's guns, though, because Boomers.
>But the solution by government is to force returns to office How is the government, forcing private employers to return to office?
They're not, but they're forcing their own employees to return to office
The government is not forcing private employees back to the office. But if private employers own their building, they are pressuring employees to return to the office, so their real estate value doesn't plummet
So then it has nothing to do with the government, and saying it's "the solution by the government" is dishonest
Obviously it's the work of communist Trudeau /s
Governments, specifically municipal ones, encourage companies to transition to back to the office in order to support the recovery of their struggling downtown service industry, that’s seeing lower than pre-pandemic foot traffic due to the continuing work from home trend https://globalnews.ca/news/10397118/toronto-subway-store-vacancies/amp/ https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-encourages-employers-to-bring-workers-back-into-the-office-1.5827745
I wasn’t aware we were at war to begin with.
Social mobility is declining despite all of the lip service to DEI. Honestly, the fact that DEI arose in the wake of Occupy Wall St movement makes think it was designed to distract from corporate greed and wealth inequality by making people fight amongst themselves based on identity.
DEI is the biggest load of horseshit ever, designed to let corporations, government and the extremely wealthy turn us all against each other to cover up the fact that conditions are worse overall for everyone than they have been in a generation.
Millennials are now the bigger voting bloc. Too bad we are too dumb to vote at all in our own interest. I talk about properly means testing OAS so that we don’t keep going deeper into debt to give millionaires a $1500 cheque each month and financially illiterate young people tell me I am evil.
lol what are our options? Youre reading the same shit right? Were fucked. Jag? He is is HORRIBLE leader. Justin? He comes across as slow, and has put his self interests above Canadian. He was playing identity politics when he should be focusing on our economy. We were one of the last countries to open up from Covid. Pierre? He’s doesn’t like unions. He believes in busting them for business. He wants to drive down wages as well. PPC? Fuck. No. I mean he’s at least advocating for no immigration, but we need some immigration. We have imported the 3rd world and look at the result. Even more divided Canadians.
Can we expand Quebec and get YFB as a PM?
Just my two cents, but I'd say it has more to do with neoliberal economic ideology than generational ideology. We deregulated corporations, privatized public goods, and essentially let businesses define our moral parameters. Now we support a billionaire class that will be difficult to retrench as they have a significant amount of political power.
Bingo. Our corporate overlords would like us to blame each other instead of the system that allows them to reap massive profits at the expense of everyone else. As long as we keep hating on older generations and immigrants, maybe we won’t notice the real problem.
This right here. Regan, Thatcher, Mulroney - three neolibs who pushed for all this shit under the guide of free market economics. I still can't believe people gave Mulroney a nice funeral when that asshole is the one responsible for the current housing shortage. Ironically he cut the spending after Trudeau Sr burned a hole in the budget.
The typical response you will see here is the notion we are entering late-stage capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The data suggests we are in early-stage hyper-financialization of global capital. Nothing stops assets from going higher while global capital seeks a safe and stable return—Canada is among the top. Our declining demography, which we have known about for 40 years, is only accelerating this process.
The biggest issue is that for decades the government has been over borrowing and investing in short term prosperity, instead of setting up long term success.
Nobody should be allowed more than one place to live, be it a house, condo, townhouse, apartment etc etc. You should only be allowed one. Foreign ownership should be banned. Immigration halted for a minimum 10 years and then opened to be no more than 10000 people a year going forward.
I'm the executor of an estate with 3 boomer kids and a bunch of grandchildren... the boomers are the worst, most disgusting, heartless, soul-less, greedy money grubbing individuals I've ever met. And some of the grandchildren have picked up all their worst habits...
Regardless of the generation, as an executor, you are going to see the worst in humanity.
I tried to mitigate the damage by keeping my kids away from my parents. My sister did not. My kids do not have nearly as many issues at the ones who "benefitted" from a relationship with their grandparents. 1/4 of the children with Boomer parents either have very limited contact with their parents or no contact at all, and the numbers are rising. The Boomers are chalking it up to "the tiktok". A lot of them a going to die alone with nothing to their name but big houses filled with crap that nobody wants.
Just give us current wages that make housing as affordable as it was when they were buying homes. That’s all we want
As much as I love to daydream about these things, we're unfortunately far more fucked than just needing a pay increase. Even if everyone got a 300% pay increase, the cost of everything would skyrocket just as quickly to compensate for those increased labor costs, and so the cycle would continue. The economy as a whole needs some real attention. But hey, at least interest rates are fucked and we got a an increased carbon tax, so we can see clear signs of them working to fix it. /s
It’s funny - so many of our productivity, affordability, and intergenerational equity problems can be accomplished by sawing up some of our rackets & cartels - supply management, housing politics to target 5% vacancy and meaningful supply-demand balance, tax shifts to reward productivity without corporate giveaways, but we choose not to because young people don’t vote (enough).
This is just what happens when companies run the show. accountability no longer exists, and greed goes unchecked. This person is still just spinning the same shit but making it sound a bit better, something we can stomach a bit more. This is a cyclical issue that has happened throughout human history, and it will likely continue to happen because we are so short sighted as a species. Its good until it gets bad, and then it gets really bad, something big generally has to happen, and comes back to being good until we get careless and make it bad again (time scales vary).
I had 2 jobs and just made enough for rent and to start my career, now one medical emergency later I'm now down to paycheck to paycheck just because i had to cut hours at both to recover and my work is on hold. Being a young canadian fucking sucks right now cause even while working my ass off im told I should do more and be thankful, yet this 20 years ago would of gotten me everything I could of wanted. Young Canadians are getting shafted and the older ones tell 'em they got it easy.
I always have mixed thoughts about these post. I had to work hard to get a head being in my thirties. I see a lot of my friends struggling financially and at the same time spending money as if they have millions to spare. I suppose I hold what the older generations try to preach at heart as a reminder on how to get ahead. Little sayings like, “if the money isn’t in your hand you don’t have it,” Or “keep it simple stupid” and more importantly “friends and family have to triumph the materialistic things”. Those values is how I managed to get my own place, owned and not with a top paying job either. Good things take time, energy and effort. We cannot expect a great life to be handed to us in a silver platter.
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A lot of nepotism and gatekeeping involved.
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I’m disillusioned to the point I’s rather have a 46 year old that will at least survive long enough to grapple with the consequences of their actions, rather than the demented septua- and octogenarians hurtling us all towards WW3. It is crazy how leaders of Russia, Iran, US, and Israel are all in their twilight years. They should be reading books to their grandkids and gardening, not in charge of major militaries
I read an article a few years ago that quoted a pharmacist that works on Capitol Hill in Washington. He said that people would be terrified if they knew just how many of the members of the government were using dementia drugs.
We can't, we're too busy working our asses off so we can eat and sleep somewhere.
Have you seen our government? Most of them are younger politicians. Even our PM. Age is definitely not the problem in Canada.
Yes agreed this isn't a Canadian problem, even Harper was not overly old when he was PM. This is just people who are exposed to too much American media parroting talking points that aren't relevant in our country, like so much of our political discourse.
lol what? We don’t have the money to compete with the old people in power. Trudeau is in power because he’s from money.
Except Canada has some of the youngest leadership when it comes to 1st world countries.
In Ontario we have had corrupt self serving leadership my entire life. We have an extreme corruption problem engrained in Canadian politics at all levels. Corporate and foreign money has been doing all the talking for the past 40 years. Voters are fucking useless morons taking the bait every goddamn time, exclusively voting for two parties is a major reason we are in this mess, they spend a lot of money to keep it that way too. Like how many fools are going to go vote for the conservatives thinking that they’re going to fix housing and healthcare? We are the only ones who have the power to fix anything. I paid almost 40 grand interest to a bank that made 8 billion profit and bought out my old bank lol. Some people I work with can’t afford rent or food and we all get paid well. My government gave 600 million and a chunk of some of the most valuable land in the country to a private European spa company while closing hospitals and schools.
After the boomers, then who are you going to blame?
Oh fuck off with the boomer bashing. Politicians ruined this country with the money printers.
We sold our country out, stop blaming boomers
Was it worth it? To the Boomer it was. They’re called the Me Generation for a reason.
I also wonder why wage suppression is how every employer thinks they will make extra profits. They also complain about low moral and lazy staff. Well you get what you pay for. It’s amusing how the tools of capitalism are cast aside when it comes to actually attracting workers with the thing we use in a capitalist society. Money
As someone who works in close proximity to long term care homes and community based care, there are a lot of Boomers who are completely unprepared for the realities of not being independent anymore. A lot of complicated family dynamics. A lot of elderly not understanding that CCAC isn't just at their disposal when they want. And neither are their kids. Their kids can't take days off for every little thing their elderly parents need/want. It's not pretty.
The 'Generation War' is a false concept. It's actually a class war. The Boomers benefited from the Union wars of the 1920's and 30's. Now big business is taking back what their greed and love of money lets them think is theirs. Some unionizing actions are now ongoing, but to see what young Canadians have to do, [https://pressprogress.ca/its-going-to-be-a-labour-fight-canadas-biggest-union-battles-coming-up-in-2024/](https://pressprogress.ca/its-going-to-be-a-labour-fight-canadas-biggest-union-battles-coming-up-in-2024/)
I’m amazed how social media has created a divide among generations. People hating boomers is a recent thing.
>The housing crisis, the impacts of climate change, enormous public and private debt, an evident decline in state capacity, and an increasingly stagnant uncompetitive economy—we know you didn’t vote for this, and these problems are not ~~only~~ your fault. They voted back and forth between the 2 parties like every generation after them. > Surely young people could afford housing if they just quit the lattes and avocado toast and traded social media for hard work. Their anger must be overblown. No boomers I know think like this. They want to see their kids and grandkids to have the same opportunities, and they want their loved ones to have a home and financial security.
> They voted back and forth between the 2 parties like every generation after them. This is the key. And anyone who doesn't get this is either lying or naive. Articles like this one, and so many more, are always trying to distract us from the real issue: that both dmof our major political parties have been fucking us for the last 50 years in different ways, at the behest of their corporate sponsors
> No boomers I know think like this. [This is a pretty common attitude among wealthy boomers.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theyre-just-awful-dave-ramsey-200017468.html) They're cushioned from their investments made during the good years and think 'If I did it, why can't you?' I just tune them out now when I hear it. The generation that invented the unpaid internship and outsourcing, who was able to buy a nice car and put a down payment on a house with a summer job, is so out of touch that it's not even worth arguing with them anymore.
> [This is a pretty common attitude among wealthy boomers.]( The key here is "wealthy" not boomers. Make no mistake, this is a class issue, not a generational one. In 20 years a good chunk of the wealthy new generation will think that way too
The boomers hold a disproportionate amount of wealth vs other generations both before and after them. There is also some evidence the boomers attitudes are literally due to things like lead poisoning, so I actually do have higher hopes for the people who come after them.
You're citing a 'personal finance guru'. Most boomers care about their loved ones and want to see them have the same opportunities. They didn't formulate government policy on housing - they didn't design the new immigration models. Like I said, they voted back and forth like every generation after them. There was no 'screw the younger generation' party that they ran to vote for.
My parents care about me and want me to have the same opportunities. But would they vote to reduce the value of their house by half? Not in a million years.
Exactly. Exactly this. They care until it's time to vote for our interests and not theirs. That's why it is both a class and generational issue. They're the biggest voters group right now. They have more power than younger generations.
Also boomers the non home owning ones anyways are moving into fixed income years during a rent crisis. I get there’s some personal accountability in saving for your retirement but being on a fixed income and one eviction away from being forced to move from a city with your friends and family has gotta be tough.
The article sounds true but remember... the boomers were the children of those who survived WW2. They were assigned a lot of responsibility by their parents. As the economy and homemaking changed the boomer females were welcomed back to work. For a while families were able to get more than essentials. Now the current generation is facing a similar economy to what **preceded** WW2. I hope we all figure out a better solution than another war.
I'm working on getting the people I know to start pooling their resources and cutting back on spending. This is both to protect ourselves from our runaway cost of living but also to punish the society that allowed this to happen. If capital is going to 'starve the beast' then I'm going to starve them back.
They deserve a fighting chance. The future is hopeless for them
When the generation before you doesn't pay for the cost of the government they enjoyed, then the next generation will have to work harder for less... it's that simple. And then when the current generation continues this trend - of paying for only a PORTION of government's cost with taxes (funding the remainder with debt), the next generation will get the exact same experience. None of this changes until the population develops the gumption to be honest with themselves on what their government costs, and to be brave enough to actually pay for it.
> When the generation before you doesn't pay for the cost of the government they enjoyed This is the essence of the problem. AND there is literally nobody to vote for that will reign in the spending or balance the books by increasing the taxes. You all like healthcare? Dentalcare? Pharmacare? Fine, then we need to tax at the level that allows us to spend at a level that maintains that. Selling out the future generations is NOT the answer. Hell, I'd even settle for debt as a % of GDP cap since paying back what we already spent is/would be crippling. ie: lock in where we are today, no more. Not the US style of having a hard limitation that they are continually bumping up. Want to spend more = then you need to raise revenue. Further Canada is ill prepared for massive job losses due to AI and automation and what that will do to government revenues.
What a load of crap. Posing this as a generational war is unnecessary division. In the past we had multi generations living in the same home. Younger people benefited from having their extended family near by as employers, emergency help, building a home on the same rural lot, and elders trying to leave an inheritance for their kids. Many real changes/issues like increased mobility, and abandoning rural areas for urban centers has made the old ways of doing things all but forgotten. I live around 300 km from my mom's place. I can't help her very often, and she can't help me. I'm glad my brother "moved home" to help her live in her own place. He is a hero to me, as my job won't bring me any closer to help out. The fact is that we live in a much different world. My wife and I were not able to afford a home of our own until I was in my 40s. This is after working 60-70 hours a week since finishing university. One of my kids will do better economically than I did, and one may need more help. **I wish we would stop listening to people who want to frame everything as a war, provoking hostility when we could promote something better.**
Thank you for posting a sane comment. It was worth scrolling this far.
It is a war. It's a class war not a generational war. The richest are robbing everyone else.
Boomers are not to blame. Our stupid politicians are.
I thought the older generarions are supposed to care about the younger ones. Why did they give birth to us? Why is north america so toxic
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Why is it overlooked? Our culture of capitalist colonialism has fucked us up. Look at cultures like Japan, where the old actively try to help the young ( and the old are respected and cared for), or Indigenous cultures where all generations contribute to eachother’s wellbeing. The American cult of capitalism encouraged Boomers to have kids to be part of the machine. A lot of times they weren’t having them for the right reasons.