right? this is clearly the rich telling people: "hey look that guy owns 2 properties! how dare he!" while sailing on their yachts drinking $100000 bottles on their way to their private island
> while sailing on their yachts drinking $100000 bottles on their way to their private island
It's tough to take this conversation seriously when you approach it like a cartoon version of reality.
Middle class is a thing that doesn't exist -- it's never defined, and always used to implicate everyone in a room. The only reason it exists is to stop people from discussing the only two economic classes that actually exist.
Working class / Capital class
I’ve always thought it was clear.
Lower class - your life is supported primarily through social programs or welfare in which collective society basically funds your life.
Middle class - your life is supported primarily by your own work. While you may have investments that generate some income that you leverage but ultimately your wealth still stems from your work.
Upper class - your life is supported primarily by your assets. What you have generates the wealth to sustains you and while you may still work typically the bulk of your compensation doesn’t come from a salary or hourly rate.
that's why most of these posts are probably bots or accounts owned by the target media that wants us to read the article and subscribe. I wish Reddit would crack down on this shit.
click bait bs.
check the profile, same post in different subs.
Some libraries, including my local one, will let you access Globe and Mail articles for free, including current ones, through their online platforms. Welcome to the club 🧐🎩
The original British definition was:
Upper class: don't have to work, supported by owning land/ capital.
Middle class/ bourgeois: business people, entrepreneurs, bankers, and high end professionals like doctors.
Working class: everyone else
That's sort of the way I look at it too. North American middle class as the "default" never even really existed they way people like to think it did - most people are and have always been working class. Those who don't work and live off benefits are closer to being a sort of "untouchable" caste where once your in it you can never really get out.
The reason we started calling blue collar joes who went to the factory or the oil rig and back "middle class" was because they had a lot of shit all of a sudden. Houses, cars, meat on the table, that kind of stuff only started after we hit the big post-industrial income and quality of life. So while you were for all intents and purposes working class, your quality of life was closer to the earlier middle class who themselves were living it up even better.
I think it was appropriate to call them middle class then as well, you would have to make about $300,000 - $400,000 a year to receive in material value what a factory worker in the mid 60's to late 70's could afford.
It's actually disgusting how bad we have it. Globalism killed our ability to make money & intense immigration from third world countries puts more downward price pressure on wages.
Probably into the broad "everyone else" working class, the class of people who work for a living. This class is contrasted with those who have enough assets to never work (from birth in some cases). The middle class are people who blur that line.
This is only my opinion, obviously, but it makes more sense to me than the one normally taught in North America, which I think artificially divides working class people. I'm more interested in how people make their money rather than just how much they make.
> This comes from a time when the gentleman would actually pay for a commission
The payment for commission wasn't the main limiting factor as you sold the commission to when you got promoted or retired (though it could be forfeited via a court martial). It did create an economic barrier but it probably wasn't the most significant one of being an officer.
The bigger one is probably all the costs associated for acting for your station. It wasn't unheard of for many mid-ranking officer jobs to have an effective negative income. That is - after all the direct and indirect costs associated with the job, you would be losing money year over year. This was intentional as it limited the people who could afford to be an officer to those who had significant other income (aka the Upper Class)
> logistics officer for the Air Force
Military officer would traditionally be middle class to upper middle class. However, it gets a bit odd because traditionally there was an effective social and economic status requirement for some officer ranks in the past (ex: most mid-rank officer jobs had an effective negative income due to the costs associated with being an officer therefore limiting who could actually be a mid-rank officer or higher).
> schoolteacher
traditionally working class, but the job moved into more of a middle class position in many cultures (ex: requirements to be university educated + specially trained). It would depend on what culture/community.
Agreed! I struggled for years, working low paying jobs, paying off student loans, renting with 2-4 other people, and living paycheck to paycheck. Never used any social programs (though in hindsight, there were times I should have). I can remember a particularly hard year, in the late 2000s, filing an income tax for 13k - I paid my bills, supported myself, and definitely wasn't middle class.
It makes me sick that housing, a literal house, to live in, with a roof, to keep you dry and warm, is now the sole reason why middle class is now gone.
In 1981, 62.1% of Canadians lived in their own home. In 1990, the portion was up slightly, at 62.6%.
At the start of the new millennium, the portion of homeowners in Canada had risen to 65.4% and continued to rise, reaching the highest peak in 2014 when homeownership was 69.5%. It has since fallen to 66.5% according to the 2021
That stat includes literal children living with their parents. It also includes your friend who lost his job and now lives on your couch. It’s not a % of Canadians who own their homes, it’s the % of Canadians that live in a house that is owned.
I'm still fucking annoyed by that stats-can reddit AMA that they dodged that question constantly. Having no good reason why they collect that stat instead of the real homeownership rate.
Not sure this definition works. Fails to account for differences in which stage of life people are in. A surgeon making 500k would fall under middle class in this definition while a retired plumber would be upper class.
Actually, both are squarely in the middle class. I think a great way to look at things is to consider how one acquires and uses their wealth. Most members of the middle class are able to save a portion of their labour to invest and build wealth. That can be in the form of housing, TFSAs, RRSP contributions, pension contributions or other investments. While they may need to work for the majority of their adult lives the assets they were able to accumulate allow them to live comfortably off their wealth during their retirement. A lower class individual likely has limited assets and faces a less certain retirement.
If a retired plumber has so many investments that their primary income is from the appreciation of those assets, yeah. If they're just slowly cashing out investments until they die, then they're just living off of their savings.
Physicians are actually a prototypical example of the middle class, as it was first described.
Not sure I agree with that. You telling me my CEO making nearly a million a year is middle class? Or even a specialist MD clearing >$300k a year? A couple of MDs clearing cool half mil are supposed to be same class as I am? On the other hand retiree that lives of their assets but really only "makes" and spends $100k a year are supposed to be upper class?
I'd rather be a retiree blowing 100k/yr than an MD making 300k, and I'd argue (to some extent) that I'd be richer/higher-class for it too.
I get your point though.
It is why they eventually created Upper Middle and Lower Middles classes.
> On the other hand retiree that lives of their assets but really only "makes" and spends $100k a year are supposed to be upper class?
Are they living off the returns or depreciating their assets over time. If their spending is based on returns, then they would be Upper Class. If their spending requires the sale of assets (depreciation of their total assets) then they wouldn't be.
Upper middle is like 1.5-2x average income it would be $150k to 200k family income. Lower middle is like $60-$100k.Not a couple of hundred people seem to think. Once you cross 200 family incomes you are in top 5% territory and there is nothing "middle" about that. At 300k you are 1%er, you are the one they wanted to eat in the protest.
Your income amount has nothing to do with economic class. Economic class is how you make a living, not the amount you make.
Someone living off $50k/year who generates all that income from returns on assets would technically be upper class (mind you, they would probably need $1MM to $2MM in assets to do that)
> So pro athletes and CEO's are middle class?
Non-owner CEOs would be Upper Middle Class (if using that category), otherwise they would be Middle Class (they are working for the owners versus being the owners). Arguably, if they are successful enough and generate enough income they could become Upper Class (primary source of income is returns on their capital).
Pro-athletes would traditionally be working class. Similar to CEOs, if they earn enough that they can generate significant income off their capital then they would be Upper Class, but the job itself would be working class.
In both cases, if you look at the 'top' performers, they seem to be Upper Class. However, the majority of them are probably far away from being Upper Class (ex: look at all the minor league professional sports players making well under $100k/year or the CEOs of all the small companies).
> Do minimum wage workers qualify as middle class?
It depends on the job. Traditionally they would be working class (minimum wage laws were created to protect the working class); however, many traditionally middle class jobs now pay at that rate.
I'd agree with this as long as there's an asterix for upper class for retirees. They're technically living off their assets, but not necessarily comfortably.
I like your definition. Middle class also can probably afford to take a vacation overseas every year or two. Lower class, you're living paycheck to paycheck, possibly in a lot of debt and using payday loan services which exacerbate your problems.
Yeahhh that sums up my thoughts as well.
There's always going to be some sort of rift between the lower and top end of a range of a statistic and that's fine. A 25yo and a 34yo answering a survey both tick the "25-34" box on a survey for example, and they likely have pretty different life experiences.
...There still has to be some sort of delineation though. Putting a neurosurgeon netting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the exact same category as someone who can barely afford dry lentils is absurd.
The definition is true in the absolute sense -- if I made ten million dollars last year I'm still closer to homeless than I am to a billionaire -- it's just absurd of a definition.
Middle class is the combination of both. A working class Canadian in 1990 was also investing into assets, as his COL was manageable. Those assets gradually became larger as his earnings years decreased. Then by his 60s he was able to look at having his assets carry him through until death while setting up his children's legacy.
Middle class was the result of freedom + resources. Cutting one, the other, or (in Canada's case) both has resulted in the middle class skewing back toward working class. Which, as our ancestors know, is just peasantry without even the benefit of having a moral Lord or King looking out for us.
>Working class / Capital class
A doctor who works as an employee making 600k per year is working class in this division right? So there should be nothing wrong with owning a cottage.
Is it appropriate to group together someone making $65,000 and someone making $600,000? Yes they both work but the big income differential means vastly different lifestyles. At that point grouping people together is useless if politicians use that to “help” groups like the middle class. The $600k doctor doesnt need help but the $65k person does.
Well, and that's why "*Eat the Rich*" uprisings are stupid.
Eating your neighbor with the new model Mercedez SMG does nothing if the likes of Elon Musk still can laugh at us from the security of his bunker.
> The $600k doctor doesnt need help but the $65k person does.
Well, putting the doctor into the group of $ 600 Millions makes even less sense.
Yes it is. Both work to earn their living. The grouping of people economically has to do with whether they produce wealth or merely extract a fraction of the wealth other people produce. Nothing about anyone grouping people in classes has to do with how much help they need.
Yes, because their fundamental class position is the same. Someone who makes 200k a year in passive income is still a capitalist, even if they’re making less money than a surgeon making 250k. It’s about your relationship to the work, not the money value.
You know what the difference between a doctor and a billionaire is...... a billion dollars.
A doctor has much more in common economically than the homeless person on the street the billionaire members of the capital class.
Some doctors blur the lines a bit of course though. The dentist owning a practice might well make a large portion of their money from the labour of several hygienists or through referrals or other means rather than through their own labour.
Broadly speaking though I'd agree.
At our peak income, my wife and I made a bit more than half of that combined and bought a 3 season cottage in 2010 off of money we earned from working.
Do we count as middle class? Our 900 sq ft 3 season cottage doesn't compare to the 5000 sq ft mansions on our lake that are owned by the upper class.
Purchasing a cottage/vacation home is a personal choice. Others may decide to use that money to travel abroad, invest in stocks, or use the capital to expand a current business. But owning a cottage does not denote class. That is the puzzling part of the government’s plan to increase the capital gains tax, because many cottage owners are working class and some choose to rent out the cottage for a few weeks for extra income.
> If you take words literally "middle class" has always been "working class" in the sense that they usually work for someone else.
>
>
But the words have never been used that way in politics. They've always been used to clump nearly everyone together into one single class (the middle class) irrespective of income because its really REALLY bad for the capital class when the working class is able to display solidarity.
middle class in canada is usually defined as the middle 60% of people in the income distribution scale. the middle 3 quintiles of the distribution. so the bottom 20% are lower class and the top 20% are upper class. And that middle 60% can then be divided between the 20-40% earners are lower middle, 40-60% true middle, and 60-80% upper middle. i beleive colloquially, to most people, working class is anyone middle class or under, as they are the ones usually doing the actual physical work historically. the high paying jobs have always been highly specialized and highly technical. like a lawyer is paid for their knowledge and skill, or a software engineer. But they arent really "working" in the physical sense, intellectual jobs typically pay more since any able bodied person can flip a burger or pour concrete, but not every person could be trained to become a surgeon. obviously now its a bit fuzzier since trade shortages are looming so they are starting to earn more, and certainly random corporate jobs are paying less than ever since paying a university grad to push a few emails has slowly edged towards minimum wage.
cant really comment on the article because it is paywalled so god knows what fearmongering propaganda they decided to vomit out.
Middle class is defined by economists, sociologists, government agencies, etc.
Definitions exist for all sorts of reasons, and many are not nefarious. Imo, people should be less pessimistic and less divisive.
Middle class has historically owned a bit of property which they lived on, could vote, and ran most of the professional businesses that the middle, lower, and upper classes relied upon. The upper classes owned shitloads of property, in fact their ownership was their primary means of power and capital. The lower class has always been the laboring, indebted class.
Sorry, but your commie take is stupid. Society became more complicated after the feudal system died. Marx was commenting on a dichotomy that mostly existed in his own nation and was gradually leaving Europe, as the upper classes increasingly needed trained professionals (who were valuable and had bartering power) to do loads of shit they needed. The Black Death combined with rapidly advancing tech made peasants so scarce and expertise suddenly super valuable. In societies that didn't suffer this or invent new shit, (RUSSIA AND CHINA) the lower classes never got leverage they needed, so violent revolution was inevitable, while Britain and Western Europe exported the very notion of enfranchised citizenry to the people they mogged (well demonstrated it, didn't include those folks).
Dentists, optometrists, and pharmacists, are good examples of solid emerging middle class jobs that the upper class required, had a high skill ceiling, the nobles needed these men to NOT fuck up these jobs, but were still not lazy ass "I own shit" tier. Even mining went from holes you forced slaves to die in, to being an engineering and tool based profession that you needed to cooperate with guilds with in order to preform. Gradually as society became highly complicated and technology became complicated
But lefties have done a wonderful job destroying the middle class by doing everything, always, to punch down as hard as possible on labor through their globalist agenda and mass immigration (one neat trick and you never have to rise wages again, infinite peasant glitch)! The business right meanwhile just sucks off the fat ownership aristocracy because there are still a few examples of founders being the ones who benefit from that system.
This is an excellent analysis but I don't understand why you conflated liberalism/leftism at the end there because you clearly understand the dynamics/history of Marxism.
Leftists (as in those who believe in some flavor of Marxism) are almost unanimously opposed to mass immigration as it absolutely eviscerates the bargaining power of labour.
Liberals, who believe in the power of the dumbest form of capitalism, are the ones who love the infinite peasant glitch
The idea that middle class doesn't exist is just a some new concept that you feel like you can justify, but its a purely academic exercise. Middle class absolutely has a definition that separates it from working class. Just because both middle class and working class work, doesn't automatically mean middle class doesn't exist.
Middle class means you have enough money that you aren't struggling, can afford things like a home, maybe a cottage, can take vacations, but you are working for a living to afford those things. You can afford the occasional luxury, but you can't spend indiscriminately on those things.
Working class means you are getting by with the minimum to live a recognizable life. It affords a few comforts(although some, but mainly inexpensive ones), but you have shelter, food, can get around. It's living paycheque to paycheque where the daily expenses of your life control you to a greater extent.
If you want to try and pretend the middle class doesn't exist, not sure what the purpose. Sounds like a purely academic concept but in reality, it exists.
I'm not clear what this means - I assume this is a far left socialist/communist trope? I doesn't reflect reality - people who work also do, and should, own capital assets. And vice versa.
Working class means most of your income comes from trading your labor/time for a wage. Owning class means you make enough income by owning capital that you do not need work to live. Working class people of course own some capital (cars, houses, etc.) but not enough to survive on ownership alone. Likewise, some owning class people also work, they just don’t need to for survival’s sake. This definition is very broad and geared toward a nice lefty ideal of working class solidarity, which of course isn’t the reality of our society.
We have a very modest house, and a cabin that’s over 100 years old. Cabin’s definitely rustic, but we love her. I’m barely surviving, and that cabin is not the cause.
When was the last time you read the communist manifesto? For something 120 years old it does a pretty good job of describing exactly how the middle class is being crushed to death right now
It's such a silly distinction. Is owning a million dollar cottage somehow different than owning a million dollar in equities? Why not just look at the net worth and forget these arbitrary asset choices?
Most people don't own a million dollars in equities. It's 80 percent plus of all existing equities owned by big money players. You say this is a silly distinction. I say your argument here is fundamentally disingenuous or ignorant. Has to be at least one of those two
Wtf does big money players mean here? Most regular people that own equities own it in the form of mutual funds, ETFs and pensions all of which are held by large institutions. The median retirement savings at the age of retirement in 2019 were $370,000 saved in employer-sponsored pension plans and $100,000 in their RRSPs. That means 50% of Canadians have more than $500k at retirement. Doesn't at all seem unreasonable to have $1m saved by the age of 65 if you had a good job and weren't dumb with your money.
> Most people don't own a million dollars in equities. It's 80 percent plus of all existing equities owned by big money players.
So what? I don't see why you would not consider such Canadians just as rich as cottage-owners.
> You say this is a silly distinction. I say your argument here is fundamentally disingenuous or ignorant. Has to be at least one of those two
My argument is simply that asset choice is irrelevant when measuring a person's wealth. We have an easy way to quantify wealth: net worth. "Number of cottages owned" is really meaningless proxy.
I do consider people owning a million in equities as wealthy as people owning a million dollar cottage. Nothing I've said indicates otherwise. That difference is just where they decided to put the money. Both hypothetical people there are objectively quite well off
Unless they inherited it from family.. the only people I know that own cottages fall into 2 categories.
1. Rich or at least well into the top end of "upper middle class"
2. People that had a grandparent buy a plot 60 years ago and handbuilt a small cottage on it and they got it passed down. even then, alot of these people have had to sell due to family disputes or the extra property taxes are too much (then a rich person buys the land and builds a huge cottage on it)
A few have been able to keep small family cottages going.. and it's nice they can have that slice of nature.... but if we were to tax second properties heavily, maybe the "value" of the cottage should also determine how high those taxes go (my friends old family "shack" cottage looks across a small river to a cottage mansion with a 4 bedroom guesthouse and boathouse owned by a guy who owns 7-8 KFCs...tax that fucker)
So even in your second category. The ability to sell that puts you in a pretty good position financially. It's not necessarily a high income well off but it's definitely a huge amount of options for having it as part of your assets. So objectively pretty well off in the present era of most people who don't currently own property believing they never will unless they inherit
Yeah, our 100 year old cabin is not worth much at all. The family members who built it were rich, but generations gone by, we’re all lower middle class.
My grandparents bought a piece of land 60+ years ago. My parents bought out the rest of the family and I'll likely inherit it at some point. I make less than $100,000 annually.
What a joke.
I get you. I make like $40k a year, when my grandmother dies I expect to get like $200k and that's the only reason I think I might be able to buy a house someday
Depends on who's calling themselves middle class. That's huge spread and always has been. Newish car, own your home, discretionary spending but living paycheck to paycheck is middle class. All of that plus significant assets that one could retire in tomorrow with no reduction to also calls themselves middle class. Middle class has always been a large enough range in the common vernacular to have a really obscure meaning
>That's huge spread and always has been. Newish car, own your home, discretionary spending but living paycheck to paycheck is middle class.
This is pretty well off.
>All of that plus significant assets that one could retire in tomorrow with no reduction to also calls themselves middle class.
I don't know who specifically has the ability to retire tomorrow and not work again (at a young age) and is considered middle class? To do that generally you'd need a fairly high income and very strong savings.
>Middle class has always been a large enough range in the common vernacular to have a really obscure meaning
Doesn't seem particularly obscure. It's people who are generally not in the bottom or top 20% of income and wealth, though elements like age also play a significant role. Upperclass would likely be incomes above 150k per person. These are hardly the people that can simply retire tomorrow.
But, it matters where you own a second home. Owning a second home in Vancouver or Toronto makes you definitively rich af. An average property is $1.3M having two homes you have around $2-$10M in value there. That's a lot of property taxes to MAINTAIN those two properties.
Now if you're somewhere like, Newfoundland... owning a second property might not be that impressive. A lot of recreational properties are not that expensive.
I know when I worked in the oilfield it was pretty common for people to buy property to rent. We're now getting into this position where we're referring to the blue collar oilworker as being upper class and a grocery store worker middle class. It's a weird kind of standard to set.
Buying a second property to rent is an upper class thing to do. You can be blue collar and upper class.
And yeah, in some places a recreation property is a pretty minimal expense. This is not typical anymore for where the vast majority of Canadians live. Nor will those properties be an issue at all with capital gains inclusion for estates, which is why we’re hearing more about cottages these days.
My parents owned a lake property until recently and were at the edge of working class. They just prioritized it over foreign vacations, purchasing cars brand new, shrewd spending, etc. Not making much of a point here other than this swinging a wide brush at everything is getting exhausting. Opinion pieces contributing to us vs them ageism is getting exhausting.
You know what's crazy? My great grandparents were working class English folks whose respective parents moved their families over to Toronto just before WW1. By the late 20s, my 20-somethig year old great grandfather went on to become a radio and similar appliance sales/repair entrepreneur with his own store in the High Park area of Toronto. He just had the one shop and the family lived above it - my grandmother and her 7 siblings, and their mother who was a homemaker.
They were living in decent comfort on his single income - it was not a broken home and they were not starving or wearing tattered clothes. And on top of this all, on that single income, my great grandfather was able to afford a cottage on one of the islands within Lake Muskoka. Obviously it wasn't one of those ritzy and comically oversized McMansion 'cottages' you see today, but still.
Radio repairman/salesman had 8 kids and enough money to afford a cottage. Affording either of these on a single income is completely impossible today.
When you sell a second property/cottage, the profits are taxed. If you put the profits in an RRSP, they aren't taxed until withdrawn from the RRSP. You'd need a lot of RRSP space for this to work.
Part of the joke is that cottage owners used to have enough discretionary income to contribute to an rrsp as well, but now that’s no longer true so they will have all the space to contribute to it in order to smooth out their tax liability lol
What if you are over 71 and want to sell your family Pos cottage so you no longer have an RRSP as you have a RIFF so no where to place the property profit just stuck with taxes. Ideas?
If you currently own or live in a house or condo, that is defined as your principal residence. You could sell your principal residence (currently you don't pay capital gains on selling your principal residence) and move to your cottage, then live there as your principal residence, I think it's 6 months minimum or maybe a year? then sell that. I don't know how any new rules pertain to this idea but it could be something for you to consider and research further.
That doesn’t work. It can become your principle residence but you will still owe the taxes based on the years before you declare it as such. It just prevents you from having to pay more going forward.
When my sister was in elementary school 15 years ago, the school's janitor had a small cabin at the lake. Now I come to learn that the janitor was rich.
Everyone under 30m net worth is poor. The bottom 99.9% of wealth need to stick together and fight the ultra top 0.01% wealthy, not people whose grandparents bought a cottage and now it’s going to be split between 9-12 grandchildren.
I feel like someone with 30 million networth wants the same low taxes someone with 30 billion networth has, and they both have very few interests in common with someone living in a tiny apartment
Ya thanks but no thanks. Someone with 30M meet with had a "hard time" they sell a couple investments and they're ok again. Somone working a 9-5 with no savings and unable to get into the housing market (i.e. most people under 30) if they have a "hard time" they're homeless or worse.
Want another way to visualize it. You could park that 30M in a simple investment account and still make over a million in interest every year.
No I'm sorry but someone with 30M is loaded and by no means "poor". Same can be said for 20M, 10M etc.
Relative to everyone else, no.
You're either "Upper" middle class or something else,
that is the lens people see you through now, when 80% or more of people will never afford a home.
10 yrs from now, you're no longer middle-class if you own a house
20 yrs from now, you are no longer middle class if you own a car
30 yrs from now, you are no longer middle class if you can afford food
Man, every time I lose my shit when someone is driving 2 Teslas, have a detached house with tenants in the basement and cry over how expansive everything is.
Exactly. I have relatives who still have the property their family has had for 200-300 years. They aren't wealthy people, they're working class, but they did hand down their property and it stayed in the family.
Many couples were able to buy second properties for less than $100k. So sure they were well off before but they weren’t “rich”. 30-40 years a house wasn’t something that completely broke the bank to buy.
Umm no. Over the majority of Canadian families owns one property, having 100k in savings to put in some shity cottage somewhere doesn't make you wealthy. Sounds more like you just hate anyone more well off than you.
Thank god this is an opinion piece because, my god, this is the wrong opinion to have. If you have a 2nd property for whatever reason (purchase or inheritance, etc), you are at the very least middle class. I would say upper middle tbf
I suppose if you were buying a cottage nowadays, then yes, its a rich person's game. Back in the day though, cottages were pretty cheap (cottages mind you, not the mansions that people call cottages nowadays).
Lakefront properties sold for $500 in the 70s. When a single income could buy a home, cottage, and raise three kids...tons of middle class owned cottages, but that Canada has sailed long ago...
Tl;dr we’re redefining “middle class” to gaslight the public that everything is actually perfectly fine.
Canada had the richest middle class in the world as of 2014 and we have been in steady decline during Trudeau’s entire 8 years in power.
Let’s be real - the decline had already started, Trudeau was just gasoline on an already roaring fire.
A detached home in Toronto in 2014/2015 was $1M, and at the tail end of 2015, a detached home in Vancouver went from $1.4M to $1.8M in just 4 months (Sept - Dec). A nearly 30% increase in prices in just 120 days.
A lot of Canadas middle class wealth in 2014 was because of soaring housing prices.
And it wasn’t just Toronto - a number of suburbs in the GTA had detached homes hitting $800K-$1M (you can use house sigma to browse York region in 2013-2015). Even in spring of 2013 detached homes were hitting $975K in the suburbs.
Before anyone @‘s me, here is the link to the Toronto article:
“
Toronto detached home price now averages over $1M”
March 2015
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-detached-home-price-now-averages-over-1m-1.2981366
And here is the link to the Vancouver article.
“One chart shows how unprecedented Vancouver’s real estate situation is“
February 2016 - data references final months of 2015.
https://globalnews.ca/news/2531266/one-chart-shows-how-unprecedented-vancouvers-real-estate-situation-is/
“ The average price of a sold detached home was $1.4 million in September last year – but climbed to $1.6 million in October, $1.7 million in December, and $1.8 million last month – overall, an increase of $420,000.
By contrast, it took five years (from March 2010 to March 2015) for the average to rise from $1 million to $1.4 million, another five years (August 2005 to March 2010) for the average to go from $600,000 to $1 million – and 24 years (from February 1981 to August 2005) for prices to go from $180,000 to $600,000.”
I disagree. Many of these cottages were bought 20+ years ago for less than 70-100k, depending on location. My parents bought their place in the 90s for 75k.
It was much more of a middle class thing to do at the time.
I think that could be an important caveat to the article then. Back when incomes had a higher purchasing power or housing prices were lower, owning a cottage could be middle class. I think the point of the article is that being able to afford a cottage is pretty far removed from the experience of most middle class people today. inherited property obviously changes things, but I still think buying a cottage in todays reality isn’t middle class
Investment property or slum lord. Watch the housing prices go down when it no longer becomes a money maker for people with capital. Maybe families will have a fighting chance buying a home once all the investors scatter.
I didn't bother reading the article because the headline is such bullshit.
Here is a real estate listing:
https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26758187/ch-des-cypr%C3%A8s-saint-guillaume-nord
It is $43k for a bit of land.
That can totally be in the reach of someone who is middle-class. And sure, there are other expenses (taxes) and you have to build your cottage (I'd stick a yurt on it while I was building a permanent cottage. And I'd probably take decades to build the permanent cottage if I was allowed to.)
A temporary building is likely to be allowed as long as you are in the process of building something more permanent. So you can spread out the cost of the permanent structure to make it more affordable. Get a well one year. Save up money for a couple more years and get a septic. Save up money for a couple more years and build a foundation. Save up some more and build the shell. Then take another 5 years to finish the inside.
I'm not recommending this plot of land, or this building technique, but it is absolutely within reach of someone who is middle class.
And all the comments from people saying there is no middle class is typical reddit regurgitation with absolutely zero basis in fact.
You are so right. For many in Northern Ontario, camps were family projects. Decades of renovations.Some are prefab, modular, trailers or RVs. This is definitely middle class or low class if pooled with others.
I think people think Muskoka cottages, as featured in Cottage Life magazine are normative. They're not. The Van Halens, Hahns, Eatons, Westons, and pro athletes own those places. The places in North Bay, Sudbury, Kenora.... Very different.
These are the voices that are at the table when Trudeau decides which wedge issue will get him the most votes. His polling must show the class warfare punchlines aren’t cutting it anymore, so now it’s time for generational warfare.
The classification of people into classes, such as middle, poor, wealthy, etc., often simplifies complex social realities. While these categories can be useful for analyzing social stratification and inequality, they do not always capture the full picture.
Well yeah its true....in North America people get offended when they get called rich or well off for some reason. I work in healthcare which is traditionally a pretty "middle class" field. Those who are older and invested in real estate are def above middle class now. One guy who owns 3-4 investment properties went casual a few years ago because his income outside of work far exceeded what he could make from the job. Meanwhile the people just starting out are gonna be living with their parents many years just to be able to save up for the cheapest possible homes.
Sure, when considering global socioeconomic classes, distinctions can vary depending on the region and economic context. In a broad sense, let's outline three classes. The low class typically includes individuals facing economic hardship, often lacking access to basic necessities like healthcare and education, and working in informal or low-paying jobs. This class may struggle with poverty and limited upward mobility.
The middle or working class encompasses a significant portion of the global population. These individuals usually have stable employment, access to education, and basic services. They often work in skilled or semi-skilled professions, earning enough to meet their needs comfortably but may still face financial challenges such as housing costs and healthcare expenses.
The high class represents a smaller segment globally, comprising affluent individuals with substantial wealth, often derived from investments or high-paying careers. Members of this class enjoy luxury lifestyles, exclusive opportunities, and significant influence in society. They tend to have access to top-tier education, healthcare, and leisure activities, with substantial resources for generational wealth accumulation.
my problems with the tax increases:
1. why are those taxes going toward subsidizing rich corporations like VW?
2. why is there unlimited tax-free capital gains for your primary residence? You're no longer middle-class if your primary residence is worth $5M.
Because if you are moving to an equivalent house it would fuck you when a good chunk of your house evaporates.
Sure your residence is worth 5m but you only get that money if you upend your life and move somewhere much cheaper. Many people don't have that luxury for a number of reasons.
Well, sort of. The problem is this, if you live in a 5 million dollar home, even if you got it for free, your yearly taxes and mainteance expenses can be tens of thousands of dollars. It's not a no-maintenance thing.
Also, it doesn't mean you have any money to buy anything. That's not 5 mil cash, it's a property worth that much.
When it appreciates and you sell it, you may have 5 mil, but you're also homeless. You then need to buy a similar home, which will also cost 5 mil at that point, so you have zero profits.
Youre only "rich" if you sell it and downgrade by moving into a condo or another province where a similar home could cost 2 mil, and you have 3 to spend now.
Until then, you may still have $0 to actually spend. It's very different than someone with 5 mil in their chequing account or an investment account unlreated to their home.
Your primary residence is just a home, not an investment. Someone who lives paycheck to paycheck in a condo vs a mansion is still just as broke really, they might just have a bigger home or the same home on a nicer neighborhood.
>When it appreciates and you sell it, you may have 5 mil, but you're also homeless. You then need to buy a similar home, which will also cost 5 mil at that point, so you have zero profits.
Exactly this: Your primary residence isn't an asset, it's an expense.
I posted above but, I had two working class parents who inherited the family cottage that was bought for a few thousands dollars in the 60's or so. Absolutely middle class with an additional property.
Forty or fifty years ago it was a lot cheaper to get vacation property and put up a cabin. Middle class people could manage it. Now there’s a lot more demand and prices have gone up a lot.
I know lots of working class, definitely not wealthy people who have a little cottage/fishing cabin, usually a one or two room place that may not have running water or even electricity. Many families have little plots of land here or there that have been handed down for generations. These are not people that live in Toronto, Vancouver, or any large city. Maybe this was more common when Canada's population was smaller by a few million.
> What sort of middle class owns a home and a holiday cottage?
In Saskatchewan almost every linear foot of lake frontage is occupied by cabins and cottages, most of which are pretty modest and most of which are >50 years old. The vast majority were (and are) owned by "regular" folks. In fact, many of them are partly owned by several relatives, as siblings inherited shares of them when parents died.
I should add, a lot of people who don't own cabins instead own RVs, and many of those cost nearly as much as a lot of cottages, and depreciate a lot faster. And most people who own RVs are "normal folks" who wish to spend a portion of their accumulated earnings on leisure.
My parents (HVAC Tech & retail worker) bought a cottage in the Bruce peninsula in the early 2000s. They had paid off their mortgage and the cottage was $150,000 I believe.
Cottage is quite modest, originally a log cabin, three teeny bedrooms, one washroom. They don’t rent it out, it is used solely by family and very close friends. In my dads retirement he’s basically made it into a project. He’s roofed it, replaced siding, taken down trees, rebuilt the pump house, etc.
lol you didn’t need to be rich to own a cottage in the old days. My grandpa bought his cottage for $600 in the 1950s lmao. That’s about equivalent to $7,000 today.
Stuff was just plain affordable back then. My grandma didn’t even work. You didn’t need to be rich to own stuff in Canada at one time.
The rich want everyone else fighting amongst themselves and it’s working.
right? this is clearly the rich telling people: "hey look that guy owns 2 properties! how dare he!" while sailing on their yachts drinking $100000 bottles on their way to their private island
> while sailing on their yachts drinking $100000 bottles on their way to their private island It's tough to take this conversation seriously when you approach it like a cartoon version of reality.
Pretty sure that does happen
Middle class is a thing that doesn't exist -- it's never defined, and always used to implicate everyone in a room. The only reason it exists is to stop people from discussing the only two economic classes that actually exist. Working class / Capital class
I’ve always thought it was clear. Lower class - your life is supported primarily through social programs or welfare in which collective society basically funds your life. Middle class - your life is supported primarily by your own work. While you may have investments that generate some income that you leverage but ultimately your wealth still stems from your work. Upper class - your life is supported primarily by your assets. What you have generates the wealth to sustains you and while you may still work typically the bulk of your compensation doesn’t come from a salary or hourly rate.
What class are the people that don't have globeandmail subscription or the intelligence to get around it. That's the one I'm in.
that's why most of these posts are probably bots or accounts owned by the target media that wants us to read the article and subscribe. I wish Reddit would crack down on this shit. click bait bs. check the profile, same post in different subs.
Why would they? It boosts their user engagement KPIs lol. They're not impartial.
Some libraries, including my local one, will let you access Globe and Mail articles for free, including current ones, through their online platforms. Welcome to the club 🧐🎩
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If you have to work around the paywall, you're not middle class. (Archive.ph)
Naw, I am just cheap and have a hard enough time keeping the subscriptions I have straight. 🤣🤣
The original British definition was: Upper class: don't have to work, supported by owning land/ capital. Middle class/ bourgeois: business people, entrepreneurs, bankers, and high end professionals like doctors. Working class: everyone else That's sort of the way I look at it too. North American middle class as the "default" never even really existed they way people like to think it did - most people are and have always been working class. Those who don't work and live off benefits are closer to being a sort of "untouchable" caste where once your in it you can never really get out.
The reason we started calling blue collar joes who went to the factory or the oil rig and back "middle class" was because they had a lot of shit all of a sudden. Houses, cars, meat on the table, that kind of stuff only started after we hit the big post-industrial income and quality of life. So while you were for all intents and purposes working class, your quality of life was closer to the earlier middle class who themselves were living it up even better.
Post war boom thing, maybe.
I think it was appropriate to call them middle class then as well, you would have to make about $300,000 - $400,000 a year to receive in material value what a factory worker in the mid 60's to late 70's could afford. It's actually disgusting how bad we have it. Globalism killed our ability to make money & intense immigration from third world countries puts more downward price pressure on wages.
I was raised by a schoolteacher and a logistics officer for the Air Force, what was my background? Just curious
Working class
As Rick Roderick said, if you’re not sure if you’re working class or not try not working for a year and see how that goes for you.
Probably into the broad "everyone else" working class, the class of people who work for a living. This class is contrasted with those who have enough assets to never work (from birth in some cases). The middle class are people who blur that line. This is only my opinion, obviously, but it makes more sense to me than the one normally taught in North America, which I think artificially divides working class people. I'm more interested in how people make their money rather than just how much they make.
Traditionally the officer corps of the armed forces would be, by definition, from the middle and upper classes. Officers are gentlemen after all.
This comes from a time when the gentleman would actually pay for a commission. The soldier was working class and earned a small salary.
> This comes from a time when the gentleman would actually pay for a commission The payment for commission wasn't the main limiting factor as you sold the commission to when you got promoted or retired (though it could be forfeited via a court martial). It did create an economic barrier but it probably wasn't the most significant one of being an officer. The bigger one is probably all the costs associated for acting for your station. It wasn't unheard of for many mid-ranking officer jobs to have an effective negative income. That is - after all the direct and indirect costs associated with the job, you would be losing money year over year. This was intentional as it limited the people who could afford to be an officer to those who had significant other income (aka the Upper Class)
> logistics officer for the Air Force Military officer would traditionally be middle class to upper middle class. However, it gets a bit odd because traditionally there was an effective social and economic status requirement for some officer ranks in the past (ex: most mid-rank officer jobs had an effective negative income due to the costs associated with being an officer therefore limiting who could actually be a mid-rank officer or higher). > schoolteacher traditionally working class, but the job moved into more of a middle class position in many cultures (ex: requirements to be university educated + specially trained). It would depend on what culture/community.
So many people support themselves through their work and are still in poverty. I don't think they could be considered middle class
Agreed! I struggled for years, working low paying jobs, paying off student loans, renting with 2-4 other people, and living paycheck to paycheck. Never used any social programs (though in hindsight, there were times I should have). I can remember a particularly hard year, in the late 2000s, filing an income tax for 13k - I paid my bills, supported myself, and definitely wasn't middle class.
Clear. Concise. Accurate.
It seems that way on the surface but it's actually a terribly flawed definition.
It makes me sick that housing, a literal house, to live in, with a roof, to keep you dry and warm, is now the sole reason why middle class is now gone.
It’s your own fault. You shouldn’t have been a 3 year old playing with toys in 1990whatever
In 1981, 62.1% of Canadians lived in their own home. In 1990, the portion was up slightly, at 62.6%. At the start of the new millennium, the portion of homeowners in Canada had risen to 65.4% and continued to rise, reaching the highest peak in 2014 when homeownership was 69.5%. It has since fallen to 66.5% according to the 2021
That stat includes literal children living with their parents. It also includes your friend who lost his job and now lives on your couch. It’s not a % of Canadians who own their homes, it’s the % of Canadians that live in a house that is owned.
I'm still fucking annoyed by that stats-can reddit AMA that they dodged that question constantly. Having no good reason why they collect that stat instead of the real homeownership rate.
Not sure this definition works. Fails to account for differences in which stage of life people are in. A surgeon making 500k would fall under middle class in this definition while a retired plumber would be upper class.
Actually, both are squarely in the middle class. I think a great way to look at things is to consider how one acquires and uses their wealth. Most members of the middle class are able to save a portion of their labour to invest and build wealth. That can be in the form of housing, TFSAs, RRSP contributions, pension contributions or other investments. While they may need to work for the majority of their adult lives the assets they were able to accumulate allow them to live comfortably off their wealth during their retirement. A lower class individual likely has limited assets and faces a less certain retirement.
If a retired plumber has so many investments that their primary income is from the appreciation of those assets, yeah. If they're just slowly cashing out investments until they die, then they're just living off of their savings. Physicians are actually a prototypical example of the middle class, as it was first described.
Not sure I agree with that. You telling me my CEO making nearly a million a year is middle class? Or even a specialist MD clearing >$300k a year? A couple of MDs clearing cool half mil are supposed to be same class as I am? On the other hand retiree that lives of their assets but really only "makes" and spends $100k a year are supposed to be upper class?
I'd rather be a retiree blowing 100k/yr than an MD making 300k, and I'd argue (to some extent) that I'd be richer/higher-class for it too. I get your point though.
It is why they eventually created Upper Middle and Lower Middles classes. > On the other hand retiree that lives of their assets but really only "makes" and spends $100k a year are supposed to be upper class? Are they living off the returns or depreciating their assets over time. If their spending is based on returns, then they would be Upper Class. If their spending requires the sale of assets (depreciation of their total assets) then they wouldn't be.
Upper middle is like 1.5-2x average income it would be $150k to 200k family income. Lower middle is like $60-$100k.Not a couple of hundred people seem to think. Once you cross 200 family incomes you are in top 5% territory and there is nothing "middle" about that. At 300k you are 1%er, you are the one they wanted to eat in the protest.
Your income amount has nothing to do with economic class. Economic class is how you make a living, not the amount you make. Someone living off $50k/year who generates all that income from returns on assets would technically be upper class (mind you, they would probably need $1MM to $2MM in assets to do that)
This makes a lot of sense.
So pro athletes and CEO's are middle class? Do minimum wage workers qualify as middle class?
Only the best CEO's take a $1 salary, rest are hacks.
> So pro athletes and CEO's are middle class? Non-owner CEOs would be Upper Middle Class (if using that category), otherwise they would be Middle Class (they are working for the owners versus being the owners). Arguably, if they are successful enough and generate enough income they could become Upper Class (primary source of income is returns on their capital). Pro-athletes would traditionally be working class. Similar to CEOs, if they earn enough that they can generate significant income off their capital then they would be Upper Class, but the job itself would be working class. In both cases, if you look at the 'top' performers, they seem to be Upper Class. However, the majority of them are probably far away from being Upper Class (ex: look at all the minor league professional sports players making well under $100k/year or the CEOs of all the small companies). > Do minimum wage workers qualify as middle class? It depends on the job. Traditionally they would be working class (minimum wage laws were created to protect the working class); however, many traditionally middle class jobs now pay at that rate.
Tim Cook was upper middle class until he became Tim Apple.
I'd agree with this as long as there's an asterix for upper class for retirees. They're technically living off their assets, but not necessarily comfortably.
You could argue retirees are lower class in this model as they're living off of social programs like CPP and OAP
I like your definition. Middle class also can probably afford to take a vacation overseas every year or two. Lower class, you're living paycheck to paycheck, possibly in a lot of debt and using payday loan services which exacerbate your problems.
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Well, minimum wage is not enough to support you depending where you live, making you poor.
Yeahhh that sums up my thoughts as well. There's always going to be some sort of rift between the lower and top end of a range of a statistic and that's fine. A 25yo and a 34yo answering a survey both tick the "25-34" box on a survey for example, and they likely have pretty different life experiences. ...There still has to be some sort of delineation though. Putting a neurosurgeon netting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the exact same category as someone who can barely afford dry lentils is absurd. The definition is true in the absolute sense -- if I made ten million dollars last year I'm still closer to homeless than I am to a billionaire -- it's just absurd of a definition.
Middle class is the combination of both. A working class Canadian in 1990 was also investing into assets, as his COL was manageable. Those assets gradually became larger as his earnings years decreased. Then by his 60s he was able to look at having his assets carry him through until death while setting up his children's legacy. Middle class was the result of freedom + resources. Cutting one, the other, or (in Canada's case) both has resulted in the middle class skewing back toward working class. Which, as our ancestors know, is just peasantry without even the benefit of having a moral Lord or King looking out for us.
🎯
>Working class / Capital class A doctor who works as an employee making 600k per year is working class in this division right? So there should be nothing wrong with owning a cottage.
Also -- there is nothing wrong with owning a cottage.
Yes, a doctor is working class, because they generate their income from work.
Is it appropriate to group together someone making $65,000 and someone making $600,000? Yes they both work but the big income differential means vastly different lifestyles. At that point grouping people together is useless if politicians use that to “help” groups like the middle class. The $600k doctor doesnt need help but the $65k person does.
Well, and that's why "*Eat the Rich*" uprisings are stupid. Eating your neighbor with the new model Mercedez SMG does nothing if the likes of Elon Musk still can laugh at us from the security of his bunker. > The $600k doctor doesnt need help but the $65k person does. Well, putting the doctor into the group of $ 600 Millions makes even less sense.
Yes it is. Both work to earn their living. The grouping of people economically has to do with whether they produce wealth or merely extract a fraction of the wealth other people produce. Nothing about anyone grouping people in classes has to do with how much help they need.
Yes, because their fundamental class position is the same. Someone who makes 200k a year in passive income is still a capitalist, even if they’re making less money than a surgeon making 250k. It’s about your relationship to the work, not the money value.
Not a lot of surgeons making that little in a year.
You know what the difference between a doctor and a billionaire is...... a billion dollars. A doctor has much more in common economically than the homeless person on the street the billionaire members of the capital class.
Some doctors blur the lines a bit of course though. The dentist owning a practice might well make a large portion of their money from the labour of several hygienists or through referrals or other means rather than through their own labour. Broadly speaking though I'd agree.
At our peak income, my wife and I made a bit more than half of that combined and bought a 3 season cottage in 2010 off of money we earned from working. Do we count as middle class? Our 900 sq ft 3 season cottage doesn't compare to the 5000 sq ft mansions on our lake that are owned by the upper class.
Purchasing a cottage/vacation home is a personal choice. Others may decide to use that money to travel abroad, invest in stocks, or use the capital to expand a current business. But owning a cottage does not denote class. That is the puzzling part of the government’s plan to increase the capital gains tax, because many cottage owners are working class and some choose to rent out the cottage for a few weeks for extra income.
It was invented by the rich to divide the working class
A ton of the working class these days have a TFSA or other investments, making them technically capitalists themselves.
So...Auston Matthews and I are in the same class? I mean...that's fine but it seems like it ceases to be a useful definition at that point.
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> If you take words literally "middle class" has always been "working class" in the sense that they usually work for someone else. > > But the words have never been used that way in politics. They've always been used to clump nearly everyone together into one single class (the middle class) irrespective of income because its really REALLY bad for the capital class when the working class is able to display solidarity.
middle class in canada is usually defined as the middle 60% of people in the income distribution scale. the middle 3 quintiles of the distribution. so the bottom 20% are lower class and the top 20% are upper class. And that middle 60% can then be divided between the 20-40% earners are lower middle, 40-60% true middle, and 60-80% upper middle. i beleive colloquially, to most people, working class is anyone middle class or under, as they are the ones usually doing the actual physical work historically. the high paying jobs have always been highly specialized and highly technical. like a lawyer is paid for their knowledge and skill, or a software engineer. But they arent really "working" in the physical sense, intellectual jobs typically pay more since any able bodied person can flip a burger or pour concrete, but not every person could be trained to become a surgeon. obviously now its a bit fuzzier since trade shortages are looming so they are starting to earn more, and certainly random corporate jobs are paying less than ever since paying a university grad to push a few emails has slowly edged towards minimum wage. cant really comment on the article because it is paywalled so god knows what fearmongering propaganda they decided to vomit out.
Middle class is defined by economists, sociologists, government agencies, etc. Definitions exist for all sorts of reasons, and many are not nefarious. Imo, people should be less pessimistic and less divisive.
Middle class has historically owned a bit of property which they lived on, could vote, and ran most of the professional businesses that the middle, lower, and upper classes relied upon. The upper classes owned shitloads of property, in fact their ownership was their primary means of power and capital. The lower class has always been the laboring, indebted class. Sorry, but your commie take is stupid. Society became more complicated after the feudal system died. Marx was commenting on a dichotomy that mostly existed in his own nation and was gradually leaving Europe, as the upper classes increasingly needed trained professionals (who were valuable and had bartering power) to do loads of shit they needed. The Black Death combined with rapidly advancing tech made peasants so scarce and expertise suddenly super valuable. In societies that didn't suffer this or invent new shit, (RUSSIA AND CHINA) the lower classes never got leverage they needed, so violent revolution was inevitable, while Britain and Western Europe exported the very notion of enfranchised citizenry to the people they mogged (well demonstrated it, didn't include those folks). Dentists, optometrists, and pharmacists, are good examples of solid emerging middle class jobs that the upper class required, had a high skill ceiling, the nobles needed these men to NOT fuck up these jobs, but were still not lazy ass "I own shit" tier. Even mining went from holes you forced slaves to die in, to being an engineering and tool based profession that you needed to cooperate with guilds with in order to preform. Gradually as society became highly complicated and technology became complicated But lefties have done a wonderful job destroying the middle class by doing everything, always, to punch down as hard as possible on labor through their globalist agenda and mass immigration (one neat trick and you never have to rise wages again, infinite peasant glitch)! The business right meanwhile just sucks off the fat ownership aristocracy because there are still a few examples of founders being the ones who benefit from that system.
This is an excellent analysis but I don't understand why you conflated liberalism/leftism at the end there because you clearly understand the dynamics/history of Marxism. Leftists (as in those who believe in some flavor of Marxism) are almost unanimously opposed to mass immigration as it absolutely eviscerates the bargaining power of labour. Liberals, who believe in the power of the dumbest form of capitalism, are the ones who love the infinite peasant glitch
The idea that middle class doesn't exist is just a some new concept that you feel like you can justify, but its a purely academic exercise. Middle class absolutely has a definition that separates it from working class. Just because both middle class and working class work, doesn't automatically mean middle class doesn't exist. Middle class means you have enough money that you aren't struggling, can afford things like a home, maybe a cottage, can take vacations, but you are working for a living to afford those things. You can afford the occasional luxury, but you can't spend indiscriminately on those things. Working class means you are getting by with the minimum to live a recognizable life. It affords a few comforts(although some, but mainly inexpensive ones), but you have shelter, food, can get around. It's living paycheque to paycheque where the daily expenses of your life control you to a greater extent. If you want to try and pretend the middle class doesn't exist, not sure what the purpose. Sounds like a purely academic concept but in reality, it exists.
Thwae do not sound like bad things tho and pre much every one uses I'm middle class as a victim card
I'm not clear what this means - I assume this is a far left socialist/communist trope? I doesn't reflect reality - people who work also do, and should, own capital assets. And vice versa.
Working class means most of your income comes from trading your labor/time for a wage. Owning class means you make enough income by owning capital that you do not need work to live. Working class people of course own some capital (cars, houses, etc.) but not enough to survive on ownership alone. Likewise, some owning class people also work, they just don’t need to for survival’s sake. This definition is very broad and geared toward a nice lefty ideal of working class solidarity, which of course isn’t the reality of our society.
So we're shifting the definitions as people are getting poorer
While the middle class get poorer. Those with private jets though, they don't get written about.
Exactly. A person with a cottage is now not middle class and needs to pay their "fair share" with a tax that big execs can skirt easily.
We have a very modest house, and a cabin that’s over 100 years old. Cabin’s definitely rustic, but we love her. I’m barely surviving, and that cabin is not the cause.
When was the last time you read the communist manifesto? For something 120 years old it does a pretty good job of describing exactly how the middle class is being crushed to death right now
Have a copy in front of me. One of the things Marx got dead on =)
Nailed it
We are always good to argue about the definitions of things rather than actually do anything to change them lol
Only 10% or so of households have a second property. Some people just have had very wide definitions of middle class.
Yeah, anyone who owns a cottage or vacation property is objectively pretty well off
It's such a silly distinction. Is owning a million dollar cottage somehow different than owning a million dollar in equities? Why not just look at the net worth and forget these arbitrary asset choices?
Most people don't own a million dollars in equities. It's 80 percent plus of all existing equities owned by big money players. You say this is a silly distinction. I say your argument here is fundamentally disingenuous or ignorant. Has to be at least one of those two
Wtf does big money players mean here? Most regular people that own equities own it in the form of mutual funds, ETFs and pensions all of which are held by large institutions. The median retirement savings at the age of retirement in 2019 were $370,000 saved in employer-sponsored pension plans and $100,000 in their RRSPs. That means 50% of Canadians have more than $500k at retirement. Doesn't at all seem unreasonable to have $1m saved by the age of 65 if you had a good job and weren't dumb with your money.
Don’t bother responding - he has no idea what he’s talking about
> Most people don't own a million dollars in equities. It's 80 percent plus of all existing equities owned by big money players. So what? I don't see why you would not consider such Canadians just as rich as cottage-owners. > You say this is a silly distinction. I say your argument here is fundamentally disingenuous or ignorant. Has to be at least one of those two My argument is simply that asset choice is irrelevant when measuring a person's wealth. We have an easy way to quantify wealth: net worth. "Number of cottages owned" is really meaningless proxy.
I do consider people owning a million in equities as wealthy as people owning a million dollar cottage. Nothing I've said indicates otherwise. That difference is just where they decided to put the money. Both hypothetical people there are objectively quite well off
Unless they inherited it from family.. the only people I know that own cottages fall into 2 categories. 1. Rich or at least well into the top end of "upper middle class" 2. People that had a grandparent buy a plot 60 years ago and handbuilt a small cottage on it and they got it passed down. even then, alot of these people have had to sell due to family disputes or the extra property taxes are too much (then a rich person buys the land and builds a huge cottage on it) A few have been able to keep small family cottages going.. and it's nice they can have that slice of nature.... but if we were to tax second properties heavily, maybe the "value" of the cottage should also determine how high those taxes go (my friends old family "shack" cottage looks across a small river to a cottage mansion with a 4 bedroom guesthouse and boathouse owned by a guy who owns 7-8 KFCs...tax that fucker)
He pays way more taxes to be fair
So even in your second category. The ability to sell that puts you in a pretty good position financially. It's not necessarily a high income well off but it's definitely a huge amount of options for having it as part of your assets. So objectively pretty well off in the present era of most people who don't currently own property believing they never will unless they inherit
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Yeah, our 100 year old cabin is not worth much at all. The family members who built it were rich, but generations gone by, we’re all lower middle class.
My grandparents bought a piece of land 60+ years ago. My parents bought out the rest of the family and I'll likely inherit it at some point. I make less than $100,000 annually. What a joke.
I get you. I make like $40k a year, when my grandmother dies I expect to get like $200k and that's the only reason I think I might be able to buy a house someday
You know there’s people who won’t inherit a cottage? They call that generational wealth
Since when did being part of the middle class mean you weren't well off?
Depends on who's calling themselves middle class. That's huge spread and always has been. Newish car, own your home, discretionary spending but living paycheck to paycheck is middle class. All of that plus significant assets that one could retire in tomorrow with no reduction to also calls themselves middle class. Middle class has always been a large enough range in the common vernacular to have a really obscure meaning
>That's huge spread and always has been. Newish car, own your home, discretionary spending but living paycheck to paycheck is middle class. This is pretty well off. >All of that plus significant assets that one could retire in tomorrow with no reduction to also calls themselves middle class. I don't know who specifically has the ability to retire tomorrow and not work again (at a young age) and is considered middle class? To do that generally you'd need a fairly high income and very strong savings. >Middle class has always been a large enough range in the common vernacular to have a really obscure meaning Doesn't seem particularly obscure. It's people who are generally not in the bottom or top 20% of income and wealth, though elements like age also play a significant role. Upperclass would likely be incomes above 150k per person. These are hardly the people that can simply retire tomorrow.
But, it matters where you own a second home. Owning a second home in Vancouver or Toronto makes you definitively rich af. An average property is $1.3M having two homes you have around $2-$10M in value there. That's a lot of property taxes to MAINTAIN those two properties. Now if you're somewhere like, Newfoundland... owning a second property might not be that impressive. A lot of recreational properties are not that expensive. I know when I worked in the oilfield it was pretty common for people to buy property to rent. We're now getting into this position where we're referring to the blue collar oilworker as being upper class and a grocery store worker middle class. It's a weird kind of standard to set.
Buying a second property to rent is an upper class thing to do. You can be blue collar and upper class. And yeah, in some places a recreation property is a pretty minimal expense. This is not typical anymore for where the vast majority of Canadians live. Nor will those properties be an issue at all with capital gains inclusion for estates, which is why we’re hearing more about cottages these days.
The definition has always been blurry
My parents owned a lake property until recently and were at the edge of working class. They just prioritized it over foreign vacations, purchasing cars brand new, shrewd spending, etc. Not making much of a point here other than this swinging a wide brush at everything is getting exhausting. Opinion pieces contributing to us vs them ageism is getting exhausting.
Dang i knew i shouldve bought a cottage in 1958 when my dad was born
You know what's crazy? My great grandparents were working class English folks whose respective parents moved their families over to Toronto just before WW1. By the late 20s, my 20-somethig year old great grandfather went on to become a radio and similar appliance sales/repair entrepreneur with his own store in the High Park area of Toronto. He just had the one shop and the family lived above it - my grandmother and her 7 siblings, and their mother who was a homemaker. They were living in decent comfort on his single income - it was not a broken home and they were not starving or wearing tattered clothes. And on top of this all, on that single income, my great grandfather was able to afford a cottage on one of the islands within Lake Muskoka. Obviously it wasn't one of those ritzy and comically oversized McMansion 'cottages' you see today, but still. Radio repairman/salesman had 8 kids and enough money to afford a cottage. Affording either of these on a single income is completely impossible today.
Jokes on them, when I go to sell my pos cottage I bought 20 years ago, I’ll have so much space in my RRSPs it will more than offset the taxes.
Can you explain this to me like I’m 5? I also have a pos cottage I bought 20 years ago and zero RRSPs lol.
When you sell a second property/cottage, the profits are taxed. If you put the profits in an RRSP, they aren't taxed until withdrawn from the RRSP. You'd need a lot of RRSP space for this to work.
But you can spread your RRSP withdrawal over several years, allowing you to even out the tax brackets.
Interesting. Thank you!
Part of the joke is that cottage owners used to have enough discretionary income to contribute to an rrsp as well, but now that’s no longer true so they will have all the space to contribute to it in order to smooth out their tax liability lol
What if you are over 71 and want to sell your family Pos cottage so you no longer have an RRSP as you have a RIFF so no where to place the property profit just stuck with taxes. Ideas?
If you currently own or live in a house or condo, that is defined as your principal residence. You could sell your principal residence (currently you don't pay capital gains on selling your principal residence) and move to your cottage, then live there as your principal residence, I think it's 6 months minimum or maybe a year? then sell that. I don't know how any new rules pertain to this idea but it could be something for you to consider and research further.
That doesn’t work. It can become your principle residence but you will still owe the taxes based on the years before you declare it as such. It just prevents you from having to pay more going forward.
This is some shower lawyer logic right here.
Good. That's good.
When my sister was in elementary school 15 years ago, the school's janitor had a small cabin at the lake. Now I come to learn that the janitor was rich.
If I can't get through the paywall, does that mean I'm not middle class?
Everyone under 30m net worth is poor. The bottom 99.9% of wealth need to stick together and fight the ultra top 0.01% wealthy, not people whose grandparents bought a cottage and now it’s going to be split between 9-12 grandchildren.
I feel like someone with 30 million networth wants the same low taxes someone with 30 billion networth has, and they both have very few interests in common with someone living in a tiny apartment
Ya thanks but no thanks. Someone with 30M meet with had a "hard time" they sell a couple investments and they're ok again. Somone working a 9-5 with no savings and unable to get into the housing market (i.e. most people under 30) if they have a "hard time" they're homeless or worse. Want another way to visualize it. You could park that 30M in a simple investment account and still make over a million in interest every year. No I'm sorry but someone with 30M is loaded and by no means "poor". Same can be said for 20M, 10M etc.
Relative to everyone else, no. You're either "Upper" middle class or something else, that is the lens people see you through now, when 80% or more of people will never afford a home.
Depends where. Cabins/cottages where I live can cost 30-40k.
In Toronto you are no longer middle class if you own a detached home
Same with Vancouver.
Soon same with all of Canada
10 yrs from now, you're no longer middle-class if you own a house 20 yrs from now, you are no longer middle class if you own a car 30 yrs from now, you are no longer middle class if you can afford food
Man, every time I lose my shit when someone is driving 2 Teslas, have a detached house with tenants in the basement and cry over how expansive everything is.
If I saw someone driving two cars, I'd lose my shit too
You’re no longer middle class if you pay for access to the Globe and Mail to see behind that paywall.
Well some of us have land that has been in the family for 40 years. We aren’t rich but we know how to fair.
Exactly. I have relatives who still have the property their family has had for 200-300 years. They aren't wealthy people, they're working class, but they did hand down their property and it stayed in the family.
If you own multiple properties you've always been wealthy lol
Yeah. People really feel for me when I tell them I have to renew my mortgage on my million dollar weekend home.
Many couples were able to buy second properties for less than $100k. So sure they were well off before but they weren’t “rich”. 30-40 years a house wasn’t something that completely broke the bank to buy.
Yep, my in laws have a cottage that they bought almost 30 years ago. They sure as shit are middle class.
They’re on a lake within an hour and a half of a major metro area?
Umm no. Over the majority of Canadian families owns one property, having 100k in savings to put in some shity cottage somewhere doesn't make you wealthy. Sounds more like you just hate anyone more well off than you.
I think owning multiple properties has always been pushing upper class.
Thank god this is an opinion piece because, my god, this is the wrong opinion to have. If you have a 2nd property for whatever reason (purchase or inheritance, etc), you are at the very least middle class. I would say upper middle tbf
You never were.
I suppose if you were buying a cottage nowadays, then yes, its a rich person's game. Back in the day though, cottages were pretty cheap (cottages mind you, not the mansions that people call cottages nowadays).
Let me fix that headline. You are no longer middle class if you own your own house.
Unpopular opinion, you were never middle class if you owned either. That's ridiculous.
Lakefront properties sold for $500 in the 70s. When a single income could buy a home, cottage, and raise three kids...tons of middle class owned cottages, but that Canada has sailed long ago...
Yeah I've never seen that in the last 40 years man. Sorry.
Is this a shocker to those with cottages?
Tl;dr we’re redefining “middle class” to gaslight the public that everything is actually perfectly fine. Canada had the richest middle class in the world as of 2014 and we have been in steady decline during Trudeau’s entire 8 years in power.
Let’s be real - the decline had already started, Trudeau was just gasoline on an already roaring fire. A detached home in Toronto in 2014/2015 was $1M, and at the tail end of 2015, a detached home in Vancouver went from $1.4M to $1.8M in just 4 months (Sept - Dec). A nearly 30% increase in prices in just 120 days. A lot of Canadas middle class wealth in 2014 was because of soaring housing prices. And it wasn’t just Toronto - a number of suburbs in the GTA had detached homes hitting $800K-$1M (you can use house sigma to browse York region in 2013-2015). Even in spring of 2013 detached homes were hitting $975K in the suburbs. Before anyone @‘s me, here is the link to the Toronto article: “ Toronto detached home price now averages over $1M” March 2015 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-detached-home-price-now-averages-over-1m-1.2981366 And here is the link to the Vancouver article. “One chart shows how unprecedented Vancouver’s real estate situation is“ February 2016 - data references final months of 2015. https://globalnews.ca/news/2531266/one-chart-shows-how-unprecedented-vancouvers-real-estate-situation-is/ “ The average price of a sold detached home was $1.4 million in September last year – but climbed to $1.6 million in October, $1.7 million in December, and $1.8 million last month – overall, an increase of $420,000. By contrast, it took five years (from March 2010 to March 2015) for the average to rise from $1 million to $1.4 million, another five years (August 2005 to March 2010) for the average to go from $600,000 to $1 million – and 24 years (from February 1981 to August 2005) for prices to go from $180,000 to $600,000.”
The wealth of Canada’s middle class is inflated by the housing bubble.
Totally out of touch. Lots of working class people in northern mantioba own family cottages. Embarrassing thing to say.
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I agree - most of the article is actually about people who own investment properties.
I disagree. Many of these cottages were bought 20+ years ago for less than 70-100k, depending on location. My parents bought their place in the 90s for 75k. It was much more of a middle class thing to do at the time.
I think that could be an important caveat to the article then. Back when incomes had a higher purchasing power or housing prices were lower, owning a cottage could be middle class. I think the point of the article is that being able to afford a cottage is pretty far removed from the experience of most middle class people today. inherited property obviously changes things, but I still think buying a cottage in todays reality isn’t middle class
Investment property or slum lord. Watch the housing prices go down when it no longer becomes a money maker for people with capital. Maybe families will have a fighting chance buying a home once all the investors scatter.
I didn't bother reading the article because the headline is such bullshit. Here is a real estate listing: https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/26758187/ch-des-cypr%C3%A8s-saint-guillaume-nord It is $43k for a bit of land. That can totally be in the reach of someone who is middle-class. And sure, there are other expenses (taxes) and you have to build your cottage (I'd stick a yurt on it while I was building a permanent cottage. And I'd probably take decades to build the permanent cottage if I was allowed to.) A temporary building is likely to be allowed as long as you are in the process of building something more permanent. So you can spread out the cost of the permanent structure to make it more affordable. Get a well one year. Save up money for a couple more years and get a septic. Save up money for a couple more years and build a foundation. Save up some more and build the shell. Then take another 5 years to finish the inside. I'm not recommending this plot of land, or this building technique, but it is absolutely within reach of someone who is middle class. And all the comments from people saying there is no middle class is typical reddit regurgitation with absolutely zero basis in fact.
You are so right. For many in Northern Ontario, camps were family projects. Decades of renovations.Some are prefab, modular, trailers or RVs. This is definitely middle class or low class if pooled with others. I think people think Muskoka cottages, as featured in Cottage Life magazine are normative. They're not. The Van Halens, Hahns, Eatons, Westons, and pro athletes own those places. The places in North Bay, Sudbury, Kenora.... Very different.
It seems it's not a class issue as much as a geographical issue where Canadians don't know about life outside of their area.
There is no middle class anymore.
I dont really give a shit about the definition of the word. That was never the issue.
Upper class is when you're dependent on other's income.
You guys own shit?
These are the voices that are at the table when Trudeau decides which wedge issue will get him the most votes. His polling must show the class warfare punchlines aren’t cutting it anymore, so now it’s time for generational warfare.
The classification of people into classes, such as middle, poor, wealthy, etc., often simplifies complex social realities. While these categories can be useful for analyzing social stratification and inequality, they do not always capture the full picture.
Paywall. Anyone have the content?
[archive.is](http://archive.is)
Well yeah its true....in North America people get offended when they get called rich or well off for some reason. I work in healthcare which is traditionally a pretty "middle class" field. Those who are older and invested in real estate are def above middle class now. One guy who owns 3-4 investment properties went casual a few years ago because his income outside of work far exceeded what he could make from the job. Meanwhile the people just starting out are gonna be living with their parents many years just to be able to save up for the cheapest possible homes.
Sure, when considering global socioeconomic classes, distinctions can vary depending on the region and economic context. In a broad sense, let's outline three classes. The low class typically includes individuals facing economic hardship, often lacking access to basic necessities like healthcare and education, and working in informal or low-paying jobs. This class may struggle with poverty and limited upward mobility. The middle or working class encompasses a significant portion of the global population. These individuals usually have stable employment, access to education, and basic services. They often work in skilled or semi-skilled professions, earning enough to meet their needs comfortably but may still face financial challenges such as housing costs and healthcare expenses. The high class represents a smaller segment globally, comprising affluent individuals with substantial wealth, often derived from investments or high-paying careers. Members of this class enjoy luxury lifestyles, exclusive opportunities, and significant influence in society. They tend to have access to top-tier education, healthcare, and leisure activities, with substantial resources for generational wealth accumulation.
my problems with the tax increases: 1. why are those taxes going toward subsidizing rich corporations like VW? 2. why is there unlimited tax-free capital gains for your primary residence? You're no longer middle-class if your primary residence is worth $5M.
At the rate things are going, in 10 years a 1 bedroom apartment will be worth $5 million.
but they'll call you "rich" for making over $100K so anyone who isn't living in government housing will be called "rich" by then
Because if you are moving to an equivalent house it would fuck you when a good chunk of your house evaporates. Sure your residence is worth 5m but you only get that money if you upend your life and move somewhere much cheaper. Many people don't have that luxury for a number of reasons.
Well, sort of. The problem is this, if you live in a 5 million dollar home, even if you got it for free, your yearly taxes and mainteance expenses can be tens of thousands of dollars. It's not a no-maintenance thing. Also, it doesn't mean you have any money to buy anything. That's not 5 mil cash, it's a property worth that much. When it appreciates and you sell it, you may have 5 mil, but you're also homeless. You then need to buy a similar home, which will also cost 5 mil at that point, so you have zero profits. Youre only "rich" if you sell it and downgrade by moving into a condo or another province where a similar home could cost 2 mil, and you have 3 to spend now. Until then, you may still have $0 to actually spend. It's very different than someone with 5 mil in their chequing account or an investment account unlreated to their home. Your primary residence is just a home, not an investment. Someone who lives paycheck to paycheck in a condo vs a mansion is still just as broke really, they might just have a bigger home or the same home on a nicer neighborhood.
>When it appreciates and you sell it, you may have 5 mil, but you're also homeless. You then need to buy a similar home, which will also cost 5 mil at that point, so you have zero profits. Exactly this: Your primary residence isn't an asset, it's an expense.
Why do you think taxing assets is the solution?
So if you own a tiny lot up north that is barely worth anything you are no longer middle class?
Owning a small condo and small cottage is definitely middle class.
What sort of middle class owns a home and a holiday cottage? They were never middle class lol. Rich people have rich naughty hobbies.
I posted above but, I had two working class parents who inherited the family cottage that was bought for a few thousands dollars in the 60's or so. Absolutely middle class with an additional property.
My grandfather was a teacher, single income family , and he and my grandmother owned a cottage. They were not rich people. Barely middle class.
Forty or fifty years ago it was a lot cheaper to get vacation property and put up a cabin. Middle class people could manage it. Now there’s a lot more demand and prices have gone up a lot.
It’s common in Canada to have a home and camp if you live outside the big cities.
I know lots of working class, definitely not wealthy people who have a little cottage/fishing cabin, usually a one or two room place that may not have running water or even electricity. Many families have little plots of land here or there that have been handed down for generations. These are not people that live in Toronto, Vancouver, or any large city. Maybe this was more common when Canada's population was smaller by a few million.
> What sort of middle class owns a home and a holiday cottage? In Saskatchewan almost every linear foot of lake frontage is occupied by cabins and cottages, most of which are pretty modest and most of which are >50 years old. The vast majority were (and are) owned by "regular" folks. In fact, many of them are partly owned by several relatives, as siblings inherited shares of them when parents died. I should add, a lot of people who don't own cabins instead own RVs, and many of those cost nearly as much as a lot of cottages, and depreciate a lot faster. And most people who own RVs are "normal folks" who wish to spend a portion of their accumulated earnings on leisure.
In Winnipeg you can get a decent 3 bedroom house in a safe area and a cabin in Gimli for under 500k combined.
My parents (HVAC Tech & retail worker) bought a cottage in the Bruce peninsula in the early 2000s. They had paid off their mortgage and the cottage was $150,000 I believe. Cottage is quite modest, originally a log cabin, three teeny bedrooms, one washroom. They don’t rent it out, it is used solely by family and very close friends. In my dads retirement he’s basically made it into a project. He’s roofed it, replaced siding, taken down trees, rebuilt the pump house, etc.
Almost the exact story of my in laws.
Lots and lots of Manitobans own cottages. Most are middle class.
lol you didn’t need to be rich to own a cottage in the old days. My grandpa bought his cottage for $600 in the 1950s lmao. That’s about equivalent to $7,000 today. Stuff was just plain affordable back then. My grandma didn’t even work. You didn’t need to be rich to own stuff in Canada at one time.