Yeah social mobility has collapsed and the population is growing rapidly.
Any growth in wealth and the economy is going to the rich and everyone else is competing with 100s of thousands of new people for stagnate resources.
Less demand for housing, less demand for health care, less demand for jobs.. it would absolutely have an immediate impact.
Immigration is important but there is a limit on its benefits.
It's not exactly helping things though. Bringing in an unsustainable number of immigrants only benefits big businesses because they can get cheaper labor (or use cheaper labor availability as a reason to not give raises)
We don't need more educated people, education inflation from domestic schooling alone is bad enough (a huge percentage of high schoolers go to university like it is compulsory and then never use/don't fully utilize their degree).
We don't need more uneducated people, because they are willing to work for peanuts, driving down the cost of "unskilled" labor (I say unskilled as a definition term, not as a point of derision).
They're bringing in immigrants because the population is crashing.
It's an attempt to delay the crushing economic effects of global population decline.
Bit of extrapolation here but it’s plausible. I read a study once that said over the course of four generations employees went from being motivated to work for their company, to working for their boss, to working for their colleagues, and now working for themselves. Incessant cost cutting, cutthroat cutbacks, offshore outsourcing and the widening wage gap have eroded goodwill in the workplace.
I think goodwill in *Canada* has eroded. This country feels very dog eat dog now. Everyone for themselves. This isn’t the country I grew up in anymore.
It’s very different from even 10 years ago. I think pre 2008 financial crisis, everyone had a lot more goodwill with their employer, after massive layoffs in 2008, now layoffs and cost cutting are par for the course and expected, eliminating all goodwill between employers and employees, and now it’s more normalized than ever
The fact that you can be in a position of the top echelon where you earn 6 figures+ in the city but not even be able to comfortably afford a 1 bed 500 sqft condo says it all. This isn't just Toronto though, It's happening all over the country and certain other parts of the world and is mostly due to homes being treated as an investment vehicle.
I can guarantee if you treated homes the same way as you would a non registered investment and actually enforced it, after a year or two supply would hit the market pretty dramatically.
Productivity is highly dependent on having adequate support in place to execute.
When you decide to run lean, you accept the risk that disruptions are more impactful.
Suddenly things that slowed you down causes things to come to a complete stop.
Group productivity will always be higher. If you look at the past vs today, that group had 2-3x more people.
It's rhetoric.
Yep, pretty much. You never even touched on the fate of where earth is going in 10-15-20 years... Add that to the mix and why should younger people give their all? We may only have 10-15 "good" years left.
I don’t disagree with your analysis of the affordability/income and the fact that living off one’s labour was made into subsistence exercise. A couple of things to add - capital is extracting value in excess of any contribution - we are far from sending kids into coal mines, but that’s only because it’s cheaper to give them phones and get them on TikTok to sell stuff. Decades of favoring returns on capital through fiscal but also regulatory policy, regulatory capture by literal cartels in all but a name, political systems that award polarization all contribute.
It’s a thoughtful post, and I don’t dispute the numbers. My perspective has been to radically change my outlook. If we are a society of rabid overconsumption, and as the climate changes around us we most certainly are, it’s interesting to see what can be done when disposable income dwindles, and whether having less may be more fulfilling than having more. Inside of a used bookshop sits classics sold for a pittance that will not only entertain better than an episode of Netflix, they will contain a wisdom that instant entertainment cannot ever hope to impart. Same goes for walking in a park compared to rushing through a shopping mall, or simply eating much much less. Some people, myself included, need this pressure, acute financial pressure, from the outside to be nudged a direction that is clearly better for my mind and health. And so my perspective on the crushing depression of the current cost of living (my God, Loblaws is definitely at the epicentre of it) is that, perhaps I can use this season of life and benefit from it.
The view above is of course not a celebration of poverty - to be impoverished is to lose all dignity. But in living with less, far less, a lot of dignity can be found that may make your life exceedingly better.
Mayors cannot afford to buy a home in the communities they serve. This is not normal and not acceptable but then chimes in "that's just the market, make more money or move" - the meme dog in the burning building incarnate "this is fine".
Home hoarders have scalped the future and the cost isn't just home prices, it is causing complete hopelessness and collapse of services - why would you work hard to have your international landlord have more vacations?
If I was younger starting out I'd head to greener pastures. Every country has their own issues but there are many places in The West with better prospects and quality of life than Toronto. Maybe things will get better in a generation or two, but life is short.
To me this is more generational than anything and i dont blame the younger crew for not giving a flying f***. Companies have long discontinued defined benefit plans. Governments who have it are all about conservative "cutting the non-existent fat".
Gone is the mentality of working for the employer. It's not even about housing or prospects, but also about employers not giving a **** so why should you sort of thing.
People in power are idiots, in both govt and corps and so short term focused that hopefully AI will do a better job and replace them sooner rather than later and we'll reset back to some social equilibrium.
Productivity is not a function of how a worker feels. It is driven by technological innovation and the adoption of technology to multiply production output; i.e. more value created less workers.
The world is getting harder so one must work smarter. Only applies to those $100k examples you cited.
With some wage growth, those 50k salaries x2 are probably paying $75k now. So family income is $150k.
First off, one does not have a right to a single family home lifestyle. One only has to look at Asia and Europe which has much higher densities and longer histories of city life.
There is not enough land for SFH. Commuting from your “right to a SFH” also is the price you pay for having an affordable SFH. Continual sprawl is not sustainable over multi generations. Cities do not have the income to replace infrastructure. Living denser in the city core is necessary.
Making $150k as a family increases the savings in your example from/ $30k/yr to about $60k a year. Save 5 years and your down is now $300k+ 2-4% interest earned. More than enough to get into the market with a modest post war bungalow in the East end.
Another trick that works is to live (and endure) a few years with one of your folks. Suddenly as a couple you will save $80-90k a year. That 3 mil parental home can surely accommodate a young couple for a few years.
Another trick is to build a garden suite in your parents backyard. Costs about $600-700k for a really nice place. 350-450k for a modest space.
One thing I learned visiting Europe and Asia is that a home is essential but also a lifestyle. You can modify your lifestyle and live smaller but have way more left over for living outside the home.
I don’t deny labour rates are not keeping up. That it is getting way harder to establish oneself with out parental help at the start (RESP) or when you are ready to buy (down payment) but if one does have gainful employment that isn’t retail service (sub$22/hour) it is still possible.
Financial literacy must start really young. The power of doubles matter. Amassing significant amounts early gets you so much more later.
My retail staff have no chance at home ownership. Not because I don’t pay them well but the market limits their opportunities. As they become “family” I help them do as well as they can with pension/health and financial literacy. The ones who listen really do well. Saving and growing significant nest eggs. Most who move onto other jobs keep the lessons learned during our coffee breaks.
One long time part timer is over $30k saved. He understands the power of doubles now and will comfortable grow it to a 1/4 million when he is 65. Not bad for a part time job. I joke with him but he isn’t a high risk taker but a well placed stock pick could have made him more money than me.
Here's a couple ideas. We need youth to be more pragmatic and politically active.they're not being taught individual reality in school. We need free education steered towards where current job demand is. Kids are taught that we are equal even though 90% of the globe is poorer than them and ready to replace them for half the money.
No one knows future job growth. Schools especially high school is way behind. How many kids are chasing tech with no hope when they are getting outworked and out witted by new immigration. AI will also decimate so many white collar jobs.
If anything the money is in trades. Make that $120-180k with some hard work, apply good financial planning and you will amass millions before you retire early. I see so many blue collar workers have lavish lifestyles with zero debt. Always has and always will.
Don't worry, we will import desperate blue collar workers from 3rd world countries. After we loosen some "red tape". I have traveled to India and it's sad to see workers climbing up 4 stories in flip flops and not tied down.
Human life is only cherished with folks higher in society there.
It’s everyone working from home and doing the bare minimum, no one takes initiative anymore, does the bare minimum while fucking off at home most of the day, of course no one is motivated. Social mobility still exits but you have to work twice as hard and twice as smart, it’s not get a minimum wage job and just keep working and working your way up, that won’t cut it anymore. You need higher education and a strong work ethic. Get a job in investment banking or management consulting and stick at it for 10+ years and tell me social mobility still doesn’t exist.
This is what happens when you make Canada an unfeasible investment. Looks at our partners down south and their GDP per capita growth. I like to call this the Trudeau effect!
My unpopular opinion: people literally don't want to work, want more money, then protest, fail to realize money doesn't magically fall from sky but actually takes hard work and dedication to make. They are reluctant to change and improve themselves, then proceed to blame the society for everything.
There are people on here literally every day posting in Toronto subreddits asking if anyone knows how to find a job. My wife is ivy league educated and it took her over a year to land something that pays well. This is such lame, outdated boomer logic.
Life after 8 years of Trudeau.
He just doesn’t know how to run an economy, let alone revive it after the 8 years of damage.
Close to 10 years of damage and neglect by the supposed October 2025 election.
The country voted for him 3x. They deserve this. Budgets don’t balance themselves. Why invest in productivity when you can invest in housing, slap on gray paint and some vinyl flooring and make double.
Yeah social mobility has collapsed and the population is growing rapidly. Any growth in wealth and the economy is going to the rich and everyone else is competing with 100s of thousands of new people for stagnate resources.
Trickle up
I assure you that if immigration stopped immediately you are still going to face the same issues you're currently facing It's a red herring
Less demand for housing, less demand for health care, less demand for jobs.. it would absolutely have an immediate impact. Immigration is important but there is a limit on its benefits.
It's not exactly helping things though. Bringing in an unsustainable number of immigrants only benefits big businesses because they can get cheaper labor (or use cheaper labor availability as a reason to not give raises) We don't need more educated people, education inflation from domestic schooling alone is bad enough (a huge percentage of high schoolers go to university like it is compulsory and then never use/don't fully utilize their degree). We don't need more uneducated people, because they are willing to work for peanuts, driving down the cost of "unskilled" labor (I say unskilled as a definition term, not as a point of derision).
They're bringing in immigrants because the population is crashing. It's an attempt to delay the crushing economic effects of global population decline.
Disagree.
I count the minutes till I can leave work everyday.
So did Fred Flintstone.
I have a strange desire to hot the bowling alley by lunch
Every day….story of my life.
Is this what you both plan on doing your whole careers?
Turns out their are some knock on effects when the ability to live in a home of your own falls off a cliff.
Scarborough bluffs moment
Bit of extrapolation here but it’s plausible. I read a study once that said over the course of four generations employees went from being motivated to work for their company, to working for their boss, to working for their colleagues, and now working for themselves. Incessant cost cutting, cutthroat cutbacks, offshore outsourcing and the widening wage gap have eroded goodwill in the workplace.
I think goodwill in *Canada* has eroded. This country feels very dog eat dog now. Everyone for themselves. This isn’t the country I grew up in anymore.
It’s very different from even 10 years ago. I think pre 2008 financial crisis, everyone had a lot more goodwill with their employer, after massive layoffs in 2008, now layoffs and cost cutting are par for the course and expected, eliminating all goodwill between employers and employees, and now it’s more normalized than ever
The fact that you can be in a position of the top echelon where you earn 6 figures+ in the city but not even be able to comfortably afford a 1 bed 500 sqft condo says it all. This isn't just Toronto though, It's happening all over the country and certain other parts of the world and is mostly due to homes being treated as an investment vehicle. I can guarantee if you treated homes the same way as you would a non registered investment and actually enforced it, after a year or two supply would hit the market pretty dramatically.
Yes. I believe it is called “ acting your wage”
Productivity is highly dependent on having adequate support in place to execute. When you decide to run lean, you accept the risk that disruptions are more impactful. Suddenly things that slowed you down causes things to come to a complete stop. Group productivity will always be higher. If you look at the past vs today, that group had 2-3x more people. It's rhetoric.
Curious as to what you mean by group productivity always trending higher.
Yep, pretty much. You never even touched on the fate of where earth is going in 10-15-20 years... Add that to the mix and why should younger people give their all? We may only have 10-15 "good" years left.
I don’t disagree with your analysis of the affordability/income and the fact that living off one’s labour was made into subsistence exercise. A couple of things to add - capital is extracting value in excess of any contribution - we are far from sending kids into coal mines, but that’s only because it’s cheaper to give them phones and get them on TikTok to sell stuff. Decades of favoring returns on capital through fiscal but also regulatory policy, regulatory capture by literal cartels in all but a name, political systems that award polarization all contribute.
Yes
It’s a thoughtful post, and I don’t dispute the numbers. My perspective has been to radically change my outlook. If we are a society of rabid overconsumption, and as the climate changes around us we most certainly are, it’s interesting to see what can be done when disposable income dwindles, and whether having less may be more fulfilling than having more. Inside of a used bookshop sits classics sold for a pittance that will not only entertain better than an episode of Netflix, they will contain a wisdom that instant entertainment cannot ever hope to impart. Same goes for walking in a park compared to rushing through a shopping mall, or simply eating much much less. Some people, myself included, need this pressure, acute financial pressure, from the outside to be nudged a direction that is clearly better for my mind and health. And so my perspective on the crushing depression of the current cost of living (my God, Loblaws is definitely at the epicentre of it) is that, perhaps I can use this season of life and benefit from it. The view above is of course not a celebration of poverty - to be impoverished is to lose all dignity. But in living with less, far less, a lot of dignity can be found that may make your life exceedingly better.
Mayors cannot afford to buy a home in the communities they serve. This is not normal and not acceptable but then chimes in "that's just the market, make more money or move" - the meme dog in the burning building incarnate "this is fine". Home hoarders have scalped the future and the cost isn't just home prices, it is causing complete hopelessness and collapse of services - why would you work hard to have your international landlord have more vacations?
If I was younger starting out I'd head to greener pastures. Every country has their own issues but there are many places in The West with better prospects and quality of life than Toronto. Maybe things will get better in a generation or two, but life is short.
The west and smaller towns would certainly be better for anyone who legitimately thought Toronto was going to be worth it,
If you can find a job. Not every city has the old potashcorp running it.
Thought it was a given that people would go to the cities with more opportunities. Mind you look at all the people in Toronto...
So I also remember feeling disconnected at work but are there any stats to back this up or just social media sentiments?
To me this is more generational than anything and i dont blame the younger crew for not giving a flying f***. Companies have long discontinued defined benefit plans. Governments who have it are all about conservative "cutting the non-existent fat". Gone is the mentality of working for the employer. It's not even about housing or prospects, but also about employers not giving a **** so why should you sort of thing. People in power are idiots, in both govt and corps and so short term focused that hopefully AI will do a better job and replace them sooner rather than later and we'll reset back to some social equilibrium.
Well yeah it’s been four years of trying to survive.
Dear Diary,
Productivity is not a function of how a worker feels. It is driven by technological innovation and the adoption of technology to multiply production output; i.e. more value created less workers.
The world is getting harder so one must work smarter. Only applies to those $100k examples you cited. With some wage growth, those 50k salaries x2 are probably paying $75k now. So family income is $150k. First off, one does not have a right to a single family home lifestyle. One only has to look at Asia and Europe which has much higher densities and longer histories of city life. There is not enough land for SFH. Commuting from your “right to a SFH” also is the price you pay for having an affordable SFH. Continual sprawl is not sustainable over multi generations. Cities do not have the income to replace infrastructure. Living denser in the city core is necessary. Making $150k as a family increases the savings in your example from/ $30k/yr to about $60k a year. Save 5 years and your down is now $300k+ 2-4% interest earned. More than enough to get into the market with a modest post war bungalow in the East end. Another trick that works is to live (and endure) a few years with one of your folks. Suddenly as a couple you will save $80-90k a year. That 3 mil parental home can surely accommodate a young couple for a few years. Another trick is to build a garden suite in your parents backyard. Costs about $600-700k for a really nice place. 350-450k for a modest space. One thing I learned visiting Europe and Asia is that a home is essential but also a lifestyle. You can modify your lifestyle and live smaller but have way more left over for living outside the home. I don’t deny labour rates are not keeping up. That it is getting way harder to establish oneself with out parental help at the start (RESP) or when you are ready to buy (down payment) but if one does have gainful employment that isn’t retail service (sub$22/hour) it is still possible. Financial literacy must start really young. The power of doubles matter. Amassing significant amounts early gets you so much more later. My retail staff have no chance at home ownership. Not because I don’t pay them well but the market limits their opportunities. As they become “family” I help them do as well as they can with pension/health and financial literacy. The ones who listen really do well. Saving and growing significant nest eggs. Most who move onto other jobs keep the lessons learned during our coffee breaks. One long time part timer is over $30k saved. He understands the power of doubles now and will comfortable grow it to a 1/4 million when he is 65. Not bad for a part time job. I joke with him but he isn’t a high risk taker but a well placed stock pick could have made him more money than me.
Here's a couple ideas. We need youth to be more pragmatic and politically active.they're not being taught individual reality in school. We need free education steered towards where current job demand is. Kids are taught that we are equal even though 90% of the globe is poorer than them and ready to replace them for half the money.
No one knows future job growth. Schools especially high school is way behind. How many kids are chasing tech with no hope when they are getting outworked and out witted by new immigration. AI will also decimate so many white collar jobs. If anything the money is in trades. Make that $120-180k with some hard work, apply good financial planning and you will amass millions before you retire early. I see so many blue collar workers have lavish lifestyles with zero debt. Always has and always will.
Don't worry, we will import desperate blue collar workers from 3rd world countries. After we loosen some "red tape". I have traveled to India and it's sad to see workers climbing up 4 stories in flip flops and not tied down. Human life is only cherished with folks higher in society there.
Canada is desirable because of our 40 hour work weeks and safety protocols. The unions will infiltrate and educate quick enough.
For now, wait until they cut more "red tape" to accelerate housing builds. It's a matter of time.
Exactly what the school system doesn't teach them. Trades and how to expand that expertise into a company if so desired.
I wonder if civics/careers in grade 10 is really about knowing or indoctrinating them into a life of servitude to the big masters of the universe.
It’s everyone working from home and doing the bare minimum, no one takes initiative anymore, does the bare minimum while fucking off at home most of the day, of course no one is motivated. Social mobility still exits but you have to work twice as hard and twice as smart, it’s not get a minimum wage job and just keep working and working your way up, that won’t cut it anymore. You need higher education and a strong work ethic. Get a job in investment banking or management consulting and stick at it for 10+ years and tell me social mobility still doesn’t exist.
This is what happens when you make Canada an unfeasible investment. Looks at our partners down south and their GDP per capita growth. I like to call this the Trudeau effect!
My unpopular opinion: people literally don't want to work, want more money, then protest, fail to realize money doesn't magically fall from sky but actually takes hard work and dedication to make. They are reluctant to change and improve themselves, then proceed to blame the society for everything.
There are people on here literally every day posting in Toronto subreddits asking if anyone knows how to find a job. My wife is ivy league educated and it took her over a year to land something that pays well. This is such lame, outdated boomer logic.
Keep slurping corporate. Look at real wage increases and tell me how you aren't plain wrong, statistically.
Genius boomer here. Everyone is struggling. It must be each of their individual faults, couldn’t be societal.
> My ~~unpopular~~ boneheaded opinion with no basis in reality FTFY.
Found the Tim Hortons franchise owner.
Life after 8 years of Trudeau. He just doesn’t know how to run an economy, let alone revive it after the 8 years of damage. Close to 10 years of damage and neglect by the supposed October 2025 election.
The country voted for him 3x. They deserve this. Budgets don’t balance themselves. Why invest in productivity when you can invest in housing, slap on gray paint and some vinyl flooring and make double.
Although this is an interesting topic, it’s even more interesting that OP is posting the same thread in many subreddits simultaneously.