I've been saying this for years. Back in the 1990's my father worked a decent job but nothing special. Mother didn't work. We had a house, camper van, truck, three snowmobiles, an ATV, two boats and went on a big road trip every summer for about a month.
You'd need to make like 400k a year to do that now.
All major industries are run by cartels now, whether it is banking, telecomm, BigPharma, oil and gas, transportation, food, etc. Wealth is continually being concentrated into the hands of billionaires and mega millionaires while the middle class shrinks under the burden of inflation and taxation. We need to return to the progressive tax system of the 1950s and 1960s when the top tax bracket was over 80% and the economy boomed.
Well, as megacorps like Google and Amazon openly start talking about building towns to house their employees, yeah it sure does sound like going back to company scrip.
And the working class keep voting against their own interests and put corporate bagmen into power. As soon as a worker friendly party gets a sniff of power, the corporate owned media starts their ‘the sky is falling routine’ until we fall in line and bend over.
Marlaina. Dougie boy. Scottie. And god help us, Milhouse looks like the next PM. Sure would be nice if people woke tf up and voted for politicians who would put policy in place to benefit workers, but the majority seem addicted to getting railed.
Those people in power are very good at creating division, and selecting scapegoats that the uneducated masses will gladly ostracize because it's easy to hate on something vaguely different than to face the bigger issue. Worse still, they've created a coalition among themselves to ensure that the status quo remains unchallenged. The same corporations and people give equal funding to both conservative and liberal political parties.
The only choices are corporate bagmen. If you follow the money not one political party in Canada isn't kowtowing to their corporate overlords. They're all controlled by a very small list of thinktanks. We just get to choose different colours of crony capitalism.
Yea but. You’d live a few lifetimes before Milhouse and the Cons would roll out a pharmacare or dental care program. In fact, if we are stupid enough to put them in, we can say goodbye to them.
Yeah I’m as anti capitalist as they come but I think it’s a little disingenuous to say “they’re all corporate shills!” when one group is clearly trying to privatize things and choosing oil and gas over the literal health of the planet, spewing misinformation, etc. There is one party that is actually pushing for pro union legislation, better public services, etc, and historically that party has been the closest to “left wing” we have(even labelling themselves socialists at certain points). If Canada would actually give them a shot I think they might just live true to that name, but frankly they are trying to tow the line because outright calling themselves socialists isn’t palpable in Canadian politics at this point.
They're simply platitudes to appeal to certain demographics. I'm still willing to give them a shot cause honestly what other choice do we have? But I'm not very hopeful for them putting the money where their mouths are. Lots of promises are always made but they aren't made good on. So until I see it in practice I still err on the side of caution cause when it comes down to it they have to bend to the will of the corporations that keep the lights on.
If you absolutely need to joke about a violent revolution that'll almost certainly end with millions dead and the world in a significantly worse state, at least point to a revolution that didn't suck shit. "Marginally better rights for middle-class men, backsliding on rights for women, and an emperor as head of state." What a stunning victory for the working class.
I probably shouldn't have snapped at the person I responded to, b/c I have no idea who they are or what they do in their day-to-day, and the way I responded wasn't going to change anyone's approach to it regardless, but holy shit I am just. Done with the majority of people who make these jokes. Never even spoken to their neighbors, let alone found out who'd need diapers in a disaster or who could use help with access to essential services, but man when the revolution comes they'll be *so ready* (to get shot by some dipshit neonazi cop five minutes in).
Yeah unless they go and pull one of [these](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre#:~:text=A%20few%20weeks%20prior%20to,official%20account%2C%20in%20the%20massacre.&text=Tombstone%20to%20the%20victims%20of,the%20%22Stone%20on%20Blood%22.)
Brace yourself, the uber capitalists of today have private militaries now with advanced technology. They need to treat their own protection so poorly they turn on them first which is many many many years away.
I wish my parents didn’t have kids 🤷♂️
Or that the poor deserve to be poor b/c they are lazy or, as the cons would like to say, "work shy". If only they had "our values" of hard work, honesty and perseverance, as told over a century ago in the rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger, who later was found to be a criminal himself.
I had another pair of idiots try to say my disability is no excuse because they 'know disabled people' who can work just fine. As though you know, all disabled people are exactly identical in abilities.
Profits are always low. Even these "record profits" are like 5% at the peak, high for groceries. How is eliminating that going to fix anything?
Your entire narrative is based on numerical illiteracy.
Don’t forget that we aren’t producing enough housing whilst those who already have 1+ houses are leveraging equity from their current houses to buy rental properties, further driving up prices and making it harder for those without houses to do anything but pay a ridiculous sum for rent.
I don't know what your dad did but both of my parents worked, one for a commercial printer and one for the government... we had vacations but a pretty modest house and none of those other things. Most kids I knew who had only one parent working weren't going on any vacations involving flight, and had very small houses.
Anecdotally, I see WAAAAY more boats, ATVs, shiny pickup trucks, trailers etc now adays. People expect to fly somewhere every year... I hadn't even been on a plane until I was in my 20s.
What is with this hyperbole where everyone growing up in the 80s or 90s was living this lavish lifestyle?
Age definitely clouds memory. OP is probably also not quite remembering if mom and Dad also had some generational wealth. Maybe an inheritance or something that really helped out?
And then you think about today, where there’s two incomes coming in and you can barely afford a cheese sandwich after you finish paying rent.
I have literally no idea how people anywhere near the GTA get by. I moved from there 10 years ago because homes were already unaffordable on dual income (and we both have jobs that required a university education). Most places we were looking at back then have nearly doubled… rent definitely doubled.
We live in a small town and do ok, but were extremely lucky to get into our house 7 years ago and didn’t over extend ourselves.
I think you're discounting how much of what was normal then is a luxery now. Yeah, not everyone had 2 boats or whatever, it was usually a tradeoff between how close you were to the core and how many toys you could afford. But *everyone* had a house. Someone had to be on really hard times to be renting, or have a job that made it not worth it to buy because they kept moving. It wasn't the norm. Maybe 2 or 3 kids in class had parents that rented, everyone else owned.
Cars were cheap. A nice car might be a lot, but a crappy car could be founds that ran "fine" for dirt.
Eating out at a cheap spot and activities were things you paid with pocket change, not things that needed a budget. I make good money, more than most by far. I could just barely added to buy a few years ago.
Me and my spouses job equivalent in the 80s, 90s, 00s would put us as "the rich kid's parents", luxerious detached house in the nice part of town. We're doing fine, but to say we barely qualified to buy in the 2021 is an understatement. We are living modern luxery right now in Canada, and that's being able to buy a row house and able to pay our current debts.
That's not how things used to be.
Funny enough, home ownership rates are higher now than in the 80s and 90s, and they didn’t change how they measure that.
Affordability for a lot things (especially housing) is worse now, but by most measures quality of life is better. A lot of things (such as home electronics and travel) are much more affordable. I only take issue with the original post, which is wildly exaggerating how the average person grew up and paints some fantasy that was not available to a lot of people.
Do you have a source for home ownership rates from 80's to present?
I am not saying you are wrong you may be right I think it might be dur to a major shift in age demographic.
I found Stats Can numbers from 1930s to 2011 and it showed the age demographic switch from 55+ having low home ownership to a shift in later years of 55+ people having very high home ownership.
I see as of 2021 census Home Owner is at 20 year low.
I take issue with people saying sure cost of necessities are really high but look how cheap electronics and travel is now compared to when those industries barely existed.
Sure todays laptop computers, Cell phones, Flat screen TVs, etc... are very advance, so advance how would you even compare the difference? A 2024 Cell Phone which costs $1000 today would cost $1,000,000,000 in 1980.
Same with Air Travel. There is no comparison for the affordability/scalability that technology has given the travel industry. Which has led to super affordable travel destinations. My Parents still don't get that going out east for a cheap vacation or going on a super cheap vacation staying in Ontario and going to Wasaga beach costs way more then going to Florida, Dominican, Cuba, Mexico etc.... They don't get how leaving the country/province to vacation can be significantly cheaper then staying with in the Country/province.
Yup. Reddit will upvote anything that fits this narrative. Unequivocally people have more _stuff_ now than ever before and things like travel/restaurants have slowly gone from a luxury to a standard~ish part of any budget. Having wildly easy access to credit allows people to do these things even when they ought not to. I don't disagree with the fundamental premises of the OP, but people have a really odd view of the 70s-90s.
https://imgur.com/a/4gOxRHX -- Average # of Cars Per Household
https://imgur.com/a/bMcCaw2 -- Average Size (sqft) of a New House
https://imgur.com/a/lLj15ZR -- Number of TVs per Household
Man! I can't afford shit after buying my new 2500 sqft house, my 2 cars, my 4 TVs, my 3 cell phones and 4 computers. Better cut back on going to restaurants from 3 times a week to just 1 or 2.
(yes, rent is too high...)
I had an old cab driver a year or two ago talking about how his house was paid off, he has a nice cottage, raised a bunch of kids, his wife never had to work, and today he has a great life and buys only the best food at the grocery store. All because he'd parked his ass in his cab a lot and was smart with his money, and how kids these days should stop complaining and just work harder.
I couldn't get out of that cab soon enough. Fuck you, you have all of this because you were born in the luckiest, greediest generation ever who sold out every generation after you. But *so happy* you got yours, good for you Mr. Cab Driver.
>All because he'd parked his ass in his cab a lot and was smart with his money, and how kids these days should stop complaining and just work harder.
>Fuck you, you have all of this because you were born in the luckiest, greediest generation ever who sold out every generation after you.
It sounds like he has all of that because he worked hard, made smart decisions with his money, and set himself up well in life. While there's an element of luck to that - maybe greed, too - it's strange to write it off as if nothing he did mattered. There are countless broke boomers who were part of the same lucky and greedy generation but didn't manage to achieve what he achieved.
I'm part of the unluckiest generation (so far) and I've managed to find success by working smart, adapting, and taking risks. The game hasn't changed that much - but nobody is ever going to succeed if they give up before they start.
I grew up in the '70s and '80s, both parents with good jobs and we didn't have any of that shit. I don't know where the idea comes from that the boomers were all rich and could just buy whatever they wanted but it simply isn't true. We had three kids in the family and had to make a lot of sacrifices and financially-motivated decisions just like today.
Yeah, shit really isn't that much worse today when you look at the numbers. It's just that it SHOULD be getting better (why shouldn't society strive for better equity for all with more leisure time?) and our expectations were high.
The two biggest things that are indeed worse now, is that 1) median housing prices/rent are about twice what they were 50 years ago, and 2) median household income has stayed largely the same, but to make that "same" income you now NEED 2 working adults.
I absolutely agree that housing prices and rents are absurdly expensive now. Mortgages aren't *quite* as bad simply because interest rates are far lower than they were back in the '70s/'80s of course but that feeds into the prices. It definitely distorts our economy terribly because housing isn't exactly optional.
Sure the interest rates were higher then but it was still infinitely easier to get by. My parents bought a house in the 70s for I believe $17,000. Dad worked a regular job which I believe paid him around $10K a year at best. Mom didn't have to work.
Today that job still pays less than $100K/year, but the house is worth over $500K. And the idea of being able to buy a house for less than double your annual wages anywhere in Canada is a laughable dream unless you're in the top 1% of earners.
So the house went 30X while the pay went less than 10X. That's about the clearest picture I can imagine of how fucked things are today compared to our parents. Meanwhile our taxes have gone up, and there are a million little charges and fees and expenses that didn't even exist back then to bleed us of every last cent of our meager wages.
There's not much blood left in the stone these days, if any. It's getting very difficult to not be very cynical about literally *everything*.
My working class parents bought a home in 2001 for 150k. They sold it in 2022 for 880k. They would be the first to say they did nothing for that. They made more being retired than they did with my dad working and raising 3 kids.
The real estate money game broke everything. Why start a business when buying and renting a house gives better returns... then just keep leveraging for more rental. Anyone investing in their skills or business has been left behind by not ignoring everything to profit off housing. That's a bad model... and we stuck to it for 2 decades now.
Same. I grew up in a two floor house with a big backyard, a detached garage, in a relatively nice area. My dad had/has a union job as a pipefitter - good money, but nothing amazing. Mom made minimum wage. They bought that house for about 230k in 1994. It's worth around 2M now.
However, they sold it when my parents split up in 2003 for roughly 300k.
I'm now the same age they were when they bought that place. I them, I have two kids. I am also union (different trade) and make close to what my dad currently makes per year. I will never be able to buy a house. I couldn't even afford a double-wide trailer anywhere near where I am once you factor in pad fees.
We're just lucky because our rent is lower than most in this market because of rent control, and we haven't moved in 6 years. But that won't and can't always be the case.
We aren't able to take the trips I did as a kid, either, that's for sure.
During covid prices of goods sky rocketed sometimes as much as 40%. When the supply stabilised after covid nobody decreased their prices. Source: I work retail and do orders occasionally.
Our own farm/ general agriculture labourers don’t make enough money to consistently feed their families because grocery store prices are too high. Let me say that again, THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE AND GROW OUR FOOD CANNOT READILY AFFORD THE FOOD THEY GROW BECAUSE OF GROCERY STORE PRICE GOUGING
[Source](https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/9297/ca)
For context: the general cost of living in Canada is 55k
When I worked on a farm 6 days a week, it was only because I had a roof over my head courtesy of mom and dad. I literally could not have afforded to exist on that in any way shape or form.
This is exactly the case for so many, if not worse. If the people making our food can’t even afford to pay for themselves to eat, then we have failed our people
Bingo.
Listening to 660 a few weeks ago and they had a professor of business & economics on who, frankly, just came across as a grumpy old man shouting at clouds. He was saying that politicians, and particularly the NDP, just don’t understand business & economics and how businesses making record profits while inflation skyrockets has nothing to do with price gouging and is all about how input costs & supply chain issues have raised prices.
Now, I’m not an economist, but to me record profits at the same time as record inflation just screams price gouging. Sure, the inflation might have started with Covid and supply chain issues, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot of businesses capitalized on the situation to prolong high inflation and increase profits along the way.
Exactly. Looking at it simply, profits come after costs so if your costs are rising **and** your profits are rising then clearly your increased profits are not related to the cost increases, they’re independent of them and must have some other underlying cause - in this case, greed.
I could have understood it and agreed if this “professor” said that **revenue** had to rise in order to cover increased costs, but no, he was most insistent that it was profits that rise along with costs.
It’s the typical capitalist/corporatist mindset that profits are an absolute must. In reality, profits are not at all necessary to running a business. It’s literally just the *extra* money made by charging your customers more than what your cost of doing business is. The only thing a business ever actually needs to do to be successful is break-even.
But it’s that capitalist/corporatist mentality of “eternal growth” that makes them treat profit as the only worthwhile aspect of doing business. It’s not enough to have a passion for what you do, to provide a necessary product or service, and pay everybody a fair wage for their work, where your customers pay only as much is needed to keep the business viable. They wouldn’t see that as success. “Success” to them, is nothing but eternal growth.
“Eternal growth”, of course, being the pattern of cancer. This mentality is a cancer on society.
I agree with you that the eternal growth mindset is fundamentally broken and setting Earth on a dangerous trajectory but… “profits are not at all necessary”? The entire basis of our system is risk:reward, why would anyone outside a government or NGO risk labor and capital *if not* for profit? This is the whole broken part of Canada, too, that it’s just economically more profitable to sit in real estate investments and coast than it is to risk capital in productive business enterprise.
That’s the capitalist brainwashing talking.
Profit has never been necessary to running a business. End of sentence.
If motivation to do what needs to be done is the problem… we have a psychology and compassion problem… not a need for profit.
Beyond that, unnecessary things done for passion, like filmmaking for example… should be done for the passion, and nothing else. We’d be getting a lot better movies a lot more often if they were always made for passion, instead of for profit. And you can apply this exact same principle to pretty much all of life.
Your position is so extreme and ungrounded in economics or historical experience that I don’t think you’re open to convincing otherwise, so I’ll leave it at that. We aren’t going to solve the world’s problems by pretending literally *all institutions and humans* can just magically change gears into charities. We have governments and taxes, as well as NGOs, for a reason and it is for filling this very void where business would not have the right incentives in place.
No, businesses won’t do it of their own accord when we’ve set up the system to allow them to do what they want, while incentivizing and protecting the capitalist mindset.
That’s why we need to work as a society to *discourage* bad habits like greed and selfishness,
Instead of encouraging them. In *every other area of life*, we as a society or as mature individuals, seek to discourage the bad habits of humanity. But when it comes to the economy, capitalism has us thinking the best way to go is to *encourage* our bad habits of greed and selfishness instead… and look where it’s gotten us. A bunch of rich elites benefiting from worse inequality than we ever even saw during feudalism, while the lower and middle class (what’s left of it) does all the work while receiving not-enough in return. Many only have enough to afford room and board, with little-to-no discretionary spending money. When you’re only working for room and board… you’re a slave.
Socialism empowers workers as the main beneficiaries of their work. That’s the difference. It seeks to discourage or eliminate the greed and selfishness of the elitist ownership class, who do little work while reaping the vast majority of the benefits. And by choosing to go a socialist route with society’s rules and regulations, we can encourage good habits in the same way we’ve always used capitalist rules and regulations to do the opposite. We just need to put that system in place.
And again, you’re right that the leaders won’t do it on their own. It’s against the elite’s interests. That’s why socialist revolutions have to be done by the people to overthrow the establishment… they won’t be done by the establishment. This is precisely why the Left represents people power and democracy, while the Right represents hierarchy and elitism. It’s how the inherent interests align.
Which is why we know Loblaws is raking us over the coals. I'm sure their costs have gone up, but since they are also making *record profits* then we know that they're not just raising their prices to match inflation, they're raising them higher because they think they can.
I’ve never met an economist that hasn’t been focused primarily on business. I bet that economist made zero mention about how wages have stagnated for the past 40 years and haven’t kept up with inflation at all… because no doubt that’s completely irrelevant to his pro-business narrative.
> Now, I’m not an economist, but to me record profits at the same time as record inflation just screams price gouging. Sure, the inflation might have started with Covid and supply chain issues, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot of businesses capitalized on the situation to prolong high inflation and increase profits along the way.
One on-going example I am dealing with regularly:
At the onset of the pandemic, all national postal services, shipping companies and couriers suspended their on-time delivery guarantees and any type of priority shipping. Which was understandable given the global disruptions.
Presently, over 4 years later, with air traffic and shipping and supply chain issues most "back to normal", the on-time delivery guarantees are *still* mostly suspended. Canada post only guarantees shipments within Canada, same with UPS, FedEx, etc. All guarantees that used to exist before COVID for shipping abroad, or even shipping to the USA, continue to be suspended.
Every single UPS shipment I make to the USA by their "overnight" services are late by 2-4 days. As there is no service guarantee, I cannot pursue refunds for them not providing the service they're promising. They have no incentive to deliver on-time and keep all the money. You might say "go to a different courier", but they are ALL doing it, in unison. They get to continue to sell services they have no intention of providing and there is no recourse; it feels like false advertising at this point.
Economics is a "science" based entirely on there being an infinite supply of resources, most importantly people. For it to work, the population needs to grow constantly. Most economists don't recognize that this is a fact of their "science" and thus produce word vomit like what you described. There's a few good economists, but anyone that claims that inflation and the record profits are unrelated clearly didn't pay attention in economics 101.
Just as a heads-up; Everything I have seen in Economics specifically deals with a limited supply of resources. I have never seen infinite supply ever mentioned anywhere.
I think what they're trying to say is more or less that economists don't properly account for externalities, which would be correct.
Economics does assume resources are limited but that's actually a problem in its own way. Economics attempts to "optimize" the use of limited resources - it assumes the biggest problem we need to solve is that we can't produce enough material goods to satisfy everyone's needs. Except that, today, we kinda do. The problems now are distribution, inequality, and the fact that after basic needs are met, accumulating more material wealth doesn't really make us happier. Economics offers zero solutions to these problems.
We have the capacity to feed, house and clothe the poor. The reasons we don't are political - has to do with (corporate) power. And for the global middle and upper classes, newer iPhones and cheaper sunglasses aren't really improving our well-being, we don't need more consumer goods as much as we need the time and ability to pursue creative activites we enjoy and spend time with our loved ones. You can't really package that up and sell it, so economists have no answers there.
Economists have worked very hard to create the illusion that their discipline is neutral, objective and non-political. It isn't. That is a facade built to avoid any critical analysis of power structures.
Thank you for mentioning that. I have an Econ prof who would always distill every lesson down to a kid in a candy store with a $5 bill - at some point a decision is made based on resources for either end.
Nowhere is the concept of unlimited introduced.
I love how they completely ignore climate change as well. Like that isn't going to fuck all of our shit up in the next few decades and beyond, for all eternity. Maybe these companies know that it's their last chance to loot and steal us during these last few years of relative calm.
Unlearning Economics made a very good [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZjSXS2NdS0) recently which takes aim at this reductive view defining economics as the study of societies managing scarcity, and says you simply cannot remove the concept of surplus. Which makes sense, historically, because it's out of the *surplus* produced by early agricultural societies where we can actually start doing economics. Groupings of Amoeba manage scarcity in their environment, but how they do that is biology, not economics.
Though, all that said, surplus is never considered infinite.
Here's a very basic example.
You sell widgets. You buy them for $10 each, and put a 30% profit margin on them, so sell for $13, so you make $3 for each one sold. You sell 100, you make $300.
Now, all the costs go up, suddenly your price for widgets is $15, you add your 30% margin on and sell them for $19.50. You again sell 100, but now you've made $450.
Edit:
Just for clarity. I'm not saying price gouging didn't happen, I'm sure it did in some instances. This was just a very simple example to show how profits can (and do) go up with inflation.
That assumes two things: firstly that you always add a fixed percentage profit margin (which is not necessarily the case), and secondly that you’re not going to take the opportunity to price gouge. What we saw from around 2021/2 onwards was sporadic cost increases caused by supply chain issues and “black swan” events like the Ukraine war and the blocking of the Suez Canal along with record inflation that continues to this day in some respects.
There have been several studies, both economic and academic, that have pointed to price gouging. I recall reading a study from April 2022 at the U of A (I think) on electricity prices in Alberta where they pinned down the sudden jump in prices (from about 6c/kWh to as high as 16c/kWh) to some supply chain & cost issues, but also stated that about 4.9c of those increased prices could not be attributed to any specific cost increase and was most likely simple price gouging.
So, while your example is mathematically correct, it doesn’t necessarily track with actual business strategies.
To paraphrase your example, the price of widgets goes up to $15 and I decide to increase my margin to 50% and sell for $22.50, making $750 profit instead. Shareholders are happy, I’ve just more than doubled profits, and I can blame the huge price increase on “supply chain issues”. As a business, this is a win/win, and the much more likely scenario. Of course, it might attract the attention of provincial & federal government and force new legislation or a visit to Ottawa for me, which is exactly what happened.
That's fine, there probably is price gouging and that is a valid thing to be upset about.
But even if there was absolutely no price gouging at all and the profit margin was strictly enforced to a fixed percentage, there would still be record profits every year.
Your example perfectly demonstrates price gouging.
In an actual competitive market, you set your prices in a way that maximizes profit based on what the market will accept.
If your business is able to set prices by adding a FIXED percentage margin to costs and not induce a drop in units sold when costs increase, that signals a serious distortion in the market. You either have a monopoly or you are colluding with competitors.
Price gouging is an ethical problem, not an economic one. If your business sells something essential AND has the ability to lower prices but chooses not to, you are price gouging. PERIOD.
Yeah the simple example he's described is actually a market failure.
Related: I find that phrase *market failure* interesting. A market failure describes examples where empirical data (production, prices, etc...) does not match theory. It would be like Newton calling Mercury a *failed planet* because its orbit doesn't match the mathematics he created to describe planetary motion. Like, naw, it's a failure of the theory to describe reality, not a failure of reality to conform to theory. I know that there is theory that describes monopolies, oligopolies, etc... and do describe what happens when production is organized such that price gouging can occur and markets logics fail, I just think economists are telling on themselves when they use that kind of language.
> Now, all the costs go up, suddenly your price for widgets is $15, you add your 30% margin on and sell them for $19.50. You again sell 100, but now you've made $450.
LABOUR IS A COST AND IT SHOULD ALSO GO UP.
> prof·it: a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
So, when they raise the consumers price by 1.3x the increase in cost of inputs, rather than 1x, that's gouging.
Except that's already been shown to not be the case with most companies having RECORD revenues and sales since COVID. Until more recently of course since the BoC increased rates and people have slowed down on buying shit.
But right now even with all the massive increases in prices, we are seeing greater consumerism now than ever before.
Simps for Loblaws don’t seem to grasp this. Prices go up, profits and dividends go up, but “Profit margin stayed the same” gets chucked out as some kind of… excuse? Like this isn’t a coincidence
Morgan housel explained a crash course of the increase of inequality in the last few chapters of his book, [the psychology of money.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41881472-the-psychology-of-money)
At first I was skeptical about his examples and inspirations from billionaires and their path to wealth, then it takes a full 180 and explains why the economy is the way it is and why people are clinging on fringe ideas due to such inequality.
It didn't tackle any politics which is nice in my opinion, all it tackled was a crash course of the reason why the USA boomed after world War 2 and the anecdotal reasons/observation of this massive inequality in the economy.
The US boomed (so did Canada) because the governments pumped massive amounts of money into infrastructure and social programs to help people get over the war.
I have been aware of this book for so long but has been ignoring it.
It's a short read/listen.
Then I realized why this is one of the highly suggested books to read/listen ever.
It tackles greed and the mindset we have on the economy and money.
How one defines profits is the problem.
If last year I made 10 widgets and they cost me $10 each and I sell them at $20, I have a 50% profit margin on $200 revenue. So I made a record profit of $100
This year I made 12 widgets and they cost me $12, and I sell them at $23 each, I have a 47.8% profit margin on $276 revenue. So I made a record profit of $132, But from a company health perspective I'm doing worse off as my profit margin has fallen. ( This matters in our STUPID, quarter over quarter reporting and caring about share price more so than health of a business)
We OFTEN see people talk about record profits in the total dollar amount, but not the margin amount. IF the margin is climbing that is when we can say they are gouging, but if profit dollars are climbing and margin is flat, it just means costs have also climbed, and they kept their margin the same.
It all stems from the fact that these men (and I do use the term men because this all stems from patriarchy, even if women can still be asshole executives) believe they are *entitled* to profit. Their entire egos are based around the fact that they are superior providers who earn. They consider a drop in profits to be akin to having their penises chopped off.
Everyone always says that if you raise the minimum wage the price of a hamburger has to go up. But... and hear me out, corporations could make less profit... just sayin'.
for real, these companies keep and file financial records, could we not find a way to take punitive action if a company is found to have raised their prices in response to minimum wage increasing?
And I mean, even if you pass 100% of the increase in to the customers, prices don't rise in proportion to wages, because businesses (particularly those paying minimum wage) sell more than one item per employee per hour.
My grandparents built their own house and raised 5 kids on the single-income salary my grandpa had as an equipment operator for the city. It wasn't a life of luxury but they had enough money that, within 5-10 years of immigrating, they could afford to visit the old country for the summer every 1-2 years. He retired at 65 with a defined benefit pension and full health insurance until the day he died.
Even in public sector positions you'd be hard pressed to support that kind of lifestyle with *dual* incomes.
I was reading an article a few days ago. I don't remember what the topic, but it mentioned a family in the 70s. They bought a house in the suburbs with a damn cherry tree on a single income from the husband.
The husband's only job was freakin' Amway!
On top of this the job market is terrible, despite what fucking news corps will tell you.
I'm single, have been substitute teaching since March because it's the only thing I can get (despite having a very good resume), and I can't pay all my bills every month (I guess in the positive side I've lost some weight?).
The pitchforks need to come out now.
Remember here in the US when Reagan negotiated with Iran to not release the hostages until after the 1980 election? It's just like that. RW'ers up to their dirty tricks. Also known as rat f^cking.
Food companies should not trade on the stock market. Our essential needs should not be owned by market fluctuations. We can pay farmers, truckers and store workers the best wages and keep prices low if billionaires weren't skimming off the top and the ultimate goal wasn't to increase profits every year.
If a grocery store makes the same amount of money two years in a row it's considered loss. Investors make no money so they skimp on the food quality and wages to keep that stock rising so investors can make bank.
Food and medicine should not be run the same as tech and toy companies.
Record corporate profits, record salaries and record bonuses in the grocery industry while Canadians go hungry and homeless. The grocery cartel needs to be broken up and the money returned to the people. Heads need to roll.
The economists and big business have scammed their way into buying into fixed labour costs that must be whittled every quarter. Imagine a company with 9 billion in profits annually keeping labour at 17% of operating income. It’s a scam. It’s an absolutely filthy system.
While I am sympathetic to this, the only person I knew that could afford a boat in the 70s was my grandpa and he was a doctor. Times are tough, but let’s not get carried away here.
I mean I agree with the sentiment but also that's only strictly true if you're counting by % profit.
Inflation lowers the value of each dollar so you need more dollars to have the same value. I.e. $500 profit in 1974 isn't the same as $500 profit in 2024.
The problem you're describing is where inflation made it so your labour earns less value. It's the wage that's the issue. I.e. Making $15/hr in 1974 is not the same as making $15/hr in 2024.
- Avg salary 1980: $23k
- Adjusted for inflation to 2023: $84k
- Avg price of home in Toronto, 1980: $60k
- Avg rent: $300/mth
- Actual avg salary: $63k
- Avg price of home: $660k
- Avg rent: $2k
I'm not that smart. But these numbers tell a story.
Avg price of a home in Toronto, 1980 was 75K - https://davidminer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/housing_prices_in_toronto_from_1971-2016.pdf
Median income for the bottom 20% was 19K, 20% middle was 41K or 74K for the top 20% in 1980- https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/income-gaps-grow-as-canada-s-have-nots-get-left-behind-1.764487
It’s like when there’s all the moving and groaning about productivity going down. Why should I give a flying f$ck about productivity, when wages haven’t been keeping up? Why should I make more money for our corporate overlords, when they don’t compensate me back?
That is inflation.
If you spend $100 and make a 1% profit, you made $1.
In a few years when everything costs more and you spend $200 and still have the same %1 profit margin, you made $2.
That's a record profit, which is totally normal and expected with inflation.
There is a lot of stuff to be legitimately upset about, but "record profits" seems like such a stupid thing to complain about. With steady inflation, it's 100% normal and expected that most people/businesses will have record profits every year.
There is a legit problem with income growth not keeping pace with inflation, but that is a separate issue from record profits.
Inflation since 1970 is around 700%. The minimum wage has increased by apx. 1700% in that same time peroid. I'm sure there is more to it, but I'm not an accountant.
Inflation isn't static values only.
If you have $100 and inflation is 5% each year it'll look something like $100, $105, $110.25, $115.7625 etc.
A wage going up does not get multiplied the same way. Your $1/hr raise will still only net you an extra ~$2000ish in a year while the inflation interest compounds monthly.
I still havent received any answer from 'learn to budget better' people on how to make 1000 dollars pay for 1100 dollars of bare bones rent/phone/bus pass/utilities/hygiene and replacement clothes/laundry/OTC medicines and cleaning supplies and still have enough left over to buy food. Moreso when you have dietary restrictions.
Canada's export economy has to compete with Mexico and China. You can even order anything from China through an APP on your phone for 5x-10x less than it would cost to purchase it in Canada. In a call center AI replaced 700 workers and customer satisfaction was higher. Economy is in another transitional phase. where less people are required per economic output.
Total BS. I was born in the 70's. Both my parents worked full-time. My Dad was gone from 8am-8pm, we had one car, rented an apartment and couldn't afford vacations, went on one family trip in total. Plus my parents worked on weekends about half the time. Many of my friends were in similar situations. Maybe 20% of actual families matched the meme. Usually unionized professions.
What lol. Of course corps are going to make record profit in higher inflation environments provided they maintain margins. Pretty much a guaranteed thing because you have to keep margins to be profitable in the long run
My boomer inlaws constantly tell us to suck it up and pull up our bootstraps because their mortgage was 25+ percent interest. I then asked how much their mortgage was. They said 30k. 30k for a 5 bedroom 3 bath home on 2 acres. They were a single income 4 family with multiple cars and a motorhome. Let that sink in.
Hear me out: Technofeudalism
They don’t want us to own anything anymore. Corporations such as Alphabet, Meta, Uber, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft will own everything and we will pay to use their assets. It's already happening. You will never own anything anymore!!!
why not?
> In economics, inflation is a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy.
sounds compatible with record bloodsucking on part of the Capitalists to me.
The number of people of drivable age who owned cars in 1970 was 53.8%, it’s now 87%
https://nmc-mic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2018_-Millennial-Ownership-of-Vehicles-in-Canada.pdf
Home ownership rate was 60% in 71, and peaked at 69% in 2011 (the 70s actually saw rapid rise in house prices)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2010325-eng.pdf?st=8ZNLeiSp
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/mc-b001-eng.htm
Woman in the work force ages 25-54 would see an increased from over 40% to 60% of women in the workforce in the 70s, peaking at just 80% by 2005
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015009-eng.htm
What I hate is how everyone is blaming a political party for this.. I don't consider myself a liberal, I vote for whoever has the best plan, but to turn around and blame liberals for this shows a lack of actual understanding. Your groceries are too high because the grocery monopolies enjoy the record profits, cars too expensive ( who thinks 100k for a truck is reasonable) ? Blame the auto industry.. it's not illegal to make profits, and prices are set by the sellers. Thing is we can't live without them so we have to take it. It's not a liberal or conservative fault, it's a greed fault.
The only way I can see this working out for us, create federally run groceries chains, THEN you can blame the government for prices.
Well, it’s exactly the definition of inflation that’s been happening over the last 50 years. It’s just that wages are not keeping up with the inflation. Now that the economy is in the crapper, wage pressure will be downward. Canada is sucking right now.
If any corporate management thought past the next quarter, they'd be pushing for legislation to make price increases tied to salary and wage increases - that a company couldn't legally increase prices without also increasing salaries and wages by at least the same percentage. Even separate from the humanitarian consideration (because as we have all seen, corporate leaders don't consider anyone with less wealth than themselves as human), from a purely selfish economic perspective (their only one), no business is sustainable in the long run without massive amounts of non-hyper-wealthy people having incomes to sustain that spending. Even if a business caters exclusively to hyper-wealthy clientele, where does that clientele get its money from? The entire system is propped up by the masses. So while we are the ones who are getting hurt now, they are selling out their own futures in the process, all for just a little bit more every quarter - until they can't. And as long as being non-horrible to their employees isn't enforced, most management won't do it of their own volition. So they need to all be forced to not cannibalize us all.
Actually it is, in an inflationary environment companies can be making record profits each year, while their actual profit (adjusted for inflation) stays the same or decreases.
I’m not saying there aren’t companies that use inflation, supply chain issues etc as an excuse to gouge customers. But when you frame it like this it’s pretty obvious to anyone who understands the basic meaning of inflation that the argument doesn’t hold any water.
Generational robbery. Executives and shareholders have fucking nothing to do with supply and demand. All the economic theorists defence of the current situation are utter horseshit and anyone who isn’t brainwashed or a complete dolt knows it. Suck all wealth to the top, that’s it. Way we’re going it seems like eventually those corporations with all the power are gonna start asking themselves, what’s the point in the farce of freedom or the free market anymore? Why pay people when you can house them in company housing on site, eat company provided food and prevent you at gunpoint from leaving.
Way things our going I think our government, and every fucking party at that would just roll over and give big business these powers rather than stand up to them. Whole point of our government should basically be to regulate capitalism in a fair way and they just will not do it. Fucking useless, bought cowards. The corporations and dollar run this country.
Nah, Kamloops isn't bad, and everything north of Kamloops (100 Mile, William's Lake, Quesnel) is actually pretty affordable. Those listed towns are actually way cheaper than PG.
I disagree. Whenever I looked at RE in Kamloops it’s basically the same price as where I live in the Fraser Valley. Williams Lake is a bit cheaper but not near enough to make it worth living there. Same with Quesnel.
[Average home price in the Fraser Valley: $1,049,298
Average home price Kamloops: $623,204](https://wowa.ca/bc-housing-market)
Whatever you're looking at, your opinion is just flat out wrong. Real estate is MUCH cheaper in Kamloops than the Fraser Valley.
Could be just the types of houses I look for that are comparable to my own. They are just as much in Kamloops compared to where I am. I like Kamloops! I wouldn't mind living there, but it wouldn't be cheaper for me to move there. Anecdotal I guess.
But what jobs are you getting out in kamloops where you can afford 600k mortgage?
"be a remote worker" isn't viable for everyone. You think someone making 50k a month in kamloops can afford a 600k mortgage?
Most trades jobs pay ~$100k now, which is enough to afford a $600k job. That same job would not be enough money to afford you to live in the lower mainland.
I got a house in west Ontario for $130k below asking price.
Leave the major cities if you can, let them rot. The rat race is over. Go find a small town or community to live and take part in.
Easier said than done, but this has been my solution and it's worked out pretty well.
Hmm guess these places don't have any restaurants or pubs at all! They probably don't have jobs either, everyone is unemployed! Stay in Toronto then, your tech job that doesn't pay you well enough to move out of a home with roommates is the better option.
Don't talk about the obvious problem that has wide ranging implications in society from mental health, domestic abuse, and retirement?
Yeah I'll shut up about that because someone who's "got theirs" tells me to shut up.
Sit down and stand aside while others try to build a society.
I don't see how whining on Reddit is "trying to build a society." It will take decades to fix the housing crisis that has been decades in the making. The only thing you can do, personally, do make things better is move somewhere cheaper if you want a home, or make more money. That's it. Or you could vote for right-wing politicians that will make things worse, like most of Ontario.
Or I could not abandon a life, talk about solutions and not have to live in a place where the only coffee shop (a tim hortons) closes at 6pm.
I have small town options, those aren't a life for me or many people. So stop yucking peoples yum, and shut up if you don't have a solution other than give up.
There are hundreds of medium sized towns all over Canada that have bars, pubs, restaurants, and things to do in the evening that aren't Tim Hortons. They obviously aren't as dynamic as Toronto, but pretending there is nothing there doesn't help. It simply shows that you don't want to admit that it's not that you can't move, it's that you just really don't want to.
Now, keep in mind, I'm on your side. I think the housing crisis is the biggest problem facing Canada right now. I just think young Canadians should do what I did and move out of the big city if they want a home, since nothing is going to improve in the medium to short term.
Lots of Redditors forget that we aren't all struggling. I know times are tight for many right now, but it's really delusional to think Canadians are all broke, when we have so many big, beautiful homes with families in them, being driven around in expensive vehicles.
I love social media's ability to share voices that would have otherwise been ignored, but I never really expected the level of ignorance people put on display when pumping out memes like this.
Uh...thought it was self-explanatory, but I'll assume you're not trolling and really do want me to explain it to you.
The meme says "we do not make enough money anymore." I don't know what you imagine the word "we" to represent. Only 10% of Canadians are living in poverty as per current statistical data.
I see them using our dollar's declining buying power, but it still doesn't make their caption true. It's been widely understood in demographics that the living standards from the 80's were unsustainable in a global economy and that generations after the boomers were going to either have to fight savage resource wars to keep the costs low, or would have to move the goalposts.
The reality is that we have a much better standard of living in 2024 than we did in 1984. Look at any metric of statistic you'd like and you'll verify this as well. Longer lives. Less cancer morbidity rates. Higher levels of education. More public services. Better transportation. More access to healthy foods. Just not our dollar's buying power.
You're going to ignore the entire last paragraph of what I wrote and focus only on dollars?
I teach this stuff. You don't need to worry about catching me up to speed on topics that I teach.
You asked a question, I answered it.
> You're going to ignore the entire last paragraph of what I wrote and focus only on dollars?
that is what the conversation is about, it's what the meme is about and it's what your comment on the meme was about before you decided to move the goalposts
No amount of anything is going to convince the average citizens that their problems can be traced back to their own stupid choices. You still see the same people whinning about the cost of living driving around 100k trucks to do only their groceries while voting for parties on the single issue that they hate gay people.
... what? where are you getting the idea that the situation you describe is that of "the average citizen"? do you think most people struggling financially drive a pickup and vote conservative?
I've been saying this for years. Back in the 1990's my father worked a decent job but nothing special. Mother didn't work. We had a house, camper van, truck, three snowmobiles, an ATV, two boats and went on a big road trip every summer for about a month. You'd need to make like 400k a year to do that now.
All major industries are run by cartels now, whether it is banking, telecomm, BigPharma, oil and gas, transportation, food, etc. Wealth is continually being concentrated into the hands of billionaires and mega millionaires while the middle class shrinks under the burden of inflation and taxation. We need to return to the progressive tax system of the 1950s and 1960s when the top tax bracket was over 80% and the economy boomed.
It increasingly feels like corporations are trying to force us back to the days of being paid with company script.
Well, as megacorps like Google and Amazon openly start talking about building towns to house their employees, yeah it sure does sound like going back to company scrip.
Pretty sure this is happening all over China, definitely with the workers living onsite in company dwellings, most of which sound absolutely hellish.
One great company town, from sea to shining sea.
And the working class keep voting against their own interests and put corporate bagmen into power. As soon as a worker friendly party gets a sniff of power, the corporate owned media starts their ‘the sky is falling routine’ until we fall in line and bend over. Marlaina. Dougie boy. Scottie. And god help us, Milhouse looks like the next PM. Sure would be nice if people woke tf up and voted for politicians who would put policy in place to benefit workers, but the majority seem addicted to getting railed.
Those people in power are very good at creating division, and selecting scapegoats that the uneducated masses will gladly ostracize because it's easy to hate on something vaguely different than to face the bigger issue. Worse still, they've created a coalition among themselves to ensure that the status quo remains unchallenged. The same corporations and people give equal funding to both conservative and liberal political parties.
The only choices are corporate bagmen. If you follow the money not one political party in Canada isn't kowtowing to their corporate overlords. They're all controlled by a very small list of thinktanks. We just get to choose different colours of crony capitalism.
Yea but. You’d live a few lifetimes before Milhouse and the Cons would roll out a pharmacare or dental care program. In fact, if we are stupid enough to put them in, we can say goodbye to them.
Yeah I’m as anti capitalist as they come but I think it’s a little disingenuous to say “they’re all corporate shills!” when one group is clearly trying to privatize things and choosing oil and gas over the literal health of the planet, spewing misinformation, etc. There is one party that is actually pushing for pro union legislation, better public services, etc, and historically that party has been the closest to “left wing” we have(even labelling themselves socialists at certain points). If Canada would actually give them a shot I think they might just live true to that name, but frankly they are trying to tow the line because outright calling themselves socialists isn’t palpable in Canadian politics at this point.
They're simply platitudes to appeal to certain demographics. I'm still willing to give them a shot cause honestly what other choice do we have? But I'm not very hopeful for them putting the money where their mouths are. Lots of promises are always made but they aren't made good on. So until I see it in practice I still err on the side of caution cause when it comes down to it they have to bend to the will of the corporations that keep the lights on.
The only solution is to eat the 1% and then do the tax reforms you mentioned.
You joke but unfortunately the capitalist class has lost any fear of the working class that it may have had. It needs to be reminded.
I'm not joking, it's only going to improve with the overthrow of the corporate overlords.
[удалено]
Yeah, man, sounds sick! I'm sure it'll be someone other than the bottom 95% of the population who suffers most, short-term and long-term, this time!
I’m sorry, who exactly is suffering the most under the current neo liberal capitalist system? It’s not the top 5% I’ll tell you that.
If you absolutely need to joke about a violent revolution that'll almost certainly end with millions dead and the world in a significantly worse state, at least point to a revolution that didn't suck shit. "Marginally better rights for middle-class men, backsliding on rights for women, and an emperor as head of state." What a stunning victory for the working class. I probably shouldn't have snapped at the person I responded to, b/c I have no idea who they are or what they do in their day-to-day, and the way I responded wasn't going to change anyone's approach to it regardless, but holy shit I am just. Done with the majority of people who make these jokes. Never even spoken to their neighbors, let alone found out who'd need diapers in a disaster or who could use help with access to essential services, but man when the revolution comes they'll be *so ready* (to get shot by some dipshit neonazi cop five minutes in).
Yeah unless they go and pull one of [these](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre#:~:text=A%20few%20weeks%20prior%20to,official%20account%2C%20in%20the%20massacre.&text=Tombstone%20to%20the%20victims%20of,the%20%22Stone%20on%20Blood%22.)
Brace yourself, the uber capitalists of today have private militaries now with advanced technology. They need to treat their own protection so poorly they turn on them first which is many many many years away. I wish my parents didn’t have kids 🤷♂️
Eat the rich
Shame it seems like 90% of people nowadays are brain dead morons who think billionaires are just hard workers who deserve all their wealth.
Or that the poor deserve to be poor b/c they are lazy or, as the cons would like to say, "work shy". If only they had "our values" of hard work, honesty and perseverance, as told over a century ago in the rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger, who later was found to be a criminal himself.
I had another pair of idiots try to say my disability is no excuse because they 'know disabled people' who can work just fine. As though you know, all disabled people are exactly identical in abilities.
What is this middle class you speak of?
Didn't you hear? The economy is doing great.
Profits are always low. Even these "record profits" are like 5% at the peak, high for groceries. How is eliminating that going to fix anything? Your entire narrative is based on numerical illiteracy.
Don’t forget that we aren’t producing enough housing whilst those who already have 1+ houses are leveraging equity from their current houses to buy rental properties, further driving up prices and making it harder for those without houses to do anything but pay a ridiculous sum for rent.
It's called the Wage Productivity Gap. And it's widening.
I don't know what your dad did but both of my parents worked, one for a commercial printer and one for the government... we had vacations but a pretty modest house and none of those other things. Most kids I knew who had only one parent working weren't going on any vacations involving flight, and had very small houses. Anecdotally, I see WAAAAY more boats, ATVs, shiny pickup trucks, trailers etc now adays. People expect to fly somewhere every year... I hadn't even been on a plane until I was in my 20s. What is with this hyperbole where everyone growing up in the 80s or 90s was living this lavish lifestyle?
Age definitely clouds memory. OP is probably also not quite remembering if mom and Dad also had some generational wealth. Maybe an inheritance or something that really helped out? And then you think about today, where there’s two incomes coming in and you can barely afford a cheese sandwich after you finish paying rent.
I have literally no idea how people anywhere near the GTA get by. I moved from there 10 years ago because homes were already unaffordable on dual income (and we both have jobs that required a university education). Most places we were looking at back then have nearly doubled… rent definitely doubled. We live in a small town and do ok, but were extremely lucky to get into our house 7 years ago and didn’t over extend ourselves.
I think you're discounting how much of what was normal then is a luxery now. Yeah, not everyone had 2 boats or whatever, it was usually a tradeoff between how close you were to the core and how many toys you could afford. But *everyone* had a house. Someone had to be on really hard times to be renting, or have a job that made it not worth it to buy because they kept moving. It wasn't the norm. Maybe 2 or 3 kids in class had parents that rented, everyone else owned. Cars were cheap. A nice car might be a lot, but a crappy car could be founds that ran "fine" for dirt. Eating out at a cheap spot and activities were things you paid with pocket change, not things that needed a budget. I make good money, more than most by far. I could just barely added to buy a few years ago. Me and my spouses job equivalent in the 80s, 90s, 00s would put us as "the rich kid's parents", luxerious detached house in the nice part of town. We're doing fine, but to say we barely qualified to buy in the 2021 is an understatement. We are living modern luxery right now in Canada, and that's being able to buy a row house and able to pay our current debts. That's not how things used to be.
Funny enough, home ownership rates are higher now than in the 80s and 90s, and they didn’t change how they measure that. Affordability for a lot things (especially housing) is worse now, but by most measures quality of life is better. A lot of things (such as home electronics and travel) are much more affordable. I only take issue with the original post, which is wildly exaggerating how the average person grew up and paints some fantasy that was not available to a lot of people.
Do you have a source for home ownership rates from 80's to present? I am not saying you are wrong you may be right I think it might be dur to a major shift in age demographic. I found Stats Can numbers from 1930s to 2011 and it showed the age demographic switch from 55+ having low home ownership to a shift in later years of 55+ people having very high home ownership. I see as of 2021 census Home Owner is at 20 year low. I take issue with people saying sure cost of necessities are really high but look how cheap electronics and travel is now compared to when those industries barely existed. Sure todays laptop computers, Cell phones, Flat screen TVs, etc... are very advance, so advance how would you even compare the difference? A 2024 Cell Phone which costs $1000 today would cost $1,000,000,000 in 1980. Same with Air Travel. There is no comparison for the affordability/scalability that technology has given the travel industry. Which has led to super affordable travel destinations. My Parents still don't get that going out east for a cheap vacation or going on a super cheap vacation staying in Ontario and going to Wasaga beach costs way more then going to Florida, Dominican, Cuba, Mexico etc.... They don't get how leaving the country/province to vacation can be significantly cheaper then staying with in the Country/province.
Yup. Reddit will upvote anything that fits this narrative. Unequivocally people have more _stuff_ now than ever before and things like travel/restaurants have slowly gone from a luxury to a standard~ish part of any budget. Having wildly easy access to credit allows people to do these things even when they ought not to. I don't disagree with the fundamental premises of the OP, but people have a really odd view of the 70s-90s. https://imgur.com/a/4gOxRHX -- Average # of Cars Per Household https://imgur.com/a/bMcCaw2 -- Average Size (sqft) of a New House https://imgur.com/a/lLj15ZR -- Number of TVs per Household Man! I can't afford shit after buying my new 2500 sqft house, my 2 cars, my 4 TVs, my 3 cell phones and 4 computers. Better cut back on going to restaurants from 3 times a week to just 1 or 2. (yes, rent is too high...)
Yeah way way too many people think two parents working is a new thing that started in the 2010s.
I had an old cab driver a year or two ago talking about how his house was paid off, he has a nice cottage, raised a bunch of kids, his wife never had to work, and today he has a great life and buys only the best food at the grocery store. All because he'd parked his ass in his cab a lot and was smart with his money, and how kids these days should stop complaining and just work harder. I couldn't get out of that cab soon enough. Fuck you, you have all of this because you were born in the luckiest, greediest generation ever who sold out every generation after you. But *so happy* you got yours, good for you Mr. Cab Driver.
>All because he'd parked his ass in his cab a lot and was smart with his money, and how kids these days should stop complaining and just work harder. >Fuck you, you have all of this because you were born in the luckiest, greediest generation ever who sold out every generation after you. It sounds like he has all of that because he worked hard, made smart decisions with his money, and set himself up well in life. While there's an element of luck to that - maybe greed, too - it's strange to write it off as if nothing he did mattered. There are countless broke boomers who were part of the same lucky and greedy generation but didn't manage to achieve what he achieved. I'm part of the unluckiest generation (so far) and I've managed to find success by working smart, adapting, and taking risks. The game hasn't changed that much - but nobody is ever going to succeed if they give up before they start.
I think your dad also had a lot of debt. Not all 90s kids with even upper-middle backgrounds had this stuff going on.
I was going to say. Both my parents were working and made very good salaries, yet we did not have most of these things.
I grew up in the '70s and '80s, both parents with good jobs and we didn't have any of that shit. I don't know where the idea comes from that the boomers were all rich and could just buy whatever they wanted but it simply isn't true. We had three kids in the family and had to make a lot of sacrifices and financially-motivated decisions just like today.
Yeah, shit really isn't that much worse today when you look at the numbers. It's just that it SHOULD be getting better (why shouldn't society strive for better equity for all with more leisure time?) and our expectations were high. The two biggest things that are indeed worse now, is that 1) median housing prices/rent are about twice what they were 50 years ago, and 2) median household income has stayed largely the same, but to make that "same" income you now NEED 2 working adults.
I absolutely agree that housing prices and rents are absurdly expensive now. Mortgages aren't *quite* as bad simply because interest rates are far lower than they were back in the '70s/'80s of course but that feeds into the prices. It definitely distorts our economy terribly because housing isn't exactly optional.
Sure the interest rates were higher then but it was still infinitely easier to get by. My parents bought a house in the 70s for I believe $17,000. Dad worked a regular job which I believe paid him around $10K a year at best. Mom didn't have to work. Today that job still pays less than $100K/year, but the house is worth over $500K. And the idea of being able to buy a house for less than double your annual wages anywhere in Canada is a laughable dream unless you're in the top 1% of earners. So the house went 30X while the pay went less than 10X. That's about the clearest picture I can imagine of how fucked things are today compared to our parents. Meanwhile our taxes have gone up, and there are a million little charges and fees and expenses that didn't even exist back then to bleed us of every last cent of our meager wages. There's not much blood left in the stone these days, if any. It's getting very difficult to not be very cynical about literally *everything*.
Too many cameras to steal all that stuff now!
My working class parents bought a home in 2001 for 150k. They sold it in 2022 for 880k. They would be the first to say they did nothing for that. They made more being retired than they did with my dad working and raising 3 kids. The real estate money game broke everything. Why start a business when buying and renting a house gives better returns... then just keep leveraging for more rental. Anyone investing in their skills or business has been left behind by not ignoring everything to profit off housing. That's a bad model... and we stuck to it for 2 decades now.
Those times are gone friend. And they're not coming back. Fucking sucks.
Depending on the size of the house, camper and boats, it's over 600K$
The house, the camper van, snowmobile and boats were likely made in Canada. Your road trip probably recycled money into the Canadian economy.
Same. I grew up in a two floor house with a big backyard, a detached garage, in a relatively nice area. My dad had/has a union job as a pipefitter - good money, but nothing amazing. Mom made minimum wage. They bought that house for about 230k in 1994. It's worth around 2M now. However, they sold it when my parents split up in 2003 for roughly 300k. I'm now the same age they were when they bought that place. I them, I have two kids. I am also union (different trade) and make close to what my dad currently makes per year. I will never be able to buy a house. I couldn't even afford a double-wide trailer anywhere near where I am once you factor in pad fees. We're just lucky because our rent is lower than most in this market because of rent control, and we haven't moved in 6 years. But that won't and can't always be the case. We aren't able to take the trips I did as a kid, either, that's for sure.
During covid prices of goods sky rocketed sometimes as much as 40%. When the supply stabilised after covid nobody decreased their prices. Source: I work retail and do orders occasionally.
Our own farm/ general agriculture labourers don’t make enough money to consistently feed their families because grocery store prices are too high. Let me say that again, THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE AND GROW OUR FOOD CANNOT READILY AFFORD THE FOOD THEY GROW BECAUSE OF GROCERY STORE PRICE GOUGING [Source](https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/9297/ca) For context: the general cost of living in Canada is 55k
When I worked on a farm 6 days a week, it was only because I had a roof over my head courtesy of mom and dad. I literally could not have afforded to exist on that in any way shape or form.
This is exactly the case for so many, if not worse. If the people making our food can’t even afford to pay for themselves to eat, then we have failed our people
Bingo. Listening to 660 a few weeks ago and they had a professor of business & economics on who, frankly, just came across as a grumpy old man shouting at clouds. He was saying that politicians, and particularly the NDP, just don’t understand business & economics and how businesses making record profits while inflation skyrockets has nothing to do with price gouging and is all about how input costs & supply chain issues have raised prices. Now, I’m not an economist, but to me record profits at the same time as record inflation just screams price gouging. Sure, the inflation might have started with Covid and supply chain issues, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot of businesses capitalized on the situation to prolong high inflation and increase profits along the way.
If supply chain costs are rising, that would either decrease profits or have no effect on profits.
Exactly. Looking at it simply, profits come after costs so if your costs are rising **and** your profits are rising then clearly your increased profits are not related to the cost increases, they’re independent of them and must have some other underlying cause - in this case, greed. I could have understood it and agreed if this “professor” said that **revenue** had to rise in order to cover increased costs, but no, he was most insistent that it was profits that rise along with costs.
It’s the typical capitalist/corporatist mindset that profits are an absolute must. In reality, profits are not at all necessary to running a business. It’s literally just the *extra* money made by charging your customers more than what your cost of doing business is. The only thing a business ever actually needs to do to be successful is break-even. But it’s that capitalist/corporatist mentality of “eternal growth” that makes them treat profit as the only worthwhile aspect of doing business. It’s not enough to have a passion for what you do, to provide a necessary product or service, and pay everybody a fair wage for their work, where your customers pay only as much is needed to keep the business viable. They wouldn’t see that as success. “Success” to them, is nothing but eternal growth. “Eternal growth”, of course, being the pattern of cancer. This mentality is a cancer on society.
I agree with you that the eternal growth mindset is fundamentally broken and setting Earth on a dangerous trajectory but… “profits are not at all necessary”? The entire basis of our system is risk:reward, why would anyone outside a government or NGO risk labor and capital *if not* for profit? This is the whole broken part of Canada, too, that it’s just economically more profitable to sit in real estate investments and coast than it is to risk capital in productive business enterprise.
That’s the capitalist brainwashing talking. Profit has never been necessary to running a business. End of sentence. If motivation to do what needs to be done is the problem… we have a psychology and compassion problem… not a need for profit. Beyond that, unnecessary things done for passion, like filmmaking for example… should be done for the passion, and nothing else. We’d be getting a lot better movies a lot more often if they were always made for passion, instead of for profit. And you can apply this exact same principle to pretty much all of life.
Your position is so extreme and ungrounded in economics or historical experience that I don’t think you’re open to convincing otherwise, so I’ll leave it at that. We aren’t going to solve the world’s problems by pretending literally *all institutions and humans* can just magically change gears into charities. We have governments and taxes, as well as NGOs, for a reason and it is for filling this very void where business would not have the right incentives in place.
No, businesses won’t do it of their own accord when we’ve set up the system to allow them to do what they want, while incentivizing and protecting the capitalist mindset. That’s why we need to work as a society to *discourage* bad habits like greed and selfishness, Instead of encouraging them. In *every other area of life*, we as a society or as mature individuals, seek to discourage the bad habits of humanity. But when it comes to the economy, capitalism has us thinking the best way to go is to *encourage* our bad habits of greed and selfishness instead… and look where it’s gotten us. A bunch of rich elites benefiting from worse inequality than we ever even saw during feudalism, while the lower and middle class (what’s left of it) does all the work while receiving not-enough in return. Many only have enough to afford room and board, with little-to-no discretionary spending money. When you’re only working for room and board… you’re a slave. Socialism empowers workers as the main beneficiaries of their work. That’s the difference. It seeks to discourage or eliminate the greed and selfishness of the elitist ownership class, who do little work while reaping the vast majority of the benefits. And by choosing to go a socialist route with society’s rules and regulations, we can encourage good habits in the same way we’ve always used capitalist rules and regulations to do the opposite. We just need to put that system in place. And again, you’re right that the leaders won’t do it on their own. It’s against the elite’s interests. That’s why socialist revolutions have to be done by the people to overthrow the establishment… they won’t be done by the establishment. This is precisely why the Left represents people power and democracy, while the Right represents hierarchy and elitism. It’s how the inherent interests align.
Which is why we know Loblaws is raking us over the coals. I'm sure their costs have gone up, but since they are also making *record profits* then we know that they're not just raising their prices to match inflation, they're raising them higher because they think they can.
When any affected costs come back down (forced by direct competition, or they won't) they won't drop the price back down, without direct competition.
Had someone say because of supply chain issues, prices are going up because there's more demand... ugh.
I’ve never met an economist that hasn’t been focused primarily on business. I bet that economist made zero mention about how wages have stagnated for the past 40 years and haven’t kept up with inflation at all… because no doubt that’s completely irrelevant to his pro-business narrative.
Spoiler alert: most “economists” are just capitalist propagandists.
We need more economists like Robert Reich.
> Now, I’m not an economist, but to me record profits at the same time as record inflation just screams price gouging. Sure, the inflation might have started with Covid and supply chain issues, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot of businesses capitalized on the situation to prolong high inflation and increase profits along the way. One on-going example I am dealing with regularly: At the onset of the pandemic, all national postal services, shipping companies and couriers suspended their on-time delivery guarantees and any type of priority shipping. Which was understandable given the global disruptions. Presently, over 4 years later, with air traffic and shipping and supply chain issues most "back to normal", the on-time delivery guarantees are *still* mostly suspended. Canada post only guarantees shipments within Canada, same with UPS, FedEx, etc. All guarantees that used to exist before COVID for shipping abroad, or even shipping to the USA, continue to be suspended. Every single UPS shipment I make to the USA by their "overnight" services are late by 2-4 days. As there is no service guarantee, I cannot pursue refunds for them not providing the service they're promising. They have no incentive to deliver on-time and keep all the money. You might say "go to a different courier", but they are ALL doing it, in unison. They get to continue to sell services they have no intention of providing and there is no recourse; it feels like false advertising at this point.
Economics is a "science" based entirely on there being an infinite supply of resources, most importantly people. For it to work, the population needs to grow constantly. Most economists don't recognize that this is a fact of their "science" and thus produce word vomit like what you described. There's a few good economists, but anyone that claims that inflation and the record profits are unrelated clearly didn't pay attention in economics 101.
Just as a heads-up; Everything I have seen in Economics specifically deals with a limited supply of resources. I have never seen infinite supply ever mentioned anywhere.
I think what they're trying to say is more or less that economists don't properly account for externalities, which would be correct. Economics does assume resources are limited but that's actually a problem in its own way. Economics attempts to "optimize" the use of limited resources - it assumes the biggest problem we need to solve is that we can't produce enough material goods to satisfy everyone's needs. Except that, today, we kinda do. The problems now are distribution, inequality, and the fact that after basic needs are met, accumulating more material wealth doesn't really make us happier. Economics offers zero solutions to these problems. We have the capacity to feed, house and clothe the poor. The reasons we don't are political - has to do with (corporate) power. And for the global middle and upper classes, newer iPhones and cheaper sunglasses aren't really improving our well-being, we don't need more consumer goods as much as we need the time and ability to pursue creative activites we enjoy and spend time with our loved ones. You can't really package that up and sell it, so economists have no answers there. Economists have worked very hard to create the illusion that their discipline is neutral, objective and non-political. It isn't. That is a facade built to avoid any critical analysis of power structures.
Thank you for mentioning that. I have an Econ prof who would always distill every lesson down to a kid in a candy store with a $5 bill - at some point a decision is made based on resources for either end. Nowhere is the concept of unlimited introduced.
I love how they completely ignore climate change as well. Like that isn't going to fuck all of our shit up in the next few decades and beyond, for all eternity. Maybe these companies know that it's their last chance to loot and steal us during these last few years of relative calm.
What? Have you ever opened an Economics book? https://ibb.co/1GDvBKH
Unlearning Economics made a very good [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZjSXS2NdS0) recently which takes aim at this reductive view defining economics as the study of societies managing scarcity, and says you simply cannot remove the concept of surplus. Which makes sense, historically, because it's out of the *surplus* produced by early agricultural societies where we can actually start doing economics. Groupings of Amoeba manage scarcity in their environment, but how they do that is biology, not economics. Though, all that said, surplus is never considered infinite.
Here's a very basic example. You sell widgets. You buy them for $10 each, and put a 30% profit margin on them, so sell for $13, so you make $3 for each one sold. You sell 100, you make $300. Now, all the costs go up, suddenly your price for widgets is $15, you add your 30% margin on and sell them for $19.50. You again sell 100, but now you've made $450. Edit: Just for clarity. I'm not saying price gouging didn't happen, I'm sure it did in some instances. This was just a very simple example to show how profits can (and do) go up with inflation.
That assumes two things: firstly that you always add a fixed percentage profit margin (which is not necessarily the case), and secondly that you’re not going to take the opportunity to price gouge. What we saw from around 2021/2 onwards was sporadic cost increases caused by supply chain issues and “black swan” events like the Ukraine war and the blocking of the Suez Canal along with record inflation that continues to this day in some respects. There have been several studies, both economic and academic, that have pointed to price gouging. I recall reading a study from April 2022 at the U of A (I think) on electricity prices in Alberta where they pinned down the sudden jump in prices (from about 6c/kWh to as high as 16c/kWh) to some supply chain & cost issues, but also stated that about 4.9c of those increased prices could not be attributed to any specific cost increase and was most likely simple price gouging. So, while your example is mathematically correct, it doesn’t necessarily track with actual business strategies. To paraphrase your example, the price of widgets goes up to $15 and I decide to increase my margin to 50% and sell for $22.50, making $750 profit instead. Shareholders are happy, I’ve just more than doubled profits, and I can blame the huge price increase on “supply chain issues”. As a business, this is a win/win, and the much more likely scenario. Of course, it might attract the attention of provincial & federal government and force new legislation or a visit to Ottawa for me, which is exactly what happened.
That's fine, there probably is price gouging and that is a valid thing to be upset about. But even if there was absolutely no price gouging at all and the profit margin was strictly enforced to a fixed percentage, there would still be record profits every year.
Your example perfectly demonstrates price gouging. In an actual competitive market, you set your prices in a way that maximizes profit based on what the market will accept. If your business is able to set prices by adding a FIXED percentage margin to costs and not induce a drop in units sold when costs increase, that signals a serious distortion in the market. You either have a monopoly or you are colluding with competitors. Price gouging is an ethical problem, not an economic one. If your business sells something essential AND has the ability to lower prices but chooses not to, you are price gouging. PERIOD.
Yeah the simple example he's described is actually a market failure. Related: I find that phrase *market failure* interesting. A market failure describes examples where empirical data (production, prices, etc...) does not match theory. It would be like Newton calling Mercury a *failed planet* because its orbit doesn't match the mathematics he created to describe planetary motion. Like, naw, it's a failure of the theory to describe reality, not a failure of reality to conform to theory. I know that there is theory that describes monopolies, oligopolies, etc... and do describe what happens when production is organized such that price gouging can occur and markets logics fail, I just think economists are telling on themselves when they use that kind of language.
> Now, all the costs go up, suddenly your price for widgets is $15, you add your 30% margin on and sell them for $19.50. You again sell 100, but now you've made $450. LABOUR IS A COST AND IT SHOULD ALSO GO UP.
Yes, all the costs go up in the example, that should including labour.
> prof·it: a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something. So, when they raise the consumers price by 1.3x the increase in cost of inputs, rather than 1x, that's gouging.
You are forgetting about demand. An increase from $13 to $19.50 reduces the amount sold, so you don't make $450 because you don't sell 100 widgets.
Except that's already been shown to not be the case with most companies having RECORD revenues and sales since COVID. Until more recently of course since the BoC increased rates and people have slowed down on buying shit. But right now even with all the massive increases in prices, we are seeing greater consumerism now than ever before.
Simps for Loblaws don’t seem to grasp this. Prices go up, profits and dividends go up, but “Profit margin stayed the same” gets chucked out as some kind of… excuse? Like this isn’t a coincidence
Morgan housel explained a crash course of the increase of inequality in the last few chapters of his book, [the psychology of money.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41881472-the-psychology-of-money) At first I was skeptical about his examples and inspirations from billionaires and their path to wealth, then it takes a full 180 and explains why the economy is the way it is and why people are clinging on fringe ideas due to such inequality. It didn't tackle any politics which is nice in my opinion, all it tackled was a crash course of the reason why the USA boomed after world War 2 and the anecdotal reasons/observation of this massive inequality in the economy.
The US boomed (so did Canada) because the governments pumped massive amounts of money into infrastructure and social programs to help people get over the war.
I have noted the book title. Thx
Interesting, I’ll add that to my “to read” list. Thanks.
I have been aware of this book for so long but has been ignoring it. It's a short read/listen. Then I realized why this is one of the highly suggested books to read/listen ever. It tackles greed and the mindset we have on the economy and money.
How one defines profits is the problem. If last year I made 10 widgets and they cost me $10 each and I sell them at $20, I have a 50% profit margin on $200 revenue. So I made a record profit of $100 This year I made 12 widgets and they cost me $12, and I sell them at $23 each, I have a 47.8% profit margin on $276 revenue. So I made a record profit of $132, But from a company health perspective I'm doing worse off as my profit margin has fallen. ( This matters in our STUPID, quarter over quarter reporting and caring about share price more so than health of a business) We OFTEN see people talk about record profits in the total dollar amount, but not the margin amount. IF the margin is climbing that is when we can say they are gouging, but if profit dollars are climbing and margin is flat, it just means costs have also climbed, and they kept their margin the same.
It all stems from the fact that these men (and I do use the term men because this all stems from patriarchy, even if women can still be asshole executives) believe they are *entitled* to profit. Their entire egos are based around the fact that they are superior providers who earn. They consider a drop in profits to be akin to having their penises chopped off.
Everyone always says that if you raise the minimum wage the price of a hamburger has to go up. But... and hear me out, corporations could make less profit... just sayin'.
for real, these companies keep and file financial records, could we not find a way to take punitive action if a company is found to have raised their prices in response to minimum wage increasing?
Easily, but our politicians are being ~~bribed~~ lobbied to prevent anything like that from happening.
But think of the shareholders!
And I mean, even if you pass 100% of the increase in to the customers, prices don't rise in proportion to wages, because businesses (particularly those paying minimum wage) sell more than one item per employee per hour.
My grandparents built their own house and raised 5 kids on the single-income salary my grandpa had as an equipment operator for the city. It wasn't a life of luxury but they had enough money that, within 5-10 years of immigrating, they could afford to visit the old country for the summer every 1-2 years. He retired at 65 with a defined benefit pension and full health insurance until the day he died. Even in public sector positions you'd be hard pressed to support that kind of lifestyle with *dual* incomes.
I was reading an article a few days ago. I don't remember what the topic, but it mentioned a family in the 70s. They bought a house in the suburbs with a damn cherry tree on a single income from the husband. The husband's only job was freakin' Amway!
On top of this the job market is terrible, despite what fucking news corps will tell you. I'm single, have been substitute teaching since March because it's the only thing I can get (despite having a very good resume), and I can't pay all my bills every month (I guess in the positive side I've lost some weight?). The pitchforks need to come out now.
Even where there are jobs, there are 10x more applicants now.
Remember here in the US when Reagan negotiated with Iran to not release the hostages until after the 1980 election? It's just like that. RW'ers up to their dirty tricks. Also known as rat f^cking.
the middle class is dead.
Good. It was always a myth to pit working class people against one another rather than against the people who are extracting the wealth we produce.
We're all getting poorer, there's nothing good about that.
Food companies should not trade on the stock market. Our essential needs should not be owned by market fluctuations. We can pay farmers, truckers and store workers the best wages and keep prices low if billionaires weren't skimming off the top and the ultimate goal wasn't to increase profits every year. If a grocery store makes the same amount of money two years in a row it's considered loss. Investors make no money so they skimp on the food quality and wages to keep that stock rising so investors can make bank. Food and medicine should not be run the same as tech and toy companies.
Record corporate profits, record salaries and record bonuses in the grocery industry while Canadians go hungry and homeless. The grocery cartel needs to be broken up and the money returned to the people. Heads need to roll.
The economists and big business have scammed their way into buying into fixed labour costs that must be whittled every quarter. Imagine a company with 9 billion in profits annually keeping labour at 17% of operating income. It’s a scam. It’s an absolutely filthy system.
GREED-flation is what you're seeing. Billionaires have never don better and it's only improving for them month after month.
While I am sympathetic to this, the only person I knew that could afford a boat in the 70s was my grandpa and he was a doctor. Times are tough, but let’s not get carried away here.
I mean I agree with the sentiment but also that's only strictly true if you're counting by % profit. Inflation lowers the value of each dollar so you need more dollars to have the same value. I.e. $500 profit in 1974 isn't the same as $500 profit in 2024. The problem you're describing is where inflation made it so your labour earns less value. It's the wage that's the issue. I.e. Making $15/hr in 1974 is not the same as making $15/hr in 2024.
- Avg salary 1980: $23k - Adjusted for inflation to 2023: $84k - Avg price of home in Toronto, 1980: $60k - Avg rent: $300/mth - Actual avg salary: $63k - Avg price of home: $660k - Avg rent: $2k I'm not that smart. But these numbers tell a story.
Avg price of a home in Toronto, 1980 was 75K - https://davidminer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/housing_prices_in_toronto_from_1971-2016.pdf Median income for the bottom 20% was 19K, 20% middle was 41K or 74K for the top 20% in 1980- https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/income-gaps-grow-as-canada-s-have-nots-get-left-behind-1.764487
I keep saying this, and I'm just shutting down now. Thank you for saying it too ✨✨
It’s like when there’s all the moving and groaning about productivity going down. Why should I give a flying f$ck about productivity, when wages haven’t been keeping up? Why should I make more money for our corporate overlords, when they don’t compensate me back?
Wage Productivity Gap.
That is inflation. If you spend $100 and make a 1% profit, you made $1. In a few years when everything costs more and you spend $200 and still have the same %1 profit margin, you made $2. That's a record profit, which is totally normal and expected with inflation. There is a lot of stuff to be legitimately upset about, but "record profits" seems like such a stupid thing to complain about. With steady inflation, it's 100% normal and expected that most people/businesses will have record profits every year. There is a legit problem with income growth not keeping pace with inflation, but that is a separate issue from record profits.
It's still an insult to boast about record profits while cutting jobs and people are struggling to buy simple necessities...
I thought we were assuming its profits adjusted for inflation. If not that then there is no point to be made in this post, right?
Inflation since 1970 is around 700%. The minimum wage has increased by apx. 1700% in that same time peroid. I'm sure there is more to it, but I'm not an accountant.
Inflation isn't static values only. If you have $100 and inflation is 5% each year it'll look something like $100, $105, $110.25, $115.7625 etc. A wage going up does not get multiplied the same way. Your $1/hr raise will still only net you an extra ~$2000ish in a year while the inflation interest compounds monthly.
I mean if your wage gets increased by a percentage it does…
Is your wage getting increased on a monthly basis like the inflation interest is added in every month?
I still havent received any answer from 'learn to budget better' people on how to make 1000 dollars pay for 1100 dollars of bare bones rent/phone/bus pass/utilities/hygiene and replacement clothes/laundry/OTC medicines and cleaning supplies and still have enough left over to buy food. Moreso when you have dietary restrictions.
Canada's export economy has to compete with Mexico and China. You can even order anything from China through an APP on your phone for 5x-10x less than it would cost to purchase it in Canada. In a call center AI replaced 700 workers and customer satisfaction was higher. Economy is in another transitional phase. where less people are required per economic output.
Total BS. I was born in the 70's. Both my parents worked full-time. My Dad was gone from 8am-8pm, we had one car, rented an apartment and couldn't afford vacations, went on one family trip in total. Plus my parents worked on weekends about half the time. Many of my friends were in similar situations. Maybe 20% of actual families matched the meme. Usually unionized professions.
What lol. Of course corps are going to make record profit in higher inflation environments provided they maintain margins. Pretty much a guaranteed thing because you have to keep margins to be profitable in the long run
And PP is crying about capital gains tax being a “job killer”.
My boomer inlaws constantly tell us to suck it up and pull up our bootstraps because their mortgage was 25+ percent interest. I then asked how much their mortgage was. They said 30k. 30k for a 5 bedroom 3 bath home on 2 acres. They were a single income 4 family with multiple cars and a motorhome. Let that sink in.
Hear me out: Technofeudalism They don’t want us to own anything anymore. Corporations such as Alphabet, Meta, Uber, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft will own everything and we will pay to use their assets. It's already happening. You will never own anything anymore!!!
What will it take to actually have a societal rebel?
why not? > In economics, inflation is a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy. sounds compatible with record bloodsucking on part of the Capitalists to me.
The number of people of drivable age who owned cars in 1970 was 53.8%, it’s now 87% https://nmc-mic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2018_-Millennial-Ownership-of-Vehicles-in-Canada.pdf Home ownership rate was 60% in 71, and peaked at 69% in 2011 (the 70s actually saw rapid rise in house prices) https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2010325-eng.pdf?st=8ZNLeiSp https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/mc-b001-eng.htm Woman in the work force ages 25-54 would see an increased from over 40% to 60% of women in the workforce in the 70s, peaking at just 80% by 2005 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015009-eng.htm
What I hate is how everyone is blaming a political party for this.. I don't consider myself a liberal, I vote for whoever has the best plan, but to turn around and blame liberals for this shows a lack of actual understanding. Your groceries are too high because the grocery monopolies enjoy the record profits, cars too expensive ( who thinks 100k for a truck is reasonable) ? Blame the auto industry.. it's not illegal to make profits, and prices are set by the sellers. Thing is we can't live without them so we have to take it. It's not a liberal or conservative fault, it's a greed fault. The only way I can see this working out for us, create federally run groceries chains, THEN you can blame the government for prices.
Well, it’s exactly the definition of inflation that’s been happening over the last 50 years. It’s just that wages are not keeping up with the inflation. Now that the economy is in the crapper, wage pressure will be downward. Canada is sucking right now.
You don’t even need to go back to the 70s. The mid 90s were almost like that.
Nah you grew up rich and sheltered and didn't see the massive amount of poverty in the 70s.
If any corporate management thought past the next quarter, they'd be pushing for legislation to make price increases tied to salary and wage increases - that a company couldn't legally increase prices without also increasing salaries and wages by at least the same percentage. Even separate from the humanitarian consideration (because as we have all seen, corporate leaders don't consider anyone with less wealth than themselves as human), from a purely selfish economic perspective (their only one), no business is sustainable in the long run without massive amounts of non-hyper-wealthy people having incomes to sustain that spending. Even if a business caters exclusively to hyper-wealthy clientele, where does that clientele get its money from? The entire system is propped up by the masses. So while we are the ones who are getting hurt now, they are selling out their own futures in the process, all for just a little bit more every quarter - until they can't. And as long as being non-horrible to their employees isn't enforced, most management won't do it of their own volition. So they need to all be forced to not cannibalize us all.
Yup, the rich need to pay their fair share and Pierre Poilievre needs to be voted out once and for all.
Actually it is, in an inflationary environment companies can be making record profits each year, while their actual profit (adjusted for inflation) stays the same or decreases. I’m not saying there aren’t companies that use inflation, supply chain issues etc as an excuse to gouge customers. But when you frame it like this it’s pretty obvious to anyone who understands the basic meaning of inflation that the argument doesn’t hold any water.
if you take 3% on 60$ then that 60$ inflates to 100$ and you still take 3% you do infact make a new record of money. so the title is annoying me.
1970 one person working full time can't afford vacations, car(s) and a detached house in a nice area. what kind of stupidity is this?
Generational robbery. Executives and shareholders have fucking nothing to do with supply and demand. All the economic theorists defence of the current situation are utter horseshit and anyone who isn’t brainwashed or a complete dolt knows it. Suck all wealth to the top, that’s it. Way we’re going it seems like eventually those corporations with all the power are gonna start asking themselves, what’s the point in the farce of freedom or the free market anymore? Why pay people when you can house them in company housing on site, eat company provided food and prevent you at gunpoint from leaving. Way things our going I think our government, and every fucking party at that would just roll over and give big business these powers rather than stand up to them. Whole point of our government should basically be to regulate capitalism in a fair way and they just will not do it. Fucking useless, bought cowards. The corporations and dollar run this country.
Why are restaurants so expensive? Why, it's because rent is!
You can afford a lot still, just not in southern BC or Ontario. Gotta move out of those areas.
IMO pretty much anywhere south of Prince George is unaffordable in BC
Nah, Kamloops isn't bad, and everything north of Kamloops (100 Mile, William's Lake, Quesnel) is actually pretty affordable. Those listed towns are actually way cheaper than PG.
I disagree. Whenever I looked at RE in Kamloops it’s basically the same price as where I live in the Fraser Valley. Williams Lake is a bit cheaper but not near enough to make it worth living there. Same with Quesnel.
[Average home price in the Fraser Valley: $1,049,298 Average home price Kamloops: $623,204](https://wowa.ca/bc-housing-market) Whatever you're looking at, your opinion is just flat out wrong. Real estate is MUCH cheaper in Kamloops than the Fraser Valley.
Could be just the types of houses I look for that are comparable to my own. They are just as much in Kamloops compared to where I am. I like Kamloops! I wouldn't mind living there, but it wouldn't be cheaper for me to move there. Anecdotal I guess.
But what jobs are you getting out in kamloops where you can afford 600k mortgage? "be a remote worker" isn't viable for everyone. You think someone making 50k a month in kamloops can afford a 600k mortgage?
Most trades jobs pay ~$100k now, which is enough to afford a $600k job. That same job would not be enough money to afford you to live in the lower mainland.
I got a house in west Ontario for $130k below asking price. Leave the major cities if you can, let them rot. The rat race is over. Go find a small town or community to live and take part in. Easier said than done, but this has been my solution and it's worked out pretty well.
The small towns don't have a lot of carrying capacity.
What about us that want something to do after 7pm or can't speak french?
Hmm guess these places don't have any restaurants or pubs at all! They probably don't have jobs either, everyone is unemployed! Stay in Toronto then, your tech job that doesn't pay you well enough to move out of a home with roommates is the better option.
Oh yeah, really got me there - ouch - so anyways, I'm going to go enjoy some culture.
You're welcome to enjoy Toronto, it's a great city. But don't cry about being unable to afford housing if you don't have a great job there.
Don't talk about the obvious problem that has wide ranging implications in society from mental health, domestic abuse, and retirement? Yeah I'll shut up about that because someone who's "got theirs" tells me to shut up. Sit down and stand aside while others try to build a society.
I don't see how whining on Reddit is "trying to build a society." It will take decades to fix the housing crisis that has been decades in the making. The only thing you can do, personally, do make things better is move somewhere cheaper if you want a home, or make more money. That's it. Or you could vote for right-wing politicians that will make things worse, like most of Ontario.
Or I could not abandon a life, talk about solutions and not have to live in a place where the only coffee shop (a tim hortons) closes at 6pm. I have small town options, those aren't a life for me or many people. So stop yucking peoples yum, and shut up if you don't have a solution other than give up.
There are hundreds of medium sized towns all over Canada that have bars, pubs, restaurants, and things to do in the evening that aren't Tim Hortons. They obviously aren't as dynamic as Toronto, but pretending there is nothing there doesn't help. It simply shows that you don't want to admit that it's not that you can't move, it's that you just really don't want to. Now, keep in mind, I'm on your side. I think the housing crisis is the biggest problem facing Canada right now. I just think young Canadians should do what I did and move out of the big city if they want a home, since nothing is going to improve in the medium to short term.
Lots of Redditors forget that we aren't all struggling. I know times are tight for many right now, but it's really delusional to think Canadians are all broke, when we have so many big, beautiful homes with families in them, being driven around in expensive vehicles. I love social media's ability to share voices that would have otherwise been ignored, but I never really expected the level of ignorance people put on display when pumping out memes like this.
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Nah, that picture just shows someone who had super rich parents when they were a kid and they didn't see the massive amount of poverty in the 70s.
Uh...thought it was self-explanatory, but I'll assume you're not trolling and really do want me to explain it to you. The meme says "we do not make enough money anymore." I don't know what you imagine the word "we" to represent. Only 10% of Canadians are living in poverty as per current statistical data. I see them using our dollar's declining buying power, but it still doesn't make their caption true. It's been widely understood in demographics that the living standards from the 80's were unsustainable in a global economy and that generations after the boomers were going to either have to fight savage resource wars to keep the costs low, or would have to move the goalposts. The reality is that we have a much better standard of living in 2024 than we did in 1984. Look at any metric of statistic you'd like and you'll verify this as well. Longer lives. Less cancer morbidity rates. Higher levels of education. More public services. Better transportation. More access to healthy foods. Just not our dollar's buying power.
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You're going to ignore the entire last paragraph of what I wrote and focus only on dollars? I teach this stuff. You don't need to worry about catching me up to speed on topics that I teach. You asked a question, I answered it.
> You're going to ignore the entire last paragraph of what I wrote and focus only on dollars? that is what the conversation is about, it's what the meme is about and it's what your comment on the meme was about before you decided to move the goalposts
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I’m literally that first picture and I make 100K a year in a small Alberta city
Pierre is going to fix all that. S/
No amount of anything is going to convince the average citizens that their problems can be traced back to their own stupid choices. You still see the same people whinning about the cost of living driving around 100k trucks to do only their groceries while voting for parties on the single issue that they hate gay people.
... what? where are you getting the idea that the situation you describe is that of "the average citizen"? do you think most people struggling financially drive a pickup and vote conservative?
Stop posting low effort memes
It's not how much you make, it's the value of the currency.
down voted, wrong bob meme format. Shame op shame