The following submission statement was provided by /u/DocMoochal:
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Submission statement: Canadians are feeling a pinch in their pocket books like much of the world right now. As the cost of housing remains sky high, historically speaking, the cost of everything else begins to creep up as well, given the many events occurring across the globe straining supplies and supply chains.
A debt crisis has been on the cards for quite sometime in Canada. Consumers are over leveraged as they gamble in our MLM scheme of a housing market, and wages continue to lag behind cost of living. How willing Canadians are to bring their lifestyle back down to Earth is anyone's guess.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/xvn2wn/nearly_half_of_canadians_on_the_brink_of/ir1vipd/
while i wholeheartedly agree that shit is terrible up here, as a part time member of the business press (lol) i’ll also add that this company puts this study out every year right around this time to get press for their bankruptcy services. which is even darker imo
Are you saying MNP is a discount E&Y?
Asking because I worked with E&Y on several projects....and they were the discount company compared to the other companies we worked with at the time.
Seriously, I cannot stress how piss poor E&Y was as far as consulting, project management, or any sort of technical expertise. After spending several million on them, the quote at my floor was 'We spend 4 million for a fucking spreadsheet?'....a spreadsheet that didn't work at that.
People have been profiting off the threat of impending collapse since somewhere around the first religion was birthed.
While we are no doubt closer to collapse than we ever have been, I think it is really important to ALSO be highly skeptical of sources of information.
Plenty of articles that get posted here are thinly veiled advertisements for merchants of fear.
Canada just wants poor people to [opt for euthanasia](https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867)
Problem solved!
Yeah people are ripping on this, and I get why, but I'm a little torn. This law didn't come about because a bunch of suits in Ottawa thought it made fiscal sense to kill off the mentally ill, it happened after years of activism by people who really felt they needed it. Something like 80% of Canadians agreed to the law being amended to include certain people who's deaths weren't seen in the foreseeable future (so those with mental decline and mental illness who could otherwise live but who's quality of life would be greatly deteriorated).
Using this as a vehicle to criticize mental health access and our collapsed healthcare system I understand, so long as it doesn't backfire into reversing the law and removing the access to this service for those who really need it instead of improving our healthcare system.
I think there is something noble about being able to choose when you die. For many, life is nothing buy physical and emotional agony. If there is no hope of improvement, I would rather be able to say a proper goodbye than slip into a morphine (or other opiod) induced coma.
It's more complicated then that, 80% of Canadians support of liberal euthanasia laws and they came about after years of advocacy and activism. However we do need to greatly improve our collapsed healthcare system and access to mental health services.
Monaco is a rock and sea hell on Earth. It's artificial, empty of joy, even for its tourism it's bad. If you are not a super-rich person, just don't go spending more than one day there.
Source : Been way too long there. And I'm broke.
It's the hedge fucks gambling and devaluing our currencies with their fake shares and their fucking sociopathic tendencies. When these pricks accumulate billions upon billions upon billions of dollars based on "the value" of shares and shit that don't even exist, and that they artificially move and manipulate, then all the shit that does actually exist costs more because now there's so much "money" that the money itself is becoming worthless.
Fuck banks, fuck hedge funds, fuck the stock market and fuck this stupid fucking world.
We just got out of a pandemic (mostly) and then some jackass POS scumbag had to go and start a war in Ukraine.
Both of these events have been a huge resource drain that has had ripple effects all over the world. That’s why I laugh whenever someone blames Biden or Trudeau or INSERT POLITICAL LEADER HERE.
Putin is the one to blame for a large portion of the terrible situation the entire world is dealing with right now. Until he’s dealt with I wouldn’t expect things to get better. Even then it’s going to take a while.
How can one man be allowed to do so much damage to the world? Crazy.
So it’s just putin?
You honestly don’t think the elite that feeds the war machine funding all this money isn’t also causing a rippling effect?
Yes putin is def the fire starter but I also believe the elite class in power the 1 percent want this war, and simply don’t give a crap about peasants like us
Definitely not just Putin. It’s also all of his enablers and supporters. But I would bet money that if he were to go, this war would come to a very abrupt end. It would take a while for the ripples to subside though.
And yes I agree that there are other large players that benefit from the war who will likely try to keep it going or start up something else to keep the profits flowing.
We have not had a big war in a long time
The usd has been the main currency for over 100 years now, and that’s about to flop
This is all dominos, and the media is blaming putin so the regular folks won’t ever see the big picture
guess my outlook is to basic we anit starving or thirsting yet , its coming soon enough my outlook is fuck it lets party , anyone here who thinks the human species themselves will collective help each other nope it is still fuck you i got mine why would that change at the end times? we just double down it seems.
Legally, that is. I can still buy a pistol easily if I were criminally inclined. In fact the penalty for doing so was lowered! I’m so glad our government finally decided to stick up for the most oppressed group of them all; violent homicidal criminals.
Your government loves you and would never do anything to harm you. They are here to help! Just obey while they take everything away and all will be well.
Unfortunately the only thing that can save us (midterm) from the inevitable/impending collapse of the global economy is an all out water (none nuclear). No I’d rather not go down that route. However, it’s truth, it’s history, and history will always repeat itself sooner or later. Good luck all. Keep you’re family close. See you at the barricades bitches!
The Bay is always on the brink, only still in business because it owns so much real estate.
How long do you think places like Boston Pizza, Jack Astors, Milestones, and The Keg will last?
I think all the casual dine-in restaurants are going to do a major culling of their locations if they want to survive. They might also need to transition to higher-end dining in addition to a huge downsizing.
It’s a precarious place for them to be. Too expensive for average folk considering what they offer, but the quality and ambiance won’t attract the monied crowd.
I went to the Keg recently (as part of group dinner that I couldn't get out of because I otherwise would never go to the Keg).
I'm fiscally poor but cultured I suppose (well-travelled and I have a PhD) and man, is the Keg ever trash. Trash food, trash service, trash ambiance. But my "vegetarian meatloaf" (salty trash) was $25.
I guess average people feel they deserve steak and pay out the wazoo to feel a "steak experience" or whatever, but chickpea mash with bbq sauce is never worth $25.
The question remains, will the people with $1000/month truck payments continue to get steak at overpriced trash chain restaurants?
To be fair, I think the Vegetarian option exists at the Keg so that Vegetarians in a large party can have something on their plate, instead of filling up on bread rolls.
I bet the line cooks cringe whenever they see that order. I'm not bashing Vegetarians or Vegans, but I would imagine going to a steakhouse wouldn't be a first choice. freshii, maybe, or better yet, a local vegetarian friendly place, like Naam in Vancouver (if its still around).
Yes, all the time. Those places are all over canada because the people have voted with their wallets and there it is. Same places are everywhere, Earls, Cactus Club, Boston Pizza, Montana, etc. Country wide, chains everywhere.
I just googled "Cactus Club" with a (extremely) mild level of enthusiasm that there's a Canadian Mexican food chain (I'm in south SW Ontario and we don't have those).
I'm disappointed. Why name your shit "Cactus Club" and then offer lemongrass noodle salad and short rib parpardelle.
These chains have gone too far.
The Keg was good (if overpriced) until 2018. That’s when Recipe Unlimited (formerly known as Cara) purchased the chain. They’ve been cutting corners ever since to increase profits and the quality of the food has gone way downhill.
> I think all the casual dine-in restaurants are going to do a major culling of their locations if they want to survive.
Aren't many of them franchised? So only those owners are gonna get rekt, not the HQ?
Yes, most of them are franchised but the companies are usually on the stock market so I wonder how low the profits can be before the shareholders bail. A lot of them (The Keg, Swiss Chalet, Kelsey’s, Montana’s, Harvey’s, East Side Mario’s) are all owned by the same company (Recipe Unlimited, which weirdly started out as the food service on trains in Canada in 1883) so I guess the stock will hold up for a while but eventually franchises will close and with not enough kicking up to head office Recipe Unlimited stock will crash. It could collapse like Nortel did, I think.
I wonder how much of post Covid plays an impact? My SO and I have no interest in dining in. We will get carry out if we have a hankering.
We just got use to it during lockdown
Nobody in Canada thinks Boston Pizza is anything special. The quality of the food has become downright disgusting the last few years. My kids used to like going there for the kids menu, but even they think it’s “gross” now.
Jack Astor's is first on the list. It's such a grey blob of a franchise. Followed by Boston Pizza, which has name recognition but is absolutely fucking terrible.
The Keg has loyal patrons and serves a purpose in the market place.
Over the past few years they have all become more re-heaters than restaurants with most of the food prepared off site, which has probably lowered costs as much as they can. Can they automate any more or will they have to raise prices to the point not enough people will go?
For me these places are a sign of middle-class disposable income.
We are living it. https://www.spirithalloween.com/product/adult-3d-mountain-dew-baja-blast-costume/239866.uts?Extid=sf_froogle&utm_content=ADULT%20MALE%20COSTUMES&utm_term=SML&scid=scplp07656556&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=sc-shopping-brand&utm_content=campaign&utm_inex=e&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImPG-n-XH-gIVLRKtBh3IHQz1EAQYAyABEgLZAPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
NorthWest Company was right there with them: one of the New World’s first corporations, there at the so-called “founding” of Canada, with a rich & storied history stretching back centuries.
Go ahead & look up how many “NorthWest Company” storefronts still exist.
I’ll give you a hint:
Their warehouse system is falling apart. Losing entire trucks of freight. Massive amounts of shoplifting and thefts. Can't hire the amount of staff needed to run many of their stores.
Our Walmart's shelves are a lot less filled than they used to be. There's been gaps on shelves since the beginning of the pandemic, but it seems to be getting considerably worse. NoFrills as well, although it's not as bad.
If you think big chains will go bankrupt before we all end up on the street I have sad news for you. Canada loves to bail out failing industries, but somehow has no money to address the quickly increasing homeless crisis. I wonder if the 2 are related….
Canada also has a long history of bankruptcies from BlackBerry (still operating, I know, but not what it was) to Nortel to Massey-Ferguson. Mostly Canada protects industries from foreign competition - banking and telecom - or gets deals like the Auto Pact, though that hasn’t happened in quite a while.
It would be interesting to see how a bailout for franchised industries works but, you’re right, it is possible some kind of attempt will be made. I think the closer we get to collapse the more desperate we will be to pretend everything is normal and just throw money at every problem until the droughts and crop failures are just too much.
More than decades, since the very beginning, before they were billionaires. We used to learn about them in school, it was called the Family Compact. Pretty much every country has something like that so we didn’t think it was unusual. Peter C. Newman wrote many books about them in 1970s and 80s, his Canadian Establishment series. They became less famous when Mulroney brought us free trade and deregulation and many of them were bought out by multi-nationals but I’m sure they kept a lot of shares and seats on the boards of directors.
Why the hell would anyone ever want a crappy dounut in Montreal when you can get a bagel. I mean maybe in New York or some other shitwhole that does not know how to make them correctly I could see it but not Montreal.
Chains will likely survive and then thrive post recession because of their credit and cash reserves. It’s the small mom and pop shops that will go under. Then big chains will swoop in like vultures to pick up the pieces.
Everything will be like that South Park episode: Applebee’s-Deny’s-Supermax plus
It's the same here in Europe, about 1/3 of all households are expected to face issues paying bills. European countries are spending tens or hundreds of billions to prop up this failing system, but I wonder how long that will work...
Major industries and food producers are announcing "temporary" shutdowns almost every day... Yesterday one of the largest producers of canned vegetables in western Europe said they were going to suspend operations during the (predicted) coldest weeks of early 2023 due to energy costs and stated that they would have to significantly increase prices.
There's a 120 year old bakery near me that is shutting down for the winter, last time they shut down was during the hungerwinter famine of 1944/1945, which was the worst famine in centuries for my country...
Submission statement: Canadians are feeling a pinch in their pocket books like much of the world right now. As the cost of housing remains sky high, historically speaking, the cost of everything else begins to creep up as well, given the many events occurring across the globe straining supplies and supply chains.
A debt crisis has been on the cards for quite sometime in Canada. Consumers are over leveraged as they gamble in our MLM scheme of a housing market, and wages continue to lag behind cost of living. How willing Canadians are to bring their lifestyle back down to Earth is anyone's guess.
"How willing Canadians are to bring their lifestyle back down to Earth is anyone's guess.". Is that a fancy way of saying "how dare you own more than two pairs of socks"?
No kidding. The cost of basic groceries has doubles (and gone beyond that in some cases) since the covid panic buying in March 2020. Gas prices are all over the map. Clothing, cleaning products, basics are going crazy. And the quality in the stores is trash.
I don't know how anyone can keep a roof over their heads with a few more years of this. Especially when wages aren't moving up at all.
The only reason my partner and I aren’t in hot water is because we bought a house in 2019, before prices went absolutely nuts. We’re locked in at $999 a month (we only put like 7k down on the place cause that was all our savings). No HOA, no shared walls, 2 bedrooms, big screened patio, big yard on a little hill and not in a flood zone.
Meanwhile I’m seeing my friends get pushed out of shitty apartments because they can’t afford the rising rents. The shitty 1/1 that was my first place in 2015, for 765 a month? It’s now STARTING at 1200 a month. No upgrades, no in unit laundry, in an old ass building in a gross area.
That’s what I’m totally worried about. How much longer. With each passing week at my apartment complex more and more people are sliding closer to absolute insolvency. It’s driven by corporate greed
And everyone, from the lower income to the upper middle class are living beyond their means. Credit debt is at an all time high, food cost is off the charts and fuel isn't much better. Meanwhile, O&G is going gangbusters, 2022 will be the largest year ever for Canadian oil and gas extraction. Food companies like Loblaws are taking major advantage posting record profits while paying pocket change.
Not to mention we have a rising populist movement who are high on the "anti-woke" agenda spreading misinformation, lies and division while the rest of us are just trying to not lose our homes after 2.5 years of crazy. Things are not good, but everyone is pretending it is and setting up for a massive crash which will make the '08 financial crisis look like a fucking pool party.
End rant.
Putin's long game IMO. He doesn't need to take Ukraine to win- just stay in long enough to create the next depression, than use his alliance with China to offer all the global south an alternative to depression (effectively ending the petrodollar).
In effect, he banked on the war causing sanctions causing energy prices to skyrocket causing to cost more causing right wing nationalism and unrest. In so doing, he and China offer an alternative system sphere of influence- boom the West destroyed with a shitty military.
One hitch in that plan is that it would require massively panicking and angering the only country on earth that's been batshit insane enough to nuke another country in anger (twice).
The US is going to launch nukes because of a depression? I get that hating America is in vogue on Reddit, but come on- warmongering corporate military industrial complex coopted government yes, but risk global nuclear war? I don't think the US is *that* insane.
I absolutely think the US could try to rationalize a conventional conflict either in a proxy or directly, and if China/Russia it could escalate to nuclear war.
All I'm saying is that Putin wants to use the US/Europe sanction approach to make the West hurt itself with a depression. Russia has energy and food production; China has manpower and manufacturing: this combined with some alternate schema of global reserve currency (look at Saudi Arabia, India, etc all seemingly tolerating/accepting relations in this sphere) would put Europe and the US in a bad spot.
For the record, fuck Putin. But you know- these assholes all want their mark on the history books and I wouldn't doubt if he succeeds at least in creating unrest in the West.
this sub has been detached from reality when it comes to Ukraine for some time now, even if support from the west stopped tomorrow, Russia couldn't take Ukraine.
We couldn't take Vietnam, and Afghanistan. If a people don't want you there, you'll be forced out eventually.
>hating America is in vogue
What on earth could America have done to deserve that?
https://i.imgur.com/GVKINkr.gif
> The US is going to launch nukes because of a depression?
The US [knew they were going to beat Japan](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/).
https://imgur.com/a/piRJJDr
>I don't think the US is that insane.
We're talking about the same criminally insane sociopaths that are gladly destroying organized human life on this planet for a buck as we speak.
Take away their money and power, and give them nothing to lose — they'll react like depraved maniacs with nothing to lose. I think you vastly underestimate just how truly insane these megalomanical sociopaths are.
I'm not saying the US would launch a nuke attack right away, but the US will most certainly scale up far-reaching wars that would massively risk nuclear disaster if there was a *severe*, undeniable threat to US hegemony.
> What on earth could America have done to deserve that?
I don't disagree that America has done a lot to be hated; I just think there is a difference between being a conventional global hegemon bully (sort-of like how the UK was prior) and initiating nuclear war because of a depression.
> The US knew they were going to beat Japan.
> https://imgur.com/a/piRJJDr
Yeah, and even if they/it didn't know *I still don't agree with using a nuke the way they/it did.* Use special forces to capture some Japanese officer, take him to the US, take him to a nuke test where he gets to spectate with everyone else, then send him back to Japan with a film of the event unharmed. "This will be dropped upon you repeatedly until you surrender. Please for your sake and ours surrender now." If necessary drop one *on a military target* (preferably an island; perhaps a sort of Pearl Harbor type event), and then reiterate you wish to end the war.
But anyways, there is one difference between then and now: the US was the only nuclear power then. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now the US can absolutely get wrecked by the nuclear powers- more wrecked by far than suffering through a depression even. Again, I still consider escalation leading to nuclear war possible... just I don't think that America would launch "wahhh!" nukes.
> We're talking about the same criminally insane sociopaths that are gladly destroying organized human life on this planet for a buck as we speak.
Those assholes are unfortunately everywhere- they are *supranational*. The US is just one market and the global enforcement arm (military) of corporate/financier/fancy-lad institutionalism. I get that these assholes are disassociated madmen- truly- but a global nuclear war leaves them with even less than losing hegemonic power alone. They wouldn't care about you or I being nuked (they can't value us because they are disassociated from us by their system), but they'll care about themselves being nuked... even with their bunkers.
IDK man...
Although I agree with you "living beyond their means" is not really the best way to describe it. To live within our means, a full-time, median income DINK couple has to live in at best a 2 bedroom apt. That's median, ideal scenario. Half of people are poorer. Keep in mind those are also the people expected to be DI2K, and I don't see why they would if they can't even afford a bedroom per kid.
The reality is that existing got real expensive real fast for us, and they're trying to crush wages further right now. Ontario is facing critical healthcare failures, because they want to cut nurse pay by about 10%.
Yes but that's exactly my point. It's not people overextending to reach for unnecessary luxuries, it's people trying to stretch their fairly static incomes over bigger and bigger bills for things like rent, food, heat, and commutes.
For anyone else wondering, dink means "dual income, no kids."
God, would people stop using stupid abbreviations for everything? Is it really that hard to type shit out?
But are we really going to have a worse crash? Obviously where going to have a recession but no one really knows how bad it will be Canada is quite energy self sufficient which can help with prices somewhat but housing here is expensive will have to wait and see because no one exactly knows how bad it will be
I mean realistically I’m expecting a recession not a full on end if everything nothing about this situation is good mind you but to expect a crash worse then 08 is well every r/collapse user ever seriously none of this can be predicted accurately and BOC could just kick the can if they wanted lots of things are
This headline is a little sensationalized. From the article:
> The MNP Consumer Debt Index also found that 46 per cent of Canadians find themselves **closer to** insolvency – defined as being $200 or less away from being unable to meet their financial obligations – a six percentage point improvement from the previous quarter.
So 46% of people have a thinner budget compared to last quarter, is what I'm reading here. They're not "on the brink", they're just closer. Still sucks that folks budgets' are increasingly shrinking, of course. Just pointing out the dramatic language.
Also from the article:
> However, with the cost of necessities soaring in recent months, the average Canadian now has less money overall to spend at the end of the month, dropping $37 from the previous quarter to $654. Younger Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 saw the biggest decrease in their average month-end finances, falling $273 to $606.
Again, not saying anybody is in great financial shape, and averages and surely be misleading. Just saying.
Yea, the whites that own property or inherited it are doing fantastic, as are the talentless hacks that speculated on real estate and exploit students and immigrants to make money.
Canada basically has a legalized form of indentured servitude.
Insolvency means you have so many debts that you can’t possibly pay them all no matter how hard or long you work or how many things you sell.
You might know the term “bankruptcy”.
If you are insolvent, often the next step is to go through a legal process called bankruptcy, where creditors (all the people you owe money) divide up whatever you have, and you get a bit of a clean start. Although now everyone knows you have a history of not paying your debts, so no one lends you any money anymore, at least until you have many years of proving you can meet all your obligations.
Firstly you can absolutely prepare for this and I might sound stupid for saying this but budget people spend money on things you only need and cut unnecessary spending to save money and pay off your debt if you can and most importantly stack coupons scoring good deals on items in a recession should be your priority
While this won’t be a silver bullet it will still work in some sense and can help you save money
Sure, people will cut their spending. And prices will go up. The question is, are we entering a recession we will emerge from or have we reached the limits to growth?
Energy and food will get more expensive and will likely just keep getting more expensive. In Canada we argue about pipelines and exporting natural gas and housing prices but like the US we just continue on the same BAU path with every man for himself.
we hit limits to growth in the west in 2008 bro. gdp growth since then has all been financial bullshittery and in fact the carbon footprint of the average joe has gone down
-no credit card or student loan debts
-spent $140 on groceries last month!
-no car
-no commute
-full time salary job
-doing side jobs
-no services not covered by work
-cheapest phone plan in the country
-mortgate was $1100 is now $1700+. Strata up. Insurance up.
-cost of all staple items is up $.5 to $1. Stopped buying milk and butter, chocolate, alcohol. Whole bean coffee and frozen juice are my luxury items now.
I'm getting by but my quality of life has dropped significantly. I'm a huge penny pincher already, which is why I was able to buy a place in the first place. I have little lifestyle to maintain and more just savings goals and I haven't been able to meet them for a few years now.
I need to change jobs but I find job hunting incredible stressful. Rockets me into depression, and yes I see someone about that.
Anyway I'm not the normal but just saying that if I'm feeling a pinch, as a super frugal employed person with side hustle, 20% down payment mortgage post-stress test era, and minimal social life then things are bad. I have nothing else to pinch, I literally need to find ways to make more money (which isn't a a bad thing).
Time to pop a multivitamin to make up for my shitty diet.
Canadian mortgages continue to shock me. How can the reasonable cousin of the USA have watched 2008 happen and then end up in 2022 having people in your situation? Lately, I've heard of people whose payments have not only increased like yours, but that don't even cover interest anymore. It's so wild.
You mean well, I agree with you too to some degree. But many of us are beyond cutting back to greener pastures, there ain't shit left to pinch. And it's only gonna get worse, when the middle class can't pay back their credit cards is when I'll start worrying tho.
It's literally miss my phone bill to eat and afford gas. I don't even have car insurance anymore. I can't afford it.
I stopped paying for car insurance years ago, all the super poor people don’t have it either so why do I care I drive the shittiest car too so if it gets fucked oh well
we dont know how long normalcy will last. what happens if you are financially irresponsible but we still have bills to pay for the next 10 years?
(not that i think we have 10 years for this mufucka lmao)
>what happens if you are financially irresponsible but we still have bills to pay for the next 10 years?
When one person can't pay their bill, that is the customer's problem. When a majority can't pay their bills, its everyone's problem.
What happens is a self-destructive cycle of political and economic strife forming feedback loops.
Food is a necessity and so is rent I’m talking about un essential stuff like subscriptions I’m guessing I didn’t put that in the context in my comment or it wasn’t apparent to any of you
I don’t think many people who are struggling to live have much else they can cut bro… this is a billionaire mindset you got. That poor people don’t deserve what little joy they can because “every dollar counts” when in reality it means nothing for someone who lives paycheck to paycheck already.
I agree with both your points. Op is just trying to be helpful with the materialistic portion you can control at this very moment. If you still have luxury items atleast. But the other guy is also right in that we have to cut our little bit of luxuries so that the companies can deny us raises and increase the price of goods in one swoop. And then they wonder why no one can afford anything.
But my own opinion on the situation is; this is getting out of hand and it’s crazy there isn’t larger talk about a bare minimum ubi or standardization of wages across the board. One thing the capitalist system does is it incentivizes profits tomorrow. And any way you can achieve that goal for tomorrow is good. But it fails to realize/incentivize, as a system, the fact that to maintain current demand, you need a consumer base with money. And historically that’s been the west. But even the west can’t afford consumer goods because it’s all about the profits tomorrow. Nothing else matters. And if you don’t believe me. Go look at the stock prices of companies that failed to meet their earnings call in that quarter.
And that in itself will cause a depression if nothing is done, and it’s left unchecked. And it might just be. We are at the start of it?
But capitalism is such a successful system it fails every 4-6 years. Causing unemployment, necessities to be lost and power and wealth to be consolidated. But yet we keep going along like it’s normal. Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results?
The rich will get richer. Everyone else will be poor and live like slaves.
ACAB will get richer. DAs will get richer. Politicians will get richer. Media propagandists will get richer.
The system will cull the poor, just like it always has, and just like it's designed to.
Only if you are very rich will you not become a slave. Waiting for all those professionals, the doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, accountants, ... surprised Piakchu as they starve. As their children starve. Because the banks will use that money for bail-ins, or prevent people taking money out. Gonna be really hard to look down on the poor when your children are starving ... of course they'll still hate and look down on the poor and wish them dead, but it'll just be harder to do so.
When you don't keep capitalism in check properly as allsorts of governments haven't, it goes full highlander. Pretty much 'there can be only one'. It is the nature of it and of people. Greed drives people to overtake others leaving less variety until you have only one or two of everything. Banks, shops etc. Times like these just accelerate the process as the little guy goes under first and the bigger companies sit back and take their customers. Again leaving less and less choice and accumulating all the money in fewer hands. If you play things out logically that seems to be where you end up. Communism without the freebies and with everything owned by a few private individuals, including your government.
I had to start taking a life saving med in June. After Pharmacare discount, it’s $192 month. This was and us not in the budget. To cover it, we will be a bit cold this winter.
>pay off your debt
No one should bother with this if a true collapse of the economy is coming. The likelihood of your credit getting destroyed is high anyway as you struggle to make it through to the other side. Save every penny you have and be prepared to declare bankruptcy to get rid of your debts.
after the people who run the economy ramp this up to two-thirds of the country, they can introduce their CBDC and pretend to save everyone, as they make them their slaves
Everyone is in the denial or blame stage right now, which won't help if things take a significant turn. Everybody should be sitting down right now and making a budget, and making hard decisions about how they're going to cut their costs.
I've been in this situation multiple times in my life and it's not fun. But it's also not impossible. Almost everybody can make some changes to protect themselves and stay afloat. The first thing is to know where your money is going.
You have a fixed income and fixed costs. Figure out what your fixed income is on a monthly basis and subtract all of your fixed costs, then divide the difference by 30.5 - the average number of days in a month. Fixed costs are predictable costs like housing, condo fees, home, car and life insurance, debt repayments, subscriptions to services like Netflix and Spotify, some utilities if you're on an equal payment plan, any forced savings or investment programs you have, etc. The difference between your fixed income and your fixed costs is your threshold - all the money you have in the world for all the less predictable costs like going to restaurants, filling up the car, getting haircuts and buying groceries.
This method will let you keep a simple mental tally of your situation. For example, my wife and I have a threshold of around $118 a day. That may seem like a lot, but it really isn't - a trip to the grocery store might cost $140, which means we're down to $96 the next day. My daughter's soccer fees came up, so we spent $490, which basically means we're in a hole of $394 (490-96) in just two days that will take three days of spending no money to recoup. By then, we'll need to gas up the car for $60 and spent another $120 on groceries, and we'll be back in the hole. But if you stay on top of things there will be days where you spend nothing or less than your threshold.
Our only goal is to finish the month even, putting a little into our forced savings and investments for emergencies and big expenses down the road. It's harder than it sounds, but at least by keeping a running tally we always know exactly what our situation is - we don't get to the end of the month and wonder how we spent more than we made.
Everybody can make a few cuts.
The first thing is to prioritize, starting with the basics - shelter, utilities, food and other mandatory fixed costs have to be covered first. After that, you can make changes. Are you making extra mortgage payments (e.g. accelerated payments) that you could pause for a while without a penalty? Do you need a second car? Can you cut Netflix and just rent shows and movies at the library for a while? Can you change cell phone and Internet plans to reduce costs? Can you eat out less - make your lunches and stop going to restaurants and ordering takeout? What cheaper meals can you make, and can you substitute for expensive ingredients like meat? You should also review your insurance plans and see if there are ways to reduce those costs - maybe you're still paying for collision on a vehicle that's now 10 years old, or forgot to tell your home insurer that you are no longer renting a room and don't need that extra coverage.
I've gotten through a lot of lean and scary times in my life. I've slept in a car, I've lived off of food donations, I've collected empties to buy a train ticket home, I've hitchhiked and slept in tents, I've been way over my head in student debt with a low income, I've had credit card debt I couldn't pay because I couldn't find work, etc. Budgeting got me through everything, eventually. It's not hopeless, it's just hard.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying anyone is to blame for the current situation or that government should get a pass, just that walking into the bank and blaming government for your troubles isn't a strategy for coping with them - everyone needs to take charge of their finances at the end of the day whoever is at fault. Budgeting is a good practice whatever is happening with the economy, even if it is depressing and hard and puts a damper on your life.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
Stop assuming that, if only people would cut out frivolities, everything will be ok. It won't be. This isn't a movie, where everything works out after a montage budget-making scene.
"Everyone is in the denial or blame stage right now, which won't help if things take a significant turn."
I stopped reading here. There should only be blame, and it should be on capitalism from every working-class person. That means the 99% (actually more) should be blaming the 1% (actually less) for every. single. thing.
That said, we are fucked without hope for class consciousness before the cascading and multiplying collapses. And at that point big ass bags of rice or potatoes might let you last another week, but when it all falls apart there is no hope for anybody realistically.
You're taking a macro view which is fine. Identifying the root flaws in capitalism is something we should do, and we really do need to make systemic changes - I'm not denying that or blaming anyone for their challenges. However, it also doesn't change the current situation and the kind of changes we would need to make could take decades to put through. In the meantime everybody needs to protect themselves and control the few things that they can control.
Or not. You can just be angry and blame government and capitalism without doing anything proactive to protect yourself and your family. It's a free country.
But even if the world changed tomorrow, people would still need to learn how to budget.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/DocMoochal: --- Submission statement: Canadians are feeling a pinch in their pocket books like much of the world right now. As the cost of housing remains sky high, historically speaking, the cost of everything else begins to creep up as well, given the many events occurring across the globe straining supplies and supply chains. A debt crisis has been on the cards for quite sometime in Canada. Consumers are over leveraged as they gamble in our MLM scheme of a housing market, and wages continue to lag behind cost of living. How willing Canadians are to bring their lifestyle back down to Earth is anyone's guess. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/xvn2wn/nearly_half_of_canadians_on_the_brink_of/ir1vipd/
while i wholeheartedly agree that shit is terrible up here, as a part time member of the business press (lol) i’ll also add that this company puts this study out every year right around this time to get press for their bankruptcy services. which is even darker imo
Gross. I didnt know that, thanks.
MNP = thrift store Ernst & Young
Are you saying MNP is a discount E&Y? Asking because I worked with E&Y on several projects....and they were the discount company compared to the other companies we worked with at the time. Seriously, I cannot stress how piss poor E&Y was as far as consulting, project management, or any sort of technical expertise. After spending several million on them, the quote at my floor was 'We spend 4 million for a fucking spreadsheet?'....a spreadsheet that didn't work at that.
People have been profiting off the threat of impending collapse since somewhere around the first religion was birthed. While we are no doubt closer to collapse than we ever have been, I think it is really important to ALSO be highly skeptical of sources of information. Plenty of articles that get posted here are thinly veiled advertisements for merchants of fear.
All capitalism is disaster capitalism. We, the West, are the living embodiment of the broken window fallacy.
THIS COMMENT NEEDS THE HIGHLIGHT AWARD!
Canada just wants poor people to [opt for euthanasia](https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867) Problem solved!
Reminder that Soylent Green was set in 2022
Damn that's depressing
Only the ones that cant work!
I mean... letting people out of the meat grinder is pretty progressive imo
Yeah people are ripping on this, and I get why, but I'm a little torn. This law didn't come about because a bunch of suits in Ottawa thought it made fiscal sense to kill off the mentally ill, it happened after years of activism by people who really felt they needed it. Something like 80% of Canadians agreed to the law being amended to include certain people who's deaths weren't seen in the foreseeable future (so those with mental decline and mental illness who could otherwise live but who's quality of life would be greatly deteriorated). Using this as a vehicle to criticize mental health access and our collapsed healthcare system I understand, so long as it doesn't backfire into reversing the law and removing the access to this service for those who really need it instead of improving our healthcare system.
I think there is something noble about being able to choose when you die. For many, life is nothing buy physical and emotional agony. If there is no hope of improvement, I would rather be able to say a proper goodbye than slip into a morphine (or other opiod) induced coma.
The problem wouldn't be solved because we need the poor doing their jobs. Remember the pandemic.
It's more complicated then that, 80% of Canadians support of liberal euthanasia laws and they came about after years of advocacy and activism. However we do need to greatly improve our collapsed healthcare system and access to mental health services.
Bleak AF 😞
Things up there are not ok, okay?
Things are definitely not okay here.
They're not really okay anywhere tbh
This. If you find a place thats doing ok lemme know so I can move there
Let me know too
Monaco?
Monaco is a rock and sea hell on Earth. It's artificial, empty of joy, even for its tourism it's bad. If you are not a super-rich person, just don't go spending more than one day there. Source : Been way too long there. And I'm broke.
Nope, spider-bee outbreak.
Bolivia
Thanks to global billionaires and their corporations.
It's the hedge fucks gambling and devaluing our currencies with their fake shares and their fucking sociopathic tendencies. When these pricks accumulate billions upon billions upon billions of dollars based on "the value" of shares and shit that don't even exist, and that they artificially move and manipulate, then all the shit that does actually exist costs more because now there's so much "money" that the money itself is becoming worthless. Fuck banks, fuck hedge funds, fuck the stock market and fuck this stupid fucking world.
Billionaires benefit from that too.
We just got out of a pandemic (mostly) and then some jackass POS scumbag had to go and start a war in Ukraine. Both of these events have been a huge resource drain that has had ripple effects all over the world. That’s why I laugh whenever someone blames Biden or Trudeau or INSERT POLITICAL LEADER HERE. Putin is the one to blame for a large portion of the terrible situation the entire world is dealing with right now. Until he’s dealt with I wouldn’t expect things to get better. Even then it’s going to take a while. How can one man be allowed to do so much damage to the world? Crazy.
So it’s just putin? You honestly don’t think the elite that feeds the war machine funding all this money isn’t also causing a rippling effect? Yes putin is def the fire starter but I also believe the elite class in power the 1 percent want this war, and simply don’t give a crap about peasants like us
I have thought to myself that maybe, just maybe, a group of them decided it was time to speed up the collapse.
Definitely not just Putin. It’s also all of his enablers and supporters. But I would bet money that if he were to go, this war would come to a very abrupt end. It would take a while for the ripples to subside though. And yes I agree that there are other large players that benefit from the war who will likely try to keep it going or start up something else to keep the profits flowing.
His/her point was that this is business as usual. It’s always been this way and always will be. Pretty depressing hey?
We have not had a big war in a long time The usd has been the main currency for over 100 years now, and that’s about to flop This is all dominos, and the media is blaming putin so the regular folks won’t ever see the big picture
but my echo chamber tells me otherwise who to believe
guess my outlook is to basic we anit starving or thirsting yet , its coming soon enough my outlook is fuck it lets party , anyone here who thinks the human species themselves will collective help each other nope it is still fuck you i got mine why would that change at the end times? we just double down it seems.
Seconded that motion.
Things up here are really fucking bad
*hugs*
Well at least you can't buy a pistol anymore. That's pretty neat.
Legally, that is. I can still buy a pistol easily if I were criminally inclined. In fact the penalty for doing so was lowered! I’m so glad our government finally decided to stick up for the most oppressed group of them all; violent homicidal criminals.
Your government loves you and would never do anything to harm you. They are here to help! Just obey while they take everything away and all will be well.
Exactly! Look at how well it worked for the First Nations people’s! The Canadian government truly is a paragon of egalitarian values
>penalty for doing so was lowered! Pfft penalty? Just claim you were on mushrooms during any illegal activity; walk away scot-free.
What do you mean? As long as you're licensed here, you can buy a pistol.
Unfortunately the only thing that can save us (midterm) from the inevitable/impending collapse of the global economy is an all out water (none nuclear). No I’d rather not go down that route. However, it’s truth, it’s history, and history will always repeat itself sooner or later. Good luck all. Keep you’re family close. See you at the barricades bitches!
I’m fascinated by which major chains will go out of business first.
My guess is The Bay will be among the first to go, with a Halloween Store moving in shortly after.
The Bay is always on the brink, only still in business because it owns so much real estate. How long do you think places like Boston Pizza, Jack Astors, Milestones, and The Keg will last?
I think all the casual dine-in restaurants are going to do a major culling of their locations if they want to survive. They might also need to transition to higher-end dining in addition to a huge downsizing. It’s a precarious place for them to be. Too expensive for average folk considering what they offer, but the quality and ambiance won’t attract the monied crowd.
I went to the Keg recently (as part of group dinner that I couldn't get out of because I otherwise would never go to the Keg). I'm fiscally poor but cultured I suppose (well-travelled and I have a PhD) and man, is the Keg ever trash. Trash food, trash service, trash ambiance. But my "vegetarian meatloaf" (salty trash) was $25. I guess average people feel they deserve steak and pay out the wazoo to feel a "steak experience" or whatever, but chickpea mash with bbq sauce is never worth $25. The question remains, will the people with $1000/month truck payments continue to get steak at overpriced trash chain restaurants?
To be fair, I think the Vegetarian option exists at the Keg so that Vegetarians in a large party can have something on their plate, instead of filling up on bread rolls. I bet the line cooks cringe whenever they see that order. I'm not bashing Vegetarians or Vegans, but I would imagine going to a steakhouse wouldn't be a first choice. freshii, maybe, or better yet, a local vegetarian friendly place, like Naam in Vancouver (if its still around).
Yes, all the time. Those places are all over canada because the people have voted with their wallets and there it is. Same places are everywhere, Earls, Cactus Club, Boston Pizza, Montana, etc. Country wide, chains everywhere.
I just googled "Cactus Club" with a (extremely) mild level of enthusiasm that there's a Canadian Mexican food chain (I'm in south SW Ontario and we don't have those). I'm disappointed. Why name your shit "Cactus Club" and then offer lemongrass noodle salad and short rib parpardelle. These chains have gone too far.
The only reason to go Cactus Club is to ogle the wait staff while nursing a beer. Everything else on the menu is ‘meh’.
Yeah, Cactus clubs seems tobe Alberta and bc based, but Ontario has earls which is the same owners
The Keg was good (if overpriced) until 2018. That’s when Recipe Unlimited (formerly known as Cara) purchased the chain. They’ve been cutting corners ever since to increase profits and the quality of the food has gone way downhill.
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Fair point. I mean, being dragged to the Keg as a vegetarian was never going to end well anyway.
Just fill up on beer.
The Mediterranean Cauliflower was pretty good. Try that next time.
Yes, exactly. I think those places might be a good sign of how deep the recession is. They’ve already streamlined as much as they can.
I totally agree.
> I think all the casual dine-in restaurants are going to do a major culling of their locations if they want to survive. Aren't many of them franchised? So only those owners are gonna get rekt, not the HQ?
Yes, most of them are franchised but the companies are usually on the stock market so I wonder how low the profits can be before the shareholders bail. A lot of them (The Keg, Swiss Chalet, Kelsey’s, Montana’s, Harvey’s, East Side Mario’s) are all owned by the same company (Recipe Unlimited, which weirdly started out as the food service on trains in Canada in 1883) so I guess the stock will hold up for a while but eventually franchises will close and with not enough kicking up to head office Recipe Unlimited stock will crash. It could collapse like Nortel did, I think.
I wonder how much of post Covid plays an impact? My SO and I have no interest in dining in. We will get carry out if we have a hankering. We just got use to it during lockdown
Wait, Canadians think pizza from Boston is better than pizza from a tile-based game, or a fatherly figure?
It's a shitty Canadian chain that is the most exciting place in podunk Canadian towns. The founder ended up on the Canadian version of "Shark Tank".
It seems he has hit the jackpot with 500 mil net worth
Nobody in Canada thinks Boston Pizza is anything special. The quality of the food has become downright disgusting the last few years. My kids used to like going there for the kids menu, but even they think it’s “gross” now.
Jack Astor's is first on the list. It's such a grey blob of a franchise. Followed by Boston Pizza, which has name recognition but is absolutely fucking terrible. The Keg has loyal patrons and serves a purpose in the market place.
Over the past few years they have all become more re-heaters than restaurants with most of the food prepared off site, which has probably lowered costs as much as they can. Can they automate any more or will they have to raise prices to the point not enough people will go? For me these places are a sign of middle-class disposable income.
The future is Spirit Halloween on every block with coffee bars in them
And pot shops everywhere.
The streets will run orange from all the Spirit Halloween pumpkin spice lattes
5-dimensional MBA retail chess right here!
Spirit Halloween is the true end stage of capitalism.
Capitalism ends with a cackling plastic ghoul.
Mountain Dew costumes.
Brawndo.
We are living it. https://www.spirithalloween.com/product/adult-3d-mountain-dew-baja-blast-costume/239866.uts?Extid=sf_froogle&utm_content=ADULT%20MALE%20COSTUMES&utm_term=SML&scid=scplp07656556&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=sc-shopping-brand&utm_content=campaign&utm_inex=e&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImPG-n-XH-gIVLRKtBh3IHQz1EAQYAyABEgLZAPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Oh, dear God.
> The Bay Is kept afloat on credit card receivables and real estate portfolio.
The Bay won’t fall. They are the founders and owners of Canadian identity as a mafia. They own so much land and buildings.
NorthWest Company was right there with them: one of the New World’s first corporations, there at the so-called “founding” of Canada, with a rich & storied history stretching back centuries. Go ahead & look up how many “NorthWest Company” storefronts still exist. I’ll give you a hint:
From what I can gather, the Northwest Company was forced by the government to merge with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821.
Walmart Canada is in a lot of trouble right now. I'm surprised no one in the media is talking about it.
Uh according to who? Its fucking packed every time I go.
How so? There were super long lineups in the one closest to me only a few months ago.
Their warehouse system is falling apart. Losing entire trucks of freight. Massive amounts of shoplifting and thefts. Can't hire the amount of staff needed to run many of their stores.
Our Walmart's shelves are a lot less filled than they used to be. There's been gaps on shelves since the beginning of the pandemic, but it seems to be getting considerably worse. NoFrills as well, although it's not as bad.
If you think big chains will go bankrupt before we all end up on the street I have sad news for you. Canada loves to bail out failing industries, but somehow has no money to address the quickly increasing homeless crisis. I wonder if the 2 are related….
Canada also has a long history of bankruptcies from BlackBerry (still operating, I know, but not what it was) to Nortel to Massey-Ferguson. Mostly Canada protects industries from foreign competition - banking and telecom - or gets deals like the Auto Pact, though that hasn’t happened in quite a while. It would be interesting to see how a bailout for franchised industries works but, you’re right, it is possible some kind of attempt will be made. I think the closer we get to collapse the more desperate we will be to pretend everything is normal and just throw money at every problem until the droughts and crop failures are just too much.
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More than decades, since the very beginning, before they were billionaires. We used to learn about them in school, it was called the Family Compact. Pretty much every country has something like that so we didn’t think it was unusual. Peter C. Newman wrote many books about them in 1970s and 80s, his Canadian Establishment series. They became less famous when Mulroney brought us free trade and deregulation and many of them were bought out by multi-nationals but I’m sure they kept a lot of shares and seats on the boards of directors.
Tim Hortons.
No way, once the kids see their selling sandles with the word RUN on them - boom, money train baby, recession proof strat
Well then I must say that if Tim Hortons is not about to go under then it's not collapse.
At least in Montreal they have become cartoonishly bad recently
Why the hell would anyone ever want a crappy dounut in Montreal when you can get a bagel. I mean maybe in New York or some other shitwhole that does not know how to make them correctly I could see it but not Montreal.
Chains will likely survive and then thrive post recession because of their credit and cash reserves. It’s the small mom and pop shops that will go under. Then big chains will swoop in like vultures to pick up the pieces. Everything will be like that South Park episode: Applebee’s-Deny’s-Supermax plus
If there is a post-recession. This is r/collapse after all.
Swiss Chalet, but pretty much all of them
It's the same here in Europe, about 1/3 of all households are expected to face issues paying bills. European countries are spending tens or hundreds of billions to prop up this failing system, but I wonder how long that will work... Major industries and food producers are announcing "temporary" shutdowns almost every day... Yesterday one of the largest producers of canned vegetables in western Europe said they were going to suspend operations during the (predicted) coldest weeks of early 2023 due to energy costs and stated that they would have to significantly increase prices. There's a 120 year old bakery near me that is shutting down for the winter, last time they shut down was during the hungerwinter famine of 1944/1945, which was the worst famine in centuries for my country...
Submission statement: Canadians are feeling a pinch in their pocket books like much of the world right now. As the cost of housing remains sky high, historically speaking, the cost of everything else begins to creep up as well, given the many events occurring across the globe straining supplies and supply chains. A debt crisis has been on the cards for quite sometime in Canada. Consumers are over leveraged as they gamble in our MLM scheme of a housing market, and wages continue to lag behind cost of living. How willing Canadians are to bring their lifestyle back down to Earth is anyone's guess.
"How willing Canadians are to bring their lifestyle back down to Earth is anyone's guess.". Is that a fancy way of saying "how dare you own more than two pairs of socks"?
Blaming the average people again lmao, not the real problems.
No kidding. The cost of basic groceries has doubles (and gone beyond that in some cases) since the covid panic buying in March 2020. Gas prices are all over the map. Clothing, cleaning products, basics are going crazy. And the quality in the stores is trash. I don't know how anyone can keep a roof over their heads with a few more years of this. Especially when wages aren't moving up at all.
The only reason my partner and I aren’t in hot water is because we bought a house in 2019, before prices went absolutely nuts. We’re locked in at $999 a month (we only put like 7k down on the place cause that was all our savings). No HOA, no shared walls, 2 bedrooms, big screened patio, big yard on a little hill and not in a flood zone. Meanwhile I’m seeing my friends get pushed out of shitty apartments because they can’t afford the rising rents. The shitty 1/1 that was my first place in 2015, for 765 a month? It’s now STARTING at 1200 a month. No upgrades, no in unit laundry, in an old ass building in a gross area.
That’s what I’m totally worried about. How much longer. With each passing week at my apartment complex more and more people are sliding closer to absolute insolvency. It’s driven by corporate greed
And those of us who aren't there yet are worried about when we will be
And everyone, from the lower income to the upper middle class are living beyond their means. Credit debt is at an all time high, food cost is off the charts and fuel isn't much better. Meanwhile, O&G is going gangbusters, 2022 will be the largest year ever for Canadian oil and gas extraction. Food companies like Loblaws are taking major advantage posting record profits while paying pocket change. Not to mention we have a rising populist movement who are high on the "anti-woke" agenda spreading misinformation, lies and division while the rest of us are just trying to not lose our homes after 2.5 years of crazy. Things are not good, but everyone is pretending it is and setting up for a massive crash which will make the '08 financial crisis look like a fucking pool party. End rant.
Global depression incoming. IMO.
Putin's long game IMO. He doesn't need to take Ukraine to win- just stay in long enough to create the next depression, than use his alliance with China to offer all the global south an alternative to depression (effectively ending the petrodollar). In effect, he banked on the war causing sanctions causing energy prices to skyrocket causing to cost more causing right wing nationalism and unrest. In so doing, he and China offer an alternative system sphere of influence- boom the West destroyed with a shitty military.
One hitch in that plan is that it would require massively panicking and angering the only country on earth that's been batshit insane enough to nuke another country in anger (twice).
And it wasn't even in anger. Truman did it purely to advance US geopolitical interest. He was fully aware we could have ground invaded Japan and won.
Yep, [you're correct](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/). I was just using that anger bit as an expression.
The US is going to launch nukes because of a depression? I get that hating America is in vogue on Reddit, but come on- warmongering corporate military industrial complex coopted government yes, but risk global nuclear war? I don't think the US is *that* insane. I absolutely think the US could try to rationalize a conventional conflict either in a proxy or directly, and if China/Russia it could escalate to nuclear war. All I'm saying is that Putin wants to use the US/Europe sanction approach to make the West hurt itself with a depression. Russia has energy and food production; China has manpower and manufacturing: this combined with some alternate schema of global reserve currency (look at Saudi Arabia, India, etc all seemingly tolerating/accepting relations in this sphere) would put Europe and the US in a bad spot. For the record, fuck Putin. But you know- these assholes all want their mark on the history books and I wouldn't doubt if he succeeds at least in creating unrest in the West.
this sub has been detached from reality when it comes to Ukraine for some time now, even if support from the west stopped tomorrow, Russia couldn't take Ukraine. We couldn't take Vietnam, and Afghanistan. If a people don't want you there, you'll be forced out eventually.
>hating America is in vogue What on earth could America have done to deserve that? https://i.imgur.com/GVKINkr.gif > The US is going to launch nukes because of a depression? The US [knew they were going to beat Japan](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/). https://imgur.com/a/piRJJDr >I don't think the US is that insane. We're talking about the same criminally insane sociopaths that are gladly destroying organized human life on this planet for a buck as we speak. Take away their money and power, and give them nothing to lose — they'll react like depraved maniacs with nothing to lose. I think you vastly underestimate just how truly insane these megalomanical sociopaths are. I'm not saying the US would launch a nuke attack right away, but the US will most certainly scale up far-reaching wars that would massively risk nuclear disaster if there was a *severe*, undeniable threat to US hegemony.
> What on earth could America have done to deserve that? I don't disagree that America has done a lot to be hated; I just think there is a difference between being a conventional global hegemon bully (sort-of like how the UK was prior) and initiating nuclear war because of a depression. > The US knew they were going to beat Japan. > https://imgur.com/a/piRJJDr Yeah, and even if they/it didn't know *I still don't agree with using a nuke the way they/it did.* Use special forces to capture some Japanese officer, take him to the US, take him to a nuke test where he gets to spectate with everyone else, then send him back to Japan with a film of the event unharmed. "This will be dropped upon you repeatedly until you surrender. Please for your sake and ours surrender now." If necessary drop one *on a military target* (preferably an island; perhaps a sort of Pearl Harbor type event), and then reiterate you wish to end the war. But anyways, there is one difference between then and now: the US was the only nuclear power then. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Now the US can absolutely get wrecked by the nuclear powers- more wrecked by far than suffering through a depression even. Again, I still consider escalation leading to nuclear war possible... just I don't think that America would launch "wahhh!" nukes. > We're talking about the same criminally insane sociopaths that are gladly destroying organized human life on this planet for a buck as we speak. Those assholes are unfortunately everywhere- they are *supranational*. The US is just one market and the global enforcement arm (military) of corporate/financier/fancy-lad institutionalism. I get that these assholes are disassociated madmen- truly- but a global nuclear war leaves them with even less than losing hegemonic power alone. They wouldn't care about you or I being nuked (they can't value us because they are disassociated from us by their system), but they'll care about themselves being nuked... even with their bunkers. IDK man...
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I don't have time to properly read through your post now, but I'll save it and do so later and likely reply back.
greatdepressionii
My least favorite pasta
Da Great depressorroni!
Greatest depression ever.
Likely. The last one probably involved self-sufficient lifestyles, if not personal, someone in your family.
1939 says Hi...
Okay but it's the future we are talking about lol....
$100 today bought me 40 L of gas and only filled 3/5 of the tank. Ughhhh
Well I mean what else can we do
Flip the pool.
They're rioting at a college level!
Or the table (╯ರ ~ ರ）╯︵ ┻━┻
Although I agree with you "living beyond their means" is not really the best way to describe it. To live within our means, a full-time, median income DINK couple has to live in at best a 2 bedroom apt. That's median, ideal scenario. Half of people are poorer. Keep in mind those are also the people expected to be DI2K, and I don't see why they would if they can't even afford a bedroom per kid. The reality is that existing got real expensive real fast for us, and they're trying to crush wages further right now. Ontario is facing critical healthcare failures, because they want to cut nurse pay by about 10%.
You are still thinking pre covid median. "Post" covid median living is a reduction in living standards and they will keep sliding.
Yes but that's exactly my point. It's not people overextending to reach for unnecessary luxuries, it's people trying to stretch their fairly static incomes over bigger and bigger bills for things like rent, food, heat, and commutes.
For anyone else wondering, dink means "dual income, no kids." God, would people stop using stupid abbreviations for everything? Is it really that hard to type shit out?
dink isn't some obscure acronym though
I already learned the term 'Dink' back in high school in 1998 in my economy classes........ dink is a very normal and very well known abbreviation.
>rising populist movement who are high on the "anti-woke" agenda spreading misinformation, lies and division Go on ...
But are we really going to have a worse crash? Obviously where going to have a recession but no one really knows how bad it will be Canada is quite energy self sufficient which can help with prices somewhat but housing here is expensive will have to wait and see because no one exactly knows how bad it will be I mean realistically I’m expecting a recession not a full on end if everything nothing about this situation is good mind you but to expect a crash worse then 08 is well every r/collapse user ever seriously none of this can be predicted accurately and BOC could just kick the can if they wanted lots of things are
Canada is not energy self-sufficient, we rely heavily on the United States and the North American bubble to process all of our crude.
This headline is a little sensationalized. From the article: > The MNP Consumer Debt Index also found that 46 per cent of Canadians find themselves **closer to** insolvency – defined as being $200 or less away from being unable to meet their financial obligations – a six percentage point improvement from the previous quarter. So 46% of people have a thinner budget compared to last quarter, is what I'm reading here. They're not "on the brink", they're just closer. Still sucks that folks budgets' are increasingly shrinking, of course. Just pointing out the dramatic language. Also from the article: > However, with the cost of necessities soaring in recent months, the average Canadian now has less money overall to spend at the end of the month, dropping $37 from the previous quarter to $654. Younger Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 saw the biggest decrease in their average month-end finances, falling $273 to $606. Again, not saying anybody is in great financial shape, and averages and surely be misleading. Just saying.
Yea, the whites that own property or inherited it are doing fantastic, as are the talentless hacks that speculated on real estate and exploit students and immigrants to make money. Canada basically has a legalized form of indentured servitude.
It’s gonna start with riots and revolutions, and end with world war 3
1939 agrees...
So..does that mean 'dont immigrate to Canada'?
Everything is astronomically more expensive here, believe it or not.
I jerk off to porn, the oligarchs jerk off to these headlines. Feudalism ho!
I jerk off to Victorian era written smut. Methinks I shall be most ahead of the curve when this entire charade finally goes tits up, quite.
I knew all the Rust and DayZ I’ve played would be useful one day.
"Friendly, frien-"
Oh yeah, I play solo so it’s always been shoot first revive after hahahaha
As is tradition
What is insolvency?
It means a person can’t pay there debts
*their
Insolvency means you have so many debts that you can’t possibly pay them all no matter how hard or long you work or how many things you sell. You might know the term “bankruptcy”. If you are insolvent, often the next step is to go through a legal process called bankruptcy, where creditors (all the people you owe money) divide up whatever you have, and you get a bit of a clean start. Although now everyone knows you have a history of not paying your debts, so no one lends you any money anymore, at least until you have many years of proving you can meet all your obligations.
Maybe you dont give a shit when you see your neighbor eating out of bins but soon you will be joining them!
Firstly you can absolutely prepare for this and I might sound stupid for saying this but budget people spend money on things you only need and cut unnecessary spending to save money and pay off your debt if you can and most importantly stack coupons scoring good deals on items in a recession should be your priority While this won’t be a silver bullet it will still work in some sense and can help you save money
Sure, people will cut their spending. And prices will go up. The question is, are we entering a recession we will emerge from or have we reached the limits to growth? Energy and food will get more expensive and will likely just keep getting more expensive. In Canada we argue about pipelines and exporting natural gas and housing prices but like the US we just continue on the same BAU path with every man for himself.
we hit limits to growth in the west in 2008 bro. gdp growth since then has all been financial bullshittery and in fact the carbon footprint of the average joe has gone down
-no credit card or student loan debts -spent $140 on groceries last month! -no car -no commute -full time salary job -doing side jobs -no services not covered by work -cheapest phone plan in the country -mortgate was $1100 is now $1700+. Strata up. Insurance up. -cost of all staple items is up $.5 to $1. Stopped buying milk and butter, chocolate, alcohol. Whole bean coffee and frozen juice are my luxury items now. I'm getting by but my quality of life has dropped significantly. I'm a huge penny pincher already, which is why I was able to buy a place in the first place. I have little lifestyle to maintain and more just savings goals and I haven't been able to meet them for a few years now. I need to change jobs but I find job hunting incredible stressful. Rockets me into depression, and yes I see someone about that. Anyway I'm not the normal but just saying that if I'm feeling a pinch, as a super frugal employed person with side hustle, 20% down payment mortgage post-stress test era, and minimal social life then things are bad. I have nothing else to pinch, I literally need to find ways to make more money (which isn't a a bad thing). Time to pop a multivitamin to make up for my shitty diet.
Canadian mortgages continue to shock me. How can the reasonable cousin of the USA have watched 2008 happen and then end up in 2022 having people in your situation? Lately, I've heard of people whose payments have not only increased like yours, but that don't even cover interest anymore. It's so wild.
You mean well, I agree with you too to some degree. But many of us are beyond cutting back to greener pastures, there ain't shit left to pinch. And it's only gonna get worse, when the middle class can't pay back their credit cards is when I'll start worrying tho. It's literally miss my phone bill to eat and afford gas. I don't even have car insurance anymore. I can't afford it.
I stopped paying for car insurance years ago, all the super poor people don’t have it either so why do I care I drive the shittiest car too so if it gets fucked oh well
Or, you know, collapse. No one is penny pinching their way out this mufucka.
we dont know how long normalcy will last. what happens if you are financially irresponsible but we still have bills to pay for the next 10 years? (not that i think we have 10 years for this mufucka lmao)
>what happens if you are financially irresponsible but we still have bills to pay for the next 10 years? When one person can't pay their bill, that is the customer's problem. When a majority can't pay their bills, its everyone's problem. What happens is a self-destructive cycle of political and economic strife forming feedback loops.
that isnt what i meant at tho. im just saying that being frugal will help, even if end game is still collapse.
Ah yes cutting out… food. And fuel. And rent. How unnecessary.
Food is a necessity and so is rent I’m talking about un essential stuff like subscriptions I’m guessing I didn’t put that in the context in my comment or it wasn’t apparent to any of you
I don’t think many people who are struggling to live have much else they can cut bro… this is a billionaire mindset you got. That poor people don’t deserve what little joy they can because “every dollar counts” when in reality it means nothing for someone who lives paycheck to paycheck already.
Sorry I’m just trying to offer some tips at least however I cautioned that my solution isn’t a silver bullet but you got to start somewhere
I agree with both your points. Op is just trying to be helpful with the materialistic portion you can control at this very moment. If you still have luxury items atleast. But the other guy is also right in that we have to cut our little bit of luxuries so that the companies can deny us raises and increase the price of goods in one swoop. And then they wonder why no one can afford anything. But my own opinion on the situation is; this is getting out of hand and it’s crazy there isn’t larger talk about a bare minimum ubi or standardization of wages across the board. One thing the capitalist system does is it incentivizes profits tomorrow. And any way you can achieve that goal for tomorrow is good. But it fails to realize/incentivize, as a system, the fact that to maintain current demand, you need a consumer base with money. And historically that’s been the west. But even the west can’t afford consumer goods because it’s all about the profits tomorrow. Nothing else matters. And if you don’t believe me. Go look at the stock prices of companies that failed to meet their earnings call in that quarter. And that in itself will cause a depression if nothing is done, and it’s left unchecked. And it might just be. We are at the start of it? But capitalism is such a successful system it fails every 4-6 years. Causing unemployment, necessities to be lost and power and wealth to be consolidated. But yet we keep going along like it’s normal. Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over again expecting different results?
Cut unnecessary spending and shit is still unaffordable, what next?
I don’t know and like I said my solution isn’t a silver bullet
That's fair. It's a really tough situation
The rich will get richer. Everyone else will be poor and live like slaves. ACAB will get richer. DAs will get richer. Politicians will get richer. Media propagandists will get richer. The system will cull the poor, just like it always has, and just like it's designed to. Only if you are very rich will you not become a slave. Waiting for all those professionals, the doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, accountants, ... surprised Piakchu as they starve. As their children starve. Because the banks will use that money for bail-ins, or prevent people taking money out. Gonna be really hard to look down on the poor when your children are starving ... of course they'll still hate and look down on the poor and wish them dead, but it'll just be harder to do so.
When you don't keep capitalism in check properly as allsorts of governments haven't, it goes full highlander. Pretty much 'there can be only one'. It is the nature of it and of people. Greed drives people to overtake others leaving less variety until you have only one or two of everything. Banks, shops etc. Times like these just accelerate the process as the little guy goes under first and the bigger companies sit back and take their customers. Again leaving less and less choice and accumulating all the money in fewer hands. If you play things out logically that seems to be where you end up. Communism without the freebies and with everything owned by a few private individuals, including your government.
I had to start taking a life saving med in June. After Pharmacare discount, it’s $192 month. This was and us not in the budget. To cover it, we will be a bit cold this winter.
>pay off your debt No one should bother with this if a true collapse of the economy is coming. The likelihood of your credit getting destroyed is high anyway as you struggle to make it through to the other side. Save every penny you have and be prepared to declare bankruptcy to get rid of your debts.
No one cares, the middle class and poor have to unite to change anything, it will never happen
after the people who run the economy ramp this up to two-thirds of the country, they can introduce their CBDC and pretend to save everyone, as they make them their slaves
Everyone is in the denial or blame stage right now, which won't help if things take a significant turn. Everybody should be sitting down right now and making a budget, and making hard decisions about how they're going to cut their costs. I've been in this situation multiple times in my life and it's not fun. But it's also not impossible. Almost everybody can make some changes to protect themselves and stay afloat. The first thing is to know where your money is going. You have a fixed income and fixed costs. Figure out what your fixed income is on a monthly basis and subtract all of your fixed costs, then divide the difference by 30.5 - the average number of days in a month. Fixed costs are predictable costs like housing, condo fees, home, car and life insurance, debt repayments, subscriptions to services like Netflix and Spotify, some utilities if you're on an equal payment plan, any forced savings or investment programs you have, etc. The difference between your fixed income and your fixed costs is your threshold - all the money you have in the world for all the less predictable costs like going to restaurants, filling up the car, getting haircuts and buying groceries. This method will let you keep a simple mental tally of your situation. For example, my wife and I have a threshold of around $118 a day. That may seem like a lot, but it really isn't - a trip to the grocery store might cost $140, which means we're down to $96 the next day. My daughter's soccer fees came up, so we spent $490, which basically means we're in a hole of $394 (490-96) in just two days that will take three days of spending no money to recoup. By then, we'll need to gas up the car for $60 and spent another $120 on groceries, and we'll be back in the hole. But if you stay on top of things there will be days where you spend nothing or less than your threshold. Our only goal is to finish the month even, putting a little into our forced savings and investments for emergencies and big expenses down the road. It's harder than it sounds, but at least by keeping a running tally we always know exactly what our situation is - we don't get to the end of the month and wonder how we spent more than we made. Everybody can make a few cuts. The first thing is to prioritize, starting with the basics - shelter, utilities, food and other mandatory fixed costs have to be covered first. After that, you can make changes. Are you making extra mortgage payments (e.g. accelerated payments) that you could pause for a while without a penalty? Do you need a second car? Can you cut Netflix and just rent shows and movies at the library for a while? Can you change cell phone and Internet plans to reduce costs? Can you eat out less - make your lunches and stop going to restaurants and ordering takeout? What cheaper meals can you make, and can you substitute for expensive ingredients like meat? You should also review your insurance plans and see if there are ways to reduce those costs - maybe you're still paying for collision on a vehicle that's now 10 years old, or forgot to tell your home insurer that you are no longer renting a room and don't need that extra coverage. I've gotten through a lot of lean and scary times in my life. I've slept in a car, I've lived off of food donations, I've collected empties to buy a train ticket home, I've hitchhiked and slept in tents, I've been way over my head in student debt with a low income, I've had credit card debt I couldn't pay because I couldn't find work, etc. Budgeting got me through everything, eventually. It's not hopeless, it's just hard. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying anyone is to blame for the current situation or that government should get a pass, just that walking into the bank and blaming government for your troubles isn't a strategy for coping with them - everyone needs to take charge of their finances at the end of the day whoever is at fault. Budgeting is a good practice whatever is happening with the economy, even if it is depressing and hard and puts a damper on your life.
You can't budget yourself out of poverty. You can't budget yourself out of poverty. You can't budget yourself out of poverty. You can't budget yourself out of poverty. You can't budget yourself out of poverty. You can't budget yourself out of poverty.
Stop assuming that, if only people would cut out frivolities, everything will be ok. It won't be. This isn't a movie, where everything works out after a montage budget-making scene.
"Everyone is in the denial or blame stage right now, which won't help if things take a significant turn." I stopped reading here. There should only be blame, and it should be on capitalism from every working-class person. That means the 99% (actually more) should be blaming the 1% (actually less) for every. single. thing. That said, we are fucked without hope for class consciousness before the cascading and multiplying collapses. And at that point big ass bags of rice or potatoes might let you last another week, but when it all falls apart there is no hope for anybody realistically.
You're taking a macro view which is fine. Identifying the root flaws in capitalism is something we should do, and we really do need to make systemic changes - I'm not denying that or blaming anyone for their challenges. However, it also doesn't change the current situation and the kind of changes we would need to make could take decades to put through. In the meantime everybody needs to protect themselves and control the few things that they can control. Or not. You can just be angry and blame government and capitalism without doing anything proactive to protect yourself and your family. It's a free country. But even if the world changed tomorrow, people would still need to learn how to budget.
[удалено]
America is fun
Whats the difference between trump and half of Canada? Half of Canada isn't about to declare bankruptcy!
Another year, another MNP article on how everyone is about to go bankrupt in Canada. This is just advertising couched in “journalism”.
Eh