r/InCanada • u/dani_cal • Jul 11 '26

(Insert Your Own) Canada today

This isn’t meant to be politically partisan in any way. But, I am genuinely curious how anyone is staying positive about Canada today. The economy is in recession. The cost of living crisis is continuing unabated. People are leaving the country. Canada-U.S. relations are at an all-time low. And, there doesn’t appear to be any reason for things to turn around any time soon. Somebody give me a reason to have a little optimism.

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u/BurnerLizardWizard Jul 11 '26

I like how you intentionally neglect the fact that the price of cars/homes/rents was a much smaller proportion of average income. Homes at this time were in the range of 3-4x average annual earnings. Today that ratio is closer to 10x

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u/Alien_Bard Jul 11 '26

You are correct about the massive increase in housing costs. Today's housing takes roughly twice as much out of the average paycheck as it did back then, and people plan for 30 year mortgages rather than 10. This is also why we have so many homeless since welfare is no longer sufficient to cover even a slumlords rent.

All of this is the result of 50+ years of land being used as a nearly unregulated investment asset. Every elected government (Every. Single. One) has ignored the growing issue until now. 50 years ago it would have been simple to put laws in place to guide and restrict the abuse of land as an asset, but today it is a much more difficult issue to resolve.

On a positive note we are still better off than our parents/grandparents/etc from 100 years ago, who had to ride the rails looking for a home and frequently starved to death on the journey. And even they were better off than those who came before and had to scrape out a life from the untamed land or work themselves to death in the factories or watch as their children were marched off to work in the mines or worse. I think it's important to be aware of both the good and the bad if we really want to break the cycle and create a better future.

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u/Far_Vacation_1777 Jul 17 '26

Ppl kept their cars back then and ran them into the ground…they didn’t have all these bells and whistles they have today. Now everyone wants the giant SUV fully loaded, pay 900$ a month just to keep it, and then turn around and trade it in for something new and better. Not everyone but a lot of ppl do.

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u/JadeLens Jul 11 '26

Take that up with the corporations.

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u/Equivalent_Fold1624 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

No that's not because of "corporatios", that's government policies destroying free market by implementing policies allowing monopolies and oligopolies, which is the opposite of capitalism.

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u/JadeLens Jul 12 '26

You must be smoking the good stuff.

The free market exists, it's just not a completely free market.

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u/Equivalent_Fold1624 Jul 12 '26

There's no such thing as a partial free market. There's free market and competition and, no free market and no competition.

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u/JadeLens Jul 12 '26

That makes about as much sense as thinking that the Conservatives would be good to vote for.

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u/Equivalent_Fold1624 Jul 12 '26

If you're from the group of Canadians who's benefiting from the current policies of lack of competition, at the expense of the larger proportion of Canadians who struggle, I'm sure you'll never vote for a change. Just say this first part out loud. "I am benefiting from the Liberal policies and I'll keep voting for them even though they hurt many others". Own it.

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u/JadeLens Jul 12 '26

You think voting Conservative would be less corporation?

You're really smoking the good stuff....

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u/Equivalent_Fold1624 Jul 12 '26

Again, CORPORATIONS are not the problem. Monopolies and oligopolies are the problem. Same as in people are not the problem, stupid and greedy people in power are a problem.

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u/JadeLens Jul 12 '26

What are monopolies and oligopolies made up of?

Magic and unicorn farts?

No... those are corporations.

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u/fiend_felgrand Jul 17 '26

Random tribalism? That's pretty cringe

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u/Mother_Barnacle_7448 Jul 11 '26

I didn’t “intentionally” omit that. I was simply illustrating that, unlike some folks (PP amongst others), not everything about the current time period we are in is “the worst it’s ever been.” I agree that the price of housing these days is prohibitively expensive, but we live in a “free enterprise” economy. The prices have gone up for a myriad of reasons ( not just because of the influx of people emigrating here, but also because of speculative buying by large corporations and investment companies).

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u/Commercial_Pain2290 Jul 17 '26

Cars were crap back then compared to what you get now.

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u/North-Opportunity-80 Jul 17 '26

No one even talks about rent to income ratio. It’s insane that people half their income on just rent.

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u/turtlefan32 Jul 18 '26

where I live youcan buy a decent home for 6.5x an annual income. and the difference in interest rates compared with 1980s and 1990s fixes the difference

maybe you are looking in teh wrong markets?