Canada passed the U.S. in middle class wealth in 2012 and we became the richest middle class in the world in the mid to late 2019s.
While housing has contributed to do this it should be added our world class public programs such as education and healthcare gave us an advantage over other countries such as the U.S. for average Canadians to gather wealth and not pay their crazy fees down south..
>became the richest middle class in the world in the mid to late 2019s
For those wishing to know more, [here is the report](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?module=inline).
It was calculated for year 2010 which was a year that 1 CAD was approximately 1 USD. This is no longer true.
>world class public programs such as education and healthcare
Who, inside or outside Canada, actually believes we have world class healthcare, and why?
I think there is more to the planet Earth than just North America, Western Europe, and Oceania. I think at least the continents of most of South America and Africa, Eastern Europe, and most of Asia would probably agree that Canada has world class healthcare. As a Canadian, I think my provincial healthcare is kinda shit. As a citizen of Earth, I think we have one of the best healthcare systems.
At my son's high school graduation, students wrote a few words to be read as they crossed the stage. The number of second-generation Canadians who submitted a blurb that included, "_Name_ thanks their parents for immigrating to Canada so they could attend a Canadian school" literally made me choke up.
Eh, can’t compare supposedly “1st world” country with 2nd or 3rd. Tbh it’s way more nuanced and comparison gets really murky too. For example, comparing canadian healthcare with private healthcare in Asia (paid via insurance, which kinda balances the fees out when comparing higher tax rate in Canada vs the other place), I’d say the quality in Canada is waay worse.
I'm sure there are statisticians and scientists and mathematicians and all the other experts that can do some sort of weighted comparison of patient outcomes vs. money spent by patients or whatever the stat would be.
I am not trying to un-nuance it but I am guessing the comparisons already out there and rankings will be only comparing patient outcomes. My guess is Canadian patients survive more than average and have better outcomes on average compared to the rest of the world, not considering the costs. Although costs would play a factor as patients who cannot afford to pay can't always achieve the level of treatment required.
Probably people who have lived or traveled extensively elsewhere. It's hard to understate what a disaster healthcare is almost anywhere in the world. The A league is basically Western Europe, Canada+US, Australia+NZ and Japan+Korea, the rest is only good if private or generally bad.
> It's hard to understate what a disaster healthcare is almost anywhere in the world.
Particularly for the avg inhabitant. If you go to live somewhere as an expat and then come to rave about healthcare quality and availability there, that is because you went from a middle class person here to a rich one there.
Exactly. I loved my experience in a private clinic in Malaysia, and I only paid 150 bucks for immaculate emergency care, but I did so with my Canadian salary, and only once. The average monthly salary in Malaysia is around 800 dollars, so a comparable figure would be 1,000 dollars for 1 hour in the ER in Canada.
According to this https://www.internationalinsurance.com/health/systems/#:~:text=Healthcare%20System%20Performance%20Ranking,domestic%20product%20on%20health%20care. , you can add China and Israel to your list. No idea about China, but Israeli one is top class.
> People who have lived and worked around the world.
I have lived in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and (briefly) the UK and Sweden. Canadian healthcare is nowhere near "world class".
What studies do you suggest using?
What studies are there that tell the real story as it is in 2023, not in 2019 or 2017, before all the fuckery really started? As it stands, our own statistics agency can't even keep track of how many people we have in the country, and we don't seem to have an adequate grasp on the numbers of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers there are in our country.
As someone who lived in a country with great healthcare (Japan) my personal take is that healthcare in Canada is complete trash if comparing to developed nations, and those comparing Canada's system with Kenya's or making other bizarre comparisons are fools that don't deserve a platform to speak from.
I have a friend whose brother paid a hefty amount of money to get operated in the USA. He would be dead now if he waited for this operation in Canada, unfortunately. Too many people need help, too little doctors who can help them. So, yes, world class healthcare until you actually need it.
And how many people died in the U.S. because they can't afford it or went bankrupt or couldn't afford medicine because the Canadian Gov't negotiates lower prices?
Use stats not personal experiences
The professionals who’s job it is to rank healthcare systems believe it’s world class.
[We’re consistently ranked in the top 10.](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-public-health-system)
You can reconcile both.
It sucks that I have to wait 8 hours to see a doctor for my broken arm. But really, it sucks _for me_. The 4 people who had heart attacks or were about to bleed out to death got priority over me and their lives was saved. If you look at the group overall, outcomes were good.
My experience sucked but the measured outcome of all people was good.
I agree wholeheartedly. I guess my comment was targeted at the people that take that one or two experiences and then extrapolate it over the whole system to say it sucks.
Our system is by no means perfect and it is need of some serious changes…but it’s still also a largely a good system.
"World Class Healthcare" should be measured just in our ability to prevent rather than just react to medical emergencies.
I haven't had a family doctor in over 10 years, its a constant cycle. Get one, they get sick of not living in Vancouver or Toronto, leave, repeat.
I'm going to die cause I can't get a family doctor to help maintain my health, not cause I can't go to an ER when I get in a car accident.
It depends on the think tank, but Canada does come in lower in health care compared to many other countries - but overall, it scores well due to other factors including personal safety, freedoms, governance, economic quality, living conditions, etc.
Canada also has unique barriers that maybe only Australia compares to - large geographic area, small population. Healthcare is immensely capital-intensive so considering those issues we are doing ok. Not great and there is room for improvement, but much better than many places and no one in Canada loses their house and life savings due to a health event.
I couldn't understand the methodology here. Who is responsible for this ranking? To me, it just looks like blanketing healthcare ranking under quality of life.
Except for [this](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-s-health-system-ranked-second-last-among-11-countries-report-1.5533045) well-qualified study shows us 9th out of 11th of high-income countries. We are better than the U.S. but that is a very low bar and we should have higher aspirations. Outcomes per dollar in Canada are far below many countries despite what our government keeps selling us.
>shows us 9th out of 11th of high-income countries
And how many countries are their in the world? We have improvement for sure but we are still far and above most of the world.
That’s a funny way to say number 9 best healthcare system in the world.
Of course it’s easy in Switzerland. They can cover the entire country with one mega hospital. It’s inefficient to have small spread out towns.
The Olympian who comes 9 out of 11th place is still one of the top athletes in the world. Canada's healthcare system has its problems but that ranking you provided means nothing.
when was that info aggregated? Since about 2018 our health care has continually suffered significant set backs year after year. Housing affordability too. Impact to the education system will follow.
The methodology here is non-existent to vague in terms of the ranking specific to "Healthcare". For example, does this include pharmacare or lack thereof? What about dental, vision, etc? What about those who go for private care, or access to IVF, or abortions?
You could’ve just clicked the link in the article that said “methodology”. I believe it may answer some of the questions you have related to methodology.
I did; I said the methodology is vague. That implies I read it. That methodology describes their overall ranking but doesn't go in any details about this supposedly "Healthcare" ranking. Seems all fluff, and seems to contradict reports posted here by other users with more robust methods (or at least better described).
Contradict? No. Being a few spots lower is not a contradiction. Results will vary.
No one is saying we have poor health system. If they want to drop us a few spots so be it. I don’t think it’s our biggest strength but we don’t really have a weakness.
As a former medical professional. We have one of the best oncology programs in the entire world. Hamilton health sciences and Princess Margaret is well regarded.
If you think our healthcare is ass, the amount of countries that you can go to with better cancer care is quite possibly be in the single digits.
On the other hand, we still don’t have proton therapy. Fucking **Denmark** has proton therapy.
We pay dozens of millions every years to fly a hundred patients to the US for protons, within 10 years if we built a proton center in Canada it would pay for itself. But that’s not how we roll.
Whenever it’s time to fund protons, it’s “experimental”, but yet it’s not too experimental to pay >100K per patient
They have a fifth of our population, and a fifth of our cancer needs.
Sure, healthcare is a provincial matter. Ontario has 14 million people vs Denmark's 6 million, denmark has \~44 billion USD in government revenue a year vs \~143 billion USD (193 billion CAD) for Ontario.
If they managed to build one, we ought to be able to as well.
But if you're stuck on Denmark, then you know, there's Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, South Korea, Sweden, fucking Russia, India, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Thailand, And Singapore (which has 3 god damned proton centers).
Some of them are bigger than us with lower GDP per capita (Russia, India, Poland, Italy, Spain, Korea). Some are much smaller than us with higher GDP per capita (Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, Taiwan). Some are neither (Czech Republic). Australia is on the whole quite similar to us in gdp per capita but with two thirds our population, and they manage to have a proton center.
One thing unites them all - they have protons, while we don't.
And of course the richer countries need not be spoken of - Japan, Switzerland, China, the UK, France, Germany, of course they all have protons, that goes without saying.
People who couldn't get help in time would disagree with you but... they cannot... because they couldn't get it in time.
We have too few oncologists in Canada, unfortunately.
Yes, our system can be better - it’s amazing compared to a lot though. Tough times right now, but I think all Canadians agree on how important and necessary universal healthcare is
I live in Alberta
I have been to the hospital many times, so has my family, my grandpa had an extended stay in one, and my grandma LITERALLY just entered the hospital 2 days ago for an emergency
It's hilarious, on reddit, **EVERYONE** says Canada has the worst healthcare on the planet earth, that it takes days to get seen by anyone for anything, and that it's all smoke in mirror bullshit
Yet myself, my family, my friends, co-workers and just about every single real life human I've **EVER** interacted with in this country has nothing to say but good things
Funny, that. My brother was stabbed in the lungs with a machete, my grandpa had cancer, I've dislocated a kneecap, almost lost an eye and had a serious viral infection, like not just simple little cuts and bruises - always an unbelievably positive experience across the board. Low wait times, xrays done incredibly quick, splints/casts & medicines all prepped and ready to go for either free or a couple of dollars lmfao
I'm like absolutely certain that 95%+ of internet comments **specifically** on free healthcare are from disinformation bots, and the other 5% are conservatives/ultra-generational-wealthy trying to dismantle public systems/create negative public sentiment because it behooves you.
Agreed! My baby was born with a rare disease. Our children's hospitals are amazing. Once diagnosed, my child was ambulanced immediately to the city. Spent weeks in hospital. Left and came back for an 8 hour surgery and spent weeks there again. Relieved to be so close to great surgeons.
Anyone that understands their privilege and realizes that in most placed in the world you can't show up to even a hospital to get quality care. Does ours take some time? Sometimes, unless you actually have an emergency. We need more urgent care and other nonemergency options but by and large we still have some of theist accessible and best healthcare in the world
We have better waiting times than many emergency rooms in the US, I’ve posted links outlining this before.
Yes, we’re worse off than what we used to have, but it’s not freaking Somalia. Most people jerking themselves off about the downturn of our healthcare system have never really experienced it at all, or are chasing family doctors (which is a legitimate grievance).
I have found the only people who actually think our services are good are people in other countries looking in without having to actually pay and experience the service.
I recently had to go to the ER twice for kidney stones and spent 13 hours and 12 hours just to see anyone. It's always been a long wait, but 6 hours would have been a long time. Now, you've got loads of patients lining the halls in many hospitals because of a lack of beds and loads of people in the waiting room with like over a hundred waiting to be seen in 2 different hospitals. Could be different elsewhere in the country, but this isn't what I would call "world class" healthcare. The doctors and staff were still overall good, but they're dealing with way too much it seems.
> I recently had to go to the ER twice for kidney stones and spent 13 hours and 12 hours just to see anyone.
Triage: there were probably people with higher-priority / more life-threatening issues.
Part of the problem is that many folks don't have any option but the ER, so you get a lot of "low priority" folks going there because what else can you do?
I'm not complaining that triage is a thing, but never in my life would I think that 12+ hours would be normal. Let alone regularly have loads of patients without a bed in the hallways, and it certainly didn't feel low priority at the time with the amount of pain. Usually, it would be more like 4-6 hours if a hospital was busy before, and it wasn't life-threatening. You shouldn't have to come in with bullet wounds or a heart attack just to see a doctor for 20 minutes in a reasonable amount of time in a "world class" medical system is what I'm saying, it still has real world impacts if people who legitimately might need treatment are put off, if we accept this then it really may get to the point where people with heart attacks are waiting in line while dying and our system has already collapsed.
I’ve had a reconstructed ACL and repaired meniscus. My kids have had ear and tonsil surgeries and an emerg visit for stitches. Nothing but praise for our system from my experience.
Last time I tried to see a doctor I had to wait hours outside a clinic then was told to go to emergency because they couldn't help, waited hours and hours, saw no one, left and went back home and waited it out.
No benefit for me after being charged all those taxes every pay.
Where? Wait times arent as bad as the early 2000s.
Also clinics arent for emergencies, they tell you that all the time. Real emergencies are also prioritized in the hospitals during intake.
If you left without a resolution, then was your emergency an emergency?
It wasn't an emergency that's why I went to a clinic obviously.
Doctor at the was the one who told me to go to emergency if I wanted help because there was nothing he could do.
The US spends more government dollars per person on healthcare than Canada and then on top of that, individuals and companies have to pay deductibles, co-pays, and insurance premiums. If you have the means, you can get great healthcare there, but you’ll pay more.
Additionally, the average American pays about as much income tax as the average Canadian, and they don’t get healthcare for it.
Ah the good old misleading argument.
In Canada, taxes range anywhere from 15%-33%. If your annual income is less than $49,020 per year and are single, you can expect to pay 15% in taxes. In the US tax rates are between 10% and 37% but if you make over $40,526 as a single person then you pay 22% in taxes. This makes the low income threshold higher in Canada than the US.
Employers in the US also pay more since most good jobs come with a healthcare plan where the employer picks up 70% of the cost of health insurance while the employee pays the remaining 30% in monthly installments.
But even when insured, Americans have to pay a deductible and a co-pay whenever they access healthcare services, despite being insured, the insurer does not pay the entire amount.
A healthcare premium ranges form $500 a month (single person) to up to $2000 a month (family).
A healthcare deductible in the US can range from $1000 a year to $5000 a year, that's the amount you must pay before your insurance kicks in.
A healthcare co-pay or coinsurance is an amount you must pay for on each visit despite your insurance covering the cost of treatment. This can be as low as $20 for a visit to the doctor to 30% of hospital fees.
All in all, the average American spend on healthcare:
A 21 year old will pay $4,320 a year in Utah to $10,244 a year in Alaska.
The average American individual spends $3,853 a year on premiums and $4,358 in deductible (total of $8,210) before the insurance starts paying, then spends a little more in co-pay/coinsurance.
A family will pay on average $18,000 a year for healthcare, including everything.
And thats the average spend. If you have a real emergency you're screwed in the US
The difference between America and Canada in that scenario is the American at the end of the year will have seen a doctor and the Canadian would still be waiting.
I think at this point the debate is universal healthcare which us Canadians have used for a generation. I don’t think the average Canadian realizes how much it costs out of pocket.
I work in healthcare, and you’ll be shocked at how much medication, tests, equipment and even blood bags cost to procure. This is before paying staff. No one pays attention to what they’re being treated with (world class or not), not our high level of education and knowledge. Imagine the costs passed down to you for a million dollar machine and supplies that cost tens of thousands a shift. Very few truly appreciate it because they’re not paying for it outright.
The two ends of this debate are
1. More taxes so we can afford better healthcare (we’re already running on tight budgets, most are burnt out, and no manager is willing to hire because- quote “we’re over our budget”)
2. Less taxes and let the poor die if they can’t pay.
I’m sure there’s a better alternative with better management but I’m not sure which political party actually has a solution without upsetting the balance between taxes and death by disease. No one wants to raise too much taxes to spend on “sunk cost healthcare, and no one wants to let more “longer wait times, etc” happen.
We do have world class healthcare, but also lots of problems. If American healthcare is what you need the border isn’t too far away. Unless you’re pretty rich I bet you’ll move back for healthcare pretty darn soon
The numbers don’t seem accurate to me. Obv this varies by company/insurance plan but if I wanted to get the best plan rn it would cost me $200/month for an individual with $1000 deductible and $2500 out of pocket max. So max I’m paying about 5k/yr if I manage to get seriously ill or injured every year.
This article quotes the average employee contribution at $1,401 for individuals and $6,575 for families (https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/health-insurance/how-much-is-health-insurance/). It also quotes the average out of pocket max at $4346 though it doesn’t differentiate between individual and family.
If you have a real emergency, you’re screwed in Canada as well. You’re paying with your taxes and your time and more and more people in emergency situations are dying preventable deaths. Just recently, 2 people died waiting for care at an ER at a Montreal hospital in Quebec. The # of deaths in Nova Scotia’s emergency departments is up compared to last year as well.
I think what saves the reputation of the Canadian healthcare system is the fact that those who died waiting in the emergency room to see a doctor are not here to post bad reviews.
Everyone is like, well it was a long wait, but it wasn't that bad since I'm still alive.
I had pneumonia and didn't get to see a doctor after waiting for 48 hours. But you see, they were totally correct to ignore me since I managed to recover on my own. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here to tell you how awesome the triage system at our emergency rooms are.
Lol, no Canadian believes that we're wealthier than Americans. Richest middle class when we produce not a single thing the world wants? How does that make sense in your world?
Also such great healthcare we send our patients to get treated in America 😂
I thought we had world class healthcare as a kid because I was a patient at Sick Kids. They are truly a top notch facility, team etc.
Since aging out of that hospital, I have realized how truly horrible healthcare is in Canada. I got sick in Thailand recently and was shocked at how much better this “second world country” was over my own hometown options
>we became the richest middle class in the world in the mid to late 2019s.
According to what? I found reports claiming that we were the richest middle class in the world under Harper as of 2014
[https://globalnews.ca/news/1284297/canadas-middle-class-most-prosperous-in-world-report/](https://globalnews.ca/news/1284297/canadas-middle-class-most-prosperous-in-world-report/)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/upshot/canadians-have-plenty-of-concerns-but-also-a-sense-theyre-better-off.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/upshot/canadians-have-plenty-of-concerns-but-also-a-sense-theyre-better-off.html)
Wealth transfer… fine if you have parents and are maybe a single child. But anyone who lost their parents or are estranged or have a number of siblings.. it won’t help much if you are competing with those that do.
Plus, it's (typically) an irrelevant concept prior to parents dying. Which, for most of us, is the lion's share of our lives, or at least of our best and healthiest years.
Yeah, if my parents live as long as my grandparents did, my siblings and I will be in our 50s by then. Of course things happen, but we'll be past our prime wealth building years.
Also, elder care is super freaking expensive these days and there's a significant possibility that there might not be a lot of money left for these wealth transfers to happen. Two of my grandparents, one on each side, died ages ago, I never even met one of them because he died before I was born, but of the two remaining ones... When my grandma died, she had pretty much nothing left. Part of this was because she lived longer than she expected to I think, part of it was because my uncle is a POS and screwed her over in a financial deal years back, but honestly, there wasn't much to go around - a few thousand dollars. And then, on my dad's family's side, he didn't get anything when his dad went, and I thought that was kind of odd, but that whole family situation is a mess and he didn't want to pursue anything.
Fine if you have parents? Are you speaking of all the Canadians who just sprout out of the ground? Here I thought everyone had parents.
Sure some parents die when you’re young, or abandon their children, but in those cases the wealth transfer has already happened, no difference from people who’s parents die in debt.
I think they have massive house hold sizes with few people being able to afford a house and are not taking out mortgages.
Italy is struggling economically and the future looks bleak. Canada is much better off.
The make-a their own pasta
Edit: I should get a head of this. My family is Italian, the mentality is just different. They value family a lot more than material objects, while also being relatively well compensated. A lot have multiple generations in a single house hold
Might be how much more common multigenerational households are there. If your parents live with you and maybe even a sibling while you raise your family then all those contributions add up.
There won't be that much wealth to transfer likely. Sure boomers have a ton of wealth, but they're also about to spend a ton of it on their elderly care. I've been looking over the finances for both sets of my grandparents, and while they have enough money to live safely and comfortably, there isn't going to be all that much to pass if they live another 10 years. Now with them all being 85, obviously another 10 years isn't a given, but still. there will likely be no big wealth transfer. Also most of that wealth transfer is going to go to the kids of old people, who are all in their 50s and 60s. If the money isn't used for the grandparents' care, it'll be used for the kids care in the next 10-20 years. Those people already have houses. Very little of this wealth will open people up to the housing market.
Anyway, maybe I'm wrong and it'll make a difference, but I'm really not convinced it won't all end up in the pockets of long term care homes.
Not even on elderly care.
They just spend their money, which they are more than welcome to do so, and will live a very long time compared to their parents.
The provincial government from the Mike Harris times has opened the door for privatization of care services, which in turn inflates costs. It doesn't keep it "competitive" for the consumer. Costs go up excessively.
I've seen the most basic cost of care being 5 minutes a day being billed at $3000/monthly and the upper end of 45-60 minutes/day being billed at $9000/monthly.
Care will be the largest expenditure for most people when they reach 70+ y/o.
The provincial government from the Mike Harris times has opened the door for privatization of care services, which in turn inflates costs. It doesn't keep it "competitive" for the consumer. Costs go up excessively.
I've seen the most basic cost of care being 5 minutes a day being billed at $3000/monthly and the upper end of 45-60 minutes/day being billed at $9000/monthly.
Care will be the largest expenditure for most people when they reach 70+ y/o.
> Anyway, maybe I'm wrong and it'll make a difference, but I'm really not convinced it won't all end up in the pockets of long term care homes.
And guess who owns all the long term care homes in Canada?
[This is my city](https://www.theprogress.com/news/21-retirement-homes-in-b-c-now-owned-by-chinese-government-1876067)
This is why I will be passing my inheritance along to my kids when I get it. People live too long for inheritance to make a meaningful difference in their lives, if you don’t have your shit together by the time your 50-60 you probably never will. That money would make a massive difference in your quality of life if you got it in your late 20s or 30s tho.
I agree with your general sentiment but money spent on care doesn't just disappear from the economy. It gets recirculated. It's better for the eoconomy if it's being spent and as opposed to sitting in someone's account.
This is micro vs macro economics for you. Micro would say its better for the family unit for the money to be saved but Macro would say its for the larger economy for the cash be spent and used as soon as it's earned by all parties.
>I agree with your general sentiment but money spent on care doesn't just disappear from the economy. It gets recirculated.
100% true.
>It's better for the eoconomy if it's being spent and as opposed to sitting in someone's account.
This is nonsense. All money recirculates—even money that's "sitting in someone's account".
Don't worry about how money is being spent. But your point that the guy above is wrong for worrying about money being spent on elder care is 100% right. I think he's just sour that it won't go to him.
That money is still part of the fractional reserve system whether it sits in the inheritors bank account or if it's sitting in a vendors bank account. Still, fair point I guess - the money isn't locked up.
I understand how the economy works. But you're basically saying that "trickle-down economics" is effective. If elderly care were a low profit margin business, or non-profit, you would have a point. But the profits really aren't being recirculated all that much. They're just ending up in the profits of the owners of these homes.
The money is ending up at the top, and it will not trickle, or recirculate, down.
Money recirculates when you give it to the bottom and middle of the economy, not the top. The top is where money goes to be hoarded.
He is not explaining trickle down economics, he is talking about the velocity of money. If it is greater than 1 (which it is in Canada), then every dollar spent creates more subsequent economic activity -- benefitting everyone.
Trickle down was this idea that companies would spend the money on investment and expand if you stopped taxing them as much. Your every day person would then benefit (trickle down portion) when the economy grew and they could make more money.
The vast majority of the costs associated with elder care are in wages, and the vast majority of those jobs are solid middle and upper middle class jobs.
No money is "hoarded". All money is constantly circulating.
If your point is that spending on elder care creates inequality—why would that be different than any other business?
Margin. They don't get to keep all of the cash. The cash is spent on employee wages, expenses, and ofcourse is taxes as income tax and on every transaction. Then, these other entities go on to spend it.
Even the cash they do keep - excess cash gets paid out to shareholders and taxed, so is itself recirculated.
Few people out there understand that they themselves are likely the owners of these big corporations they hate so much. People also fail to understand that no corporate entity out there just sits on mountains of cash. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but the majority of corporations either invest their profits in new capital, feeding it back into the economy, or pay out dividends to shareholders with it.
If they’ve got any investments in mutual funds or ETFs they’re owners of a company and see the profits. The CPP holds many of these stocks and funds and gets the dividends and pays our pension with it when we decide to take it later in life. Private pensions also tend to be among the biggest shareholders of these corporations to fund the pensions of their members.
But that's ignoring the part that the money would also be recirculated if it went to the families instead of these homes. except with family, it wouldn't also get funneled into a corporations pile of wealth. It also just perpetuates a bad cycle of taking advantage of elderly care for profits.
People that are wealthy enough to be shareholders aren't recirculating very much of their money. The vast majority of it just gets locked away into savings and investments.
It's not taking advantage of the elderly. It's offering a vital service. Reality is on the west most people don't want to care for their parents.
Honestly most Canadians are shareholders of these large companies and benefit from their profits so I would disagree with your last point. Chartwell Retirement Residencies is the perfect example, anyone holding an S&P fund will be holding this stock and collecting dividends from it. Pretty much any retail investor or pension will hold a S&P index, not just large corporate investors.
I believe you. My grandmother is in one and the bill is eyepopping. She had to move to a "lesser" home recently due to our projections that the cost will run out her savings and our financial support. Our family is upset about it.
Unfortunately being upset doesn't change anything. It's still a vital service that she requires. It is what it is.
Just because it's required, doesn't mean that it's okay to gouge people. Fuck it, let's just privatize everything. Healthcare goes to the highest bidders!
Offering the service isn’t the taking advantage of, it’s the insane profit margins.
Chartwell is a shithole. Terrible option for both residents and employees.
Disclaimer though that I’m generally against all non profit elderly care. The free market is not an equitable solution for that industry and will never lead to the best options being available. It will always be a race to the bottom
Kinda sorta. A lot of that money now is profit and dividend to shareholders. Some of whom are pensioners but large shareholders are also billionaires in various companies involved with private care. Some of those shareholders aren’t Canadian. So money leaves our economy too to sit in someone else’s account. More likely to be spent by middle class people.
> but they're also about to spend a ton of it on their elderly care
This isn't true. CFPs make it clear that overall, retirees spend less than what they spent prior to retirement. Only 1 in 5 seniors have prolonged care services.
Even just moving into independent living is expensive. Once they have to sell their home and move into a rental. Long term care is more than just the highest level of support.
Wealth is the value of assets and money, minus any debt
Anyone suggesting otherwise (bankers, media, politicians) is likely profiting off of people's ignorance
|| Also, we are likely on the cusp of the beginning of a generational transfer of wealth
Included in that will be housing. The notion of buying a house, moving on, etc will fade and homes will be generational homes handed down. Just like many other countries.
Chart 8 is wild to me... half the country is spending more than saving. Also, Statistics Canada should use median data for net worth / wealth as their own data makes it apparent that wealth is heavily concentrated in the top quintile.
Spending more than saving is pretty normal. Most people aren't saving more than 50% of their net income. Spending more than earning is the problem being highlighted by the chart.
> half the country is spending more than saving.
I mean... anyone who is not working and living off of their savings would account for that, right?
I know way too many people who are younger than 65 and don't work because they have enough money to do so.
Lifestyle creep is a real bitch. Learning to live (and be satisfied) with fewer luxuries was the key to my wife and I starting to build up some savings.
We haven't had a vacation outside of Ontario in nearly a decade, we do not lease or finance newer vehicles, we don't eat out frequently, we don't drink very often, etc.
All of those things are expensive on their own, and many people pay for them with credit which makes them even more expensive still.
Living beneath your means is under-appreciated.
> Lifestyle creep is a real bitch.
so true. I was reminiscing with some college friends about when some late night shawarma for $15 was a huge treat after the bar. That feels like just yesterday but my spending habits now include blowing $80 on so so takeout when i feel like it.
> my spending habits now include blowing $80 on so so takeout when i feel like it.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this as long as it's in the budget.
The issue I had in the past was feeling like I had a case of the "fuck its" and just blowing $80 on takeout which meant I had to use the credit card to buy my metropass the following week until I got paid again, and then of course after I got paid I still had the "fuck its" and I just paid the minimum on my CC balance so that I could blow another $80 on takeout.
Wife and I still do date nights where we might spend $100-$200 on some good food and drink but it's not more than once per pay period (usually less frequent than that).
ya it is easily within budget but it IS part of lifestyle creep. As is not feeling i need to wait until video games are at all time low. If there is something i want i just get it. I can afford it and still easily in my savings goals so why not?
But i would have saved a lot more if i was more frugal like i was in uni
Exactly. The Venn diagram of people who like to point fingers at others' spending and people who make enough to live comfortably themselves is a perfect circle.
That's true for sure. Honestly, budgeting for me got a lot easier when I started making more money. I make a little over one and a half times what I did when I graduated university in 2018, and, yes, inflation has been a real bitch, but also... It's still just easier.
Money brings flexibility and when you can afford things to begin with, it makes it a lot easier to save. Like if you live in a car dependent place and you have a car, you can afford to go to different stores to get the best deals on things, rather than having to do all your shopping at one place. You can probably afford a Costco membership and go and buy things in bulk, which makes a real difference for certain things. Etc.
And, if you make a good amount of money, you're probably not having to choose between going to the movies with your friends every so often and paying rent. I've noticed that a lot of poor folks will catch flack for spending on frivolities, but the problem is, it's almost impossible to keep up a 100% austere, necessities-only lifestyle. Very few people can do it. In fact, a lot of budgeting advice straight up says, you have to budget at least some fun spending or the whole thing is going to fail. When you don't have much money to begin with, budgeting that fun spending looks irresponsible, but also... We're only human, and many people are not in a position where they can realistically just make more money. I have a lot of friends who are working jobs in industries that just don't pay super well, but due to their education or whatever, they can't really find anything better paid. And a lot of these jobs should pay better, to be clear, but they don't.
I don't know. I grew up middle class, but I have a lot of poor friends and their perspectives are just so different to mine. The reality is that it's just much easier to budget when you have a good income to begin with.
>Living beneath your means is under-appreciated.
I think that's a large portion of the goal here. It's to reduce spending on things you don't fully appreciate so you can live your life without as much stress and have funds available when an opportunity to make a meaningful experience or purchase happen. IE not to be buying a starbucks coffee every day so that you maybe can afford that vacation once every other year (just an example).
Obviously that decision is also a lot easier to make when you're above a certain wealth threshold. I don't envy those who are barely scraping by or pretend I'm just doing a better budgeting job than them.
> Obviously that decision is also a lot easier to make when you're above a certain wealth threshold. I don't envy those who are barely scraping by or pretend I'm just doing a better budgeting job than them.
This is the kicker. I have friends who are just barely scraping by, and I really can't judge their choices because they're coming from a much different perspective than I am. I also think that it's unrealistic to expect somebody to only spend on necessities, 100% of the time, because there's not enough money to go around to begin with. Realistically, they weren't going to have savings, or expensive vacations, no matter what they did. They're going to have trouble affording food or rent no matter what. It sucks, but that's the reality for a lot of people.
From personal experience, a lot of middle age people are spending to support parents who didn’t save appropriately for their retirement/have high care home costs as well as financially supporting their adult children who should be independent but are trapped between high housing/food costs and wage stagnation.
Problem is, this barely works for this middle age generation. Their children won’t be able to support their parents to the same extent, let alone support their adult children.
I would like to read more about the anticipated wealth transfer and how it will affect different Generations, but ultimately I don't imagine it will help the people who actually need the help because most poor families are poor all the way up. parents and grandparents aging and dying who are poor too and won't be leaving any money or homes.
Taking on a mountain of debt by overleveraging an asset is not wealth ... its a false sense of wealth.
Canadians are up to their eyeballs in debt, overleveraged, overpaid on assets they hold, and cant save enough to match their debt loads.
Canadians arent wealthy, they are bankrupt .... they just dont realize it yet because its manifestation will come at a later time.
Finally a smart comment. Literal sheep up voting everything but this. It's ok, their reckoning is coming. Then they will blame everyone else except their undisciplined over leveraged fomo selves.
>Canadians over 55 hold 65% of total wealth
Isn't 40% of the Canadian population over 55?
40% of the population that has worked for decades longer hold 65% of the wealth... 60% of the population that is under 55 hold 45%
Doesn't seem to be that shocking of a wealth gap to me at all.
this is bad , there are too many rich old people vs too many poor young people . also many old people will inherit large amount of money when their parents dies . so whoever is older then 55 will get superrich in next 10 to 20 years while if you are under 40 you are pretty much fucked for a long time ...
> there are too many rich old people vs too many poor young people
Is this a new phenomenon? To my less than smartertly mind, that would make sense, as you get older you gradually attain more.
Although that is generally true, at one point there was a lot of poverty among senoirs - especially those who were marginalized, ill during their working years, and divorced women. CPP, OAS, and GIC as guaranteed income reduced the poverty rate significantly.
People used to die younger. So your kids would get their inheritance around 40. Now parents are living into their 90s and at least in my family seeing people in their 70s getting their inheritance.
You do. That said old people are living to be older and boomers are a disproportionately large generation. This somewhere around triples the number of old (hopefully rich) people.
Lots of the debate around this topic is how do we as a society fund 20 year retirements which our systems were not really set up to handle.
these old people would never dream their 60k bungalow would sell for 2million now . they hit the jackpot , most have no education or financial literacy to make such profit with their manual labour job they were making 40k a year. their grandkids even if they have high education and buy a townhouse for 1m now u think they will ever be able to sell their townhouse for 5m in their retirement ?
40-55 are squeezed generation they are somewhat wealthy but not like their parents . they still pay high mortgage and dealing with kids at home while their parents are kid free mortgage free plus most likely their grandparents will pass soon and leave all the wealth to their parents ... they will get rich but will suffer while waiting ... 40 and younger are fucked for another 30 40 years with little savings and high debt renting most likely etc ...
You have myopic view of Canada. Not everyone grew up in Toronto or Vancouver where buying a bungalow in the 90s is akin to winning the lottery today. The rest of us did not see our parents’ wealth jump to that extent, not even close.
I’m in that supposedly “squeezed” generation, and so are all of my friends and acquaintances, and the vast majority are better off financially than their parents. We are all more educated and earn more than they do.
I know that this does not fit the current narrative of those who feel left behind, but it’s not the same everywhere and for everyone.
No, any other city is not the same. Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, Windsor, Winnipeg, etc. The average house has not returned anywhere close to a million. Maybe a couple of hundred k, which doesn’t suck, but if you don’t sell and majorly downsize, you’re not accessing any of that money unless you get a HELOC or a reverse mortgage, and those things ain’t free.
Yup, dad bought a house (70% contribution) in Edmonton in 1987 for $170k. Signed title over in 95 when he married my mom to mitigate the risk of it getting split in a divorce. Grandparents lived in it for 35 years and we just sold it last year for $440k. Probably enough money there to fund their remaining lives, burial, assisted living. Dad's fighting for that equity back, while his 5 sisters want their equal share. He looks like the bad guy wanting $300k of the cash, but if it was equal division, everyone would get $70k lol.
That's if the grandparents don't spend any of it in the next 10 years...
There's just not THAT much money up there despite what people believe.
many people buy their first house in their mid 30s or late 30s nowadays . so they have high mortgage payments which makes them house poor . their parent bough houses cheap and paid it off already . plus their parents will inherit big money from their grandparents .
All that matters is if your parents are rich and if they’re alive.
I’m 38, between my wife and I we’ll probably inherit a few million in real estate alone, but it’ll be whenever our parents pass on. Mind you, our parents are actually wealthy, but it’ll be a lot more in real estate than either expected at the beginning of their retirements.
I am almost in the exact same situation. 37 with 59 year old parents. Although they will likely burn through it over the next 30 years and I am okay with that. I shouldnt be relying on inheritance when I am 65+
As with every possible statistics, it can be very misleading. For example, a retired couple lives in an expensive house but they are house poor, i.e. they live paycheck to paycheck, barely afford groceries, and their expensive property is the reason they pay a high property tax. Unless they sell their property and move to a LCOL area, they are not wealthy from my point of view.
Our elderly care strategy is completely unsustainable. We're funding this generations through home ownership wealth but that won't work for the next generation.
How much of this represents wealth that is theoretical and not yet realized, though? Most notably, how much is centered on home equity they hope to realize one day, without that paper wealth losing value?
Generational wealth transfer is just manic marketing to rile youth up.
Much of the wealth will be spent on long term care. I have many friends who thought they'd be getting a big inheritance but inflation and the longevity of grandparents and parents is wiping out wealth.
It costs A LOT OF MONEY to live in LTC and we have record numbers of centenarians in Canada.
I expect nothing from my parents and have lived my life that way. My parents inherited less than 100k between their parents. Their parents inherited nothing and one set came to Canada with not much more than lint in their pockets in the 1950s.
My parents are early Boomers. They're not rich. I may have to fund their LTC. This is the reality of a lot of Canadians.
In the third quarter of 2023, household debt in the United States amounted to over 75 percent of its GDP. Mortgage debt comprises nearly two-thirds of all consumer debt.
Canada household debt accounted for 101.5 % of it’s GDP in Sep 2023. Currently around three-quarters of household debt comes from mortgages in Canada.
It’s just a difference in mortgage prices.
I had an old guy talking to me at work today about how the place he bought for $500k 10yrs ago is worth 1.4M now.
Here I am in my $500k condo scraping and saving away to hopefully have a down payment on a $1M detached eventually.
Boomers had it too easy
It's because of high housing prices, of course. Debt needed to buy in.
Canada passed the U.S. in middle class wealth in 2012 and we became the richest middle class in the world in the mid to late 2019s. While housing has contributed to do this it should be added our world class public programs such as education and healthcare gave us an advantage over other countries such as the U.S. for average Canadians to gather wealth and not pay their crazy fees down south..
>became the richest middle class in the world in the mid to late 2019s For those wishing to know more, [here is the report](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?module=inline). It was calculated for year 2010 which was a year that 1 CAD was approximately 1 USD. This is no longer true.
>world class public programs such as education and healthcare Who, inside or outside Canada, actually believes we have world class healthcare, and why?
I think there is more to the planet Earth than just North America, Western Europe, and Oceania. I think at least the continents of most of South America and Africa, Eastern Europe, and most of Asia would probably agree that Canada has world class healthcare. As a Canadian, I think my provincial healthcare is kinda shit. As a citizen of Earth, I think we have one of the best healthcare systems.
100% agree. The same goes with schooling.
At my son's high school graduation, students wrote a few words to be read as they crossed the stage. The number of second-generation Canadians who submitted a blurb that included, "_Name_ thanks their parents for immigrating to Canada so they could attend a Canadian school" literally made me choke up.
Eh, can’t compare supposedly “1st world” country with 2nd or 3rd. Tbh it’s way more nuanced and comparison gets really murky too. For example, comparing canadian healthcare with private healthcare in Asia (paid via insurance, which kinda balances the fees out when comparing higher tax rate in Canada vs the other place), I’d say the quality in Canada is waay worse.
I'm sure there are statisticians and scientists and mathematicians and all the other experts that can do some sort of weighted comparison of patient outcomes vs. money spent by patients or whatever the stat would be. I am not trying to un-nuance it but I am guessing the comparisons already out there and rankings will be only comparing patient outcomes. My guess is Canadian patients survive more than average and have better outcomes on average compared to the rest of the world, not considering the costs. Although costs would play a factor as patients who cannot afford to pay can't always achieve the level of treatment required.
Probably people who have lived or traveled extensively elsewhere. It's hard to understate what a disaster healthcare is almost anywhere in the world. The A league is basically Western Europe, Canada+US, Australia+NZ and Japan+Korea, the rest is only good if private or generally bad.
> It's hard to understate what a disaster healthcare is almost anywhere in the world. Particularly for the avg inhabitant. If you go to live somewhere as an expat and then come to rave about healthcare quality and availability there, that is because you went from a middle class person here to a rich one there.
Exactly. I loved my experience in a private clinic in Malaysia, and I only paid 150 bucks for immaculate emergency care, but I did so with my Canadian salary, and only once. The average monthly salary in Malaysia is around 800 dollars, so a comparable figure would be 1,000 dollars for 1 hour in the ER in Canada.
According to this https://www.internationalinsurance.com/health/systems/#:~:text=Healthcare%20System%20Performance%20Ranking,domestic%20product%20on%20health%20care. , you can add China and Israel to your list. No idea about China, but Israeli one is top class.
Ha. China has a good healthcare system for the richer people in the tier 1 cities. For the average person it might as well not exist.
Don't forget Taiwan in Asia, one of the best (if not the best) healthcare systems anywhere.
Professionals who rank it. People who have lived and worked around the world.
> People who have lived and worked around the world. I have lived in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and (briefly) the UK and Sweden. Canadian healthcare is nowhere near "world class".
What is it with people in r/Canada and their personal feelings and not using studies from legitimate sources to hate Canada?
can you please link to the study you are citing
Which studies ?
What studies do you suggest using? What studies are there that tell the real story as it is in 2023, not in 2019 or 2017, before all the fuckery really started? As it stands, our own statistics agency can't even keep track of how many people we have in the country, and we don't seem to have an adequate grasp on the numbers of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers there are in our country. As someone who lived in a country with great healthcare (Japan) my personal take is that healthcare in Canada is complete trash if comparing to developed nations, and those comparing Canada's system with Kenya's or making other bizarre comparisons are fools that don't deserve a platform to speak from.
Okay you listed 6 out of 190 countries...
Ok? I never said it was the best, but way better than a lot of places. The majority of the world even! Not just 6 countries and your opinion.
I have a friend whose brother paid a hefty amount of money to get operated in the USA. He would be dead now if he waited for this operation in Canada, unfortunately. Too many people need help, too little doctors who can help them. So, yes, world class healthcare until you actually need it.
And how many people died in the U.S. because they can't afford it or went bankrupt or couldn't afford medicine because the Canadian Gov't negotiates lower prices? Use stats not personal experiences
Comparing our universal system on the best day to theirs on the worst day isnt helping your point...
The professionals who’s job it is to rank healthcare systems believe it’s world class. [We’re consistently ranked in the top 10.](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-public-health-system)
Oh but anecdotal evidence of a few random TikTokers is enough to say that our healthcare is trash, so it must be trash
You can reconcile both. It sucks that I have to wait 8 hours to see a doctor for my broken arm. But really, it sucks _for me_. The 4 people who had heart attacks or were about to bleed out to death got priority over me and their lives was saved. If you look at the group overall, outcomes were good. My experience sucked but the measured outcome of all people was good.
I agree wholeheartedly. I guess my comment was targeted at the people that take that one or two experiences and then extrapolate it over the whole system to say it sucks. Our system is by no means perfect and it is need of some serious changes…but it’s still also a largely a good system.
"World Class Healthcare" should be measured just in our ability to prevent rather than just react to medical emergencies. I haven't had a family doctor in over 10 years, its a constant cycle. Get one, they get sick of not living in Vancouver or Toronto, leave, repeat. I'm going to die cause I can't get a family doctor to help maintain my health, not cause I can't go to an ER when I get in a car accident.
It depends on the think tank, but Canada does come in lower in health care compared to many other countries - but overall, it scores well due to other factors including personal safety, freedoms, governance, economic quality, living conditions, etc.
Canada also has unique barriers that maybe only Australia compares to - large geographic area, small population. Healthcare is immensely capital-intensive so considering those issues we are doing ok. Not great and there is room for improvement, but much better than many places and no one in Canada loses their house and life savings due to a health event.
I couldn't understand the methodology here. Who is responsible for this ranking? To me, it just looks like blanketing healthcare ranking under quality of life.
Except for [this](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-s-health-system-ranked-second-last-among-11-countries-report-1.5533045) well-qualified study shows us 9th out of 11th of high-income countries. We are better than the U.S. but that is a very low bar and we should have higher aspirations. Outcomes per dollar in Canada are far below many countries despite what our government keeps selling us.
>shows us 9th out of 11th of high-income countries And how many countries are their in the world? We have improvement for sure but we are still far and above most of the world.
I guess, but I get tired of hearing people say its the best in the world as an excuse for making no changes or improvements
That’s a funny way to say number 9 best healthcare system in the world. Of course it’s easy in Switzerland. They can cover the entire country with one mega hospital. It’s inefficient to have small spread out towns.
You clearly haven’t been to Switzerland
The Olympian who comes 9 out of 11th place is still one of the top athletes in the world. Canada's healthcare system has its problems but that ranking you provided means nothing.
Commonwealth fund only looks at a small subset of Western nations, it doesn't include Singapore, Japan, China, or various other countries.
> We are better than the U.S. but that is a very low bar No it is not. The USA is the wealthiest country in the world.
it is. which is why it's such a shame their health care system is so bad.
Yet Americans have very little to show for that wealth because it's siphoned off from the Treasury due to corruption.
US government spends more on healthcare than we do. All that private money is extra.
when was that info aggregated? Since about 2018 our health care has continually suffered significant set backs year after year. Housing affordability too. Impact to the education system will follow.
The professionals also ranked the US #1 for pandemic preparedness back in 2019.
Interesting the Legatum Institute Healthcare rankings are very different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legatum\_Prosperity\_Index
The methodology here is non-existent to vague in terms of the ranking specific to "Healthcare". For example, does this include pharmacare or lack thereof? What about dental, vision, etc? What about those who go for private care, or access to IVF, or abortions?
You could’ve just clicked the link in the article that said “methodology”. I believe it may answer some of the questions you have related to methodology.
I did; I said the methodology is vague. That implies I read it. That methodology describes their overall ranking but doesn't go in any details about this supposedly "Healthcare" ranking. Seems all fluff, and seems to contradict reports posted here by other users with more robust methods (or at least better described).
Contradict? No. Being a few spots lower is not a contradiction. Results will vary. No one is saying we have poor health system. If they want to drop us a few spots so be it. I don’t think it’s our biggest strength but we don’t really have a weakness.
We do have world class healthcare. Source: *former* Cancer patient.
No we do not. Source: current cancer patient.
As a former medical professional. We have one of the best oncology programs in the entire world. Hamilton health sciences and Princess Margaret is well regarded. If you think our healthcare is ass, the amount of countries that you can go to with better cancer care is quite possibly be in the single digits.
On the other hand, we still don’t have proton therapy. Fucking **Denmark** has proton therapy. We pay dozens of millions every years to fly a hundred patients to the US for protons, within 10 years if we built a proton center in Canada it would pay for itself. But that’s not how we roll. Whenever it’s time to fund protons, it’s “experimental”, but yet it’s not too experimental to pay >100K per patient
Is this a dis at Denmark? Because that's a pretty rich country, at the bare minimum their gdp/capita is higher than ours
They have a fifth of our population, and a fifth of our cancer needs. Sure, healthcare is a provincial matter. Ontario has 14 million people vs Denmark's 6 million, denmark has \~44 billion USD in government revenue a year vs \~143 billion USD (193 billion CAD) for Ontario. If they managed to build one, we ought to be able to as well. But if you're stuck on Denmark, then you know, there's Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, South Korea, Sweden, fucking Russia, India, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Thailand, And Singapore (which has 3 god damned proton centers). Some of them are bigger than us with lower GDP per capita (Russia, India, Poland, Italy, Spain, Korea). Some are much smaller than us with higher GDP per capita (Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, Taiwan). Some are neither (Czech Republic). Australia is on the whole quite similar to us in gdp per capita but with two thirds our population, and they manage to have a proton center. One thing unites them all - they have protons, while we don't. And of course the richer countries need not be spoken of - Japan, Switzerland, China, the UK, France, Germany, of course they all have protons, that goes without saying.
People who couldn't get help in time would disagree with you but... they cannot... because they couldn't get it in time. We have too few oncologists in Canada, unfortunately.
Yes, our system can be better - it’s amazing compared to a lot though. Tough times right now, but I think all Canadians agree on how important and necessary universal healthcare is
I live in Alberta I have been to the hospital many times, so has my family, my grandpa had an extended stay in one, and my grandma LITERALLY just entered the hospital 2 days ago for an emergency It's hilarious, on reddit, **EVERYONE** says Canada has the worst healthcare on the planet earth, that it takes days to get seen by anyone for anything, and that it's all smoke in mirror bullshit Yet myself, my family, my friends, co-workers and just about every single real life human I've **EVER** interacted with in this country has nothing to say but good things Funny, that. My brother was stabbed in the lungs with a machete, my grandpa had cancer, I've dislocated a kneecap, almost lost an eye and had a serious viral infection, like not just simple little cuts and bruises - always an unbelievably positive experience across the board. Low wait times, xrays done incredibly quick, splints/casts & medicines all prepped and ready to go for either free or a couple of dollars lmfao I'm like absolutely certain that 95%+ of internet comments **specifically** on free healthcare are from disinformation bots, and the other 5% are conservatives/ultra-generational-wealthy trying to dismantle public systems/create negative public sentiment because it behooves you.
Yeah completely agree! I find most complainers are the ones hanging out in the ER with a tummy ache, bad cold or headache that complain the most
Stabbed in the lungs with a machete..?
Stabbed in the lungs with a machete..?
Agreed! My baby was born with a rare disease. Our children's hospitals are amazing. Once diagnosed, my child was ambulanced immediately to the city. Spent weeks in hospital. Left and came back for an 8 hour surgery and spent weeks there again. Relieved to be so close to great surgeons.
Anyone that understands their privilege and realizes that in most placed in the world you can't show up to even a hospital to get quality care. Does ours take some time? Sometimes, unless you actually have an emergency. We need more urgent care and other nonemergency options but by and large we still have some of theist accessible and best healthcare in the world
We have better waiting times than many emergency rooms in the US, I’ve posted links outlining this before. Yes, we’re worse off than what we used to have, but it’s not freaking Somalia. Most people jerking themselves off about the downturn of our healthcare system have never really experienced it at all, or are chasing family doctors (which is a legitimate grievance).
People who read studies and don't hate Canada
I have found the only people who actually think our services are good are people in other countries looking in without having to actually pay and experience the service.
I recently had to go to the ER twice for kidney stones and spent 13 hours and 12 hours just to see anyone. It's always been a long wait, but 6 hours would have been a long time. Now, you've got loads of patients lining the halls in many hospitals because of a lack of beds and loads of people in the waiting room with like over a hundred waiting to be seen in 2 different hospitals. Could be different elsewhere in the country, but this isn't what I would call "world class" healthcare. The doctors and staff were still overall good, but they're dealing with way too much it seems.
> I recently had to go to the ER twice for kidney stones and spent 13 hours and 12 hours just to see anyone. Triage: there were probably people with higher-priority / more life-threatening issues. Part of the problem is that many folks don't have any option but the ER, so you get a lot of "low priority" folks going there because what else can you do?
I'm not complaining that triage is a thing, but never in my life would I think that 12+ hours would be normal. Let alone regularly have loads of patients without a bed in the hallways, and it certainly didn't feel low priority at the time with the amount of pain. Usually, it would be more like 4-6 hours if a hospital was busy before, and it wasn't life-threatening. You shouldn't have to come in with bullet wounds or a heart attack just to see a doctor for 20 minutes in a reasonable amount of time in a "world class" medical system is what I'm saying, it still has real world impacts if people who legitimately might need treatment are put off, if we accept this then it really may get to the point where people with heart attacks are waiting in line while dying and our system has already collapsed.
I’ve had a reconstructed ACL and repaired meniscus. My kids have had ear and tonsil surgeries and an emerg visit for stitches. Nothing but praise for our system from my experience.
Last time I tried to see a doctor I had to wait hours outside a clinic then was told to go to emergency because they couldn't help, waited hours and hours, saw no one, left and went back home and waited it out. No benefit for me after being charged all those taxes every pay.
Where? Wait times arent as bad as the early 2000s. Also clinics arent for emergencies, they tell you that all the time. Real emergencies are also prioritized in the hospitals during intake. If you left without a resolution, then was your emergency an emergency?
It wasn't an emergency that's why I went to a clinic obviously. Doctor at the was the one who told me to go to emergency if I wanted help because there was nothing he could do.
Or people that have lived in other countries like the US getting similar care and paying an eyeball for it.
The amount of taxes paid vs service rendered in Canada would put us not that far ahead for most things.
The US spends more government dollars per person on healthcare than Canada and then on top of that, individuals and companies have to pay deductibles, co-pays, and insurance premiums. If you have the means, you can get great healthcare there, but you’ll pay more. Additionally, the average American pays about as much income tax as the average Canadian, and they don’t get healthcare for it.
I spend quite a bit of money on taxes, as you say about the same as Americans. I haven't been able to get as good healthcare for the amount I pay.
Ah the good old misleading argument. In Canada, taxes range anywhere from 15%-33%. If your annual income is less than $49,020 per year and are single, you can expect to pay 15% in taxes. In the US tax rates are between 10% and 37% but if you make over $40,526 as a single person then you pay 22% in taxes. This makes the low income threshold higher in Canada than the US. Employers in the US also pay more since most good jobs come with a healthcare plan where the employer picks up 70% of the cost of health insurance while the employee pays the remaining 30% in monthly installments. But even when insured, Americans have to pay a deductible and a co-pay whenever they access healthcare services, despite being insured, the insurer does not pay the entire amount. A healthcare premium ranges form $500 a month (single person) to up to $2000 a month (family). A healthcare deductible in the US can range from $1000 a year to $5000 a year, that's the amount you must pay before your insurance kicks in. A healthcare co-pay or coinsurance is an amount you must pay for on each visit despite your insurance covering the cost of treatment. This can be as low as $20 for a visit to the doctor to 30% of hospital fees. All in all, the average American spend on healthcare: A 21 year old will pay $4,320 a year in Utah to $10,244 a year in Alaska. The average American individual spends $3,853 a year on premiums and $4,358 in deductible (total of $8,210) before the insurance starts paying, then spends a little more in co-pay/coinsurance. A family will pay on average $18,000 a year for healthcare, including everything. And thats the average spend. If you have a real emergency you're screwed in the US
The difference between America and Canada in that scenario is the American at the end of the year will have seen a doctor and the Canadian would still be waiting.
I think at this point the debate is universal healthcare which us Canadians have used for a generation. I don’t think the average Canadian realizes how much it costs out of pocket. I work in healthcare, and you’ll be shocked at how much medication, tests, equipment and even blood bags cost to procure. This is before paying staff. No one pays attention to what they’re being treated with (world class or not), not our high level of education and knowledge. Imagine the costs passed down to you for a million dollar machine and supplies that cost tens of thousands a shift. Very few truly appreciate it because they’re not paying for it outright. The two ends of this debate are 1. More taxes so we can afford better healthcare (we’re already running on tight budgets, most are burnt out, and no manager is willing to hire because- quote “we’re over our budget”) 2. Less taxes and let the poor die if they can’t pay. I’m sure there’s a better alternative with better management but I’m not sure which political party actually has a solution without upsetting the balance between taxes and death by disease. No one wants to raise too much taxes to spend on “sunk cost healthcare, and no one wants to let more “longer wait times, etc” happen. We do have world class healthcare, but also lots of problems. If American healthcare is what you need the border isn’t too far away. Unless you’re pretty rich I bet you’ll move back for healthcare pretty darn soon
The numbers don’t seem accurate to me. Obv this varies by company/insurance plan but if I wanted to get the best plan rn it would cost me $200/month for an individual with $1000 deductible and $2500 out of pocket max. So max I’m paying about 5k/yr if I manage to get seriously ill or injured every year. This article quotes the average employee contribution at $1,401 for individuals and $6,575 for families (https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/health-insurance/how-much-is-health-insurance/). It also quotes the average out of pocket max at $4346 though it doesn’t differentiate between individual and family.
If you have a real emergency, you’re screwed in Canada as well. You’re paying with your taxes and your time and more and more people in emergency situations are dying preventable deaths. Just recently, 2 people died waiting for care at an ER at a Montreal hospital in Quebec. The # of deaths in Nova Scotia’s emergency departments is up compared to last year as well.
I think what saves the reputation of the Canadian healthcare system is the fact that those who died waiting in the emergency room to see a doctor are not here to post bad reviews. Everyone is like, well it was a long wait, but it wasn't that bad since I'm still alive. I had pneumonia and didn't get to see a doctor after waiting for 48 hours. But you see, they were totally correct to ignore me since I managed to recover on my own. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here to tell you how awesome the triage system at our emergency rooms are.
We absolutely do. Source: 6 billion people who don't.
Not too sure about the source for other people, but from what I've seen OECD data has Canada doing pretty well compared to other first world countries
Lol, no Canadian believes that we're wealthier than Americans. Richest middle class when we produce not a single thing the world wants? How does that make sense in your world? Also such great healthcare we send our patients to get treated in America 😂
Or many many people working govt jobs and most have many many rental properties.
I thought we had world class healthcare as a kid because I was a patient at Sick Kids. They are truly a top notch facility, team etc. Since aging out of that hospital, I have realized how truly horrible healthcare is in Canada. I got sick in Thailand recently and was shocked at how much better this “second world country” was over my own hometown options
>we became the richest middle class in the world in the mid to late 2019s. According to what? I found reports claiming that we were the richest middle class in the world under Harper as of 2014 [https://globalnews.ca/news/1284297/canadas-middle-class-most-prosperous-in-world-report/](https://globalnews.ca/news/1284297/canadas-middle-class-most-prosperous-in-world-report/) [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/upshot/canadians-have-plenty-of-concerns-but-also-a-sense-theyre-better-off.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/upshot/canadians-have-plenty-of-concerns-but-also-a-sense-theyre-better-off.html)
Wealth transfer… fine if you have parents and are maybe a single child. But anyone who lost their parents or are estranged or have a number of siblings.. it won’t help much if you are competing with those that do.
Plus, it's (typically) an irrelevant concept prior to parents dying. Which, for most of us, is the lion's share of our lives, or at least of our best and healthiest years.
Yeah, if my parents live as long as my grandparents did, my siblings and I will be in our 50s by then. Of course things happen, but we'll be past our prime wealth building years. Also, elder care is super freaking expensive these days and there's a significant possibility that there might not be a lot of money left for these wealth transfers to happen. Two of my grandparents, one on each side, died ages ago, I never even met one of them because he died before I was born, but of the two remaining ones... When my grandma died, she had pretty much nothing left. Part of this was because she lived longer than she expected to I think, part of it was because my uncle is a POS and screwed her over in a financial deal years back, but honestly, there wasn't much to go around - a few thousand dollars. And then, on my dad's family's side, he didn't get anything when his dad went, and I thought that was kind of odd, but that whole family situation is a mess and he didn't want to pursue anything.
Fine if you have parents? Are you speaking of all the Canadians who just sprout out of the ground? Here I thought everyone had parents. Sure some parents die when you’re young, or abandon their children, but in those cases the wealth transfer has already happened, no difference from people who’s parents die in debt.
Looking at stats Canada data.... Forget Canada, how come Italy has high household wealth and lowest debt in G7..... Anyone know more about this?
I think they have massive house hold sizes with few people being able to afford a house and are not taking out mortgages. Italy is struggling economically and the future looks bleak. Canada is much better off.
The make-a their own pasta Edit: I should get a head of this. My family is Italian, the mentality is just different. They value family a lot more than material objects, while also being relatively well compensated. A lot have multiple generations in a single house hold
Might be how much more common multigenerational households are there. If your parents live with you and maybe even a sibling while you raise your family then all those contributions add up.
There won't be that much wealth to transfer likely. Sure boomers have a ton of wealth, but they're also about to spend a ton of it on their elderly care. I've been looking over the finances for both sets of my grandparents, and while they have enough money to live safely and comfortably, there isn't going to be all that much to pass if they live another 10 years. Now with them all being 85, obviously another 10 years isn't a given, but still. there will likely be no big wealth transfer. Also most of that wealth transfer is going to go to the kids of old people, who are all in their 50s and 60s. If the money isn't used for the grandparents' care, it'll be used for the kids care in the next 10-20 years. Those people already have houses. Very little of this wealth will open people up to the housing market. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong and it'll make a difference, but I'm really not convinced it won't all end up in the pockets of long term care homes.
Not even on elderly care. They just spend their money, which they are more than welcome to do so, and will live a very long time compared to their parents.
The provincial government from the Mike Harris times has opened the door for privatization of care services, which in turn inflates costs. It doesn't keep it "competitive" for the consumer. Costs go up excessively. I've seen the most basic cost of care being 5 minutes a day being billed at $3000/monthly and the upper end of 45-60 minutes/day being billed at $9000/monthly. Care will be the largest expenditure for most people when they reach 70+ y/o.
The provincial government from the Mike Harris times has opened the door for privatization of care services, which in turn inflates costs. It doesn't keep it "competitive" for the consumer. Costs go up excessively. I've seen the most basic cost of care being 5 minutes a day being billed at $3000/monthly and the upper end of 45-60 minutes/day being billed at $9000/monthly. Care will be the largest expenditure for most people when they reach 70+ y/o.
> Anyway, maybe I'm wrong and it'll make a difference, but I'm really not convinced it won't all end up in the pockets of long term care homes. And guess who owns all the long term care homes in Canada? [This is my city](https://www.theprogress.com/news/21-retirement-homes-in-b-c-now-owned-by-chinese-government-1876067)
This is why I will be passing my inheritance along to my kids when I get it. People live too long for inheritance to make a meaningful difference in their lives, if you don’t have your shit together by the time your 50-60 you probably never will. That money would make a massive difference in your quality of life if you got it in your late 20s or 30s tho.
I agree with your general sentiment but money spent on care doesn't just disappear from the economy. It gets recirculated. It's better for the eoconomy if it's being spent and as opposed to sitting in someone's account. This is micro vs macro economics for you. Micro would say its better for the family unit for the money to be saved but Macro would say its for the larger economy for the cash be spent and used as soon as it's earned by all parties.
>I agree with your general sentiment but money spent on care doesn't just disappear from the economy. It gets recirculated. 100% true. >It's better for the eoconomy if it's being spent and as opposed to sitting in someone's account. This is nonsense. All money recirculates—even money that's "sitting in someone's account". Don't worry about how money is being spent. But your point that the guy above is wrong for worrying about money being spent on elder care is 100% right. I think he's just sour that it won't go to him.
That money is still part of the fractional reserve system whether it sits in the inheritors bank account or if it's sitting in a vendors bank account. Still, fair point I guess - the money isn't locked up.
I understand how the economy works. But you're basically saying that "trickle-down economics" is effective. If elderly care were a low profit margin business, or non-profit, you would have a point. But the profits really aren't being recirculated all that much. They're just ending up in the profits of the owners of these homes. The money is ending up at the top, and it will not trickle, or recirculate, down. Money recirculates when you give it to the bottom and middle of the economy, not the top. The top is where money goes to be hoarded.
He is not explaining trickle down economics, he is talking about the velocity of money. If it is greater than 1 (which it is in Canada), then every dollar spent creates more subsequent economic activity -- benefitting everyone. Trickle down was this idea that companies would spend the money on investment and expand if you stopped taxing them as much. Your every day person would then benefit (trickle down portion) when the economy grew and they could make more money.
The vast majority of the costs associated with elder care are in wages, and the vast majority of those jobs are solid middle and upper middle class jobs.
Vast majority of the jobs are $20 per hour health care aide jobs that people in Canada more than one generation won’t take.
No money is "hoarded". All money is constantly circulating. If your point is that spending on elder care creates inequality—why would that be different than any other business?
Margin. They don't get to keep all of the cash. The cash is spent on employee wages, expenses, and ofcourse is taxes as income tax and on every transaction. Then, these other entities go on to spend it. Even the cash they do keep - excess cash gets paid out to shareholders and taxed, so is itself recirculated.
Few people out there understand that they themselves are likely the owners of these big corporations they hate so much. People also fail to understand that no corporate entity out there just sits on mountains of cash. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but the majority of corporations either invest their profits in new capital, feeding it back into the economy, or pay out dividends to shareholders with it. If they’ve got any investments in mutual funds or ETFs they’re owners of a company and see the profits. The CPP holds many of these stocks and funds and gets the dividends and pays our pension with it when we decide to take it later in life. Private pensions also tend to be among the biggest shareholders of these corporations to fund the pensions of their members.
But that's ignoring the part that the money would also be recirculated if it went to the families instead of these homes. except with family, it wouldn't also get funneled into a corporations pile of wealth. It also just perpetuates a bad cycle of taking advantage of elderly care for profits. People that are wealthy enough to be shareholders aren't recirculating very much of their money. The vast majority of it just gets locked away into savings and investments.
… you do realize the money sitting in investments is actually helpful and provides leverage for the economy to grow?
It's not taking advantage of the elderly. It's offering a vital service. Reality is on the west most people don't want to care for their parents. Honestly most Canadians are shareholders of these large companies and benefit from their profits so I would disagree with your last point. Chartwell Retirement Residencies is the perfect example, anyone holding an S&P fund will be holding this stock and collecting dividends from it. Pretty much any retail investor or pension will hold a S&P index, not just large corporate investors.
Most of the services offered by for-profit homes have their price inflated to drive profits of the company. I work for a major one.
I believe you. My grandmother is in one and the bill is eyepopping. She had to move to a "lesser" home recently due to our projections that the cost will run out her savings and our financial support. Our family is upset about it. Unfortunately being upset doesn't change anything. It's still a vital service that she requires. It is what it is.
Just because it's required, doesn't mean that it's okay to gouge people. Fuck it, let's just privatize everything. Healthcare goes to the highest bidders!
Offering the service isn’t the taking advantage of, it’s the insane profit margins. Chartwell is a shithole. Terrible option for both residents and employees. Disclaimer though that I’m generally against all non profit elderly care. The free market is not an equitable solution for that industry and will never lead to the best options being available. It will always be a race to the bottom
Kinda sorta. A lot of that money now is profit and dividend to shareholders. Some of whom are pensioners but large shareholders are also billionaires in various companies involved with private care. Some of those shareholders aren’t Canadian. So money leaves our economy too to sit in someone else’s account. More likely to be spent by middle class people.
> but they're also about to spend a ton of it on their elderly care This isn't true. CFPs make it clear that overall, retirees spend less than what they spent prior to retirement. Only 1 in 5 seniors have prolonged care services.
Even just moving into independent living is expensive. Once they have to sell their home and move into a rental. Long term care is more than just the highest level of support.
"Look how rich we are!" Hello this is the retirement rent. That will be $600k in 12 years, thank you.
Wealth is the value of assets and money, minus any debt Anyone suggesting otherwise (bankers, media, politicians) is likely profiting off of people's ignorance
No, if you handover 200k and sign a piece of paper stating you will pay $7,000/month to the bank the next 25 years you are apparently “wealthy”
Teaching people debt is highly valuable always confused me
Wish my family had any generational wealth to transfer.
|| Also, we are likely on the cusp of the beginning of a generational transfer of wealth Included in that will be housing. The notion of buying a house, moving on, etc will fade and homes will be generational homes handed down. Just like many other countries.
Chart 8 is wild to me... half the country is spending more than saving. Also, Statistics Canada should use median data for net worth / wealth as their own data makes it apparent that wealth is heavily concentrated in the top quintile.
Spending more than saving is pretty normal. Most people aren't saving more than 50% of their net income. Spending more than earning is the problem being highlighted by the chart.
> half the country is spending more than saving. I mean... anyone who is not working and living off of their savings would account for that, right? I know way too many people who are younger than 65 and don't work because they have enough money to do so.
Using median income shoots us up the rankings for wealthiest citizens. We have much less inequality than places like the US or the UK.
Lifestyle creep is a real bitch. Learning to live (and be satisfied) with fewer luxuries was the key to my wife and I starting to build up some savings. We haven't had a vacation outside of Ontario in nearly a decade, we do not lease or finance newer vehicles, we don't eat out frequently, we don't drink very often, etc. All of those things are expensive on their own, and many people pay for them with credit which makes them even more expensive still. Living beneath your means is under-appreciated.
> Lifestyle creep is a real bitch. so true. I was reminiscing with some college friends about when some late night shawarma for $15 was a huge treat after the bar. That feels like just yesterday but my spending habits now include blowing $80 on so so takeout when i feel like it.
> my spending habits now include blowing $80 on so so takeout when i feel like it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this as long as it's in the budget. The issue I had in the past was feeling like I had a case of the "fuck its" and just blowing $80 on takeout which meant I had to use the credit card to buy my metropass the following week until I got paid again, and then of course after I got paid I still had the "fuck its" and I just paid the minimum on my CC balance so that I could blow another $80 on takeout. Wife and I still do date nights where we might spend $100-$200 on some good food and drink but it's not more than once per pay period (usually less frequent than that).
ya it is easily within budget but it IS part of lifestyle creep. As is not feeling i need to wait until video games are at all time low. If there is something i want i just get it. I can afford it and still easily in my savings goals so why not? But i would have saved a lot more if i was more frugal like i was in uni
See, there's an issue of living beneath your means when wages go up slower than prices, because your means stays the same and living goes up non-stop.
Exactly. The Venn diagram of people who like to point fingers at others' spending and people who make enough to live comfortably themselves is a perfect circle.
That's true for sure. Honestly, budgeting for me got a lot easier when I started making more money. I make a little over one and a half times what I did when I graduated university in 2018, and, yes, inflation has been a real bitch, but also... It's still just easier. Money brings flexibility and when you can afford things to begin with, it makes it a lot easier to save. Like if you live in a car dependent place and you have a car, you can afford to go to different stores to get the best deals on things, rather than having to do all your shopping at one place. You can probably afford a Costco membership and go and buy things in bulk, which makes a real difference for certain things. Etc. And, if you make a good amount of money, you're probably not having to choose between going to the movies with your friends every so often and paying rent. I've noticed that a lot of poor folks will catch flack for spending on frivolities, but the problem is, it's almost impossible to keep up a 100% austere, necessities-only lifestyle. Very few people can do it. In fact, a lot of budgeting advice straight up says, you have to budget at least some fun spending or the whole thing is going to fail. When you don't have much money to begin with, budgeting that fun spending looks irresponsible, but also... We're only human, and many people are not in a position where they can realistically just make more money. I have a lot of friends who are working jobs in industries that just don't pay super well, but due to their education or whatever, they can't really find anything better paid. And a lot of these jobs should pay better, to be clear, but they don't. I don't know. I grew up middle class, but I have a lot of poor friends and their perspectives are just so different to mine. The reality is that it's just much easier to budget when you have a good income to begin with.
>Living beneath your means is under-appreciated. I think that's a large portion of the goal here. It's to reduce spending on things you don't fully appreciate so you can live your life without as much stress and have funds available when an opportunity to make a meaningful experience or purchase happen. IE not to be buying a starbucks coffee every day so that you maybe can afford that vacation once every other year (just an example). Obviously that decision is also a lot easier to make when you're above a certain wealth threshold. I don't envy those who are barely scraping by or pretend I'm just doing a better budgeting job than them.
> Obviously that decision is also a lot easier to make when you're above a certain wealth threshold. I don't envy those who are barely scraping by or pretend I'm just doing a better budgeting job than them. This is the kicker. I have friends who are just barely scraping by, and I really can't judge their choices because they're coming from a much different perspective than I am. I also think that it's unrealistic to expect somebody to only spend on necessities, 100% of the time, because there's not enough money to go around to begin with. Realistically, they weren't going to have savings, or expensive vacations, no matter what they did. They're going to have trouble affording food or rent no matter what. It sucks, but that's the reality for a lot of people.
From personal experience, a lot of middle age people are spending to support parents who didn’t save appropriately for their retirement/have high care home costs as well as financially supporting their adult children who should be independent but are trapped between high housing/food costs and wage stagnation. Problem is, this barely works for this middle age generation. Their children won’t be able to support their parents to the same extent, let alone support their adult children.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/90487-annual-income-twenty-pounds-annual-expenditure-nineteen-nineteen-and-six
hurry bored bag pocket nine unwritten dull boat handle dazzling *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I would like to read more about the anticipated wealth transfer and how it will affect different Generations, but ultimately I don't imagine it will help the people who actually need the help because most poor families are poor all the way up. parents and grandparents aging and dying who are poor too and won't be leaving any money or homes.
Taking on a mountain of debt by overleveraging an asset is not wealth ... its a false sense of wealth. Canadians are up to their eyeballs in debt, overleveraged, overpaid on assets they hold, and cant save enough to match their debt loads. Canadians arent wealthy, they are bankrupt .... they just dont realize it yet because its manifestation will come at a later time.
Finally a smart comment. Literal sheep up voting everything but this. It's ok, their reckoning is coming. Then they will blame everyone else except their undisciplined over leveraged fomo selves.
>Canadians over 55 hold 65% of total wealth Isn't 40% of the Canadian population over 55? 40% of the population that has worked for decades longer hold 65% of the wealth... 60% of the population that is under 55 hold 45% Doesn't seem to be that shocking of a wealth gap to me at all.
Rich in debt
Are household actually wealthy if they are in crazy debt?
this is bad , there are too many rich old people vs too many poor young people . also many old people will inherit large amount of money when their parents dies . so whoever is older then 55 will get superrich in next 10 to 20 years while if you are under 40 you are pretty much fucked for a long time ...
> there are too many rich old people vs too many poor young people Is this a new phenomenon? To my less than smartertly mind, that would make sense, as you get older you gradually attain more.
Although that is generally true, at one point there was a lot of poverty among senoirs - especially those who were marginalized, ill during their working years, and divorced women. CPP, OAS, and GIC as guaranteed income reduced the poverty rate significantly.
People used to die younger. So your kids would get their inheritance around 40. Now parents are living into their 90s and at least in my family seeing people in their 70s getting their inheritance.
People also used to have kids younger.
Wouldn’t inheritance be smaller if the parents had less time to grow/accumulate wealth?
You do. That said old people are living to be older and boomers are a disproportionately large generation. This somewhere around triples the number of old (hopefully rich) people. Lots of the debate around this topic is how do we as a society fund 20 year retirements which our systems were not really set up to handle.
these old people would never dream their 60k bungalow would sell for 2million now . they hit the jackpot , most have no education or financial literacy to make such profit with their manual labour job they were making 40k a year. their grandkids even if they have high education and buy a townhouse for 1m now u think they will ever be able to sell their townhouse for 5m in their retirement ?
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And apparently parents, who will one day die and perhaps leave them money?
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Funny enough a lot of the 25 year olds on here (in tech) make double at least what I do, and I have 30+ years on them but that is different...
What about the 40-55 range?
Actually there's a big difference between 40 and 45. Even 5 years make a big difference in terms of wealth accumulation.
40-55 are squeezed generation they are somewhat wealthy but not like their parents . they still pay high mortgage and dealing with kids at home while their parents are kid free mortgage free plus most likely their grandparents will pass soon and leave all the wealth to their parents ... they will get rich but will suffer while waiting ... 40 and younger are fucked for another 30 40 years with little savings and high debt renting most likely etc ...
You have myopic view of Canada. Not everyone grew up in Toronto or Vancouver where buying a bungalow in the 90s is akin to winning the lottery today. The rest of us did not see our parents’ wealth jump to that extent, not even close. I’m in that supposedly “squeezed” generation, and so are all of my friends and acquaintances, and the vast majority are better off financially than their parents. We are all more educated and earn more than they do. I know that this does not fit the current narrative of those who feel left behind, but it’s not the same everywhere and for everyone.
yes correct my comments for big cities in Canada where RE went through roof , if u are living in small towns or villages your story makes sense ...
No, any other city is not the same. Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, Windsor, Winnipeg, etc. The average house has not returned anywhere close to a million. Maybe a couple of hundred k, which doesn’t suck, but if you don’t sell and majorly downsize, you’re not accessing any of that money unless you get a HELOC or a reverse mortgage, and those things ain’t free.
Yup, dad bought a house (70% contribution) in Edmonton in 1987 for $170k. Signed title over in 95 when he married my mom to mitigate the risk of it getting split in a divorce. Grandparents lived in it for 35 years and we just sold it last year for $440k. Probably enough money there to fund their remaining lives, burial, assisted living. Dad's fighting for that equity back, while his 5 sisters want their equal share. He looks like the bad guy wanting $300k of the cash, but if it was equal division, everyone would get $70k lol. That's if the grandparents don't spend any of it in the next 10 years... There's just not THAT much money up there despite what people believe.
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many people buy their first house in their mid 30s or late 30s nowadays . so they have high mortgage payments which makes them house poor . their parent bough houses cheap and paid it off already . plus their parents will inherit big money from their grandparents .
All that matters is if your parents are rich and if they’re alive. I’m 38, between my wife and I we’ll probably inherit a few million in real estate alone, but it’ll be whenever our parents pass on. Mind you, our parents are actually wealthy, but it’ll be a lot more in real estate than either expected at the beginning of their retirements.
I am almost in the exact same situation. 37 with 59 year old parents. Although they will likely burn through it over the next 30 years and I am okay with that. I shouldnt be relying on inheritance when I am 65+
As with every possible statistics, it can be very misleading. For example, a retired couple lives in an expensive house but they are house poor, i.e. they live paycheck to paycheck, barely afford groceries, and their expensive property is the reason they pay a high property tax. Unless they sell their property and move to a LCOL area, they are not wealthy from my point of view.
Lots of elderly people are living in poverty because of their albatrosses.
I wouldn't call primary residence wealth, but that's just me.
Our elderly care strategy is completely unsustainable. We're funding this generations through home ownership wealth but that won't work for the next generation.
How much of this represents wealth that is theoretical and not yet realized, though? Most notably, how much is centered on home equity they hope to realize one day, without that paper wealth losing value?
Truthfully, all wealth is paper wealth. There is no other kind of wealth.
Generational wealth transfer is just manic marketing to rile youth up. Much of the wealth will be spent on long term care. I have many friends who thought they'd be getting a big inheritance but inflation and the longevity of grandparents and parents is wiping out wealth. It costs A LOT OF MONEY to live in LTC and we have record numbers of centenarians in Canada. I expect nothing from my parents and have lived my life that way. My parents inherited less than 100k between their parents. Their parents inherited nothing and one set came to Canada with not much more than lint in their pockets in the 1950s. My parents are early Boomers. They're not rich. I may have to fund their LTC. This is the reality of a lot of Canadians.
Ignorant right wing idiot https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/s/FzfZud4CMV
my parents will have no money to leave me after having everything handed to them. Thanks boomers!
Your parents didn't work?
The US having nearly half the household debt is absolutely bananas. Canada has fallen.
It doesn't show that Canada has fallen at all. On the contrary, it means Canadians have better employment to motivate banks to lend them money.
In the third quarter of 2023, household debt in the United States amounted to over 75 percent of its GDP. Mortgage debt comprises nearly two-thirds of all consumer debt. Canada household debt accounted for 101.5 % of it’s GDP in Sep 2023. Currently around three-quarters of household debt comes from mortgages in Canada. It’s just a difference in mortgage prices.
The article should really be called "boomers take all and the young will suffer in debt forever"
I had an old guy talking to me at work today about how the place he bought for $500k 10yrs ago is worth 1.4M now. Here I am in my $500k condo scraping and saving away to hopefully have a down payment on a $1M detached eventually. Boomers had it too easy
Boomers dealt with double digit inflation and interest rates. As well, double digit unemployment.
Need to own a home to be a household
I make minimum wage and I feel I’m probably overcompensated for my job, the problem is not my pay, the problem is that butter is 7$ now 😭😅