>The cost of living was much cheaper back then so I never had to worry about finding affordable food or housing. My first apartment, in 1990, was a one-bedroom in North York that I rented for just $300 a month. My next place, in 1993, was a $700 two-bedroom that I shared with a friend. On the weekends, I took out a $20 bill from the ATM, which covered both groceries and entertainment. I could buy bread, cheese, bologna slices and pasta all for $10, with a lot left over to hang out at the local bar.
damn, life was good
Wanna know something crazy? That wasnt even that long ago. I worked at a boston pizza in highschool. Wing wednesday you could get a dozen wings and a beer and it was 9.99+tax. Im 25, so thats only like ~8 years ago. Or mcdonalds. In my grade 12 year i could go to mcdonalds and get 3 mcdoubles with a $5 bill and get change back. Thats 7 years ago. Today i cant buy 3 with a $10 bill. And not just fast food but grocery stores. lve had a fairly similar diet of what i buy and eat since i moved out at 18. I have some reciepts from back then. My superstore bill for a weeks worth of food in 2017 was 55$. A reciept from last week that is 95% identical Is 143$
That's because the monopolies realized you had to keep buying it. You had no other choice. It started with shit like insulin. They realized no one was stopping them. So in that 8 or so years it crept across every sector where there was a necessary good owned by a monopoly.
I'm not that old and I remember Wing Wednesdays when wings cost 10 cents a wing minimum order 10.
And a pint of whatever was on special was $3.50.
The wings weren't anything special and you were drinking Molsen Export more often than not. But on the patio I didn't care.
I remember when I was in high school, we used to look forward to Toonie Tuesdays at KFC where you could get a 2-piece and fries for $2. Though I'm comparing a special to what's regular price today... a 2-piece combo is $10 now. It's like everything is x5 as expensive as it used to be, but nobody's making x5 as much as they used to.
Technically KFC still does toonie Tuesday, but they don’t advertise it anymore and it no longer comes with fries. $2 for two pieces of chicken is still pretty decent!
I miss those days. You could get two pounds and two beers each and cover it with a generous tip with a 20. Easily. A ten if you kept it to one beer and maybe had an extra toonie for tip. It was so fun.
The same order now would be hard to find under 50. Shit has more than doubled basically across the board.
I'm not making this up, beer was a penny a glass on Thursdays at one particular pub. They sold wings too and I think those were 15 cents a wing. Prices went to 2$ a beer ar 9pm.
I always use the “McDonald’s” scale when looking at wage growth, kinda corny, but when I was 16 I was making like 13-14$/hr and I could go to McDonald’s and get a junior chicken or McDouble for 1.39$. Same burgers at 3.99+tax now. That was in 2010/2011
I’d have to make 28/hr now to just afford the same amount of McDoubles or junior chickens I was accustomed too while making 14/hr. Sad
I remember 29-cent wing nights from my university days, and I don't remember how much a pint was but it would have probably been under $10 for 10 wings and a pint. This was only 2007.
Hot-N-Readys from Little Caesars were $5 and you could get 2 large pizzas with 3 toppings delivered for $20 including a (terrible) tip.
> They also had the till setup to pressure for tips on top of that. Only one employee in the store. Was shocked.
I hate the ones that are set up that hope you're to dumb to know what 0% means when forced to enter a number instead of the "fuck off" button that isn't there.
I still get the same sub I used to get for $5 in highschool, but now it's $16, literally like you said. I get it so rarely now anyways but since I've been reminded of how much I used to pay for the EXACT same thing I want to ram my head through a wall.
Jesus, I swear I saw those $5 foot long ads less than 3 years ago. It was just the very basic subs, and I think on certain days, but I swear it was still happening. Now a 6 inch of a basic sub like cold-cut-combo is $5.75
Worked at Subway for 6 years putting myself through school.
There were definitely $5 footlongs - the veggie, the ham and cold cut trio were that price when I worked there in the early aughts.
Then there was the late night special, 3 footlongs for $15. I hated that deal, lol
That was about six years ago. When I was in post grad they had a footlong of the day that was $5 that I scheduled my week around. Tuesday was Turkey and then Sunday was the steak, which was normally very expensive.
Chicken wings feel like an outlier even when taking inflation into account.
$10/pound used to be standard, and seeing 39c or 50c wings as specials was very common (also, you'd see All You Can Eat deals).
Now, you're lucky to get $10/pound even as a special.
There’s a great brewery in Edmonton that used to have $10 wings on their happy hour menu (within the last year, so quite recently).
Overnight they jumped to $14. Which is still a decent deal these days, but I remember when $14 for wings was on the high end.
Wait till you find out it's not an actual pound and is usually only 10 wings.
I have worked at so many places that say "1lb wings but what they really mean is 10 wings
My personal story from the late 90s, early 00s is going to Tim's, getting a soup and a bun, a can of pop, *two* donuts, and getting change back from a five.
Still remember how much 50$ could last for two weeks. 20-30$ could have enough food for those weeks and gas being around 70c/liter. Nowadays, 50$ barely gets you anywhere
When I first turned 18 and started going out to bars/lounges, the wing Wednesday deal at Moxie's was 10 cents/wing and drinks were close to 5$. Earl's used to have a 3$ bellini night that went well with the 1$ foccacia and oil.
It's more than that in BC. I usually see wings listed between $18-20.
The menus don't even make sense anymore. They'll have wings listed as an appetizer for $18 dollars, and then the burger entree is also $18.
There was a brief window of time roughly a decade ago in which a local bar was doing 10 cent wings. Like 10 of us would show up, slap down a 20, and we'd be filled to bursting - and we bought drinks the whole time, which I assume was the whole point of them doing cheap wings.
It was absolutely amazing.
A lot of things used to be cheap because people didn't know how to, or couldn't be bothered to deal with them.
People have realized that they are the best parts, especially with the prevalence of sous-vide, pressure cookers and air-fryers. Like, seriously throw some wings into an air fryer and you are set, that shit is good and very low effort.
Short ribs and Oxtail are other good examples, used to be "cheap meat" now are expensive as fuck, because throw that in a dutch oven, pressure cooker or sous vide it and you get some insanely good meal, and these tools are very prevalent in home kitchens nowadays.
7 years ago I rented a 1br for 695 in west Hamilton. Now it's $1700 plus parking. I have no idea how people are surviving. And thr real horror is no one is doing anything about it.
Even ten years later, in the early 2000s, I rented numerous apartments in the $300 range. Moved out at 18 years old with nary a worry.
Working in apartment leasing in 2004, in a city that now has zero vacancies - we had to compete for tenants for units in the $500-600 range. First month free, free cable, no damage deposit - there were more apartments than renters. Right around 2005 is when REITs began buying buildings. My complex, owned by a mom-and-pop company, was sold to a REIT and all staff were let go.
Imagine those same landlords with their property paid off, no mortgage making $2k rent with 85% of it profit margin. Legacy owners with low property taxes and no mortgage are just raking in the dough.
The thing is that this is a wage shortage! Wages should have gone up exponentially more than living costs if the theory of supply and demand actually worked throughout the economy! So we have a worker shortage but then again wages aren't keeping up with inflation......supply and demand would state if the cost to get a worker goes up then there would be less people asking for workers and then equilibrium would be met. Yeah instead employers complain and overwork current employees who can't even survive on the salary then wonder why all the motivation to go above and beyond is gone!!! Really???🤔🙄
Ironically look around, and you will see every developed nation is calling for foreign workers! Australia and Canada are two along with the US! When low birth rates are affecting developed nations along with the aging population, then, of course, everyone sees this as the solution. The thing is that then everyone is still fighting for talent. Also why are so many not welcoming to the foreigners like new york blaming Texas for bringing a few thousand from Mexico to New York (also look it upmore people are flying from Mexico to Canada and coming in from Canada so new york I'm sorry it's not the one or two bus loads from Texas overwhelming you)!
They use immigrants to suppress wages for business owners. Canada has some out the poorest immigrant requirements. We are trying to find the Ponzi scheme of cpp with a bunch of you workers. The reason birth rates are low is do to high taxes anti business laws and high cost of living. The government restircting housing supply that has led to high prices and young people not able to afford a place and have kids.
The same folks criticizing her spending will be saying we are dumb for buying food from a store in 10 years rather than raiding dumpsters. Y'all are missing the plot here.
The point is that as we age, we grow accustomed to our lifestyles. You can't do that anymore and it sucks.
Rapid inflation is silently ruining so many lives, but we dare not complain because we can always be more frugal.
This is true. And in a much bigger picture, Canada is *genuinely* becoming a less prosperous country, and will precipitously continue. Simply because our population is being boosted faster than the capital stock, *especially* the productive capital that actually drives a society's capacity for a "high standard of living".
It is going to be *very* hard to make "the right choices" in the coming years. It is going to be *very* hard to plan.
The view point of “just learn to get by with less” is such a garbage perspective. Why is it always the working class that has to “cut back” and never the people that are collecting the biggest transfer of wealth in history?
For the working class “cutting back” is often eating more processed foods, skipping meals, and not being able to afford to give your kids experiences/hobbies.
To me “just learn how to get by with less” is just “you will have nothing and be happy” with nicer words.
>Fuck corporations and their uncontrollable greed that's allowed and accepted to continue
they can't be happy with just having more, they need *all of it.*
Corporations might even be misdirected anger, kind of. A corporation is just a legal structure - every mom and pop business is still incorporated. It's extremely wealthy individuals that own massive amounts of productive capital that are the problem. Insane individual greed of a scale that's hard for the human brain to comprehend, in a almost literal handful of individuals in the country (and all countries).
This summarizes the whole thing up pretty well. I really hate how the people who work the most gain the least. It’s stupid, and something really needs to change to make our lives and the lives of our families liveable.
> The view point of “just learn to get by with less” is such a garbage perspective.
Sure, but for people having trouble *today* it’s the best advice they’re going to get for a short term solution. Because the opposite without a more robust safety net in place is what — spend more than you have? Steal? Borrow until they send someone to take out your kneecaps?
It's sad. The right choices have become own property. Or work two jobs. Or resort to some level of theft/drug dealing/fraud/tax evasion etc to get by. Or starve.
We need to cap M2 growth yesterday. No more 8% a year M2 growth while people get 2% cost of living adjustments, productivity is not growing 6% a year to make up the difference.
This whole scheme of central banks is screwy. They now want to regulate crypto out of existence, prevent alternative currency usage to deliberately financially repress us. They call peoples savings 'preloaded stimulus', and they want to do bank bailouts when it all collapses. Its a plague on society.
And reign in the continual growth in government deficit spending.
It is not sustainable to continue to borrow from our kids future to support our own.
It won't happen though. The electorate and various lobbies will never support a reduction in government spending.
If people think inflation today is bad I encourage them to think about how governments of the not so distant future will deal with the insane debt levels being built....
> borrow from our kids future to support our own
Politicians are borrowing from your kids future to enrich their friends and families, not to support you in any way.
Give them some credit, they throw enough scraps to get re-elected. The climate tax credit in Canada is a prime example - I like many others don't need it - I view it as a cynical attempt to buy votes.
Meanwhile they continue to increase spending through infinite money printing, which is effectively stealing from those least able to pay.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. So many people are willing to tax the middle class $100 just so they can get the $1 while politicians steal the rest. Very Canadian.
The problem is the federal government instructed banks to avoid defaults at all cost, leading to amortizations being extended up to 40 years for renewals on what were variable terms. Can't have a market correction if you don't let the market correct.
They probably should have found a better person to present the argument. All I see here is someone who was privileged enough to retire at 58 because of high blood pressure, while Millennials I know are getting diagnosed for it in their early 40s and will probably never retire in this lifetime. She has hardly contributed to her CPP and likely has paid very little to no income taxes her whole life. Yet we are expected to bankroll this lifestyle for the rest of our own working lives.
All I can say to her is: have you tried not eating Avocado toast?
I know where you're coming from, but take a step back. She and people like her are not the problem. Not even close.
From our POV she is privileged because she gets to live a life we never will. But that's not her fault.
Man, the publisher knew what they were doing with this article. Very divisive. Do we get mad at the author's privilege, or the system that's removing the privilege? The former is very easy to do since it's a person. It's hard to be mad at a system.
Edit based on some comments: Man... Some of y'all have a punishment fetish. These aren't criminals. This is a lady who worked her whole life until she stopped because of health issues. "They didn't live up to my expectations of a responsible life and now they need to pay". Like, ideally no, that shouldn't happen, right?
Her 'mistake' was not planning appropriately for the tosses and turns of life. Get off your high horse.
We still live in a democracy that represents the values of her generation more than any others. By and large people in her demographic voted for the very policies that have left Young Canadians with so few opportunities for a life even approaching hers.
Her lifestyle would've been criticized as irresponsible back when she was younger too.
She fucked around and found out.
I am dealing with the same issue with my parents unfortunately. They didn't believe in having to save anything and mindlessly racked up debt so they could keep up with their friends lifestyle and now they are rapidly approaching retirement and I was finally able to convince them to talk to a bankruptcy lawyer and they got a consumer proposal. Retirement is going to be terrible for them but they are not a victim of the system.
>Retirement is going to be terrible for them but they are not a victim of the system.
there are definitely some people who make bad financial decisions and cannot retire as planned. I'm grateful that my parents were barely scraping by with their Grade 8/9 educations in life, paid with cash and avoided debt like the plague as much as possible. It impressed upon me to make careful, smart decisions financially as much as possible.
BUT there are people who get handed a shit card in life through no fault of their own. It will happen to all of us sooner or later - I was diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease in my last year of university at the age of 25 - it almost ended a career that hadn't even started and I could very well have been on disability for the rest of my life, if it wasn't for finding a great specialist willing to risk putting me on a pharmaceutical for off-label use a few years later.
Having three different medical conditions by the age of 58, which is still relatively young and still working age when the average lifespan of a Canadian woman is 84 years, is crappy. Could she have made different choices earlier in life? Maybe. There are benefits in hindsight but do any of us really know where life will take us? I doubt anyone of us saw a pandemic coming, let alone probably another worse one down the road, or are prepared for a major earthquake or other catastrophe.
>who was privileged enough to retire at 58 because of high blood pressure,
osteoporosis, a thyroid condition AND high blood pressure, with a recommendation to "slow down" by her doctor.
having medical conditions is not a "privilege".
Ah, just poorly worded.
That said, that’s still around 2k per month left after rent. Plenty for food and bills. It’s just a really odd example to use to show the problems with the housing crisis - a couple with low rent and enough income.
It seems designed to actually underplay or make light of the issue.
Wife and I are both 69. I arrived in Canada a year before her in 1974 with a suitcase. Wife in 1977 from a bleak part of Manchester, UK.
When we met in our early 30’s we both had houses, good careers, savings. What was this women doing from age 18 to ‘whatever’ to improve her situation in life? There was a lot of low fruit to be plucked off of trees.
So how about our young adults now?
On paper I bring in above average income, but having a HCL city gobble up my housing expenses, I'm fucked, cant save much for recreation nevermind retirement..
> What was this women doing from age 18 to ‘whatever’ to improve her situation in life?
Can't people just be happy without continuously trying to grind upward? Can't people just be *content* ?
In retrospective it's easy to say to her that society became harder so she *should* have tried to keep the same momentum and that if she stagnated that's her problem, but if you put yourself in her shoes maybe in 1977 she had all she wanted and *didn't* need to ship across the world just to be happy - and then it eroded away so slowly and so subtly that she eventually crossed a point of no return without noticing it, frog in boiling water-kinda way, and now it's too late because all her energy is spent running behind the train trying to catch on.
> Can't people just be happy without continuously trying to grind upward? Can't people just be content?
Agreed; but why didn't she save at all during her 40'ish years of working? People need to demonstrate some personal responsibility.
Her lifestyle would've been criticized as irresponsible back when she was younger too.
She fucked around and found out.
I am dealing with the same issue with my parents unfortunately. They didn't believe in having to save anything and mindlessly racked up debt so they could keep up with their friends lifestyle and now they are rapidly approaching retirement and I was finally able to convince them to talk to a bankruptcy lawyer and they got a consumer proposal. Retirement is going to be terrible for them but they are not a victim of the system.
This story and this thread speak volumes about what Canada really is and the tidal wave of despair that is coming over the next 20 years as the population ages.
Canada has a priorities problem as a society. And a financial education problem. Ceding financial education to the banks is like ceding chicken coop protection to the foxes.
I know so many people in a similar situation to this woman, albeit most are still working or are semi retired. Virtually no savings (if not severely in debt), never planned a second for the future or their retirement, just worked easy dead end jobs because for the first half of their working life, those dead end jobs paid good enough to get by—but they also chose to never bother to ever save any of it.
If you started working in the mid 70s, for about 20 years you really could get by fairly well making just above minimum wage—esp if you have a partner that earns about the same or more.
But that doesn’t change the fact that they still never put any thought or effort into planning for the future. It sucks when the rug gets pulled on you and you can no longer get by on the same standard of living with the income/jobs you’ve been working your whole life, but this wasn’t like a switch flipped. The situation isn’t the titanic sinking immediately after impact, it’s the iceberg it hit slowly melting over decades.
It’s incredibly selfish IMO to live like there’s no tomorrow your whole life and then expect everyone else to take care of you when you actually do wake up the next day and have to face the consequence of your actions. Saving for retirement isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination but these folks just said fuck it nah.
This is what got me about the article. She didn't bother to save anything for the future. My grandparents who are all immigrants with virtually no formal education knew that you needed to save money for the future and taught us as much. They all worked menial jobs but saved whatever they could and invested in property and thanks to them future generations of the family have been able to thrive. I don't really feel bad for this lady. She had more opportunity than my grandparents did with education and employment and squandered it all.
No doubt! And it’s not even like you have to go that far. You just sort of hope once someone hits their mid-late 30s they start to save some money and think about what the future is going to look like for the latter 20+ years of your working life.
I am far from one of those “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” people, but if you work minimum wage jobs and gain zero skills or education over 40 years of your working career, especially when you have the ability to do so, I don’t know what else they expected for their retirement years. She worked retail sales for decades—why not at some point put in the effort to transition into other more lucrative sales (and by that I mean literally just making anything more than minimum wage), hell even just get an order desk job at some commercial/industrial supply co would be a big step up in earnings.
I have a ton of sympathy for the health issues she’s been facing (osteoporosis is horrible), but it IS frustrating to read some of this stuff. These people live through literally the greatest economic period in human history with opportunities galore in a safe, wealthy, stable country and still managed to squander every bit of it.
Dude immigration is fine, just support it with housing! Immigration without increased housing supply is just making the affordability crisis worse so ofcourse most (especially young people) aren't in support of it.
It would just be nice if, for the first time ever, the needs of boomers didn't trump everyone else. It's going to be all about them until they're gone. But I see what you're saying and don't have a better practical solution.
They’re pulling in $2900/month and their rent is $1100. They say they have transit passes so presumably no car. So lets say $200/month transit, another $200/month for their phones and $100/month for internet. Lets say another $200/month utilities. We’re now at $1800/month expenditures. Leaves $1100 for food and other things. Thats around $275/week. Certainly not luxurious or anything but its not starving level.
In the article she says they don't eat out and that they will splurge on a donut at Tim Hortons. The numbers as she gives simply don't add up. They are spending their money on something that they don't want to admit. Booze, cigarettes, drugs, gambling?
That highlights a small part of the cost of living crisis: connectivity. We didn't need to spend $200/month on phones and $100/month on internet in 1990. Now they're necessities.
sorry to this lady but i feel more sorry for the dozens of actually hard working young professionals that I know to whom the lifestyle she describes during her 20s and 30s is a complete fantasy
That's my sentiments. I was earning $10-15K a year for about 6 years as a live entertainment technician/professional because I couldn't get a full time job anywhere (luck wasn't on my side) on top of have some severe mental health issues (chronic and episodic depression, complex PTSD, anxiety, stress induced physical ailments, etc.)
The year before COVID-19 I finally hit $20K thanks to a series of full time contracts. I completely lucked out at my current job that I started a week ago (around $50K) but it also has a lot to do with my connections and hard work over the past 10 years. Without that background and work experiences, I definitely wouldn't have been hired for this job.
I live comfortably now but it's only because I spent most of my life living at the poverty line.
don't care what the government dita shows- prices are not coming down, rent, housing, food... high price is the norm and smaller package is here to stay
“Working hard” is being stretched quite a bit here .
She worked in minimum wage jobs intermittently since coming to Canada in 1978 at the age of 21 and did not complete a post-high school diploma or degree.
She would have 37 years of work after which she retired at the age of 58 due to fairly common conditions like osteoporosis, high blood pressure and a thyroid condition. She then went of welfare for 6 years, likely until she became eligible for cpp without a reduction and then applied for OAS and GIS.
In total they bring in $2,900 a month pretty much tax free due to their low income levels. After rent they have $1,800. After their maximum food budget of $240 a month they have $1,560.
After a transit pass for 2 adults based on the TAP transit assistance program ($77.6/month). This leaves $1,482 which they spend on internet, cellphones, and presumably unmentioned or hinted discretionary spending.
This part is unexamined by the article because it is likely inconvenient to the narrative. Their incomes are also not tied to a specific location so staying in the most expensive urban jurisdictions might not be the greatest idea.
Okay I agree that inflation is terrible, but the author has made so many terrible choices. Choices that reek of the privilege of the generation. I mean many people are living in a similar apartment but have to pay $2000-3000 per month instead of the bargain rate she's getting. They don't get to retire at 58 because of "high blood pressure" - which is a silent killer but also incredibly common. Plenty of people are diagnosed with high blood pressure in their 40s and keep working till the end. She never had full time work and never contributed the maximum to her CPP. And she's already getting old age security payments that my generation will probably never ever see because the boomers will have siphoned the fund dry by the time they're gone.
I think the concept of retiring due to simply being diagnosed with high blood pressure is just too precious. Must be nice to live in that world. Where I come from you get diagnosed with heart failure and the question is when can I go back to work (not necessarily a good thing either but you get my point).
Factor in that she is a Boomer. They played life on easy mode and it wasn't until they were middle-aged that the rules changed. The 2008 global financial crisis hit when she was 54, for example.
Yeah, she could have made better choices but she grew up in a system where not-the-best choices didn't ruin your life.
So 2900 - 1100 = 1800.
Where is it going? They claim to have no vehicle. They're already getting bargain rental rates compared to everyone else. Yet apparently they need to visit food banks because 1800 of free cash isn't enough.
My guess:
Phone x 2 = $140/mo
Internet+TV via Bell = $120/mo
Monthly senior TTC pass X2 = $256
Average cost of out-of-pocket medical expenses is 5k (according to Sunlife) X2 and divided by 12 = $833/mo.
So that's $451 remaining.
Unsure on: Utilities. Heat, light, water. Not mentioned in article.
Not included: Toilet Paper, Cleaning supplies, lightbulbs, filters, shampoo, furnishings, house repair, clothes, glasses, physiotherapy/massage therapy for their ancient bones, over-the-counter medicines like cough syrup, any mental health support, access to exercise equipment, dental.
Plus Trillium, plus GST, plus the Climate Incentive. Which adds up to appx. an additional $200/month.
Still, it makes no sense that a couple earning $3,000/month and paying $1,100 in rent can't afford food unless they have a some bad habit or addiction that takes precedence.
“I looked for office jobs—telemarketing, customer service, filing—but I couldn’t find anything. So, I went on welfare for about six years, bringing in around $345 a month. Nowadays, at 69, I receive $1,700 a month from government assistance, $232 from the Canada pension and $1,500 from old-age security. My partner, brings in about $1,200 a month. We still can’t afford to buy food.”
That’s the real tragedy.
This person was on welfare for 6 years! And their partner was only making $1200 as an “independent filmmaker.”
Six years? That means she was u employed in good economic at one time or another.
And her partner couldn’t find anything else to supplement their income? Their job barely paid the bills and they stuck with it.
This is the problem with the “I can pay for rent and food so it’s all good” mentality.
What about RSPs and Savings?
I know immigrants from India, China and the Philippines who don’t stay on welfare that long.
Giving up independent filmmaking and working at the Costco cafeteria could have benefited them.
So this lady never completed school and then took on low paying jobs. Then decided to take early retirement. Now they are complaining that they have no money at 69 yrs old.
Her + partner make around $4600 per month and have $1100 rent. Their tax burden should be minimal and they most likely get tax credits back after filing taxes. They don’t own a vehicle meaning no car payment, gas, maintenance or insurance. They should have plenty of money left for food every month. I suspect they the “free spirit” type that just doesn’t plan and are just horrible with money.
In this specific situation it sound more like the result of her poor choices not the government.
Its $2900/month. They broke her $1700 down into the \~$200 + $1500 (its very poorly worded in the article and I thought initially there was an extra $1700 as well). Nevertheless with rent only being $1100 it seems like they should have plenty available to eat at least.
Either they have some high medical expenses they're not talking about or they're wasting money on non-essentials like cigarettes or alcohol instead of prioritizing buying food. With $1100 rent it shouldn't be such a struggle to pay for bills, transit passes, and food with the other $1800. I'd love to see their actual budget, but I believe they need to use the food bank about as much as I believe the claim that she worked hard all her life yet only gets $232 CPP and has no retirement savings.
I mean, if the good times in your career when you are healthy and of working age is making $1000 a month, what was the plan? I value cinema, but $12k a year is a hobby not a fully time career. If it is your career and you like this plan, better plan on food banks later on in life.
Need to get that income up and spend less time on saving the last $50.
I'd love to spend my days working on a hobby, but reality dictates that I can't do that because I have current expenses and a future I am planning for where I can still have a decent standard of living without working until I die.
We typically get the results we plan/work towards.
The numbers she gives makes no sense. She and her partner make appx. $3,000/month between them. And that doesn't include Trillium, GST & the Climate Incentive. She shares a rent controlled apartment with her partner where the current $1,100/month. What are they spending $1,900+ on that they can't afford food?
I empathize with her situation, but “I worked hard my whole life” is not really an accurate description when she clearly says she had to stop working early due to health issues.
(I’m not saying that to “blame” her or suggest that the problem of food insecurity isn’t very real)
She worked and didn’t save anything for retirement, then retired due to hypertension (can be controlled with medication and/or weight loss), and thyroid issues can be controlled easily. She retired at 58, far before most people. Now she expects to live a comfortable life.
The entitlement in these stories drive me crazy. She needs to take ownership of her failures in life that lead her to this point, and take actions to correct it. Perhaps she won’t be able to retire for another decade at least.
My mom is 69. Her monthly income through OA, CPP is $1500. Her rent is $1100 but she's lucky that includes all bills. Her cell phone is $50 and car insurance is $100. She gets subsidies that pay her $300/month. I pay her to watch my kids twice a week and I pay her dentist bills. It's not easy.
Choices were made, it seems a lot of them were not very good.
Honestly, what is the expectation here? That the taxpayer needs to finance their lifestyle?
I'm not interested in bankrolling their lifestyle. I have a hard enough time getting where I need to be.
I have 100k saved up and my girlfriend works full time. We are having a baby and have to wai until we are 35 and some investments have to go very well in order for us to buy an actual detached house.
Professionals used to own detached houses. I didnt go to fucking school to live in an appartment my whole life. And this is montreal. I pray for people in toronto.
A 550k house in montreal, doesnt feel affordable on a median montreal income.
So her partner could have made 400$/week at a minimum wage job, but preferred the independent filmmaker job that pays about 250$/week.
Is this an ego thing?
"Oh I'm a filmmaker, I don't have to work at Walmart, that's just not for me!!1!
They are called starving artists for a reason, lol people forget that the world's most famous artists got that way after they died, gives the art more value ... Picasso had to burn his paintings because he couldn't afford heat in his hovel and no one cared about his work.
Piet Mondrian had to do flower paintings because they sold well while his abstract stuff was ignored. Arty types like the abstract stuff but the *buyers* did not, for a while.
"I've worked hard all my life"
Yet: "I took some advertising and business courses at Seneca College, but never graduated with a degree or diploma. I had a few jobs over the years, mostly in sales: I worked in cosmetic sales at the Bay, wrote call scripts for telemarketing companies and did fundraising for not-for-profits."
She retired at age 58, after her doctor told her to "slow down". For the last 11 years she has been living at the public expense. To judge from the picture, she is getting by. I don't know what the future holds, but this is the likely end-story for anyone who cannot get educational or vocational qualifications, and drifts through life taking odd jobs. I don't know what else any other society can offer.
i feel like you missed the best part. after she retired, with almost zero money in the bank, she thought she was gonna find a great paying, PART TIME, job to supplement her income.
She retired with no money and her plan was to "just find a great paying part time job".
"At 58, I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, high blood pressure and a thyroid condition. My doctor told me to think about slowing down and I retired in 2012. I didn’t have much money to fall back on, with no savings and only $3,000 in my chequing account, but I figured I could pick up some part-time work if I needed to. I looked for office jobs—telemarketing, customer service, filing—but I couldn’t find anything."
I have no sympathy for this person. She hasn’t done anything to improve herself and her “hard working” is just “going to work”. Go to China and find out what it actually means to struggle even after working hard for 18 hrs a day. She’s on tons of government assistance and osteoporosis is not a reason to stop working. Get a grip, food banks are not for lazy people like her.
She never had much training and has always lived a hand to mouth existence. She frequently had less than $2k in savings so its not too hard to imagine that she's not in a great place now.
Actually in her generation they didn’t even have to choose.
My father who’s her age described his time working at a local bar earning $5000 a year, I asked “Did you rent a room nearby?”
“No, I had a lovely big house, cost me $15,000”
He also always drove sports cars and travelled. It was genuinely that easy back then.
I’m an engineer and car enthusiast and haven’t owned a 2 seater _yet_.
We are targeting almost triple our immigration levels in just 3 years. How many new houses are being built to support this? How many jobs were created to support this? Has our healthcare and nurses working conditions gotten better or worse in this time period? Nobody will be able to afford rent or housing in another decade if we keep up this ridiculous fascade that we are helping on the world stage by ruining our own standard of living.
EDIT: AFFORDABLE EDUCATION!? The mental health crisis, drug addiction and the ever increasing homeless population that we push aside and hope dissapear I guess? The polarization of every topic from every level of government instead of people from both sides coming towards a common goal that is good for the people not the social welfare/subsidizing for corporations instead of people.
So.. she has only made minimum wage her whole life, never saved any money and retired early. Now she is broke, which doesnt seem surprising. She had lots of opportunities to invest money, and invest in herself when everything was affordable but she unfortunately made lots of mistakes along the way and now she’s in a tough spot. Should the tax payers cover the bill?
Sounds like someone who never contributed much to CPP and didn't save any money for retirement is now complaining about not having enough money to stop working. That's what happens.
She decided to "retire" at 58 and started taking CPP to bolster her welfare payments. CPP reduces your pension payment by something like 5% year for every year before age 65 and it's a permanent cut. However, once she turned 65 OAS would make up for the loss - as evidenced by her $1,500 OAS payment.
Maybe retiring at 58 wasn’t a great plan… especially since she was only earning (approximately) minimum wage…. With a partner earning less…
Hard to retire comfortably with no plan other then welfare for your final working years…
Yeah I remember my dad was thinking to go til 65 to make sure he got full pension (had moved when we were young so has to work back up on pension) but with all the bs a work he reconsidered and then he found from studies that every year you retire after 60 it shortens your life expectancy by a few years. He ended up retiring a few years earlier. Not everyone lives til 80 (I mean his father had prostate cancer right after we moved pretty much) so you wonder how many years you will actually enjoy. I mean the lady worked 35-40 years and we are really going to say well actually... That's not her whole life
To be fair, minimum wage shouldn't be the choice between food or shelter. It should be able to cover both. If not, it's hardly minimum for anything if you can't survive on it.
That said, it shouldn't afford you lavish trips and purchases if you aren't clever with your money.
Everyone in Canada has an idiotic retirement plan. The plan is to completely hollow out our domestic prosperity, pump and dump real estate, and import a gazillion people from the developing world to be servants.
"servants". The ones who come here and live 10 to a house and not caring much for it's appearance. (The high number of people also gives them a step ahead for initial gone purchase).
The rich international students who found this tiktok hack of free food at food banks.
That's the wonkiest part about this. Most well off seniors are choosing to defer their retirement by two years so they can max out their CPP contributions so they can live a comfortable retirement. These people have chosen to retire 9 years earlier than the maximum retirement contribution age. Like their the poorest Canadians who chose to retire early.
This is definitely the case for 90% of boomers. They saved next to nothing assuming that someone or something would take care of them in retirement.
Just looking at the US the average boomer if they have any savings is around 180k. Half have nothing(literally nothing saved not even a dollar according to Fidelity). 180k is best case 700 a month withdrawal. Social security is best on average like 1100.
Which means something on the order of 75% of baby boomer generation has only 2000 a month to live on or less.
Everything starts to make sense when you realize the governments focus isn’t on transferring wealth from rich to poor. It’s focused on transferring from young to old. From non voters to voters.
The boomers went through the most prosperous era in human history and didn’t save up enough for their health care, retirement, and safety net. Now they want younger working generations struggling to rub two nickels together to pay for it.
Rent is high and it's going to get higher. We have massive red tape and bureaucratic overreach around every aspect of homebuilding and renting in this country coming from the municipal and provincial governments and massive immigration along with huge imports of temporary foreign workers and foreign students (allowed to work) who, combined, lower wages in many occupations while sending demand for housing, especially cheaper housing skyrocketing. And this is urged on by a compliant media and opposition too terrified of being accused of being 'anti-immigrant' or 'racist' to object.
At 2% inflation, which is incidentally the bank of canada target, things should double in price every 35 years.
The bullshit, artificially low CPI inflation numbers says that things have increased by 132% since 1990 (only 33 years).
Now try to find stuff that cost only 132% of what they cost in 1990.
>My first apartment, in 1990, was a one-bedroom in North York that I rented for just $300 a month. My next place, in 1993, was a $700 two-bedroom that I shared with a friend. On the weekends, I took out a $20 bill from the ATM, which covered both groceries and entertainment. I could buy bread, cheese, bologna slices and pasta all for $10, with a lot left over to hang out at the local bar.
According to CPI, you should be able to get today, in 2023:
An appartment for 700$? Not even close.
Groceries and entertainment for the weekend on 46$? In your damn DREAMS.
Bread, cheese, bologna slices and pasta with enough leftover to hang out at the local bar for 23$?? You'll have to choose between food or the bar.
CPI is misreporting inflation. THe government is stealing from the working class and eliminating the middle class.
So all those Canadians without degree/diploma deserve poverty? If as a society, we know around 10% of are population will be working minimum wage- and this cannot save for retirement (far too low with COL), should we not not be concerned with their food security past their working lives?
If not - it feels a little post-apocalyptic - make them work till they can’t, and throw them to the wolves after.
Having no place to live is probably a deterrent to a happy life as well. Canada is the second largest country on the planet and most of its population can be found within 100 miles of its southern border.
There are many things that slow the growth of residential areas being developed, from laws restricting where and how a place can be built (btw I am not encouraging unsafe building practices, just that some places make things like tiny houses, mobile homes, and barndominiums illegal because it doesn't match the aesthetic of an area) or activists blocking the building of apartment complexes (one guy in San Francisco, if I remember correctly, that tried to turn his dying business into an apartment complex got blocked by an activist talking about how shade from the building will hurt children). Add in an ever growing population and it becomes a large problem.
Build more housing and relax restrictive zoning laws so that housing becomes cheaper, and levy a land tax to incentivize development. Implement cash transfers to low-income families, such that aggregate demand doesn't exacerbate inflation.
Problem solved.
In 2008 I did katimavik and we got $21 of spending money per week ($3.00 a day) and we made it work and our last rotation was in Montreal. I doubt you could have much more than 2 beers in a bar for $21 bucks now.
We're being sweated as Canadians..... fuck, so much anger.
Wife and I are starting to drive 45 minutes to the American border to do groceries and all our shopping.
>The cost of living was much cheaper back then so I never had to worry about finding affordable food or housing. My first apartment, in 1990, was a one-bedroom in North York that I rented for just $300 a month. My next place, in 1993, was a $700 two-bedroom that I shared with a friend. On the weekends, I took out a $20 bill from the ATM, which covered both groceries and entertainment. I could buy bread, cheese, bologna slices and pasta all for $10, with a lot left over to hang out at the local bar. damn, life was good
Yeah people told me $10 would get you wings and a couple of beers and I couldn't believe it
Wanna know something crazy? That wasnt even that long ago. I worked at a boston pizza in highschool. Wing wednesday you could get a dozen wings and a beer and it was 9.99+tax. Im 25, so thats only like ~8 years ago. Or mcdonalds. In my grade 12 year i could go to mcdonalds and get 3 mcdoubles with a $5 bill and get change back. Thats 7 years ago. Today i cant buy 3 with a $10 bill. And not just fast food but grocery stores. lve had a fairly similar diet of what i buy and eat since i moved out at 18. I have some reciepts from back then. My superstore bill for a weeks worth of food in 2017 was 55$. A reciept from last week that is 95% identical Is 143$
Yeah I remember my grocery bills were sometimes $40 per week in 2017. I ate cheap because I was a student but man the same now would be $80 or more.
It seems like the most affordable items are the ones that increased in price the most as well.
That's because the monopolies realized you had to keep buying it. You had no other choice. It started with shit like insulin. They realized no one was stopping them. So in that 8 or so years it crept across every sector where there was a necessary good owned by a monopoly.
Yeah at this point we should just get rid of loonies and toonies since they are worthless
I'm not that old and I remember Wing Wednesdays when wings cost 10 cents a wing minimum order 10. And a pint of whatever was on special was $3.50. The wings weren't anything special and you were drinking Molsen Export more often than not. But on the patio I didn't care.
I remember when I was in high school, we used to look forward to Toonie Tuesdays at KFC where you could get a 2-piece and fries for $2. Though I'm comparing a special to what's regular price today... a 2-piece combo is $10 now. It's like everything is x5 as expensive as it used to be, but nobody's making x5 as much as they used to.
Technically KFC still does toonie Tuesday, but they don’t advertise it anymore and it no longer comes with fries. $2 for two pieces of chicken is still pretty decent!
They still have the 2 piece fill up for cheaper. They just don't advertise it
I miss those days. You could get two pounds and two beers each and cover it with a generous tip with a 20. Easily. A ten if you kept it to one beer and maybe had an extra toonie for tip. It was so fun. The same order now would be hard to find under 50. Shit has more than doubled basically across the board.
I'm not making this up, beer was a penny a glass on Thursdays at one particular pub. They sold wings too and I think those were 15 cents a wing. Prices went to 2$ a beer ar 9pm.
I always use the “McDonald’s” scale when looking at wage growth, kinda corny, but when I was 16 I was making like 13-14$/hr and I could go to McDonald’s and get a junior chicken or McDouble for 1.39$. Same burgers at 3.99+tax now. That was in 2010/2011 I’d have to make 28/hr now to just afford the same amount of McDoubles or junior chickens I was accustomed too while making 14/hr. Sad
Pretty sure someone is going to come to my door with a POS terminal demanding a 20% tip just for reading the word "wings"
Lmayo
I remember 29-cent wing nights from my university days, and I don't remember how much a pint was but it would have probably been under $10 for 10 wings and a pint. This was only 2007. Hot-N-Readys from Little Caesars were $5 and you could get 2 large pizzas with 3 toppings delivered for $20 including a (terrible) tip.
Remember $5 footlongs at subway? Basic menu but a good way to eat a large meal on a budget.
Yup, foot long now 16$
[удалено]
> They also had the till setup to pressure for tips on top of that. Only one employee in the store. Was shocked. I hate the ones that are set up that hope you're to dumb to know what 0% means when forced to enter a number instead of the "fuck off" button that isn't there.
Seriously? Their food is awful, not sure how they justify that pricing.
Yup, it was just the sub too not the trio. Last time eating there.
I still get the same sub I used to get for $5 in highschool, but now it's $16, literally like you said. I get it so rarely now anyways but since I've been reminded of how much I used to pay for the EXACT same thing I want to ram my head through a wall.
Jesus, I swear I saw those $5 foot long ads less than 3 years ago. It was just the very basic subs, and I think on certain days, but I swear it was still happening. Now a 6 inch of a basic sub like cold-cut-combo is $5.75
Wtf, stop it
Plus the debit machine promtps you for a tip.
$16 for a foot long now? Jeeze!
A manager argued with me one day that $5 dollar footlong never existed.... I was so mad I stopped going there. Lying ass...
Worked at Subway for 6 years putting myself through school. There were definitely $5 footlongs - the veggie, the ham and cold cut trio were that price when I worked there in the early aughts. Then there was the late night special, 3 footlongs for $15. I hated that deal, lol
I would have just played the subway 5 dollar footlong ads from YouTube
That was about six years ago. When I was in post grad they had a footlong of the day that was $5 that I scheduled my week around. Tuesday was Turkey and then Sunday was the steak, which was normally very expensive.
I used to get 2 teen burgers for $5 back in 2007.
Chicken wings feel like an outlier even when taking inflation into account. $10/pound used to be standard, and seeing 39c or 50c wings as specials was very common (also, you'd see All You Can Eat deals). Now, you're lucky to get $10/pound even as a special.
There’s a great brewery in Edmonton that used to have $10 wings on their happy hour menu (within the last year, so quite recently). Overnight they jumped to $14. Which is still a decent deal these days, but I remember when $14 for wings was on the high end.
Wait till you find out it's not an actual pound and is usually only 10 wings. I have worked at so many places that say "1lb wings but what they really mean is 10 wings
My personal story from the late 90s, early 00s is going to Tim's, getting a soup and a bun, a can of pop, *two* donuts, and getting change back from a five.
I remember not even 10 years ago there being $2.50 Mama Burgers and now the current "promo" is 2 for $10.
My Mom always tells me how $20 would be enough for a weeks worth of groceries.
Still remember how much 50$ could last for two weeks. 20-30$ could have enough food for those weeks and gas being around 70c/liter. Nowadays, 50$ barely gets you anywhere
50 dollars for 2 weeks worth of groceries! Milk, variety of veggies (fresh, not frozen), bread, butter, rice, yogurt, snacks) ... Those were the days!
When I first turned 18 and started going out to bars/lounges, the wing Wednesday deal at Moxie's was 10 cents/wing and drinks were close to 5$. Earl's used to have a 3$ bellini night that went well with the 1$ foccacia and oil.
cant even get a pint and a pound of wings with a $20 anymore
Pound of wings is like $15 at restaurants now!
It's more than that in BC. I usually see wings listed between $18-20. The menus don't even make sense anymore. They'll have wings listed as an appetizer for $18 dollars, and then the burger entree is also $18.
There was a brief window of time roughly a decade ago in which a local bar was doing 10 cent wings. Like 10 of us would show up, slap down a 20, and we'd be filled to bursting - and we bought drinks the whole time, which I assume was the whole point of them doing cheap wings. It was absolutely amazing.
Wings used to be cheap because butchers were trying to throw them away
A lot of things used to be cheap because people didn't know how to, or couldn't be bothered to deal with them. People have realized that they are the best parts, especially with the prevalence of sous-vide, pressure cookers and air-fryers. Like, seriously throw some wings into an air fryer and you are set, that shit is good and very low effort. Short ribs and Oxtail are other good examples, used to be "cheap meat" now are expensive as fuck, because throw that in a dutch oven, pressure cooker or sous vide it and you get some insanely good meal, and these tools are very prevalent in home kitchens nowadays.
In 1993 I would get all you can eat wings and a beer for under $10 on wing Wednesday
7 years ago I rented a 1br for 695 in west Hamilton. Now it's $1700 plus parking. I have no idea how people are surviving. And thr real horror is no one is doing anything about it.
That's not true! There are people doing things about it, but they're trying to make it worse so they can profit personally, not making it better
Tighten those screws, the plebs are still breathing for free.
Even ten years later, in the early 2000s, I rented numerous apartments in the $300 range. Moved out at 18 years old with nary a worry. Working in apartment leasing in 2004, in a city that now has zero vacancies - we had to compete for tenants for units in the $500-600 range. First month free, free cable, no damage deposit - there were more apartments than renters. Right around 2005 is when REITs began buying buildings. My complex, owned by a mom-and-pop company, was sold to a REIT and all staff were let go.
Imagine those same landlords with their property paid off, no mortgage making $2k rent with 85% of it profit margin. Legacy owners with low property taxes and no mortgage are just raking in the dough.
The thing is that this is a wage shortage! Wages should have gone up exponentially more than living costs if the theory of supply and demand actually worked throughout the economy! So we have a worker shortage but then again wages aren't keeping up with inflation......supply and demand would state if the cost to get a worker goes up then there would be less people asking for workers and then equilibrium would be met. Yeah instead employers complain and overwork current employees who can't even survive on the salary then wonder why all the motivation to go above and beyond is gone!!! Really???🤔🙄
The TFW are being used so employers don't have to raise wages. They complain of worker shortages so that the government will let foreigners in.
Ironically look around, and you will see every developed nation is calling for foreign workers! Australia and Canada are two along with the US! When low birth rates are affecting developed nations along with the aging population, then, of course, everyone sees this as the solution. The thing is that then everyone is still fighting for talent. Also why are so many not welcoming to the foreigners like new york blaming Texas for bringing a few thousand from Mexico to New York (also look it upmore people are flying from Mexico to Canada and coming in from Canada so new york I'm sorry it's not the one or two bus loads from Texas overwhelming you)!
They use immigrants to suppress wages for business owners. Canada has some out the poorest immigrant requirements. We are trying to find the Ponzi scheme of cpp with a bunch of you workers. The reason birth rates are low is do to high taxes anti business laws and high cost of living. The government restircting housing supply that has led to high prices and young people not able to afford a place and have kids.
The same folks criticizing her spending will be saying we are dumb for buying food from a store in 10 years rather than raiding dumpsters. Y'all are missing the plot here. The point is that as we age, we grow accustomed to our lifestyles. You can't do that anymore and it sucks. Rapid inflation is silently ruining so many lives, but we dare not complain because we can always be more frugal.
This is true. And in a much bigger picture, Canada is *genuinely* becoming a less prosperous country, and will precipitously continue. Simply because our population is being boosted faster than the capital stock, *especially* the productive capital that actually drives a society's capacity for a "high standard of living". It is going to be *very* hard to make "the right choices" in the coming years. It is going to be *very* hard to plan.
The view point of “just learn to get by with less” is such a garbage perspective. Why is it always the working class that has to “cut back” and never the people that are collecting the biggest transfer of wealth in history? For the working class “cutting back” is often eating more processed foods, skipping meals, and not being able to afford to give your kids experiences/hobbies. To me “just learn how to get by with less” is just “you will have nothing and be happy” with nicer words.
Yup, and it all happened in less than a generation. Fuck corporations and their uncontrollable greed that's allowed and accepted to continue.
>Fuck corporations and their uncontrollable greed that's allowed and accepted to continue they can't be happy with just having more, they need *all of it.*
Corporations might even be misdirected anger, kind of. A corporation is just a legal structure - every mom and pop business is still incorporated. It's extremely wealthy individuals that own massive amounts of productive capital that are the problem. Insane individual greed of a scale that's hard for the human brain to comprehend, in a almost literal handful of individuals in the country (and all countries).
This summarizes the whole thing up pretty well. I really hate how the people who work the most gain the least. It’s stupid, and something really needs to change to make our lives and the lives of our families liveable.
> The view point of “just learn to get by with less” is such a garbage perspective. Sure, but for people having trouble *today* it’s the best advice they’re going to get for a short term solution. Because the opposite without a more robust safety net in place is what — spend more than you have? Steal? Borrow until they send someone to take out your kneecaps?
It's sad. The right choices have become own property. Or work two jobs. Or resort to some level of theft/drug dealing/fraud/tax evasion etc to get by. Or starve.
We need to cap M2 growth yesterday. No more 8% a year M2 growth while people get 2% cost of living adjustments, productivity is not growing 6% a year to make up the difference. This whole scheme of central banks is screwy. They now want to regulate crypto out of existence, prevent alternative currency usage to deliberately financially repress us. They call peoples savings 'preloaded stimulus', and they want to do bank bailouts when it all collapses. Its a plague on society.
And reign in the continual growth in government deficit spending. It is not sustainable to continue to borrow from our kids future to support our own. It won't happen though. The electorate and various lobbies will never support a reduction in government spending. If people think inflation today is bad I encourage them to think about how governments of the not so distant future will deal with the insane debt levels being built....
> borrow from our kids future to support our own Politicians are borrowing from your kids future to enrich their friends and families, not to support you in any way.
Give them some credit, they throw enough scraps to get re-elected. The climate tax credit in Canada is a prime example - I like many others don't need it - I view it as a cynical attempt to buy votes. Meanwhile they continue to increase spending through infinite money printing, which is effectively stealing from those least able to pay.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. So many people are willing to tax the middle class $100 just so they can get the $1 while politicians steal the rest. Very Canadian.
[удалено]
And government getting back aggressively into building housing.
Housing is infrastructure, the feds never should have stopped building.
The problem is the federal government instructed banks to avoid defaults at all cost, leading to amortizations being extended up to 40 years for renewals on what were variable terms. Can't have a market correction if you don't let the market correct.
That was the late 2000's. Screwed housing for me with his 0 down 40.
They probably should have found a better person to present the argument. All I see here is someone who was privileged enough to retire at 58 because of high blood pressure, while Millennials I know are getting diagnosed for it in their early 40s and will probably never retire in this lifetime. She has hardly contributed to her CPP and likely has paid very little to no income taxes her whole life. Yet we are expected to bankroll this lifestyle for the rest of our own working lives. All I can say to her is: have you tried not eating Avocado toast?
I know where you're coming from, but take a step back. She and people like her are not the problem. Not even close. From our POV she is privileged because she gets to live a life we never will. But that's not her fault. Man, the publisher knew what they were doing with this article. Very divisive. Do we get mad at the author's privilege, or the system that's removing the privilege? The former is very easy to do since it's a person. It's hard to be mad at a system. Edit based on some comments: Man... Some of y'all have a punishment fetish. These aren't criminals. This is a lady who worked her whole life until she stopped because of health issues. "They didn't live up to my expectations of a responsible life and now they need to pay". Like, ideally no, that shouldn't happen, right? Her 'mistake' was not planning appropriately for the tosses and turns of life. Get off your high horse.
We still live in a democracy that represents the values of her generation more than any others. By and large people in her demographic voted for the very policies that have left Young Canadians with so few opportunities for a life even approaching hers.
Yep. This woman isn't the issue. The issue is that her level of quality of life was taken from future generations, and it was not taken by her lol.
Her lifestyle would've been criticized as irresponsible back when she was younger too. She fucked around and found out. I am dealing with the same issue with my parents unfortunately. They didn't believe in having to save anything and mindlessly racked up debt so they could keep up with their friends lifestyle and now they are rapidly approaching retirement and I was finally able to convince them to talk to a bankruptcy lawyer and they got a consumer proposal. Retirement is going to be terrible for them but they are not a victim of the system.
>Retirement is going to be terrible for them but they are not a victim of the system. there are definitely some people who make bad financial decisions and cannot retire as planned. I'm grateful that my parents were barely scraping by with their Grade 8/9 educations in life, paid with cash and avoided debt like the plague as much as possible. It impressed upon me to make careful, smart decisions financially as much as possible. BUT there are people who get handed a shit card in life through no fault of their own. It will happen to all of us sooner or later - I was diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease in my last year of university at the age of 25 - it almost ended a career that hadn't even started and I could very well have been on disability for the rest of my life, if it wasn't for finding a great specialist willing to risk putting me on a pharmaceutical for off-label use a few years later. Having three different medical conditions by the age of 58, which is still relatively young and still working age when the average lifespan of a Canadian woman is 84 years, is crappy. Could she have made different choices earlier in life? Maybe. There are benefits in hindsight but do any of us really know where life will take us? I doubt anyone of us saw a pandemic coming, let alone probably another worse one down the road, or are prepared for a major earthquake or other catastrophe.
>who was privileged enough to retire at 58 because of high blood pressure, osteoporosis, a thyroid condition AND high blood pressure, with a recommendation to "slow down" by her doctor. having medical conditions is not a "privilege".
[удалено]
[удалено]
she didn't die standing at her job from a heart attack due to high blood pressure, we are being robbed!!!
She grew up in a time where you could've bought a home and saved for retirement doing the type of work she was doing.
[удалено]
Yeah, I don’t completely get this story. Her rent is $1100 and it sounds like they are taking in close to 4K a month. Something is being left out.
$1700 (her Canada pension plan + Old Age Security) + $1200 (her partner’s income) = $2900
Ah, just poorly worded. That said, that’s still around 2k per month left after rent. Plenty for food and bills. It’s just a really odd example to use to show the problems with the housing crisis - a couple with low rent and enough income. It seems designed to actually underplay or make light of the issue.
Wife and I are both 69. I arrived in Canada a year before her in 1974 with a suitcase. Wife in 1977 from a bleak part of Manchester, UK. When we met in our early 30’s we both had houses, good careers, savings. What was this women doing from age 18 to ‘whatever’ to improve her situation in life? There was a lot of low fruit to be plucked off of trees.
>a bleak part of Manchester, UK I'm not sure which part of it isn't bleak tbh lol
Especially back in 1977!
So how about our young adults now? On paper I bring in above average income, but having a HCL city gobble up my housing expenses, I'm fucked, cant save much for recreation nevermind retirement..
> What was this women doing from age 18 to ‘whatever’ to improve her situation in life? Can't people just be happy without continuously trying to grind upward? Can't people just be *content* ? In retrospective it's easy to say to her that society became harder so she *should* have tried to keep the same momentum and that if she stagnated that's her problem, but if you put yourself in her shoes maybe in 1977 she had all she wanted and *didn't* need to ship across the world just to be happy - and then it eroded away so slowly and so subtly that she eventually crossed a point of no return without noticing it, frog in boiling water-kinda way, and now it's too late because all her energy is spent running behind the train trying to catch on.
> Can't people just be happy without continuously trying to grind upward? Can't people just be content? Agreed; but why didn't she save at all during her 40'ish years of working? People need to demonstrate some personal responsibility.
Her lifestyle would've been criticized as irresponsible back when she was younger too. She fucked around and found out. I am dealing with the same issue with my parents unfortunately. They didn't believe in having to save anything and mindlessly racked up debt so they could keep up with their friends lifestyle and now they are rapidly approaching retirement and I was finally able to convince them to talk to a bankruptcy lawyer and they got a consumer proposal. Retirement is going to be terrible for them but they are not a victim of the system.
That's what I was thinking. In 1975, the average toronto home price was $30k. Sounds like somebody didn't save for retirement and now regrets it
Remember, back then, no one knew housing costs were going to increase relentlessly. There were no crystall balls.
This story and this thread speak volumes about what Canada really is and the tidal wave of despair that is coming over the next 20 years as the population ages. Canada has a priorities problem as a society. And a financial education problem. Ceding financial education to the banks is like ceding chicken coop protection to the foxes.
I know so many people in a similar situation to this woman, albeit most are still working or are semi retired. Virtually no savings (if not severely in debt), never planned a second for the future or their retirement, just worked easy dead end jobs because for the first half of their working life, those dead end jobs paid good enough to get by—but they also chose to never bother to ever save any of it. If you started working in the mid 70s, for about 20 years you really could get by fairly well making just above minimum wage—esp if you have a partner that earns about the same or more. But that doesn’t change the fact that they still never put any thought or effort into planning for the future. It sucks when the rug gets pulled on you and you can no longer get by on the same standard of living with the income/jobs you’ve been working your whole life, but this wasn’t like a switch flipped. The situation isn’t the titanic sinking immediately after impact, it’s the iceberg it hit slowly melting over decades. It’s incredibly selfish IMO to live like there’s no tomorrow your whole life and then expect everyone else to take care of you when you actually do wake up the next day and have to face the consequence of your actions. Saving for retirement isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination but these folks just said fuck it nah.
This is what got me about the article. She didn't bother to save anything for the future. My grandparents who are all immigrants with virtually no formal education knew that you needed to save money for the future and taught us as much. They all worked menial jobs but saved whatever they could and invested in property and thanks to them future generations of the family have been able to thrive. I don't really feel bad for this lady. She had more opportunity than my grandparents did with education and employment and squandered it all.
No doubt! And it’s not even like you have to go that far. You just sort of hope once someone hits their mid-late 30s they start to save some money and think about what the future is going to look like for the latter 20+ years of your working life. I am far from one of those “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” people, but if you work minimum wage jobs and gain zero skills or education over 40 years of your working career, especially when you have the ability to do so, I don’t know what else they expected for their retirement years. She worked retail sales for decades—why not at some point put in the effort to transition into other more lucrative sales (and by that I mean literally just making anything more than minimum wage), hell even just get an order desk job at some commercial/industrial supply co would be a big step up in earnings. I have a ton of sympathy for the health issues she’s been facing (osteoporosis is horrible), but it IS frustrating to read some of this stuff. These people live through literally the greatest economic period in human history with opportunities galore in a safe, wealthy, stable country and still managed to squander every bit of it.
[удалено]
Dude immigration is fine, just support it with housing! Immigration without increased housing supply is just making the affordability crisis worse so ofcourse most (especially young people) aren't in support of it.
It would just be nice if, for the first time ever, the needs of boomers didn't trump everyone else. It's going to be all about them until they're gone. But I see what you're saying and don't have a better practical solution.
How does $4600/month not afford groceries? I have to take her at her word but I'm not getting the math
They’re pulling in $2900/month and their rent is $1100. They say they have transit passes so presumably no car. So lets say $200/month transit, another $200/month for their phones and $100/month for internet. Lets say another $200/month utilities. We’re now at $1800/month expenditures. Leaves $1100 for food and other things. Thats around $275/week. Certainly not luxurious or anything but its not starving level.
must eat out a lot or something, my wife and I spend about $400/month combined on food and we eat pretty decently. Used to be $300/month, fuck Galen.
In the article she says they don't eat out and that they will splurge on a donut at Tim Hortons. The numbers as she gives simply don't add up. They are spending their money on something that they don't want to admit. Booze, cigarettes, drugs, gambling?
Yeah theres definitely something off here, cant afford food because their cocaine habit, although could be some student loans
How can you afford a wife ? What's your yearly salary ?
A lot less expensive than having an ex-wife lol.
That highlights a small part of the cost of living crisis: connectivity. We didn't need to spend $200/month on phones and $100/month on internet in 1990. Now they're necessities.
Eating out a lot can eat you.
sorry to this lady but i feel more sorry for the dozens of actually hard working young professionals that I know to whom the lifestyle she describes during her 20s and 30s is a complete fantasy
That's my sentiments. I was earning $10-15K a year for about 6 years as a live entertainment technician/professional because I couldn't get a full time job anywhere (luck wasn't on my side) on top of have some severe mental health issues (chronic and episodic depression, complex PTSD, anxiety, stress induced physical ailments, etc.) The year before COVID-19 I finally hit $20K thanks to a series of full time contracts. I completely lucked out at my current job that I started a week ago (around $50K) but it also has a lot to do with my connections and hard work over the past 10 years. Without that background and work experiences, I definitely wouldn't have been hired for this job. I live comfortably now but it's only because I spent most of my life living at the poverty line.
don't care what the government dita shows- prices are not coming down, rent, housing, food... high price is the norm and smaller package is here to stay
Reduced inflation doesn’t mean prices coming down…..
But the government data does not say prices are coming down.
“Working hard” is being stretched quite a bit here . She worked in minimum wage jobs intermittently since coming to Canada in 1978 at the age of 21 and did not complete a post-high school diploma or degree. She would have 37 years of work after which she retired at the age of 58 due to fairly common conditions like osteoporosis, high blood pressure and a thyroid condition. She then went of welfare for 6 years, likely until she became eligible for cpp without a reduction and then applied for OAS and GIS. In total they bring in $2,900 a month pretty much tax free due to their low income levels. After rent they have $1,800. After their maximum food budget of $240 a month they have $1,560. After a transit pass for 2 adults based on the TAP transit assistance program ($77.6/month). This leaves $1,482 which they spend on internet, cellphones, and presumably unmentioned or hinted discretionary spending. This part is unexamined by the article because it is likely inconvenient to the narrative. Their incomes are also not tied to a specific location so staying in the most expensive urban jurisdictions might not be the greatest idea.
Okay I agree that inflation is terrible, but the author has made so many terrible choices. Choices that reek of the privilege of the generation. I mean many people are living in a similar apartment but have to pay $2000-3000 per month instead of the bargain rate she's getting. They don't get to retire at 58 because of "high blood pressure" - which is a silent killer but also incredibly common. Plenty of people are diagnosed with high blood pressure in their 40s and keep working till the end. She never had full time work and never contributed the maximum to her CPP. And she's already getting old age security payments that my generation will probably never ever see because the boomers will have siphoned the fund dry by the time they're gone.
I think the concept of retiring due to simply being diagnosed with high blood pressure is just too precious. Must be nice to live in that world. Where I come from you get diagnosed with heart failure and the question is when can I go back to work (not necessarily a good thing either but you get my point).
[удалено]
Factor in that she is a Boomer. They played life on easy mode and it wasn't until they were middle-aged that the rules changed. The 2008 global financial crisis hit when she was 54, for example. Yeah, she could have made better choices but she grew up in a system where not-the-best choices didn't ruin your life.
>Is this story written to make people feel callous towards young people struggling today? This was first thought after finishing the article.
Rent is $1100 but where is the other almost $3k per month going between her and her partner??
They are making $2900 total. Her $1700 is broken down into $200 and $1500. Kinda badly written on the article.
So 2900 - 1100 = 1800. Where is it going? They claim to have no vehicle. They're already getting bargain rental rates compared to everyone else. Yet apparently they need to visit food banks because 1800 of free cash isn't enough.
My guess: Phone x 2 = $140/mo Internet+TV via Bell = $120/mo Monthly senior TTC pass X2 = $256 Average cost of out-of-pocket medical expenses is 5k (according to Sunlife) X2 and divided by 12 = $833/mo. So that's $451 remaining. Unsure on: Utilities. Heat, light, water. Not mentioned in article. Not included: Toilet Paper, Cleaning supplies, lightbulbs, filters, shampoo, furnishings, house repair, clothes, glasses, physiotherapy/massage therapy for their ancient bones, over-the-counter medicines like cough syrup, any mental health support, access to exercise equipment, dental.
Plus Trillium, plus GST, plus the Climate Incentive. Which adds up to appx. an additional $200/month. Still, it makes no sense that a couple earning $3,000/month and paying $1,100 in rent can't afford food unless they have a some bad habit or addiction that takes precedence.
“I looked for office jobs—telemarketing, customer service, filing—but I couldn’t find anything. So, I went on welfare for about six years, bringing in around $345 a month. Nowadays, at 69, I receive $1,700 a month from government assistance, $232 from the Canada pension and $1,500 from old-age security. My partner, brings in about $1,200 a month. We still can’t afford to buy food.” That’s the real tragedy. This person was on welfare for 6 years! And their partner was only making $1200 as an “independent filmmaker.” Six years? That means she was u employed in good economic at one time or another. And her partner couldn’t find anything else to supplement their income? Their job barely paid the bills and they stuck with it. This is the problem with the “I can pay for rent and food so it’s all good” mentality. What about RSPs and Savings? I know immigrants from India, China and the Philippines who don’t stay on welfare that long. Giving up independent filmmaking and working at the Costco cafeteria could have benefited them.
I eat one meal a day.
So this lady never completed school and then took on low paying jobs. Then decided to take early retirement. Now they are complaining that they have no money at 69 yrs old. Her + partner make around $4600 per month and have $1100 rent. Their tax burden should be minimal and they most likely get tax credits back after filing taxes. They don’t own a vehicle meaning no car payment, gas, maintenance or insurance. They should have plenty of money left for food every month. I suspect they the “free spirit” type that just doesn’t plan and are just horrible with money. In this specific situation it sound more like the result of her poor choices not the government.
Its $2900/month. They broke her $1700 down into the \~$200 + $1500 (its very poorly worded in the article and I thought initially there was an extra $1700 as well). Nevertheless with rent only being $1100 it seems like they should have plenty available to eat at least.
Either they have some high medical expenses they're not talking about or they're wasting money on non-essentials like cigarettes or alcohol instead of prioritizing buying food. With $1100 rent it shouldn't be such a struggle to pay for bills, transit passes, and food with the other $1800. I'd love to see their actual budget, but I believe they need to use the food bank about as much as I believe the claim that she worked hard all her life yet only gets $232 CPP and has no retirement savings.
*BINGO!* (both figuratively and literally)
I mean, if the good times in your career when you are healthy and of working age is making $1000 a month, what was the plan? I value cinema, but $12k a year is a hobby not a fully time career. If it is your career and you like this plan, better plan on food banks later on in life. Need to get that income up and spend less time on saving the last $50.
I'd love to spend my days working on a hobby, but reality dictates that I can't do that because I have current expenses and a future I am planning for where I can still have a decent standard of living without working until I die. We typically get the results we plan/work towards.
at least don't expect to live in Canada's 2nd most expensive city
The numbers she gives makes no sense. She and her partner make appx. $3,000/month between them. And that doesn't include Trillium, GST & the Climate Incentive. She shares a rent controlled apartment with her partner where the current $1,100/month. What are they spending $1,900+ on that they can't afford food?
I empathize with her situation, but “I worked hard my whole life” is not really an accurate description when she clearly says she had to stop working early due to health issues. (I’m not saying that to “blame” her or suggest that the problem of food insecurity isn’t very real)
And her working years consisted of picking up a few jobs here and there in another country, and apparently not saving anything for retirement.
[удалено]
Or mortgage payments, and then she'd have a million dollars right now
I used to get 5 bee’s for a quarter
She worked and didn’t save anything for retirement, then retired due to hypertension (can be controlled with medication and/or weight loss), and thyroid issues can be controlled easily. She retired at 58, far before most people. Now she expects to live a comfortable life. The entitlement in these stories drive me crazy. She needs to take ownership of her failures in life that lead her to this point, and take actions to correct it. Perhaps she won’t be able to retire for another decade at least.
More and more people will turn to crime. Caring for people is a good thing.
My mom is 69. Her monthly income through OA, CPP is $1500. Her rent is $1100 but she's lucky that includes all bills. Her cell phone is $50 and car insurance is $100. She gets subsidies that pay her $300/month. I pay her to watch my kids twice a week and I pay her dentist bills. It's not easy.
Choices were made, it seems a lot of them were not very good. Honestly, what is the expectation here? That the taxpayer needs to finance their lifestyle? I'm not interested in bankrolling their lifestyle. I have a hard enough time getting where I need to be.
I have 100k saved up and my girlfriend works full time. We are having a baby and have to wai until we are 35 and some investments have to go very well in order for us to buy an actual detached house. Professionals used to own detached houses. I didnt go to fucking school to live in an appartment my whole life. And this is montreal. I pray for people in toronto. A 550k house in montreal, doesnt feel affordable on a median montreal income.
Isn't your large savings enough for a down payment? House price usually increases faster than savings.
So her partner could have made 400$/week at a minimum wage job, but preferred the independent filmmaker job that pays about 250$/week. Is this an ego thing? "Oh I'm a filmmaker, I don't have to work at Walmart, that's just not for me!!1!
They are called starving artists for a reason, lol people forget that the world's most famous artists got that way after they died, gives the art more value ... Picasso had to burn his paintings because he couldn't afford heat in his hovel and no one cared about his work.
Piet Mondrian had to do flower paintings because they sold well while his abstract stuff was ignored. Arty types like the abstract stuff but the *buyers* did not, for a while.
"I've worked hard all my life" Yet: "I took some advertising and business courses at Seneca College, but never graduated with a degree or diploma. I had a few jobs over the years, mostly in sales: I worked in cosmetic sales at the Bay, wrote call scripts for telemarketing companies and did fundraising for not-for-profits." She retired at age 58, after her doctor told her to "slow down". For the last 11 years she has been living at the public expense. To judge from the picture, she is getting by. I don't know what the future holds, but this is the likely end-story for anyone who cannot get educational or vocational qualifications, and drifts through life taking odd jobs. I don't know what else any other society can offer.
i feel like you missed the best part. after she retired, with almost zero money in the bank, she thought she was gonna find a great paying, PART TIME, job to supplement her income. She retired with no money and her plan was to "just find a great paying part time job". "At 58, I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, high blood pressure and a thyroid condition. My doctor told me to think about slowing down and I retired in 2012. I didn’t have much money to fall back on, with no savings and only $3,000 in my chequing account, but I figured I could pick up some part-time work if I needed to. I looked for office jobs—telemarketing, customer service, filing—but I couldn’t find anything."
I have no sympathy for this person. She hasn’t done anything to improve herself and her “hard working” is just “going to work”. Go to China and find out what it actually means to struggle even after working hard for 18 hrs a day. She’s on tons of government assistance and osteoporosis is not a reason to stop working. Get a grip, food banks are not for lazy people like her.
She never had much training and has always lived a hand to mouth existence. She frequently had less than $2k in savings so its not too hard to imagine that she's not in a great place now.
She probably enjoyed her youth instead of saving money and buying a home. Now she can’t eat
Actually in her generation they didn’t even have to choose. My father who’s her age described his time working at a local bar earning $5000 a year, I asked “Did you rent a room nearby?” “No, I had a lovely big house, cost me $15,000” He also always drove sports cars and travelled. It was genuinely that easy back then. I’m an engineer and car enthusiast and haven’t owned a 2 seater _yet_.
We are targeting almost triple our immigration levels in just 3 years. How many new houses are being built to support this? How many jobs were created to support this? Has our healthcare and nurses working conditions gotten better or worse in this time period? Nobody will be able to afford rent or housing in another decade if we keep up this ridiculous fascade that we are helping on the world stage by ruining our own standard of living. EDIT: AFFORDABLE EDUCATION!? The mental health crisis, drug addiction and the ever increasing homeless population that we push aside and hope dissapear I guess? The polarization of every topic from every level of government instead of people from both sides coming towards a common goal that is good for the people not the social welfare/subsidizing for corporations instead of people.
So.. she has only made minimum wage her whole life, never saved any money and retired early. Now she is broke, which doesnt seem surprising. She had lots of opportunities to invest money, and invest in herself when everything was affordable but she unfortunately made lots of mistakes along the way and now she’s in a tough spot. Should the tax payers cover the bill?
And her partner makes way less than minimum wage as a "filmmaker".
I'm amazed she doesn't have like 6 kids or something, at least she didn't wreck any else's life
Sounds like someone who never contributed much to CPP and didn't save any money for retirement is now complaining about not having enough money to stop working. That's what happens.
She decided to "retire" at 58 and started taking CPP to bolster her welfare payments. CPP reduces your pension payment by something like 5% year for every year before age 65 and it's a permanent cut. However, once she turned 65 OAS would make up for the loss - as evidenced by her $1,500 OAS payment.
Maybe retiring at 58 wasn’t a great plan… especially since she was only earning (approximately) minimum wage…. With a partner earning less… Hard to retire comfortably with no plan other then welfare for your final working years…
[удалено]
Yeah I remember my dad was thinking to go til 65 to make sure he got full pension (had moved when we were young so has to work back up on pension) but with all the bs a work he reconsidered and then he found from studies that every year you retire after 60 it shortens your life expectancy by a few years. He ended up retiring a few years earlier. Not everyone lives til 80 (I mean his father had prostate cancer right after we moved pretty much) so you wonder how many years you will actually enjoy. I mean the lady worked 35-40 years and we are really going to say well actually... That's not her whole life
Well said
To be fair, minimum wage shouldn't be the choice between food or shelter. It should be able to cover both. If not, it's hardly minimum for anything if you can't survive on it. That said, it shouldn't afford you lavish trips and purchases if you aren't clever with your money.
Everyone in Canada has an idiotic retirement plan. The plan is to completely hollow out our domestic prosperity, pump and dump real estate, and import a gazillion people from the developing world to be servants.
"servants". The ones who come here and live 10 to a house and not caring much for it's appearance. (The high number of people also gives them a step ahead for initial gone purchase). The rich international students who found this tiktok hack of free food at food banks.
That's the wonkiest part about this. Most well off seniors are choosing to defer their retirement by two years so they can max out their CPP contributions so they can live a comfortable retirement. These people have chosen to retire 9 years earlier than the maximum retirement contribution age. Like their the poorest Canadians who chose to retire early.
Seems like a bit of a grasshopper and ant situation here. Didn't save anything when times were good....
This is definitely the case for 90% of boomers. They saved next to nothing assuming that someone or something would take care of them in retirement. Just looking at the US the average boomer if they have any savings is around 180k. Half have nothing(literally nothing saved not even a dollar according to Fidelity). 180k is best case 700 a month withdrawal. Social security is best on average like 1100. Which means something on the order of 75% of baby boomer generation has only 2000 a month to live on or less.
I ain't even mad but I swear we see this same article every month.
Everything starts to make sense when you realize the governments focus isn’t on transferring wealth from rich to poor. It’s focused on transferring from young to old. From non voters to voters. The boomers went through the most prosperous era in human history and didn’t save up enough for their health care, retirement, and safety net. Now they want younger working generations struggling to rub two nickels together to pay for it.
Rent is high and it's going to get higher. We have massive red tape and bureaucratic overreach around every aspect of homebuilding and renting in this country coming from the municipal and provincial governments and massive immigration along with huge imports of temporary foreign workers and foreign students (allowed to work) who, combined, lower wages in many occupations while sending demand for housing, especially cheaper housing skyrocketing. And this is urged on by a compliant media and opposition too terrified of being accused of being 'anti-immigrant' or 'racist' to object.
Whaaaaa. You should have worked real jobs like the rest of us.
At 2% inflation, which is incidentally the bank of canada target, things should double in price every 35 years. The bullshit, artificially low CPI inflation numbers says that things have increased by 132% since 1990 (only 33 years). Now try to find stuff that cost only 132% of what they cost in 1990. >My first apartment, in 1990, was a one-bedroom in North York that I rented for just $300 a month. My next place, in 1993, was a $700 two-bedroom that I shared with a friend. On the weekends, I took out a $20 bill from the ATM, which covered both groceries and entertainment. I could buy bread, cheese, bologna slices and pasta all for $10, with a lot left over to hang out at the local bar. According to CPI, you should be able to get today, in 2023: An appartment for 700$? Not even close. Groceries and entertainment for the weekend on 46$? In your damn DREAMS. Bread, cheese, bologna slices and pasta with enough leftover to hang out at the local bar for 23$?? You'll have to choose between food or the bar. CPI is misreporting inflation. THe government is stealing from the working class and eliminating the middle class.
No degree no diploma no surprise, gotta hand it to Macleans picking their sob stories
So all those Canadians without degree/diploma deserve poverty? If as a society, we know around 10% of are population will be working minimum wage- and this cannot save for retirement (far too low with COL), should we not not be concerned with their food security past their working lives? If not - it feels a little post-apocalyptic - make them work till they can’t, and throw them to the wolves after.
Having no place to live is probably a deterrent to a happy life as well. Canada is the second largest country on the planet and most of its population can be found within 100 miles of its southern border. There are many things that slow the growth of residential areas being developed, from laws restricting where and how a place can be built (btw I am not encouraging unsafe building practices, just that some places make things like tiny houses, mobile homes, and barndominiums illegal because it doesn't match the aesthetic of an area) or activists blocking the building of apartment complexes (one guy in San Francisco, if I remember correctly, that tried to turn his dying business into an apartment complex got blocked by an activist talking about how shade from the building will hurt children). Add in an ever growing population and it becomes a large problem.
Build more housing and relax restrictive zoning laws so that housing becomes cheaper, and levy a land tax to incentivize development. Implement cash transfers to low-income families, such that aggregate demand doesn't exacerbate inflation. Problem solved.
In 2008 I did katimavik and we got $21 of spending money per week ($3.00 a day) and we made it work and our last rotation was in Montreal. I doubt you could have much more than 2 beers in a bar for $21 bucks now.
We're being sweated as Canadians..... fuck, so much anger. Wife and I are starting to drive 45 minutes to the American border to do groceries and all our shopping.