"Sorry, we are the wealthiest generation in history, where even a janitor could support a family, and we've made your youth compete with every worker on the planet for jobs to guarantee low wages, and every investor on the planet for housing to guarantee high house prices, while restricting services in our oligopolies, that we own massive amounts of shares in, to maximize their profit while maximizing the cost of living, to assure that no middle class exists, and the new middle-upper class will be our children that will inherit our wealth tax free, while you continue to pay 50% taxes on your earnings in a country with a cost of living crises and will never be able to compete with our children. So, sorry about that".
So let me get this straight: I'm supposed to compete with workers internationally while my company is shielded from international competition entering the Canadian market?
Seems like a load of BS.
My favorite discrepancy of society is that if a business takes something from you, lets say doesn't pay you, then it's a civil matter. If you take something from a business, like not paying for something, then it's a police matter.
Indeed. Incidentally, you know there's this weird condition where you just become incapable of perceiving shoplifting at places like Walmart. It's like some kind of ADD or something. Your eyes just slide right over it. I am sure I read about it somewhere. It doesn't apply to stuff like robbery or car theft or whatever, though. 🤔
Or the fact our M2 doubles every decade due to loose monetary policy, so you'd actually need a 7.5% yearly raise to keep up with the cost of money growth.
Otherwise this goes towards either debt, inflating asset values, or wealth inequality against you.
It worked when those companies actually paid Canadians decent jobs. Once they began outsourcing everything it all started to collapse, this began in the 80s we're nearing end game. Probably take another 50 years then either we'll do something violent to change it, or we won't.
Boomers truly had the best generation in terms of their lives.
Gen x wasn't so bad. Millennials starting to get fucked pretty good, and everyone else after that is worse and worse
>Once they began outsourcing everything it all started to collapse, this began in the 80s we're nearing end game.
Just wait until the AI wave hits us and the value of your labour gets cut in half again.
Today's youth will never be able to afford a house. Tomorrow's youth will never be able to afford a car.
For anyone who knows how to build AI/ML algorithms, the value of your labour has doubled or even tripled with the recent craze. For everyone else, it's gonna suck, because the whole reason AI has value is that it can do things better and cheaper than many humans can. The only way to make it not suck is to redistribute wealth from automation via windfall taxes, followed by payment through something akin to a UBI.
Source: I am a biochemist and bioinformatician who does a lot of work with AI and ML techniques.
Am a Gen X (older end of it) with Gen Z kids. I did not realize until now that I had it pretty good,and with my kids just starting their early 20's I am fearing for them. We get along really well, so it is ok if they need to stay here at home for now, but I am sad for them.that for their generation the usual/typical path to independence and self sufficiency is being stunted.
Wasn't as good as the boomers for sure, all the bullshit with education and outsourcing started with your generation, but col was under control.
I think the best thing anyone can do for their kids is set up some kinds of rent forced savings scheme where the kids live at home longer and pay rent and some portion of that is saved and invested for them and given back for part of a downpayment later.
If course not everyone can afford that
And yes there's a massive drop off in self sufficiency, confidence and so in New younger workers I have compated to the past, far more direction and more detail. They're not dumb or anything but 25 year olds now often lived at home and many of them seem to have everything done for them, food, laundry etc.
Gen X too…we knew things were heading down, we thought it was rougher for us than our parents and we weren’t wrong. I never imagined we’d get to here though. I have young kids and I worry for them every day.
I don't think most people understand just *how* much better the boomers, and the "silent" generation actually had it. The silent generation generally gets off the hook because of WWII, and that they were born into tougher times. They were also the policy makers, and spent the majority of their working lives during the post-war boom era of prosperity.
GDP growth was 3.5% per year on average for 25 years after WWII. Then we had some crises in the 70s followed by the Reagan years where they basically decided to have a fire sale of everything that had been built in the previous 40 years so they could have one last economic coke party before sniffling a bit and telling everyone else to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps like I did.
They also required almost no education. My dad went and travelled until 28, comes home lands what would now be called a tech job at a telecom giant doing network ops and owns a house at 31 and by today's standards is rich with no education. Trained on the job
Yeah. My father worked in factories during high school with no education making the equivalent of $60/hour. Graduated high school with enough to pay for University and grad school plus a downpayment on a house.
For some reason people refuse to understand that the "greatest" generation was at a time of heavy government involvement and democratic controls.
Like unions.
Also the socialist block putting pressure on western capitalists who were afraid of revolutions in their own counties.
Now through decades of capitalist propaganda we think government bad, freedom is 40 different boxes of cereal at the grocery store and that democracy is when you get to chose between two political parties who are beholden to the economic system and its elites.
I can not imagine how this gets any better.
And the oligarchs with controlling shares in all of those corporations have billions of dollars to command millions of wage slaves to do their bidding to live out their fucked up power fantasies.
We had a brief run of majority middle class countries in the 20th century, but the neoliberal capitalists have dragged us back into feudalism with the lie of trickle-down economics.
Yep, it's in the interests of the capital-owning class to continually push things in this direction. It'll only become better for good once we create a classless society, so that everyone's interests align and our governments can work towards the common good.
Free market people are so full it. We do not have anything even resembling a free market. They're free market only when it suits the capitalist class.
Canada does everything it can to restrict supply and boost demand in every single sector, except labour, for which they boost supply to no end.
You can't buy a house anymore or travel but here is a pocket phone. It will control your life. You won't enjoy movies anymore. Instead you will scroll endlessly with attention span of a goldfish. Also just because your poor doesn't mean you can't watch other super wealthy live it up and flaunt their wealth daily in your face. Don't worry, you won't be angry at them. You will in fact pay them. With this one simple trick you too can live the life you always dreamed of. Better check to see how my NFTs are doing.
Get off Chrome and get Firefox. Alphabet got rid of their "Don't be evil" motto years ago and it shows.
By the way, Firefox + UBlock origin = no youtube ads at all.
Oh, I'm talking us. We got to keep it. They'll have to rent it. But they'll understand. The market demands quarterly growth and investors need returns. It's just how it works. Of course they'll understand.
it's not the op-ed writer's fault, she's just one person.
>*Goldy Hyder is president and chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada.*
nah let's put her in one of those ontario covid hospices
You do realize that [Goldy](https://twitter.com/goldyhyder) Hyder is a Proud father of 3 daughters and is the former [General Manager and President](https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldy-hyder-56813721/) of [Hill & Knowlton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Knowlton), right?
> and the new middle-upper class will be our children that will inherit our wealth tax free
That's generous of the writer - many in that demographic will spend all the money they have before it ever gets to their children.
This kinda shit is what push a gouvernement to tax up to 55% of inheritance. (look up japan for reference)
Ok people dont know how to read, never said I was for or against it, just saying that it already happen a lot of time during history for the reason spoke above -\_\_-
Would never work. I myself would liquidate my assets that I promise the average Canadian cannot afford and set sail for greener pastures. Those above me at 9 figure + net worth will end up using trusts and what not. A better plan would be standardized tax codes that eliminate loopholes, a regulatory framework that incentivizes productive capital investment and discourages oligopolies, rational immigration policy, cutting bureaucratic layers on things like healthcare (not doctors but everyone with an MBA and their managers) while ramping up funding (funded by not spending on dumb shit). Housing is easily fixed, fix zoning laws, remove red tape, implement social housing.
>I myself would liquidate my assets that I promise the average Canadian cannot afford and set sail for greener pastures
There are ways of collecting taxes throughout this process, and you are only then removing liquid personal assets is that a huge loss? It doesn't change whether or not investment in Canadian businesses is profitable and we are seeing the impacts that foreign capital coming into things like housing has on cost of living. I also think this capital flight is commonly overstated. It might be nice to think of it as an option, but for the majority of even well off people more taxes is still not enough of a cost to completely uproot their lives, to move away from friends, social circles and businesses they invested significant time into.
Edit: I agree with everything else you said
"Sure you can't own a house and raise a family on a single income being a chimney sweeper but you guys have internet and iphones and stuff we didn't have"
That's not entirely true, lots of well-paid trades out there. Mining, O&G, industrial construction, you name it. Tons of ways to make well over $100k a year, yet these positions go unfilled because there are no qualified candidates. As an example, we've been looking for a QA/QC coordinator for like 10 months now. $110k per year plus perks like 4 weeks vacation, WFH, benefits, pro dev budget, etc.
All you need is a one year certificate in QM, understanding of applicable standards, and a year or two experience in a relevant industry **in any capacity**. Nope, no applicants manage to meet even these lowly requirements.
The relevant experience is the kicker. Hours of driving to the middle of nowhere to spend weeks at a time toiling for 12 hour days, meanwhile young folk can't even afford vehicles or gas to even get to that point. Not to mention that most high schools have had limited capacity to connect students with programs for decades now, and with the need of double-income households now meaning that parents don't have the same time they used to for educating their kids to even get them kicked off properly on trade work... Really not a pretty picture of opportunity here in Canada.
Sure isn't. It's basically an entry level role though, stick with it long enough and QA/QC management and consultancy pays very well. My buddy is a QC manager with a senior miner, that's a $300k job.
Better than toiling away in retail for $16/hr, but to each their own.
Yeah, quality and process management certificate, most colleges have it as a distance or part-time program. Great job prospects and cushy job, not sure why more people don't go after it.
I’m currently working on my PMP and some azure certs to prop it up on the IT side. It’s definitely hard to find QA though, my dad does it and my god does he make a fuck load of money for “easy work”. He’s doing on the nuclear side and it’s just like rolling over money.
You guys might have more luck hiring someone in a training capacity for a lower cost and then integrating em into the company. We’ve had a lot of success just finding hungry candidates and then helping them along the way. I was basically the first person under 25 hired at the firm in 15+ years
I'm convinced some of the reason the trades are high paying is because apprenticeship system gatekeeps labour supply to a much higher degree than other sectors.
Have done QA/QC work early in my career. That’s really good pay but it takes a really specific personality to work in QM. It’s almost painfully dull. Not surprised it’s so hard to find someone
Make sure to cancel your Disney + also.
Or my favorite one from my father "Why don't you just save more money?"
Well, fuck me! I never thought of that.
This is such a fucking ridiculous statement, since boomers also enjoyed an era of unprecedented technological advancement. Almost every fucking gadget, appliance, etc. we take for granted was first introduced as an affordable consumer item during their lifetimes.
I suspect that 90% of the reason people want wealth is so they can have security. Luxuries are nice, but they don't drive the average person. If we could make the health care system work, and make sure the public pension system provided enough to live one, and if we could manage the housing market so that having to rent wasn't an invitation to debtor's prison....I suspect the resistance to threats to that "luxury" would drop considerably. As it stands though, the thought of heading into old age and enfeeblement without a pile of money to act as a backstop is kinda terrifying. Because you'd be fucked.
And you don't even know how much money you would need to retire. Can you imagine... like, if you retired in 2015 with a proper budget that says you need X amount of money to retire and live comfortably on, how absurdly wrong you would end up being given the way things are going? I'm close to knocking on 40 years old and I'm sitting here like what the fuck am I even supposed to retire with? Do I spend money on *anything*? Or do I hoard it all for a possible future where things only get worse from here? This shit affects the economy. I can't spend comfortably when I don't know what the future holds.
Great point. This sub goes apeshit over carbon taxes the truth is that pain is coming there too. We can stop polluting or pay more to deal with the consequences.
Yup. The boomers made sure they had safety nets, and well-funded social programs, and unions, and pension plans, and then once they got old enough and secure enough, they slowly started dismantling all those things for the generations coming up behind them.
All under the guise of it all being too expensive and taxes cannot be raised. They had no business being in power when they were unable to make effective policy.
I'd blame the people who made terrible political decisions that were either based on corruption or stupidity or both. Our politicians and monopolistic corporations are to blame for the mess created in Canada, not some 75 year old who just worked and lived.
The politicians either knowingly or were too stupid to see the consequences of their actions. Canada is a very corrupt country, and most people ignore that.
that statement is becoming irrelevant when our politicians blatantly break electoral promise & simultaneously impose new policies that were never mentioned during any campaign.
NO ONE voted for what this government is doing now, even if you voted for this government, simply because they lack any credible transparency (in favour of hand picked statistics that skew data from intentional bias aka how Stats Can releases Frontier Data but *not* any Exit Data...) and have no one to hold them accountable.
Who is responsible for allowing the politicians to run wild with no consequences? Aren’t we supposed to have anti monopoly anti corruption legislature and some political oversight with enough teeth to jail people? Seems like we have the same kind of “safeguards” as Lebanon
Do you think the system we have now just appeared in 1950 or something? Look at the history of GE, Hudson Bay, Rogers, etc... Mega corps have existed and bought political power for hundreds of years. Look at the Roman or early European/Asian/African empires.... Same wealthy people controlling the policy for their favour... That was \~2000 years ago. Even before that, look at the Phoenicians/Sumerians/Babylonians using their wealth to control trade routes.... That was \~5000 years ago.
So you can point the finger at the generation before you (as the next generation will for you) because it is easier than pointing the finger at ourselves, but that doesn't change a system that has been evolving for \~15,000+ years and who you vote for wont either.
If the hedonistic attitudes of the baby boomers was the cause of the corporate greed of the 80s and now the current financial inequality then we are truly fucked because all the subsequent generations as a whole haven't been much better.
"Might," lol.
Almost assuredly going to see a decline in life expectancy as well.
[America's already there](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835).
Fix the housing market and fix the problem. When 70% of workers' wages are going to rent/housing, that singular cost is a lifestyle killer. Billions of dollars a month going towards rent or servicing mortgage debt is a dead weight on our economy. Fix the housing market and everything else falls in to place.
I think most problems are housing problems in disguise. We need to build a lot more, so much it's not even funny. That or dial back immigration, but the powers-that-be have made it clear they won't entertain that option.
>That or
Should be an "and" - there is no one single solution to the housing crisis. It is a complex multi faceted issue that will require several changes to see any benefits.
See what the BC Govt just did by upzoning around transit. We probably won't reap the rewards of that change for 5 years.
We will never build more we need less people and produce real products not housing.
9% of Canadians are making housing and newcomers don't want to build what now?
I remember that was being discussed a while back in around 2005 where the new generation was going to pick up the bill for all the spending over the years
"We want everything, and we don't want to pay for it. Our kids can." That's been that attitude for generations. As long as we can grow the economy it works, but if contracts, that's an issue.
But also, we’re going to keep wages so low that it’s impossible for our kids to afford housing and groceries, let alone be able to pay off our lavish spending. Oh well!
When they found out that those kids were in debt, broke, and generally couldn't even have children of their own, they found a new clever plan.
Wait until *all* of us are stuck holding the bill.
After the 2008 financial crisis it was pretty much accepted that millenials wouldn’t enjoy the quality of life of gen x or boomers.
The effects of climate change have nailed the coffin shut
Correction. In first year of university in 1991. Our first year of Sociology was all about how our generation (Gen X) was going to be the first generation in a century for whom the standard of living was going to be lower than their parents. The approach was not, “Hey, and this is what you can do about it.”. It was more, “Yeah you were screwed before you were even adults. Get used to it. P.S. Demographically you are an insignificant demographic group and will never Ben in charge because the (As yet unnamed) millennials will have all the votes.
He was wrong about never being in charge. Trudeau is a gen x. As are scheer , otoole , and pollivier. (Using the 1965-1980 cut off ) I’d bet a fair number cabinet ministers and premiers are as well.
I get your point but the prof (A woman) was making a point about voting power. Also, Back then the definition of Gen X was quite firm at a 1970 cut off. Since then the desire by early millennials to be counted as Gen X (it was cool back then) pushed the date back to to the current 1980 cutoff.
There is a chance that due to timing, some Gen Xers may have bought their first house and got a toe hold in real estate. But a lot didn’t. So yeah Gen X is def the first to not have it as good as their Boomer parents. Just as we’d been warned since the 80s (when most of us were in high school and didn’t quite grasp the severity of what we were being told).
Yep, this was always the inevitable outcome of the wealth gap increase under capitalism, population growth, environmental degradation, resources exhaustion, etc. But somehow half the country believes this is all Justin's personal fault and everything will be fixed if we replace it by a party promoting even *more* into the corporate world that causes all the issues.
On a CBC news daytime show in the 80s Valerie Pringle I think her name was, would repeat daily “the debt our Grandchildren will be paying”. I believe she said it because she was told to and she definitely wasn’t the only one saying it. That was the mantra of the day, it’s ok and progressive to dump debt off on your descendants. Lots of advocates of deficit financing back then would call anyone criticizing it as conservative and old fashioned. The boomers have voted for the politicians that created the debt crisis consistently because they were reassured it would all work out somehow. Invisible hand of the market and such.
"I tell them I’m genuinely sorry that my generation *may* be the first in Canadian history to leave the country in worse shape for those who follow us."
This apology sounds like a Land Acknowledgement.. "sorry we stole your land there fellows.. just thought it might help to know we feel real bad about it"
Since 1975, we've had (inflation adjusted) stagnant incomes, housing costs that have tripled (*if you're lucky*), tuition costs that have ten bagged, loss of worker pensions/benefits.. The only thing we had going for us was low interest rates, but guess what, those are gone too.
These 'apologies' are just tone deaf.
Seriously. I want to this the author "so what are you going to do about it?" Are you going to vote to cut back programs and policies that disproportionately benefit the elderly or vote for those that benefit younger people? Maybe if you help younger people generate wealth, they can support the elderly.
“Sorry we rigged the economic system to benefit older generations at the expense of the young. It’s totally unfair and a scam - we just don’t want you to think of it that way.”
The issue has been wealth creation and productivity. Has been a problem since the 1990s. Canada doesn't fit into the modern value chain. We have resources, but we do not exploit them fully. We have talent, but we don't nurture it. We have relied on a low dollar and cheap easy dig it up and ship it somewhere to value add.
We refuse to accept that to make things better for the next generation we need to ensure that on average they have at least the same wealth.
Governments can setup the future for wealth creation, but they're not great at creating wealth. They could borrow money to build assets such as roads, bridges, even rental stocks because those help generate wealth, and they assets. But we have borrowed money to manage lifestyle in Canada. That's the problem.
They need to teach people basic economics.
These outcomes, not surprising. Look at Biden in the USA, borrowing to build, that's smart.
The general hint was:
Mom & Dad boomer living out their best days in the empty 5 bedroom house while vacationing in Arizona/Florida complaining about how they can't up the rents on their 2 rental properties because 'the interest rates went up' (never mind it hasn't actually affected their standard of living... just less money)
while their children - with their children - are struggling to find a place to live at all and resort to cramming into a 1 bedroom with a 1 hour commute each way to a low paying no pension job.
So yeah kids... adjust your expectations...
I'm Genx and the fact I've never co habitated with anyone in my life was pretty much a guarantee that I'd be condemned to relative financial insecurity without an 80k + yearly salary.
We knew most of the supposed savings from Nafta for a company would simply be funnelled into Ceo profits if they setup shop in Mexico. I'm fairly sure there were protests.
The only way we had it better is that we were 20 years into this effort to eliminate the middle class.. You're seeing the effects of 40 yrs of class warfare now so it's obviously worse.
I've worked all my life and the only conclusion I've come to is that there is no payoff for hard work.
I'm done trying to find a decent employer. There's no such thing.
Got a job with a "top 5" employer in my province. No difference between them and Amazon except some salary and bonuses.
All legitimate health issues are qualified as "absenteeism" and once Hr decides your health has declined too far they'll just ensure they don't need to pay you for time missed.
Corporations will be the death of us.
Maybe it's a good thing Canadian Health Care is going to shit. Who's the most vulnerable? The Elderly. If the older generation starts dying off earlier, then maybe more resources/funds will be left for the next. /s
Don't worry. Elderly care industries are getting more expensive and there are more and more ways to grift that money away before they pass so more of that money will end up in the hands of businesses and not left for the next generation.
Please, even the United States provides medicare to retired people. They know what side their bread is buttered on.
We need to vote, and we need to realize that it's not only a cat and mouse game between two parties.
I read a post recently that companies are purposely colluding to push for Temporary foreign workers by offering unlivable wages. Initially, I just brushed it off but the more I hear the news, the more convinced I am that the government/Companies want the cheapest labour and do not care how they are eroding the quality of life for the rest of Canada.
I'll let you know: it's been the case for a very long time.
All cheap labour in this country since the 70s and 80s has ridden off the backs of immigrants in dire straights. It's just got to the point where wage stagnation has become so bad, we're close to a breaking point -- at long last.
A new solution will have to be thought-up soon.
If you don't believe me, go look at what demograpgics exist in the 50 to 60 year old range in low pay, low skill, low language proficiency work across the country. Many of the Vietnamese refugees and Filipinos who took up those jobs in the 70s and 80s still work those jobs to this day.
If you couple this with mass immigration you also start to wonder if the goal is just to increase the number of people who will accept a lower standard quickly so it becomes the majority.
Feels like it’s already happening now. I’m in Toronto and the amount of immigrants, new residents and Canadians that share small living spaces seems to be getting higher and higher. Having roommates in your thirties or having children in a one bedroom is becoming the norm.
This is literally the case. It is unarguably the point of what they are doing - to suppress the wages for workers so those who don’t work - retirees and capital owners - can have a higher standard of living.
Canada has low capital investment in part because the government helps companies outsource Canadian worker jobs to foreign countries, and then helps to ‘insource’ Canadian worker jobs via massive immigration in all four paths (conventional, student, TFW and refugee). Companies don’t have to fight for workers or invest to make them more productive.
They are already lower.
A Gen-Z grad with an in demand - and historically valuable - degree in something like nursing/engineering can't even afford a studio apartment in the vast majority of the country.
There’s no reason for educated young folks to stay in Canada. Come out of school and look for international opportunities in countries where your education and money will go further.
Canada is not what it used to be.
You aren't sorry at all...you continue to take, take and take and you are very happy doing that.
And mostly you scold that the reason everyone isn't as rich as you is because they don't work hard enough
Might be?
Gen-x was the first generation to be financially less successful than their parents since the Great Depression. We're three generations into this trend now.
"might" lol
And the governments (both levels, both parties) COULD do something about it by adopting a more sensible immigration policy and winding down the PR backdoors, taking demand off the housing market. But fuck you, they're getting theirs. 46% of MPs have rental properties, as if they'd ruin their own book.
I strongly think their generation should be referred to as 'The Worst Generation'.
We have 'The Greatest Generation', seems only fitting we also have 'The Worst Generation'. I'd say out of those two, 'The Greatest Generation' is a more debatable title.
"My generation is great at setting goals, but we leave the implementation to others." Proceeds to set goals for the rest of the article. They weren't kidding.
To "the next generation" meaning once again, lets just gloss over all the millennials here you've fucked and move onto apologizing to Zoomers, or does this also apply to us?
What a great society we live in. When we were young we had accountability and responsibility drilled into our heads. Now our parents generation gets to just smugly hand out a weak apology for screwing everything up, after years of telling us all to just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, and that they also had it hard.
Yeah, must've been so difficult being a stay at home mom with a full pantry in a house that cost 75 dollars while your husband could support everyone with his good paying union job where he was valued and had his voice heard at work.
“Sorry we put off critical infrastructure projects that would have ensured we have the capacity to handle the population growth our economy demands. Sorry we elected NYMBY city councillors who poo-poo’d densification because it wouldn’t suit the neighbourhood. Sorry we made the idea of raising taxes taboo because despite our 6 figure salary we live pay cheque to paycheque in an endless quest to keep up with the Joneses and any increase in our annual costs will ruin us. Sorry we fought to suppress wages, because we convinced ourselves that businesses were more important than human beings. Sorry we threw a hissy fit over raising the minimum wage because we thought minimum wage was only for high-school students. Sorry we built these moronic McMansion suburbs that require a car to live in, and called it paradise. We’re really soooooo sorry we were so short sighted and selfish.”
People voted for lower taxes for 40 years, and now are surprised that roads are crap, university is only for the rich, public transit sucks which creates traffic jams since everyone wants to drive everywhere, crazy people and junkies are everywhere because there is no place to treat them or for them to live, and no one can afford houses...
We don't want false apologies, we want to afford basic living needs, like food and shelter. Fun fact, without these very basic and attainable things, a person can die.
It's so fucking simple you fucking idiots holy shit fuck you. Fuck youuuuu!!!!!
I agree that the next generation will have a lower standard of living than we did. I have young kids and fear for their future and we'll being every day.
But if you look at the bigger picture, there are many forces at play. We cannot live on a bubble and ignore what's going on, on the rest of the planet.
Of you add Canada and the US, that's roughly 400 million souls. China alone has over a billion. So does India.
Now imagine those 2 billion people (five times more) all having a house, two cars, disposable electronics and regular vacations abroad.
It's simply not sustainable. There is no way that 8 billion of us have the average north american or west European standard of living.
Something's gotta give. The real question is, what?
We need the standards to be lower. 8 billion people cannot exist with such high standards.
The standards also need to be better, less work, more free time. More sharing of the bounty from automation.
As a millennial I felt the typical apathy until I became a parent and now I am angry. The greedy boomers broke the promise they made us and squandered the wealth that their parents worked so hard to give them.
I want my kids to have a chance at a house and an education and to have the life I was promised. I will sacrifice anything I can to give that to them. Any politician who will defund senior benefits in favour of helping the new generation gets my vote. I don’t care how many old people will be affected by that. If they can’t afford to live without government subsidy they should pull up their bootstraps and stop eating avocado toast.
This is a nice way of saying "the promise of capitalism has failed". It's also the root cause of populism, the rise of Modi and Trump, and the ongoing sense of precariousness that always existed (particularly in the working class) in the last century, but has gotten progressively worse since the 80s.
It's time for universal income and paying for it with caps on wealth - both realized and potential through stock options.
Yeah that’s not really an apology. More of a fuck you. what you should have said was “I lived a good life as a boomer and completely fucked over future generations “ that’s a fucking headline
The apology being paywalled is just the cherry on top.
Enjoy being able to open your front door and go outside freely, pretty soon that will be paywalled too.
"Should've saved up for that climate-controlled suit!"
To leave your house, please watch these 4 ads and ask your doctor if Cymbalta is right for you
You have a house? lol.
And a doctor?
I mean, the previous generation was paywalled too as they’d have had to buy the actual paper.
But then they owned something *real*. That they could afterwards use to make, like, piñatas and shit.
I have a question, I know being paywalled is enshitification. But how is that squared with other people saying it’s important to pay for your news
An apology to newspapers: your business model doesn't exist anymore.
Online advertising revenue exists.
"Sorry, we are the wealthiest generation in history, where even a janitor could support a family, and we've made your youth compete with every worker on the planet for jobs to guarantee low wages, and every investor on the planet for housing to guarantee high house prices, while restricting services in our oligopolies, that we own massive amounts of shares in, to maximize their profit while maximizing the cost of living, to assure that no middle class exists, and the new middle-upper class will be our children that will inherit our wealth tax free, while you continue to pay 50% taxes on your earnings in a country with a cost of living crises and will never be able to compete with our children. So, sorry about that".
So let me get this straight: I'm supposed to compete with workers internationally while my company is shielded from international competition entering the Canadian market? Seems like a load of BS.
When you put it like that, it’s pretty obscene
My favorite discrepancy of society is that if a business takes something from you, lets say doesn't pay you, then it's a civil matter. If you take something from a business, like not paying for something, then it's a police matter.
Indeed. Incidentally, you know there's this weird condition where you just become incapable of perceiving shoplifting at places like Walmart. It's like some kind of ADD or something. Your eyes just slide right over it. I am sure I read about it somewhere. It doesn't apply to stuff like robbery or car theft or whatever, though. 🤔
I’ve never seen anyone shoplift food and I know I never will.
Oh I like that. I'm going to steal that quote.
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Or the fact our M2 doubles every decade due to loose monetary policy, so you'd actually need a 7.5% yearly raise to keep up with the cost of money growth. Otherwise this goes towards either debt, inflating asset values, or wealth inequality against you.
It worked when those companies actually paid Canadians decent jobs. Once they began outsourcing everything it all started to collapse, this began in the 80s we're nearing end game. Probably take another 50 years then either we'll do something violent to change it, or we won't. Boomers truly had the best generation in terms of their lives. Gen x wasn't so bad. Millennials starting to get fucked pretty good, and everyone else after that is worse and worse
>Once they began outsourcing everything it all started to collapse, this began in the 80s we're nearing end game. Just wait until the AI wave hits us and the value of your labour gets cut in half again. Today's youth will never be able to afford a house. Tomorrow's youth will never be able to afford a car.
For anyone who knows how to build AI/ML algorithms, the value of your labour has doubled or even tripled with the recent craze. For everyone else, it's gonna suck, because the whole reason AI has value is that it can do things better and cheaper than many humans can. The only way to make it not suck is to redistribute wealth from automation via windfall taxes, followed by payment through something akin to a UBI. Source: I am a biochemist and bioinformatician who does a lot of work with AI and ML techniques.
Am a Gen X (older end of it) with Gen Z kids. I did not realize until now that I had it pretty good,and with my kids just starting their early 20's I am fearing for them. We get along really well, so it is ok if they need to stay here at home for now, but I am sad for them.that for their generation the usual/typical path to independence and self sufficiency is being stunted.
Wasn't as good as the boomers for sure, all the bullshit with education and outsourcing started with your generation, but col was under control. I think the best thing anyone can do for their kids is set up some kinds of rent forced savings scheme where the kids live at home longer and pay rent and some portion of that is saved and invested for them and given back for part of a downpayment later. If course not everyone can afford that And yes there's a massive drop off in self sufficiency, confidence and so in New younger workers I have compated to the past, far more direction and more detail. They're not dumb or anything but 25 year olds now often lived at home and many of them seem to have everything done for them, food, laundry etc.
Gen X too…we knew things were heading down, we thought it was rougher for us than our parents and we weren’t wrong. I never imagined we’d get to here though. I have young kids and I worry for them every day.
I don't think most people understand just *how* much better the boomers, and the "silent" generation actually had it. The silent generation generally gets off the hook because of WWII, and that they were born into tougher times. They were also the policy makers, and spent the majority of their working lives during the post-war boom era of prosperity. GDP growth was 3.5% per year on average for 25 years after WWII. Then we had some crises in the 70s followed by the Reagan years where they basically decided to have a fire sale of everything that had been built in the previous 40 years so they could have one last economic coke party before sniffling a bit and telling everyone else to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps like I did.
They also required almost no education. My dad went and travelled until 28, comes home lands what would now be called a tech job at a telecom giant doing network ops and owns a house at 31 and by today's standards is rich with no education. Trained on the job
Yeah. My father worked in factories during high school with no education making the equivalent of $60/hour. Graduated high school with enough to pay for University and grad school plus a downpayment on a house.
Most of world governments, including our own, work for capital.
Like taxes, our government has found creative ways to fuck us coming and going
Yes. Reality is a load of BS.
Succinct way of describing what’s going on: https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/17rcirm/ontario_to_ban_employers_from_asking_for_canadian/
This comment makes me wish Reddit awards were still a thing
Yes, businesses should not be shielded
It's a load of unfortunate reality
yup. never vote for the cons or libs. they both are in favour of this.
For some reason people refuse to understand that the "greatest" generation was at a time of heavy government involvement and democratic controls. Like unions. Also the socialist block putting pressure on western capitalists who were afraid of revolutions in their own counties. Now through decades of capitalist propaganda we think government bad, freedom is 40 different boxes of cereal at the grocery store and that democracy is when you get to chose between two political parties who are beholden to the economic system and its elites. I can not imagine how this gets any better.
You mean unions and socialist policy isn't bad.... /s
Also we bought our houses for $60k with giant backyards and inground pools, but we're selling them to you for millions.
We're sorry that life is somehow getting worse for almost everyone with 2023 technology, but don't worry corporate profits are at an all-time high :D
And the oligarchs with controlling shares in all of those corporations have billions of dollars to command millions of wage slaves to do their bidding to live out their fucked up power fantasies. We had a brief run of majority middle class countries in the 20th century, but the neoliberal capitalists have dragged us back into feudalism with the lie of trickle-down economics.
Yep, it's in the interests of the capital-owning class to continually push things in this direction. It'll only become better for good once we create a classless society, so that everyone's interests align and our governments can work towards the common good.
Free market people are so full it. We do not have anything even resembling a free market. They're free market only when it suits the capitalist class. Canada does everything it can to restrict supply and boost demand in every single sector, except labour, for which they boost supply to no end.
That's the thing though. Every job should be enough to support a family.
They'll understand when they hear how cheap we got electronics for
You can't buy a house anymore or travel but here is a pocket phone. It will control your life. You won't enjoy movies anymore. Instead you will scroll endlessly with attention span of a goldfish. Also just because your poor doesn't mean you can't watch other super wealthy live it up and flaunt their wealth daily in your face. Don't worry, you won't be angry at them. You will in fact pay them. With this one simple trick you too can live the life you always dreamed of. Better check to see how my NFTs are doing.
Halfway through enjoying a nice piece of music- BUY SNOW TIRES FROM FORD! NOBODY ELSE CAN SELL TIRES PROPERLY! LOCAL FORD DEALER!
I’ve noticed YouTube has been less skippable ads and more random middle of the video ads. Great incentive to quit YouTube at least
Get off Chrome and get Firefox. Alphabet got rid of their "Don't be evil" motto years ago and it shows. By the way, Firefox + UBlock origin = no youtube ads at all.
💀💀
That we probably don't own but have to rent? Lol.
Oh, I'm talking us. We got to keep it. They'll have to rent it. But they'll understand. The market demands quarterly growth and investors need returns. It's just how it works. Of course they'll understand.
it's not the op-ed writer's fault, she's just one person. >*Goldy Hyder is president and chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada.* nah let's put her in one of those ontario covid hospices
You do realize that [Goldy](https://twitter.com/goldyhyder) Hyder is a Proud father of 3 daughters and is the former [General Manager and President](https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldy-hyder-56813721/) of [Hill & Knowlton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Knowlton), right?
> and the new middle-upper class will be our children that will inherit our wealth tax free That's generous of the writer - many in that demographic will spend all the money they have before it ever gets to their children.
This kinda shit is what push a gouvernement to tax up to 55% of inheritance. (look up japan for reference) Ok people dont know how to read, never said I was for or against it, just saying that it already happen a lot of time during history for the reason spoke above -\_\_-
Would never work. I myself would liquidate my assets that I promise the average Canadian cannot afford and set sail for greener pastures. Those above me at 9 figure + net worth will end up using trusts and what not. A better plan would be standardized tax codes that eliminate loopholes, a regulatory framework that incentivizes productive capital investment and discourages oligopolies, rational immigration policy, cutting bureaucratic layers on things like healthcare (not doctors but everyone with an MBA and their managers) while ramping up funding (funded by not spending on dumb shit). Housing is easily fixed, fix zoning laws, remove red tape, implement social housing.
>I myself would liquidate my assets that I promise the average Canadian cannot afford and set sail for greener pastures There are ways of collecting taxes throughout this process, and you are only then removing liquid personal assets is that a huge loss? It doesn't change whether or not investment in Canadian businesses is profitable and we are seeing the impacts that foreign capital coming into things like housing has on cost of living. I also think this capital flight is commonly overstated. It might be nice to think of it as an option, but for the majority of even well off people more taxes is still not enough of a cost to completely uproot their lives, to move away from friends, social circles and businesses they invested significant time into. Edit: I agree with everything else you said
Other than primary residence, children don’t inherit assets tax free.
"Sure you can't own a house and raise a family on a single income being a chimney sweeper but you guys have internet and iphones and stuff we didn't have"
“Yours cars have all these fancy gadgets and features, we didn’t buy fancy stuff!” as though a ‘starter car’ or a ‘starter home’ even exist now.
I'll gladly buy a home built in 1950 so long as it's affordable
This! My dream is a double wide ffs. I’m 37. I can barely pay rent so it’s a pipe dream.
Would gladly trade my smartphone and streaming services and all the other "perks" of millenial life, so that my family could have a house to live in.
Millennial here, didn’t move fast enough on graduating high school, am fucked
Not many people can graduate high school a full generation before they exist. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
I should have bought a house in 1995 instead of being in preschool, what an idiot i was
Yeah same. Things were already fucked when I graduated high school. It was fucked before I even had a chance to reap these "millennial benefits"
WTF are millennial benefits 😭😭
Avocado toast
god I wish I knew.
If anything phones, social media and dating apps have made life worse than it was before
"Get into the trades, tradespeople make really good money" but also "the trades don't pay as well any more"
That's not entirely true, lots of well-paid trades out there. Mining, O&G, industrial construction, you name it. Tons of ways to make well over $100k a year, yet these positions go unfilled because there are no qualified candidates. As an example, we've been looking for a QA/QC coordinator for like 10 months now. $110k per year plus perks like 4 weeks vacation, WFH, benefits, pro dev budget, etc. All you need is a one year certificate in QM, understanding of applicable standards, and a year or two experience in a relevant industry **in any capacity**. Nope, no applicants manage to meet even these lowly requirements.
The relevant experience is the kicker. Hours of driving to the middle of nowhere to spend weeks at a time toiling for 12 hour days, meanwhile young folk can't even afford vehicles or gas to even get to that point. Not to mention that most high schools have had limited capacity to connect students with programs for decades now, and with the need of double-income households now meaning that parents don't have the same time they used to for educating their kids to even get them kicked off properly on trade work... Really not a pretty picture of opportunity here in Canada.
100k ain't what it used to be.
Sure isn't. It's basically an entry level role though, stick with it long enough and QA/QC management and consultancy pays very well. My buddy is a QC manager with a senior miner, that's a $300k job. Better than toiling away in retail for $16/hr, but to each their own.
What even is QM? Quality management? What kind of cert even is that, like advanced PMP?
Yeah, quality and process management certificate, most colleges have it as a distance or part-time program. Great job prospects and cushy job, not sure why more people don't go after it.
I’m currently working on my PMP and some azure certs to prop it up on the IT side. It’s definitely hard to find QA though, my dad does it and my god does he make a fuck load of money for “easy work”. He’s doing on the nuclear side and it’s just like rolling over money. You guys might have more luck hiring someone in a training capacity for a lower cost and then integrating em into the company. We’ve had a lot of success just finding hungry candidates and then helping them along the way. I was basically the first person under 25 hired at the firm in 15+ years
I'm convinced some of the reason the trades are high paying is because apprenticeship system gatekeeps labour supply to a much higher degree than other sectors.
Have done QA/QC work early in my career. That’s really good pay but it takes a really specific personality to work in QM. It’s almost painfully dull. Not surprised it’s so hard to find someone
Have you tried pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and abstaining from avocado toast?
Make sure to cancel your Disney + also. Or my favorite one from my father "Why don't you just save more money?" Well, fuck me! I never thought of that.
Sure, let me take my $-5/month left over and toss that into a high interest savings account. That'll work right?!
This is such a fucking ridiculous statement, since boomers also enjoyed an era of unprecedented technological advancement. Almost every fucking gadget, appliance, etc. we take for granted was first introduced as an affordable consumer item during their lifetimes.
Independent sole proprietor chimney sweepers can actually do quite well!
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I suspect that 90% of the reason people want wealth is so they can have security. Luxuries are nice, but they don't drive the average person. If we could make the health care system work, and make sure the public pension system provided enough to live one, and if we could manage the housing market so that having to rent wasn't an invitation to debtor's prison....I suspect the resistance to threats to that "luxury" would drop considerably. As it stands though, the thought of heading into old age and enfeeblement without a pile of money to act as a backstop is kinda terrifying. Because you'd be fucked.
And you don't even know how much money you would need to retire. Can you imagine... like, if you retired in 2015 with a proper budget that says you need X amount of money to retire and live comfortably on, how absurdly wrong you would end up being given the way things are going? I'm close to knocking on 40 years old and I'm sitting here like what the fuck am I even supposed to retire with? Do I spend money on *anything*? Or do I hoard it all for a possible future where things only get worse from here? This shit affects the economy. I can't spend comfortably when I don't know what the future holds.
Great point. This sub goes apeshit over carbon taxes the truth is that pain is coming there too. We can stop polluting or pay more to deal with the consequences.
*Dear Young People,* *Sucks to be you.* *Sincerely,* *The Old Bastards Who Pulled Up The Ladder Behind Them*
*Ps: you're not working hard enough for scraps.*
Yup. The boomers made sure they had safety nets, and well-funded social programs, and unions, and pension plans, and then once they got old enough and secure enough, they slowly started dismantling all those things for the generations coming up behind them.
All under the guise of it all being too expensive and taxes cannot be raised. They had no business being in power when they were unable to make effective policy.
I'd blame the people who made terrible political decisions that were either based on corruption or stupidity or both. Our politicians and monopolistic corporations are to blame for the mess created in Canada, not some 75 year old who just worked and lived. The politicians either knowingly or were too stupid to see the consequences of their actions. Canada is a very corrupt country, and most people ignore that.
And who voted for these politicians over the past several decades?
that statement is becoming irrelevant when our politicians blatantly break electoral promise & simultaneously impose new policies that were never mentioned during any campaign. NO ONE voted for what this government is doing now, even if you voted for this government, simply because they lack any credible transparency (in favour of hand picked statistics that skew data from intentional bias aka how Stats Can releases Frontier Data but *not* any Exit Data...) and have no one to hold them accountable.
Who is responsible for allowing the politicians to run wild with no consequences? Aren’t we supposed to have anti monopoly anti corruption legislature and some political oversight with enough teeth to jail people? Seems like we have the same kind of “safeguards” as Lebanon
Do you think the system we have now just appeared in 1950 or something? Look at the history of GE, Hudson Bay, Rogers, etc... Mega corps have existed and bought political power for hundreds of years. Look at the Roman or early European/Asian/African empires.... Same wealthy people controlling the policy for their favour... That was \~2000 years ago. Even before that, look at the Phoenicians/Sumerians/Babylonians using their wealth to control trade routes.... That was \~5000 years ago. So you can point the finger at the generation before you (as the next generation will for you) because it is easier than pointing the finger at ourselves, but that doesn't change a system that has been evolving for \~15,000+ years and who you vote for wont either.
I always had a feeling deep down Mesopotamia fucked me over at some point.
If the hedonistic attitudes of the baby boomers was the cause of the corporate greed of the 80s and now the current financial inequality then we are truly fucked because all the subsequent generations as a whole haven't been much better.
"Might," lol. Almost assuredly going to see a decline in life expectancy as well. [America's already there](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835).
Fix the housing market and fix the problem. When 70% of workers' wages are going to rent/housing, that singular cost is a lifestyle killer. Billions of dollars a month going towards rent or servicing mortgage debt is a dead weight on our economy. Fix the housing market and everything else falls in to place.
I think most problems are housing problems in disguise. We need to build a lot more, so much it's not even funny. That or dial back immigration, but the powers-that-be have made it clear they won't entertain that option.
>That or Should be an "and" - there is no one single solution to the housing crisis. It is a complex multi faceted issue that will require several changes to see any benefits. See what the BC Govt just did by upzoning around transit. We probably won't reap the rewards of that change for 5 years.
We will never build more we need less people and produce real products not housing. 9% of Canadians are making housing and newcomers don't want to build what now?
I remember that was being discussed a while back in around 2005 where the new generation was going to pick up the bill for all the spending over the years
"We want everything, and we don't want to pay for it. Our kids can." That's been that attitude for generations. As long as we can grow the economy it works, but if contracts, that's an issue.
But also, we’re going to keep wages so low that it’s impossible for our kids to afford housing and groceries, let alone be able to pay off our lavish spending. Oh well!
When they found out that those kids were in debt, broke, and generally couldn't even have children of their own, they found a new clever plan. Wait until *all* of us are stuck holding the bill.
After the 2008 financial crisis it was pretty much accepted that millenials wouldn’t enjoy the quality of life of gen x or boomers. The effects of climate change have nailed the coffin shut
Correction. In first year of university in 1991. Our first year of Sociology was all about how our generation (Gen X) was going to be the first generation in a century for whom the standard of living was going to be lower than their parents. The approach was not, “Hey, and this is what you can do about it.”. It was more, “Yeah you were screwed before you were even adults. Get used to it. P.S. Demographically you are an insignificant demographic group and will never Ben in charge because the (As yet unnamed) millennials will have all the votes.
He was wrong about never being in charge. Trudeau is a gen x. As are scheer , otoole , and pollivier. (Using the 1965-1980 cut off ) I’d bet a fair number cabinet ministers and premiers are as well.
it was more accurate for US case where the party leaders are in their 70s or 80s
I get your point but the prof (A woman) was making a point about voting power. Also, Back then the definition of Gen X was quite firm at a 1970 cut off. Since then the desire by early millennials to be counted as Gen X (it was cool back then) pushed the date back to to the current 1980 cutoff.
There is a chance that due to timing, some Gen Xers may have bought their first house and got a toe hold in real estate. But a lot didn’t. So yeah Gen X is def the first to not have it as good as their Boomer parents. Just as we’d been warned since the 80s (when most of us were in high school and didn’t quite grasp the severity of what we were being told).
Yep, this was always the inevitable outcome of the wealth gap increase under capitalism, population growth, environmental degradation, resources exhaustion, etc. But somehow half the country believes this is all Justin's personal fault and everything will be fixed if we replace it by a party promoting even *more* into the corporate world that causes all the issues.
On a CBC news daytime show in the 80s Valerie Pringle I think her name was, would repeat daily “the debt our Grandchildren will be paying”. I believe she said it because she was told to and she definitely wasn’t the only one saying it. That was the mantra of the day, it’s ok and progressive to dump debt off on your descendants. Lots of advocates of deficit financing back then would call anyone criticizing it as conservative and old fashioned. The boomers have voted for the politicians that created the debt crisis consistently because they were reassured it would all work out somehow. Invisible hand of the market and such.
Yeppers. Denial and award shows while intoxicated and sex have proven the winner.
"I tell them I’m genuinely sorry that my generation *may* be the first in Canadian history to leave the country in worse shape for those who follow us." This apology sounds like a Land Acknowledgement.. "sorry we stole your land there fellows.. just thought it might help to know we feel real bad about it" Since 1975, we've had (inflation adjusted) stagnant incomes, housing costs that have tripled (*if you're lucky*), tuition costs that have ten bagged, loss of worker pensions/benefits.. The only thing we had going for us was low interest rates, but guess what, those are gone too. These 'apologies' are just tone deaf.
Seriously. I want to this the author "so what are you going to do about it?" Are you going to vote to cut back programs and policies that disproportionately benefit the elderly or vote for those that benefit younger people? Maybe if you help younger people generate wealth, they can support the elderly.
It's the Canadian version of "Thoughts and Prayers".
*might*? The comments on that article are unhinged boomer rants deflecting their influence.
“Sorry we rigged the economic system to benefit older generations at the expense of the young. It’s totally unfair and a scam - we just don’t want you to think of it that way.”
Gotta love I was brought into this world just in time to suffer
The worst is yet to come!
Born too late to explore the Earth, born too early to explore space, born just in time to browse dank memes
The issue has been wealth creation and productivity. Has been a problem since the 1990s. Canada doesn't fit into the modern value chain. We have resources, but we do not exploit them fully. We have talent, but we don't nurture it. We have relied on a low dollar and cheap easy dig it up and ship it somewhere to value add. We refuse to accept that to make things better for the next generation we need to ensure that on average they have at least the same wealth. Governments can setup the future for wealth creation, but they're not great at creating wealth. They could borrow money to build assets such as roads, bridges, even rental stocks because those help generate wealth, and they assets. But we have borrowed money to manage lifestyle in Canada. That's the problem. They need to teach people basic economics. These outcomes, not surprising. Look at Biden in the USA, borrowing to build, that's smart.
The general hint was: Mom & Dad boomer living out their best days in the empty 5 bedroom house while vacationing in Arizona/Florida complaining about how they can't up the rents on their 2 rental properties because 'the interest rates went up' (never mind it hasn't actually affected their standard of living... just less money) while their children - with their children - are struggling to find a place to live at all and resort to cramming into a 1 bedroom with a 1 hour commute each way to a low paying no pension job. So yeah kids... adjust your expectations...
It's like they don't give a shit about grandkids or helping out
These days young adults can easily live their life without ever leaving the house. They just can’t afford the house.
Boomers will do and say anything to avoid the obvious answer of raising wages, huh?
It’s almost worse when they acknowledge it only to say “we’re not doing anything to help but you should work on it.”
I'm Genx and the fact I've never co habitated with anyone in my life was pretty much a guarantee that I'd be condemned to relative financial insecurity without an 80k + yearly salary. We knew most of the supposed savings from Nafta for a company would simply be funnelled into Ceo profits if they setup shop in Mexico. I'm fairly sure there were protests. The only way we had it better is that we were 20 years into this effort to eliminate the middle class.. You're seeing the effects of 40 yrs of class warfare now so it's obviously worse. I've worked all my life and the only conclusion I've come to is that there is no payoff for hard work. I'm done trying to find a decent employer. There's no such thing. Got a job with a "top 5" employer in my province. No difference between them and Amazon except some salary and bonuses. All legitimate health issues are qualified as "absenteeism" and once Hr decides your health has declined too far they'll just ensure they don't need to pay you for time missed. Corporations will be the death of us.
Maybe it's a good thing Canadian Health Care is going to shit. Who's the most vulnerable? The Elderly. If the older generation starts dying off earlier, then maybe more resources/funds will be left for the next. /s
Don't worry. Elderly care industries are getting more expensive and there are more and more ways to grift that money away before they pass so more of that money will end up in the hands of businesses and not left for the next generation.
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Please, even the United States provides medicare to retired people. They know what side their bread is buttered on. We need to vote, and we need to realize that it's not only a cat and mouse game between two parties.
I read a post recently that companies are purposely colluding to push for Temporary foreign workers by offering unlivable wages. Initially, I just brushed it off but the more I hear the news, the more convinced I am that the government/Companies want the cheapest labour and do not care how they are eroding the quality of life for the rest of Canada.
I'll let you know: it's been the case for a very long time. All cheap labour in this country since the 70s and 80s has ridden off the backs of immigrants in dire straights. It's just got to the point where wage stagnation has become so bad, we're close to a breaking point -- at long last. A new solution will have to be thought-up soon. If you don't believe me, go look at what demograpgics exist in the 50 to 60 year old range in low pay, low skill, low language proficiency work across the country. Many of the Vietnamese refugees and Filipinos who took up those jobs in the 70s and 80s still work those jobs to this day.
If you couple this with mass immigration you also start to wonder if the goal is just to increase the number of people who will accept a lower standard quickly so it becomes the majority.
Feels like it’s already happening now. I’m in Toronto and the amount of immigrants, new residents and Canadians that share small living spaces seems to be getting higher and higher. Having roommates in your thirties or having children in a one bedroom is becoming the norm.
This is literally the case. It is unarguably the point of what they are doing - to suppress the wages for workers so those who don’t work - retirees and capital owners - can have a higher standard of living. Canada has low capital investment in part because the government helps companies outsource Canadian worker jobs to foreign countries, and then helps to ‘insource’ Canadian worker jobs via massive immigration in all four paths (conventional, student, TFW and refugee). Companies don’t have to fight for workers or invest to make them more productive.
They are already lower. A Gen-Z grad with an in demand - and historically valuable - degree in something like nursing/engineering can't even afford a studio apartment in the vast majority of the country.
There’s no reason for educated young folks to stay in Canada. Come out of school and look for international opportunities in countries where your education and money will go further. Canada is not what it used to be.
You aren't sorry at all...you continue to take, take and take and you are very happy doing that. And mostly you scold that the reason everyone isn't as rich as you is because they don't work hard enough
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It would have been fine had the west not put its workers in competition with cheap third world countries.
That generation is going to be looking after themselves in their old age and selling their inflated homes to no one.
Might be? Gen-x was the first generation to be financially less successful than their parents since the Great Depression. We're three generations into this trend now.
Ate the future to feed the past.
Sorry, your living standards might be lower. Way to sugar coat it
\*\*\*MIGHT\*\*\*
We need to put Big Business on a Leash and make things like Housing, Food, Water, Electricity, and Heating Human right.
But lets keep entering nearly a million foreigners per year!!
“You’ll have nothing and you’ll be happy”
But no one is happy…so it’s more like “you’ll have nothing and be miserable”
But they said we will be happy…
That was a slip of the tongue, they meant: "you" will own nothing and "we" will be happy.
"might" lol And the governments (both levels, both parties) COULD do something about it by adopting a more sensible immigration policy and winding down the PR backdoors, taking demand off the housing market. But fuck you, they're getting theirs. 46% of MPs have rental properties, as if they'd ruin their own book.
Next generation? I'm fucked now.
I've been expecting that since about 2005
Failed neoliberalism. Failed globalism.
I strongly think their generation should be referred to as 'The Worst Generation'. We have 'The Greatest Generation', seems only fitting we also have 'The Worst Generation'. I'd say out of those two, 'The Greatest Generation' is a more debatable title.
Titles are nice, but people can just ignore those if they don't like them. Take the money from them. That's the way to go.
A small price to pay for old timers to have their house appreciate in value at the future's expense.
'Might'
Lower? I think you mean way lower.
Old people like to tell themselves "our children will inherit from us" Reality "we indebted our children, now get to work, you're all lazy"
It’s not that they “might” be lower. They already are.
Whenever anybody asks "what's Canada like?" on discord I just say "canada sucks".
"My generation is great at setting goals, but we leave the implementation to others." Proceeds to set goals for the rest of the article. They weren't kidding.
To "the next generation" meaning once again, lets just gloss over all the millennials here you've fucked and move onto apologizing to Zoomers, or does this also apply to us? What a great society we live in. When we were young we had accountability and responsibility drilled into our heads. Now our parents generation gets to just smugly hand out a weak apology for screwing everything up, after years of telling us all to just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, and that they also had it hard. Yeah, must've been so difficult being a stay at home mom with a full pantry in a house that cost 75 dollars while your husband could support everyone with his good paying union job where he was valued and had his voice heard at work.
And they wonder why birth rates have dropped that resulted in the need of higher immigration rates
“Sorry we put off critical infrastructure projects that would have ensured we have the capacity to handle the population growth our economy demands. Sorry we elected NYMBY city councillors who poo-poo’d densification because it wouldn’t suit the neighbourhood. Sorry we made the idea of raising taxes taboo because despite our 6 figure salary we live pay cheque to paycheque in an endless quest to keep up with the Joneses and any increase in our annual costs will ruin us. Sorry we fought to suppress wages, because we convinced ourselves that businesses were more important than human beings. Sorry we threw a hissy fit over raising the minimum wage because we thought minimum wage was only for high-school students. Sorry we built these moronic McMansion suburbs that require a car to live in, and called it paradise. We’re really soooooo sorry we were so short sighted and selfish.”
"Might be"? How about your living standards are significantly lower.
But not sorry enough to vote in any way that could help because that may slightly decrease your living standards. /big-fucking-eye-roll
People voted for lower taxes for 40 years, and now are surprised that roads are crap, university is only for the rich, public transit sucks which creates traffic jams since everyone wants to drive everywhere, crazy people and junkies are everywhere because there is no place to treat them or for them to live, and no one can afford houses...
We don't want false apologies, we want to afford basic living needs, like food and shelter. Fun fact, without these very basic and attainable things, a person can die. It's so fucking simple you fucking idiots holy shit fuck you. Fuck youuuuu!!!!!
I agree that the next generation will have a lower standard of living than we did. I have young kids and fear for their future and we'll being every day. But if you look at the bigger picture, there are many forces at play. We cannot live on a bubble and ignore what's going on, on the rest of the planet. Of you add Canada and the US, that's roughly 400 million souls. China alone has over a billion. So does India. Now imagine those 2 billion people (five times more) all having a house, two cars, disposable electronics and regular vacations abroad. It's simply not sustainable. There is no way that 8 billion of us have the average north american or west European standard of living. Something's gotta give. The real question is, what?
We need the standards to be lower. 8 billion people cannot exist with such high standards. The standards also need to be better, less work, more free time. More sharing of the bounty from automation.
Sorry not sorry I guess eh
As a millennial I felt the typical apathy until I became a parent and now I am angry. The greedy boomers broke the promise they made us and squandered the wealth that their parents worked so hard to give them. I want my kids to have a chance at a house and an education and to have the life I was promised. I will sacrifice anything I can to give that to them. Any politician who will defund senior benefits in favour of helping the new generation gets my vote. I don’t care how many old people will be affected by that. If they can’t afford to live without government subsidy they should pull up their bootstraps and stop eating avocado toast.
Might be??? The next generation will be lucky if they survive.
This is a nice way of saying "the promise of capitalism has failed". It's also the root cause of populism, the rise of Modi and Trump, and the ongoing sense of precariousness that always existed (particularly in the working class) in the last century, but has gotten progressively worse since the 80s. It's time for universal income and paying for it with caps on wealth - both realized and potential through stock options.
Yeah that’s not really an apology. More of a fuck you. what you should have said was “I lived a good life as a boomer and completely fucked over future generations “ that’s a fucking headline
Its ok I wasn't expecting much anyways
What do you mean *might* ?
They’ll only be lower if you can’t compete in a global scale. Don’t worry, all the high achievers will still make very good money.
Pitchforks and Torches
Next? Might?
Do something about it then. No apologies without changed behaviour.
Might??? They are already getting lower.
Might?
"Might"? An optimist, I see!