Canadian real estate prices have surged in almost every market, with a typical home price doubling in many regions. A median household in major cities like Toronto and Vancouver would need to save over 20 years for just the down payment, more than 3x the historic average. Seems absurd? The outlandish scenario was apparently a […]
Or maybe, just a crazy idea, the government could provide for people’s basic needs so that no one has to worry about dying alone on the streets when they’re too old or infirm to usefully participate in the endless meatgrinder of capitalism.
It’s not the simple unfortunately, because of 2 factors:
Our boomers are a very large generation, larger than the millenials
Life expectancy has increased so people live much longer (with high medical costs)
In the 70s - 2000s we had a large generation of in their working years paying for a small generation’s 5-10 year retirement
Now, we have a small generation in their working years paying for a large generation 15-25 year retirement
And this is not something we can solve by just “taxing the rich”. The numbers are so huge that taxing Canada’s richest people is a drop in the bucket
Life expectancy has been decreasing.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10116838/life-expectancy-decrease-canada-stat-can/
There’s been a slight downtick in recent years, but it’s still up +10 years from 1970
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/life-expectancy