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Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans

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Re: Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans

#7
post #4

Canadians have been gorging themselves on debt for the past decade. Far higher than other OCED countries. That's left them in a very precarious situation.[1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/24/canadas-household-debt-level...

A huge chunk of our economy is real-estate and finance[1], so that's not too surprising. Everyone thinks the path to getting rich is to buy houses / condos. They're in for a nasty surprise I think. It's never a good idea to go crazy leveraging debt. When you combine that with all of the insane student loan debt people go into (I know someone on their 4th university degree!), then it's a recipe for disaster.

https://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-GDP-canadian-import...

Re: Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans

#8
post #4

Canadians have been gorging themselves on debt for the past decade. Far higher than other OCED countries. That's left them in a very precarious situation.[1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/24/canadas-household-debt-level...

Well spotted. And that is mostly due to Harper and the Conservatives giving huge tax breaks to the very wealthy, and the super ridiculously wealthy.

Re: Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans

#9

And then you realize that the population of Canada is 10% of US. Canada should be compared to the Nordic countries vs. US in terms of quality of life etc.

It's not that simple, really. Although for some comparisons you are probably correct, in other ways they are a very natural pairing.

For all their differences, in many other ways Canada and the USA are much more like each other than either are like any other country.

Re: Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans

#10
post #5

[flagged]

California and Vancouver has more homelessness because you can survive in the streets with the weather there far easier than Toronto.

It also has a network effect, their friends are out there so they want to go. More homeless people the more community they have and less hassle from the police. Same with drug users, the more junkies around the more drug dealers there will be to serve them. Most of those westcoast homeless areas turn into open drug markets which you wouldn't find in Toronto. A lot of the opioid stuff is coming from Asia so it's possible being closer to the west coast shipping ports attracts more users.

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