Canadian middle class wealthier than American middle class

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starvingartist
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25 Apr 2014, 10:39 pm

GiantHockeyFan wrote:
GGPViper wrote:
It should be noted, however - as the article points out - that one of the reasons for the apparent superior Canadian performance might be a housing bubble in Canada which could collapse in the following years.

Isn't that the truth! Housing prices are INSANE here even in high unemployment areas. Literally nobody can afford houses right now and the prices are astronomical compared to similar US cities. I work in a cushy government job and still pay almost half my wages to rent a lower income apartment because I could never afford a house. Something has to give!


indeed, our bubble is primed for popping north of the 49th.



mr_bigmouth_502
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25 Apr 2014, 11:08 pm

starvingartist wrote:
DevKit wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
DevKit wrote:
Did you ever wonder why some people are middle class and other are not? Why would anybody have average as their goal in the first place?


Maybe because being rich isn't a realistic goal unless you're born into old money? :roll:


Well as long as your think that way Mr_Big it will always be impossible for you, but not for me since I strongly disagree. Ill put it to you this way, you couldn't walk through an open door if you didnt believe you could.


what about people who don't give a sh** about getting rich or other materialistic concerns? where do we fit into your extremely distorted view of reality?


It would be nice to be rich in some ways, but it isn't a terribly big priority for me. I'd rather have a career I enjoy and live in some cheap apartment than a job that I hate and live in a mansion.



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26 Apr 2014, 4:14 am

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
starvingartist wrote:
DevKit wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
DevKit wrote:
Did you ever wonder why some people are middle class and other are not? Why would anybody have average as their goal in the first place?


Maybe because being rich isn't a realistic goal unless you're born into old money? :roll:


Well as long as your think that way Mr_Big it will always be impossible for you, but not for me since I strongly disagree. Ill put it to you this way, you couldn't walk through an open door if you didnt believe you could.


what about people who don't give a sh** about getting rich or other materialistic concerns? where do we fit into your extremely distorted view of reality?


It would be nice to be rich in some ways, but it isn't a terribly big priority for me. I'd rather have a career I enjoy and live in some cheap apartment than a job that I hate and live in a mansion.


I have 3 jobs that I love. They havent been paying me a living wage and I live at home still and I am almost 28. Thats not just because I have a disability either. I have sacrificed a lot to get to where I am and I am but I'm finally on the brink of pulling ahead. Its insane to think it cant be both. And I have no freaken clue what my statement about the power of the mind has to do with people who dont want to be wealthy.

A lot of people have serious delusions about what being wealthy and successful means, and I cant for the life of me figure out why anyone would shoot for average as their goal.

To say that its about "materialism" further shows just how badly people misunderstand money. Money is a tool, if you think its about materialism that is purely in your mind. I am obligated to my self, my family and those around me to be successful. People believe in me, they have come to expect good results, good service, good products and good a time. You cant help anyone else until you have help your self first.

These ill informed kinds of mindsets that people have are largely responsible for why so many people are doing poorly today. Schools do not teach people the skills that real life demands.



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26 Apr 2014, 5:10 am

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I cant for the life of me figure out why anyone would shoot for average as their goal.


Do you mean 'average' as you conceive of it, or do you mean that people purposely think "I'd prefer to be average"?

Money is as necessary as socio-economic conditions make it. There are reasons I would like to have more money than I do, but if those reasons could be done away with by other means, I'd no longer want that particular 'extra' money.


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Nights_Like_These
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29 Apr 2014, 2:16 am

DevKit wrote:
To say that its about "materialism" further shows just how badly people misunderstand money.



Seriously? lol What else could money be about?

DevKit wrote:
Money is a tool, if you think its about materialism that is purely in your mind.


I would say the money is what is really in our minds, when you think about just how much time and effort people put into earning it, to earn something the human race just made up one day. lol Money is meaningless. I'd rather shoot for some form of happy than for some form of rich, and that doesn't mean I've set 'average' as my goal because I didn't actually set a goal to begin with.



khaoz
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29 Apr 2014, 2:55 am

DevKit wrote:
Did you ever wonder why some people are middle class and other are not? Why would anybody have average as their goal in the first place?


I am perfectly content being "average/normal" Middle class is only a status symbol for people concerned about status. And finding excuses in life to create for themselves the illusion that they are better than someone else, based on how much crap you have in your cave. creating reasons in the brains to accuse other people of being jealous, or lazy. non-productive.....



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29 Apr 2014, 5:04 am

khaoz wrote:
DevKit wrote:
Did you ever wonder why some people are middle class and other are not? Why would anybody have average as their goal in the first place?


I am perfectly content being "average/normal" Middle class is only a status symbol for people concerned about status. And finding excuses in life to create for themselves the illusion that they are better than someone else, based on how much crap you have in your cave. creating reasons in the brains to accuse other people of being jealous, or lazy. non-productive.....


Hell, I'm usually not that upset that I'm poor, as my wife and I wear our genteel poverty as a bohemian badge of pride. It's just when others judge my family and me for said poverty as proof of our alleged mental or moral inferiority that I have a problem.


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01 May 2014, 12:57 am

It does cost more to live in Canada than it does to live in America.


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mr_bigmouth_502
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01 May 2014, 2:39 am

AspieOtaku wrote:
It does cost more to live in Canada than it does to live in America.


How so? We have free healthcare. That alone makes a huge difference for a lot of people.



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01 May 2014, 11:00 am

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
AspieOtaku wrote:
It does cost more to live in Canada than it does to live in America.


How so? We have free healthcare. That alone makes a huge difference for a lot of people.


I know it certainly would for most Americans. I have a friend who years ago had gone bankrupt because of medical bills.


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01 May 2014, 11:02 am

trollcatman wrote:
DevKit wrote:
Did you ever wonder why some people are middle class and other are not? Why would anybody have average as their goal in the first place?


Even if everyone became super wealthy there would still be a middle class. Like median income, it's just a definition. There will always be a person who ears the median income. Now, why would you want your country's middle class to be poorer than another country's middle class?
It is by definition impossible for all citizens to be part of the 1%. If all people strive to become the 1%, only 1% will succeed.


Do people want the middle class in other countries to be poorer than the one in their country?


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01 May 2014, 11:03 am

DevKit wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
DevKit wrote:
Did you ever wonder why some people are middle class and other are not? Why would anybody have average as their goal in the first place?


Maybe because being rich isn't a realistic goal unless you're born into old money? :roll:


Well as long as your think that way Mr_Big it will always be impossible for you, but not for me since I strongly disagree. Ill put it to you this way, you couldn't walk through an open door if you didnt believe you could.


So you honestly think everyone could get rich if they believed they could? :lol: belive you can all you want, but realistically mr_bigmouth is correct getting rich is really not a realistic goal these days. Of course if someone creates something or has an idea that could potentially bring them lots of money they should certainly jump on it and do their best to get there. However the following is how it doesn't work 'you work hard thinking hard work will pay off and you'll eventually move up and become wealthy and then you become wealthy' instead someone like that probably just constantly longs to have more than they do and wonders why all their hard work isn't getting them there. Our system is not set up in such a way that everyone has a chance to get rich, and that people who don't get there simply didn't have the drive to.


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01 May 2014, 1:00 pm

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
AspieOtaku wrote:
It does cost more to live in Canada than it does to live in America.


How so? We have free healthcare. That alone makes a huge difference for a lot of people.


Healthcare costs in the US are tiny compared to housing costs. I live in a low-rent city, and a room in a shared apartment is still at least $300/month.

Even before Obamacare, we had a state health insurance program for the poor that included dental and eye care, and had no co-pay on most prescriptions and visits. They'd send you to Mayo.

I checked when I was 27, and a private insurance policy would have cost me $90-180/month here. There was also a state high-risk pool that was capped at 20% over private insurance rates, so even someone with high medical bills could get coverage for less than what a college student pays to rent a room near campus.



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01 May 2014, 1:02 pm

DevKit wrote:
I have 3 jobs that I love. They havent been paying me a living wage and I live at home still and I am almost 28. Thats not just because I have a disability either. I have sacrificed a lot to get to where I am and I am but I'm finally on the brink of pulling ahead. Its insane to think it cant be both. And I have no freaken clue what my statement about the power of the mind has to do with people who dont want to be wealthy.

A lot of people have serious delusions about what being wealthy and successful means, and I cant for the life of me figure out why anyone would shoot for average as their goal.

To say that its about "materialism" further shows just how badly people misunderstand money. Money is a tool, if you think its about materialism that is purely in your mind. I am obligated to my self, my family and those around me to be successful. People believe in me, they have come to expect good results, good service, good products and good a time. You cant help anyone else until you have help your self first.

These ill informed kinds of mindsets that people have are largely responsible for why so many people are doing poorly today. Schools do not teach people the skills that real life demands.


Not to be offensive but I think you've been brainwashed by Ayn Rand and Horatio Algiers. The hardworking just get worked over hard. Modern western capitalism isn't built on an equation of hardwork = success. If we're talking accumulating massive amounts of capital no amount of hard work is going to trump innovation and moral ambiguity + the desire to f*ck people over. Look at Bill Gates, he was fairly innovative in his time and had absolutely no problem f*cking people in the *ss without lube = money in the bank. Steve Jobs, fairly innovative on his own right but really bent over Wozniak to get ahead. Zuckerberg, same thing. The current era makes the robber barons of the late 1800's look like they were playing paddy cakes.

I mean that's all assuming I accept your premise that money equals success.

Besides, "materialism" is no more of a made-up concept than "money" itself is. Back in the day before currency people made their own goods and traded straight up for other people's goods-- it worked for about six thousand years. Then someday an *sshat came up with the idea of plastering his face on a disk. Then said *sshat claimed that every good in his empire was equivalent with a set amount of the disk with his ugly mug on it and we got currency or "money". The only difference between then and today is that we have a whole host of *sshat's on our money now and we value based on how important the *sshat on said money was. Soon we will remove *sshat's from our money and it will be in a digital form, a number of digits on a computer register. Then we'll have our favorite corporate rapists' logo on a little plastic card and we'll call that "money" and it will be equivalent to actual physical goods. So yeah, money itself is a concept, if we didn't believe it had value then it wouldn't have value-- same thing for the entire market for that matter, it only exists because we believe it does.



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01 May 2014, 1:21 pm

^^^^^^^^^^ I'm sympathetic, but who would you replace those robber barons with?

Our middle class isn't any more honest. They let rich kids with no talent buy their way into our colleges. There are two or three generations of middle class "professionals" who didn't even pretend to study when they were in school, and they feel completely comfortable paying themselves ten times what an equally talented person from a poor background could hope to make.

When I lived out West, we'd sometimes hear a coyote yelping while a mountion lion ate it. I could feel sorry for it, but it's probably eaten rabbits with just as much cruelty. That's how I feel about our middle class: They slept just fine when they were stealing from the poor, and now somebody did it to them. Poor dears :roll:



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01 May 2014, 2:54 pm

NobodyKnows wrote:
^^^^^^^^^^ I'm sympathetic, but who would you replace those robber barons with?
Our middle class isn't any more honest. They let rich kids with no talent buy their way into our colleges. There are two or three generations of middle class "professionals" who didn't even pretend to study when they were in school, and they feel completely comfortable paying themselves ten times what an equally talented person from a poor background could hope to make.
When I lived out West, we'd sometimes hear a coyote yelping while a mountion lion ate it. I could feel sorry for it, but it's probably eaten rabbits with just as much cruelty. That's how I feel about our middle class: They slept just fine when they were stealing from the poor, and now somebody did it to them. Poor dears :roll:


Oh forgot to add Google in my rant, ye of the "do no harm" that only paid a 2.5% tax rate last year due to offshore shenanigans. Anyhow, I agree completely with you about a lot of the middle class as well, there's a bunch of white collar middle class out there that have the same attitude as our current robber barons. Example, throughout the 90's I remember a lot of programmers/techies not really giving a damn about manufacturing going overseas, or even claiming it was good because it lowered costs; but around 2000 when a lot of tech companies started shipping programming jobs to India and China all of a sudden outsourcing was bad. Western society's morals have become corrupt from top to bottom.

The good news is that I see a future where that's not really a problem. In a hundred years I'm going to be so bold as to say I don't think "currency" or "money" are really going to exist. When we have robots that do virtually every task for us and machines that print off any good we want in the comfort of our own homes what need is there for some made-up concept like "money" to prove we're more "valuable" than the next person? I kind of view the future like Star Trek, where Picard mentions: people don't work for "money", they work to better themselves and the community around them.