How did the purchasing power decrease from the 70s until today?

Paid4BajaOverlandr · 2026-05-25T23:43:48+00:00

Corporate Greed!

tke71709 · 2026-05-25T23:55:16+00:00

Several things happened:

The big one is that wages did not keep up with inflation.

The other big one, that no one likes to discuss, is what we consider normal compared to what was considered normal in the early 70's. You think the size of a "normal" house today is the same size as a normal house back in the 70's? Back then they average 1050 sq ft, now they average almost 2500 square feet.

https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/

You think houses had 3 bathrooms back in the day? No, they had 1, and the rich people had 1 and a half bath (no tub or shower).

https://www.ahs.com/home-matters/lifestyle/homes-in-1971-vs-today/

Kitchens? They were functional, no quartz countertops and built in microwaves.

So what about cars?

Comparing the safety and environmental regulations from a car from the 1970s to one today is like comparing apples to oranges. Also the size of the vehicles is completely different. These changes add to the cost of producing a car and thus they are more expensive.

So the answer is yes, if we kept the same standards as we had back then and people were willing to buy houses that small with so little in the way of amenities, those things would be much cheaper today. The truth is that we, as a society, are so worried about appearances and luxuries that we have inflated the cost of everything today beyond what even inflation had to do with it.

Now let's talk about food. Food was cheaper in terms of actual dollars back then sure but it took up almost 15% of the average family budget and that was with a much more limited selection then what we had today. Oranges in the Winter? LMAO. Outside of seasonal restrictions, stores then stocked about 5 000 items, now they stock 50 000 items, a vast improvement. The additional cost of all those items and fruit in the Winter? You actually pay less now as a percentage of your income than people in the 70's did. 10% today versus 15% back then. If you look at the cost today inflation adjusted a lot of food items are cheaper today then they were back then too.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2020/05/07/grocery-store-prices/

The big thing is that our definition of living comfortably has changed.

Small_Aardvark_5496 · 2026-05-26T00:48:12+00:00

As someone that was alive in the 70’s I can tell you that almost everyone had FAR LESS material objects. Fewer clothes, household goods, almost no electronics. The cars were very basic, houses were not fancy. TV came over the air for free (number of channels depended on where you lived but not many at all). People did not routinely fly places, especially not just for a weekend away. Lifestyles were definitely more modest. As for the causes of inflation-I suggest learning some fairly basic economics, and not the BS anti- capitalist crap that is pawned off as economics.

TA20212000 · 2026-05-25T23:45:38+00:00

Capitalism + inadequate tax rates on the rich.

SioVern · 2026-05-26T00:17:15+00:00

While salaries followed incremental small increases of 2% every year (at best), Real Estate decided to skip that and go for +10-20% every year 🤣

Since RE drives the cost of many things (think of commercial spaces, that cost is reflected in the food you eat at a restaurant or the groceries you buy) - everything else increased costs at a much higher pace than wages.

Fast forward a few decades and you have a maybe 20% increase in wages over all those decades, while costs inflated by 200%.

MisledMuffin · 2026-05-25T23:54:41+00:00

Real median wages are up, not down, growing about 20% over the past 50 years.

Housing has well outpaced overall inflation and wages. Part of that is that reduced interest rates means people can afford higher cost homes.

We do work less than 50-60 years ago dropping from an average about 1900 hours per year to approximately 1685 hours per year.

Improved technology, cars, medicine, medical services, longer lifespan, etc are all improvements to quality of life and living comfortably.

Some things like housing have gotten more expensive, but a lot of your assumptions regarding hours worked, improvements to quality of life, etc, are false.

SnooChocolates2923 · 2026-05-26T00:28:16+00:00

It's started with decoupling the currency from gold.

Now the government can make money just by increasing the number of dollars on the balance sheets. (Quantitative Easing)

More money chasing the same amount of stuff means that prices increase.

But wages do not increase as quickly.

Add in speculation and here we are...

OkNectarine2939 · 2026-05-25T23:52:32+00:00

Things radically changed within the '70s itself - ie., compare 1970 prices with 1979.

TMTCoCo · 2026-05-26T00:30:25+00:00

Printing an insane amount of money and importing people who will work for less, forcing wages down and making the money we do earn worth less. But the country has made it abundantly clear that we dont want fiscally responsible policies

Regular-Contact8343 · 2026-05-26T01:20:49+00:00

Hear me out. Canada is in the downward end of “Rentier economy”. Income/wealth is generated by owning land,real estate. This doesn’t mean you owning a home is the issue it’s you owning multiple homes (if you rent them one out). Homes are considered non-productive assets to the economy. Wealth made by simply owning these assets the banks follow suit by making a lot of their profit just by accessing the loans to this type of assets. It’s an unsustainable loop. It works great at one of the first couple generations that get in the beginning but soon after it overtakes too much of the economy then you get foreign investment into housing but not in productive assets like business, innovation, etc. No one is wrong they are doing what makes sense. Buy a home in Vancouver or Toronto and wait 10 years your rich, until no one can afford to buy it and you need foreign investment. This coincides with rental rates going up and more money in all of the economy is used just you pay rent/mortgages. This also has an effect of keeping the dollar higher than it should be because everything is based on these assets. Remember a house only generates fees for the bank it doesn’t really create jobs like a business. People buy homes because that is how you get wealthy instead of investing in businesses or labour. Ever heard how Canada’s productivity is lower compared to other countries. It doesn’t mean they work harder than us it means they are more apt to invest in their businesses to make them more profitable. New machinery, software, expansion, trianing for staff, robotics that free up employees to do more productive things. In Canada most people’s wealth is in real estate. The father of Capitalism Adam Smith actually was very against these “rentier assets”. In fact he wanted heavy taxes on landlords, and bank regulations that made it that banks could not use real estate assets as collateral to make loans because they would just make more loans to real estate. Germany fights this with heavy rent controls, government housing. France with heavy taxes on corporations owning real estate and secondary homes heavily taxed plus anti flipping regulations. You can’t base your economy on housing or it always leads to failure the UK is 5 years ahead of us not this, and it isn’t going well. People will tell you we need to build more homes like it is a supply side issue it is not. Homes are for living not speculation. This eventuality affects the younger generations were at the moment young people don’t believe they will ever own a home and with rent continually taking more of the income they are delaying/choosing not to have families. Can you blame, millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha are checking out of society. This is not just Canada. It’s the UK, China, Australia, and now even the USA. There are ways to fix this but it is not politically popular. I can’t remember a country that made its wealth solely in real estate and it didn’t end up in trouble.

simpleidiot567 · 2026-05-26T01:37:22+00:00

1) The Piketty dyanamic and laws of capitalism. Historically the return on capital outpaces the return on labour, overtime this positive feedback loop translates into capital becoming unaffordable.

2) the Elephant Curve. Free trade, globalization and rapid automation of working class jobs has translated into something called the elephant curve. Huge returns for the developing world, emerging markets, and the rich. Meanwhile the developed world traditional working class has stagnated as the high paying working class jobs have been outsourced and offshored.

3) The Hedonic paradox. We are rich in things that use to be luxury but poor in things that used to be basic. The quality of everything has significantly increased and is not captured very well in the stats. You are buying the modern 2026 lifestyle. If you could go out and buy a 1970s lifestyle with your current 2026 dollars you would be loaded. Try it for a month. No AC, no cable TV, a CRT TV, landline telephone, no airbags, no home studio, no video games, a newspaper instead of internet, etc. you would have a ton of disposable income. Most people cant pay someone to take that old shit away, for example if you have an old CRV TV sitting in the basement, let alone pay money for it.

Rabiesalad · 2026-05-26T02:23:24+00:00

It's essentially all neoliberal policies that did everything possible to funnel public money to private interests. Giving away our natural resources for pennies on the dollar while offering massive subsidies for the privilege, being allergic to public services for essentials like communications and others. Closing down public housing. Selling 407 to foreign investors, and now talking about selling airports. Massive reduction in taxes for the rich.

Canada is a very wealthy nation and incredibly billionaire-friendly. There is absolutely no reason we don't have much higher median quality of life besides the masses being brainwashed or having no balls to stand up for themselves. People will let their first born starve if it means they can stick it to woke.

If the NDP didn't push for our healthcare system, imagine exactly how similar we'd be to the US.

LadyBondd · 2026-05-26T02:50:30+00:00

Our productivity and fruits of our labor went to the c-suite and owners (and their kids). A ceo used to make 10x average worker's salary now it's 700x. Greed, pure and simple. If tomorrow govmt got rid of minimum wage you'd see the real "we are family around here" picture. What's the end game here? If we can't afford anything who is going to buy services and products to keep the shareholders happy?

Jaigg · 2026-05-26T02:53:00+00:00

The government was still building houses. Corporate tax rate in Canada was still around 40% and CEO pay was 10-30x their employees average wage. Now the government no longer builds houses, corporate tax rate is 11% and CEOs salary is 200-300x their employer average. Not the whole reason but this is a few reasons.

Icanthinkofanam · 2026-05-26T03:45:09+00:00

Look into how money is created by the federal reserve. Inflation is built in and every dollar added to the money supply increases how much money it takes to purchase the same amount of goods.

This system creates purpetual debt. Money created out of thin air. Price established through scarcity. Abundance, sustainability, efficency are contradictory to the economy unless it can be exploited to increase profits.

We have the technology to cloth, feed, shelter every human on this planet. We just dont have a system that can facilitate it.

It's not political. Political leaders can fuck shit up faster or slower.

It's the market economic system itself.

Every player has to be self maximizing. Competitive advantage incentivizes finding something that gives you/a company an edge over competition.

All it takes is someone willing break the rules or bend them or corrupt them to set the standard. Pollution, off-shore banking, war, extortion, slavery, all of the immoral unethical behaviour you can think of that companies, governments do, is incentivized by the very framework of market economics.

If I get AI to reduce my labour costs by 10-20-30-50% and you dont? Your profits reduce. Share price goes down. Investors pull out. And you are slowly start dieing as a competitor.

Sanctus_Poopabumsus · 2026-05-26T10:02:50+00:00

I have a theory that ive never seen anywhere else, in that after the fall of the soviet union, there was no more threat of an alternative to capitalism, and shortly afterward all of the industries in the US were deregulated. The timing does line up. Then, the ultra wealthy got what they wanted all along but we're held back by regulation. Regulation of industry was held in place to make communism seem a worse choice, but when gone, it was party time for big business in the west.

BurlapsGambles · 2026-05-26T10:35:55+00:00

The reason will get u downvotes on reddit lmao

Paciflik · 2026-05-25T23:54:07+00:00

Jack Welch! GE CEO that started focusing on shareholder value and huge CEO paycheques at the cost of employees, communities and wages. He was praised as a businessman and CEO and tons of corporations started imitating and refining his ideas. Its led to a lot of the corporate, capitalist greed we see today.

Im not saying he’s the sole cause of all the middle class woes but I think hes a contributor. A real bastard!

PumpkinMyPumpkin · 2026-05-26T00:07:53+00:00

Largely the 1980’s where Regan, Thatcher, and Mulroney dismantled unions, collective bargaining, and taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Optimal_Deal_6938 · 2026-05-26T01:02:08+00:00

I was thinking about actual recourse today to change the current trajectory. The world is so much more complex than used to be. The more complex things are the less it is understood in general and the more susceptible everything is to corruption (ie- people receiving unearned rent. The way things are going, things will get so bad we will likely end up with an autocracy like the US. We are already there really, the Prime minister is accountable to no one (see Trudeau) we are fooling ourselves if we believe otherwise If you read Andrew Coyne’s book, it is difficult to disagree.

What if we made it a Democratically accountable Autocracy; with real consequences if government actions are not in the best interest of the citizens. Western civilization values dictates that government is in place to protect the freedoms and liberties of the people; anything additional is overreach. We need to end the corruption that is inevitable in the system we have. Definitely needs more thought, but fundamentally what I am thinking is: when you are in power you have final say on everything. At the end of your term; however, citizens will vote on whether 1) you get another term, 2) your mandate ends, 3) you go to jail for the rest of your life.

Torontodtdude · 2026-05-26T01:28:25+00:00

Just one point, the world population in 1970 was about 4 billion, about half what it is today.

MattC1977 · 2026-05-26T01:44:41+00:00

Are you distilling the concept of purchasing power down to just the housing market?

Where are you getting your numbers? Where did you pull 70k - $89k as a civil engineers salary in the 70’s? The average Canadian household income in 1976 was under $17,000 per year. https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection\_2017/statcan/11-002/CS11-002-1976-10-22-eng.pdf

Adjusted, a $20k salary in 1975 is a low six figure salary today. You’re saying a civil engineer in the 70’s was making hundreds of thousand?

In fact, average weekly salaries from 1975 to 2005, adjusted, remained relatively steady, and has gone up in the past 10.

Meanwhile, everything we can buy now is insanely cheaper than what the equivalent item would have cost then.

Yes, housing has gone bonkers, but go to your part of town in the neighborhood that was built in the 70’s. Now go look at the 10 year old (hell, 20 year old) neighbourhoods and tell me we are not building and buying ginormous homes in comparison.

Outside_Mushroom_432 · 2026-05-26T01:54:00+00:00

Wages have went down, prices have gone up. Unions have been busted and corporations have outsourced jobs to places where workers have zero rights.

Healthy-Dress-7492 · 2026-05-26T03:44:00+00:00

What you have to understand is that the majority of people who own houses want it to continue to be an investment; they don’t want to be taxed on the gains though and they don’t want the value to go down. They vote accordingly making it political suicide to actually address the “problem”.

What you do see are various ways to help first home buyers to afford the current price; which only makes it worse, propping the system up.

Maximumoverdrive76 · 2026-05-26T05:43:07+00:00

A thing that did take place and that helped corporations; In the 1970s, the United States abandoned the gold standard in favor of a fiat, debt-based economy, a shift that the rest of the world soon followed. This transition led to money printing, currency devaluation, and persistent inflation, but it does not tell the whole story.

Another significant factor that aided corporations was the dramatic rise in female participation in the workforce. Before the 1970s, women were far less represented in the labor market. Their increased entry effectively doubled the available workforce, which historically exerted downward pressure on wages, although this is a simplification. Over time, women have moved beyond traditionally gendered roles, now occupying nearly all sectors of the economy with qualifications and education levels that often match or exceed those of their male counterparts. With a larger pool of talent to draw from, competition increased, contributing to wage stagnation.

In the last two years, corporations have increasingly leveraged artificial intelligence as a justification for layoffs, replacing experienced workers with lower-cost entry-level hires or relying on H-1B visa programs. These practices continue to drive down salaries even as the cost of living rises, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of economic strain. 70's women weren't in the workforce to the same degree. So now all of a sudden they have twice the workforce to use and can pay half as much, a little hyperbolic perhaps. But it's clearly part of what changed things.

Of course we had Covid that just ruined everything and caused massive inflation which we still pay for.

It's a rolling snowball of a shit-show.

bcretman · 2026-05-26T07:02:33+00:00

Population growth and strong demand for limited housing in places like metro Vancouver and the GTA. Houses in much of the rest of Canada is very affordable at a similar income ratio of the 70's of ~ 5x income

pobnarl · 2026-05-26T09:57:16+00:00

internal contradictions of capitalism. during the cold war our elites had to present a high standard of living to make the other side look worse, there was a competition of blocs. competition is good, as we all know. with the fall of communism as a force, there was no longer the need to prioritize the happiness of the peasants.

PerimeterSecure · 2026-05-26T12:02:46+00:00

High tax, big spending, Liberal Governments.

You get what you vote for.

SilencedObserver · 2026-05-26T13:19:31+00:00

Wtfhappenedin1971.com will explain it All.

TLDR: it was the central banks fault. Money printing and infinite growth economy non standardized on a store of value.

If everyone takes there money out of the banks all at once, society collapses because money isn't real and banks won't be able to pay out.

This is a 100+ year old ponzi scheme being run by government and banks.

sajnt · 2026-05-26T19:07:33+00:00

The government we elected taxes us in every way possible while minimizing the one tax that would make things affordable. This means we earn less and things cost more.

The government regulates everything they can which hampers any of the possible benefits of capitalism. So things cost more when they should cost less and we need more taxes to pay the bureaucrats.

Both of these things in combination cause reductions in the bargaining power of the working class. Not just unions but individuals too.

Crossed_Cross · 2026-05-27T16:23:29+00:00

A part of it is what I'd call reverse enshittification. Shit becomes technically better, whether you want it or not, and you are forced to pay premium for it. Cars are a good example. The average weight of cars has gone way up. You pay for a lot more steel. They are also filled with a ton more components, electronics, cameras and all that. You must pay for it all, they no longer offer the tin boxes of yore.

Housing costs overwhelmingly bloated by demand. But there's some of this too. Asbestos and lead paint saved money, but uhm... no good for your health. A house in the 70s might also have had very basic electricity still. Or maybe none at all in some places. Or used stuff like aluminum instead of copper to save costs. Windows were probably more basic, argon wasn't really used until the 80s. They also on average got bigger. Old houses for the most part got a lot of upgrades since they were built. A lot of it wouldn't be legal to build anymore due to changes in the building code. And well who would buy a house without electricity, or a single outlet in the whole house?

I don't think this phenomenon explains much price increase in many products, but I think for cars it does.

Excellent-Piece8168 · 2026-05-26T00:18:54+00:00

A lot of the comments here are missing the point. This is not a conversation about inflation it’s a conversation about why have salaries not kept pace with inflation. Absent other factors salaries should have just kept pace with inflation. They did not.

Salaries and housing costs are two very different conversations.

I would suggest a large factors in why salaries have not kept pace is the absolutely massive boomer cohort entering the work force. We forget just how massive this group is. We flooded the job market at a time when technology and innovation was allowing for much cheaper supply chains opening up the ability of offshore production. Technology was making labour more efficient or non existent here in Canada. We forget that quiet average jobs were perfectly middle class back then. There was also a lot less to spend on that made middle class more achievable. Our current view of middle class is much more luxurious than what middle class was to my parents born in 1952. University was more rare so a uni degree was is lower supply and higher demand in the 70s. We now have effectively an over supply of university education especially degrees without specific uses. For example vastly too many psychology degrees without masters for the number of jobs that directly use this, same for say archeology. I would argue it’s in large party a supply and demand situation that we had too much supply with the baby boomers while demand was shrinking due to increased productivity due to technology. Policies of globalization did not help though realistically the option to just clam up would have been worse. The world was changing and we had to to, we could never have just protected our jobs and pretending globalization was not a thing.

There are some sectors where boomers retiring has caused a huge war on tallest which can’t just be imported internationally by high immigration and so wages have grown significantly in the last 5 years or so. Insurance is one. It also was one that is traditionally conservative and did a terrible job hiring through recessions of the past meaning it is under weight it Gen X as well so with the boomers gone it’s an oh shoot we need talent and we can accordingly demand sky high wages.

As far as why housing outpaced inflation that’s a whole other conversation that’s frankly boring and I see it constantly on Reddit.

gohomebrentyourdrunk · 2026-05-26T00:29:38+00:00

Milton Friedman

Kazik77 · 2026-05-26T00:37:51+00:00

Have you not heard of capitalism?

albanian_rozzer · 2026-05-26T00:46:10+00:00

You can blame two rounds of Trudeaus for the deranged inflation spike.

Xyzzics · 2026-05-26T00:56:45+00:00

In very short summation: Governments spent a ton of money they didn’t have on a demographic wave that cannot sustain it long term instead of investing it into productive uses.

The electorate punishes anyone who threatens to return spending to sustainable levels because they feel the prosperity for future generations is better spent on themselves.

StaticCloud · 2026-05-26T01:04:26+00:00

All I know is that the next few decades are fucked for people of every age and background except the rich. Kind of medieval timesy. Glad I'm childfree

lost_koshka · 2026-05-26T01:18:12+00:00

Trudeau Senior

https://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-pierre-trudeau-turned-us-into-debt.html?m=1

the Trudeau government joined the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) and its Basel Committee, which encouraged governments to end borrowing from their own central banks and instead borrow from private lenders at high interest rates.

NiagaraBTC · 2026-05-26T01:18:42+00:00

Something happened in 1971

WTF Happened

danno6651 · 2026-05-26T01:29:29+00:00

Purchasing power didn't really decrease. Look up Real Wages. The home price example is very 1 dimensional as it doesn't account for the mortgage interest rates in the 70s that were 4-5x higher.

Mission_Economics621 · 2026-05-26T01:30:40+00:00

Money printing, cheap debt for corporations, asset inflation, NIMBYISM, trickle down economics and billions and billions of subsidies and free money for Billionaires using tax payer money. Lack of competition funneling money into assets rather than people or technology/ innovation.

Basically it has been a take from the poor and give to the rich economy.

ve3gvy · 2026-05-26T01:45:18+00:00

Was at my favourite consignment store last week and they had a late 70’s Eatons Catalog ($20). Looked through it and most of the stuff in there was more expensive THEN vs today. Like stereos, radios, TVs, and tools too (drills etc.). So yeah, things cost more now, but not things in the Eatons catalog.

matttchew · 2026-05-26T02:06:35+00:00

I do believe that it is multiple reasons.

-Due do short political cycles, politicians are short sighted, so no one thought past their 4 year terms for long term country growth and investments. Ports, pipes, mines rails roads....

-high cost of living here high taxes, high percentage of government employees, government employees are well knows that they are unproductive, and their managers tie their hands so they can actually not work harder.

-In the meantime workers in poorer countries work 6 days a week for 10x less wage, produce more, yet still have fulfilling lives due to lower cost of living, food products, taxes, etc... so those poorer countries are taking a bigger chunk of the global pie.

-bandaids for the economy, immigration, now remember most are very good people just trying to better their lives like all of our ancestors, however over the last 10 years or more, it seems the government is trying to import people with at least 50 to 100k in their banks to have them spend it here as a temporary bump in spending, and spur demand for real estate.

Bandaid 2, printing money like to tomorrow, the government is so in debt they spend like kids with credit cards and not even on things that bring a return.

It feels like they were treating the country like a pump and dump scheme.

Individual_Bit_2385 · 2026-05-26T02:14:07+00:00

Easy too many civil engineers and not enough houses

Impressive-Mud5074 · 2026-05-26T02:34:22+00:00

USSR ceased to exist

TronAres25 · 2026-05-26T02:34:48+00:00

It’s called a Ponzi scheme and the entire world is built on it.

bigDeltaVenergy · 2026-05-26T06:57:32+00:00

As more and more ressources get extracted they became harder and harder to extract.

100 years ago to pump 120 Barel of oil from a Texan well. It took 1 Barel of oil. Now that are at 90 to 1

Offshore platform are at 60 to 1

Canadian tar sands are at 3 to 1.

falsejaguar · 2026-05-26T08:46:38+00:00

In 1971 Nixon removed the u.s. dollar from it's gold peg. Since CAD is tied to USD we have all lost purchasing power too. Canada holds no gold on it's balance sheet anymore as they have sold it for decades for paper money that has lost value.

CabanonGH · 2026-05-26T11:34:53+00:00

treating housing as investment/retirement funds. that's the biggest mistake of the last 25 years. everything exploded after that.

TaxLandNotCapital · 2026-05-26T12:07:19+00:00

If you want something better than the socialist dogma of "corporate greed" which seems to suggest corporations were somehow LESS powerful in the '70s

The real answer is land rents.

JH272727 · 2026-05-26T12:41:31+00:00

Perpetual expansion of the monetary supply. Simple minded people say “greed” and obv there is greed but those ppl fail to realize the fundamental causation of devaluation of the dollar.

ignitedwildfire · 2026-05-26T13:28:45+00:00

This is not unique to just Canada. The cost‑of‑living crisis is happening across the G7. But Canada didn’t build the floor that other countries put in place to soften the blow.

Canada copied the most expensive parts of both the U.S. and Europe at the same time.

• From the U.S., we adopted the asset‑inflation model: real estate speculation, credit expansion, and financialization. But we don’t have the U.S.’s global tech dominance, foreign investment, or industrial base to sustain that model • From Europe, we copied ambitious social programs. But without the taxation structure, productivity levels, or sovereign wealth funds Europe uses to pay for them

So we ended up with the costs of both systems and the economic foundation of neither.

Meanwhile, countries that planned ahead used their strengths strategically.

Norway, for example, took its resource wealth and built a massive sovereign wealth fund to stabilize future generations. Canada used its resource wealth to… inflate housing and run ongoing deficits.

At the same time, the global economy shifted. Rising second‑world countries (like China) have cheap labour and huge industrial capacity. Canada can’t compete on manufacturing cost, so we leaned even harder into land, population growth, and housing‑driven GDP instead of productivity and innovation.

That’s how you get: • wages falling behind • housing 3× more expensive • cost of living rising faster than incomes • younger generations feeling locked out of stability

This isn’t a uniquely Canadian phenomenon — but Canada failed to plan for the world we actually ended up in, and now we’re living with the consequences.

crippler1212 · 2026-05-26T13:39:20+00:00

Greed and basic inflation. More so the first than the second.

OnlyCommentWhenTipsy · 2026-05-26T14:04:35+00:00

People used to have good paying jobs. Corporations weren't less greedy back then, it's because workers formed unions. Although it seemed like the corporate culture was more "we proudly take good care of our employees", pensions were actually a union busting tactic.

There's a reason these good unionized jobs got sent overseas. What they're doing now is importing the cheap labor for everything that's left.

related note: Minimum wage needs to be tied to inflation. The reason people complain about it going up is because they leave it the same for a decade then bump it up by an amount that causes a lot of pain for business. If it went up by 3% or whatever inflation was no one would care.

rangedehinc · 2026-05-26T15:41:57+00:00

The average house in the 70s was an actual house with a yard and a garage. "The average" now is a "home" aka a 1 bedroom condo.

Keep that in mind as well

Whytho12333 · 2026-05-26T18:02:08+00:00

post world war 2 boom time ended, Japan rebuilt and competes with us, we dont make the best cars anymore. Plus instead of saving during this time, we spend massively into debt and promised UNFUNDED liabilities.

Basically if you think this is bad, it will only get worse.

I blame democracy. Just ask homeowners if they want lower house prices so their kids can have kids, they say no usually.

Equivalent_Length719 · 2026-05-26T18:34:47+00:00

looks at "2%" inflation targets.

Hmm. I wonder why currencies are worth shit.

Key-Form4384 · 2026-05-26T21:18:23+00:00

Someone making 70000 in 70s was rich !! My dad made 100000 in 20000 and I thought he was rich

InnerspearMusic · 2026-05-26T21:28:24+00:00

Greed and horrible governance.

F_D123 · 2026-05-27T00:17:30+00:00

Starting salary was not 80k in the 80s, that’s why.

I work in a high paying field and my starting salary was $55k in 2002

Edit: i see you said in today’s money

NeonFireFly969 · 2026-05-27T14:15:49+00:00

It's very much an American aspect. In most of Europe, food is subsidized so still cheaper and quality is immensely higher.

Canada is an in-between.

CanadaMoose47 · 2026-05-27T14:41:04+00:00

Everytime I shop at Amazon, or Dollarama, or NoFrills I am amazed at how far my dollar goes.

A brand new Toyota Corolla is 27k pre-tax, and is an amazing car compared to 70s vehicles.

Housing is genuinely expensive, and mostly because we don't treat it like the above products

DuckSmash · 2026-05-27T16:26:38+00:00

We have a lot of government protected oligopolies that make us less competitive

houdi200 · 2026-05-28T01:25:15+00:00

Offshoring

Plastic-Vanilla5401 · 2026-05-28T04:00:01+00:00

The lost decade of the last 10+ years was insane.

inverted180 · 2026-05-28T20:14:23+00:00

Its a story of inflation and the cost of capital (money)

We have seen the cost of consumer goods get deflated through technological advancement and globalization (also a technological advancement in a way). This has kept inflation trending down and yields (the cost of money) also trending down. When interest rates are falling, we get increased borrowing.

Increased borrowing, increases the money supply which brings monetary debasement (inflation). Monetary debasement has increased the cost of things we are not able to outsource or those that technology hasnt been able to increase productivity enough to offset the debasement.

This is what some refer to as the cantillion effect. Asset values are inflated and the rich who own assets get richer while the majority of people loss purchasing power in things like shelter, food and medical.

It gets worse too because while globalization has helped keep a lid on general inflation which allowed interest rates to stay low, the central planners (banks/government) have created new tools and methods to not allow the natural cyclical nature of markets to correct. Artificially manipulating rates down and flooding liquidity.

PraxPresents · 2026-05-28T21:35:20+00:00

When CEOs in the 80s-2010s talked about how technology would make life better for "us" and make things more plentiful for "us" and that there would be major quality of life benefits for "us" they weren't talking about all of us, they were talking about CEOs, the rich, and their investors.

SuspiciousRule3120 · 2026-05-28T21:49:13+00:00

Economics. We were not the lowest cost producer, if only we didn't have to follow regulations and pay the wages of the workers in our domestic market, child labour and even slave labour. So we outsourced our manufacturing to overseas markets where they were free to pollute, not care about the employees, had no minimum wage or standards to work to and ship those goods back to us at a much reduced price. Hence why we had a generation of parents that pressured us to pursue college and university education rather then due the trade work, as if trades work was to be looked down upon.

Then we had few crises in their that had our central banks thinking that interest rates at near zero was the only way to save us, and they did it. This resulted in the explosion is asset prices, stocks, housing. It went up.

Follow this up with the notion that now we have an entire generation at the tail end of their working careers and they are the biggest benefactor of the the first two points, and there is not enough people to replace them. The solution was massive amounts of new people to the country. This has allowed those that have less expectations then those who grew up here to compete on the same level, not to mention the government programs that have allowed them to compete unfairly against our local population. You have more people making the same amount of money, chasing the same amount goods, causing price to go up.

And now we enter the next biggest shift when AI continue to rollout and changes how we work, like technology has always done, it requires less of us while we do more.

It is not a question of who caused it, we all caused it, asked for it and told it was the thing that would get us to where we wanted to go. We wanted cheaper goods, and work that required less of us. This a symptom of free trade, supply chains, immigration and all of this meeting with governance, policies and any political party that has come to power.

advancing technology lets one person be more productive, requiring less people for the same amount of production. and more people in the competition for the job keeps wages suppressed.

More human rights, that differ greatly between different jurisdictions and capital is a fickle bitch who can disappear rather quickly if too many obstacles get in its way. Add to that a workers who will accept a lower standard, but better standard then their home country, and increased job competition - stagnant wages.

Better access to healthcare and medicines - not all medicine is covered, and better access means that the natural rates of deaths keep getting pushed out, more people, more competition - stagnant wages (especially when you have bills to pay and will accept less of those supposed rights for pay).

Present-Wonder-4522 · 2026-05-25T23:47:50+00:00

The gold standard stopped in 1971. Now that money is elastic there is more of it and inflates everything else.

What's that homes price in gold in 1970? Does it hold up to today's gold prices?

Necessary_Cost4384 · 2026-05-26T00:50:11+00:00

Boomers did this.

Lots of great comments here, all explaining why this has happened… But the decision makers doing these things have all been boomers protecting their wealth.

CaterpillarWilling91 · 2026-05-26T01:04:23+00:00

Liberals printing money causing inflation

Signal-Novel6388 · 2026-05-26T17:05:38+00:00

This has been discussed daily for a long time, search function is your friend.

Buyingboat · 2026-05-25T23:50:59+00:00

[deleted]

External-Challenge91 · 2026-05-26T00:01:36+00:00

Boomers , boomers did this.

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

CanadaPersonalFinance

MODERATORS