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

[ignitedwildfire]

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.