[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I don't see it. I think this is something we tell ourselves to self-soothe and so that older generations can justify their avarice in the face of obvious social and economic failures with the generations that follow. Nobody really wants to admit that their legacy is going to be one of them being remembered as a leech. Especially not while they are actually alive. So we keep saying it'll get better just to justify kicking the can further down the road.

While your tone seems a little sanctimonious, I know it comes from a good place.

I'm still having trouble understanding exactly the point you are trying to make, but I'll give it a try...

It sounds like you are saying that the older generations (the silent generation, boomers, gen X) were wrong to fit within society norms of working hard to live a better life so that you could provide a home for yourself and your family (or just yourself, if you didn't have a family), spend your entire productive years paying the bank double the purchase price for a mortgage that you might be able to pay off just as you face a massive reduction in income as you hit your retirement years, and then expect to live in the house that was essentially the most tangible product of your working years.

So these people trundled through the highs and lows of life, with the majority (middle class?) paying their dues to keep the bank and debt collectors away. Meanwhile, while they were busy doing what they were always told they had to do to be an honest, productive person, the world changed around them. They suddenly found that politicians had screwed everybody over by creating a situation whereby housing was now at a shortage, and younger generations (well, everybody) who missed the cut-off date were no longer able to attain housing at prices that only the uber rich could now afford. And suddenly, it became some kind of a sin for regular working schmucks who managed to live to retirement age, to attempt to live your remaining healthy, self-sufficient years in the home that you spent your life trying to keep (for those lucky enough to have been able to do so).

It seems that the target of your ire are the people who were just trying to live their best lives by being hardworking and honest, and whose only failure seems to have been to manage to live to old age. Yet, no solution to the 'problem' is being offered.

As I said previously, if we can balance supply and demand for housing, won't pricing naturally drop? I don't see how having a glut of housing would allow the market to maintain artificially inflated pricing in a democratic capitalist society - sooner or later somebody will get tired of holding onto assets that aren't bringing in a return, and the dominoes will start to fall.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Saying this is all housing massive minimizes the problem given that housing is the primary instrument of both wealth creation and wealth preservation in Canada. Locking large groups out of the housing ladder doesn't just condemn them to poverty. It basically condemns their offspring too. This isn't a minor problem or technicality. It's basically feudalism.

Well, I actually said: "It seems that a large part of this is related to housing."

It confuses me when you say that "housing is the primary instrument of both wealth creation and wealth preservation in Canada". Is it really? I thought housing was a place to live for the vast majority of us. It has always been expensive to buy and maintain, but unless you buy everything cash nothing short of our recently artificially inflated market would ever qualify as an investment, given that the financing costs are huge for most of us.

Also, who is intentionally "Locking large groups out of the housing ladder"? Is it not just the supply/demand thing playing out? Of course I know there were issues with foreign investors (mostly from China?) laundering money through Canadian real estate, and massive influxes of population both temporary and permanent that created the supply issue... but is the average 'old Canadian' responsible for this, or the people who are supposed to be running things for us? I'll answer it for you - the people who were supposed to be running the country fucked it up for all of us.

Again, can you explain to me why increasing housing supply while restricting the flow of 1.5 million new people per year into the country won't bring the housing market back to reality again?

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Does it suck that our old folks are basically house poor millionaires? Yes. That's a result of decades of policy that let them tie their wealth in their homes instead of forcing them to save it.

This literally doesn't make sense to me, because in order to buy a home, most of us had to put everything we earned into it.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Practically speaking, we can't fix this for the Boomers. We should fix it for Millennials though. We can however encourage Boomers to at least support themselves a bit more with that stored up wealth through policies like OAS reform. Nobody needs OAS above say $40k in income. You want a more comfortable retirement at that income level? Maybe it's time to cash out.

...and live your "more comfortable retirement" where? In a tent in a city park? You seem to forget that living 'comfortably' involves having a place to live. And how does this improve the situation for younger generations - the prices are still inflated, so you are only selling the house to a rich person who can actually afford the shit, while the people who don't have houses are still 'locked out of the housing ladder'...

Honestly, how does this not be fixed without massive supply increases combined with demand decreases (by reducing immigration until the market stabiilizes... not by killing off 'old people', or throwing them out on the street (not that you were suggesting this... or at least I hope not).

The more I think of it, there's no need to answer any of my questions... this will just continue into a circular conversation and nothing will be solved (not that it ever would be by a messageboard discussion). What really needs to happen is for regular folks like myself to just stay out of the conversation while the torches and pitchforks are out. I hope some government in the future can turn this country around before it literally becomes a third world nation, as that seems to be the direction in which we are heading.

In a historical sense, maybe that's where we have been heading all along. I mean, the standard of living that had become accepted in Canada was always better than many places in the world, which is why it was always an attractive place to which people wanted to immigrate - to have a chance to create a better life for themselves and their children. But perhaps this was just a temporary situation that was always destined to fall, and its demise was only accelerated by politicians and industry leaders to cash out by moving our productive capabilities overseas, while leaving us with a service economy that doesn't really make anything, other than natural resource extraction/collection.

I guess that's why I always had an aversion to politics - it's all just utter bullshit. And, I discovered, somewhat by accident, that a lot of this is mirrored in internet forum discussions... just on a smaller scale.