National Economy

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by ainvan

https://posts.voronoiapp.com/economy...-3-Metrics-617

We fare poorly on these metrics (especially when stacked against Australia, which I found to be extremely expensive both times that I have visited). At the same time, I dislike seeing city-states represented, as they do not have hinterlands to support, which almost always bring down the national figures. Luxembourg is not a city-state, but very nearly so. Singapore? Come on. Qatar has no residents (only a tenth of its population are citizens: the population of Qatar is 2.6 million, with only 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and with the other 2.3 million as expatriates).

There is also a massive disparity across different rankings by different outfits. The overall size of Canada's economy has apparently surpassed that of Italy, despite the latter having 19 million more people (not a trivial rounding error!).

[svlt]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

We fare poorly on these metrics (especially when stacked against Australia, which I found to be extremely expensive both times that I have visited). At the same time, I dislike seeing city-states represented, as they do not have hinterlands to support, which almost always bring down the national figures. Luxembourg is not a city-state, but very nearly so. Singapore? Come on. Qatar has no residents (only a tenth of its population are citizens: the population of Qatar is 2.6 million, with only 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and with the other 2.3 million as expatriates).

There is also a massive disparity across different rankings by different outfits. The overall size of Canada's economy has apparently surpassed that of Italy, despite the latter having 19 million more people (not a trivial rounding error!).

Yeah I would be inclined to agree, sure you can always look at the Luxembourgs, Monacos and Liechtensteins and think "what are they doing right?" but realize almost no country can replicate those metrics with their geography. Also, fun fact, but I would wager most wouldn't think Iceland was significantly smaller (by population) than Luxembourg given relative popularities of these countries.

It's really something like the Nordic European countries (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark), a couple of western European countries (Switzerland and Netherlands), USA and Australia that I would say have some clear economic advantages over Canada. That's more than a handful, sure, but it isn't vast swaths of the world, even the Western world by any means. And among those, I personally only think Australia, and only if you're in the top 30% of income earners, USA, would bring a higher QOL.

[WarrenC12]

Inflation at 2.9% for January, below economists' consensus.

Canada's annual inflation rate slowed to 2.9 per cent in January, mostly due to a deceleration in the price of gas, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

Economists were expecting the rate to come in at 3.3 per cent.

Gas prices fell four per cent year over year in January after driving headline inflation up to 3.4 per cent in December, due to what economists call a base-year effect (the impact of comparing prices in a given month to the same month a year earlier).

The core inflation rate, which strips away gasoline and other volatile sectors, was 3.2 per cent.

However, mortgage interest costs continued to be the No. 1 driver of inflation, at a year-over-year rate of 27.4 per cent, while rent price growth ticked up to 7.9 per cent.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/inf...2024-1.7119796

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Inflation at 2.9% for January, below economists' consensus.



https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/inf...2024-1.7119796

Let's take a look at what that's built on:
1) lower gas prices (notoriously volatile)
20 lower flights: news that Flair & Lynx might merge and AC worrying about the cost of a new pilot labour agreement mean that won't be low for long
3) that leaves lower clothing costs

The cost of wage increases has barely begun to ripple through the economy but housing pimps are desperately anxious to say lower rates are just around the corner!

[kwoldtimer]

The price of soup and bacon dropped too! Actually, it's an unexpected pleasure to see the rate of food inflation slowing down.

[GreaterMontréal]

Even if they drop the rates some, prices won't go higher that much. The BOC will react once again when the economy will stall this summer. They will sharply drop the rates in 2025-2026. We know that it takes 2 years to feel the effects of a rate change. In Quebec most new projects are rentals. Every city in Southern Quebec is now looking to density its territory.

Province of Quebec (urban centers of at least 10,000) SFH (construction projections)

2023 : 6,187 (new record) low
2024 : 6,800
2025 : 7,500

population change from 2023 to 2025, probably 500,00 - 600,000

So about 1 SFH built for every 25-30 new people. Be ready to see rental towers going up everywhere across the province.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

At the same time, I dislike seeing city-states represented, as they do not have hinterlands to support, which almost always bring down the national figures. Luxembourg is not a city-state, but very nearly so. Singapore? Come on. Qatar has no residents (only a tenth of its population are citizens: the population of Qatar is 2.6 million, with only 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and with the other 2.3 million as expatriates).

There is also a massive disparity across different rankings by different outfits. The overall size of Canada's economy has apparently surpassed that of Italy, despite the latter having 19 million more people (not a trivial rounding error!).

On the surface, these arguments seem valid but on closer inspection they don't hold up. The vast majority of Canada is urban. Per capita income in Ontario/Quebec should mirror what we see in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc. but it's massively lower. Same goes for Vancouver vs Seattle.

Our hinterlands are vast but very few Canadians live in places like that. It also bears mentioning that many of these isolated places have GDP per capita (nominal) far higher than the national average. They bring the Canadian figure up, not down. NWT, Nunavut, Yukon, and Newfoundland sit well above the national average. Northern Ontario does as well actually.

Canadian GDP per capita (2022 and CDN$)

NWT: $124,740
Nunavut: $117,402
Alberta: $101,818
Yukon: $89,511
Newfoundland & Labrador: $76,601
British Columbia: $73,785
Canada: $72,249
Ontario: $69,215
Quebec: $62,913
Manitoba: $61,221
Prince Edward Island: $56,801
New Brunswick: $54,969
Nova Scotia: $53,034

Canada used to sit far higher up these tables. In 1970, Canada ($4,100) had GDP per capita (Nominal) higher than Switzerland ($3,925). In 1977, our figure ($8,813) was more than double that of the UK ($4,138). Over the last 40 years, Canada has consistently fallen down these tables. Our manufacturing sector imploded, but unlike the US, we've been unable to replace those high paying jobs with high paying tech jobs. Our productivity (dollar output/hour worked) is abysmal and has not kept pace.

I do agree that Canada surpassing Italy is an accomplishment but shouldn't we be comparing ourselves to best in class rather than one of the economic laggards of western Europe? California (similar population to Canada) has an economy larger than that of the UK.

We shouldn't be making excuses about vast geography when the vast majority of us live in fairly dense compact regions. The Windsor - Quebec City corridor, the Lower Mainland, and the Edmonton - Calgary corridor (actually quite wealthy). As a highly urbanized country, there's no reason Canada ($53,247 per capita in 2023) couldn't attain similar GDP per capita as California ($100,038 in 2023). We should, at the very least, be able to get close to that figure instead of the gargantuan gulf that currently exists.

Tech, tv/film, tourism, professional services, aerospace. These are the industries that create wealth in California but they're also industries Canada has a strong foundation in. Moving up these tables requires us to properly exploit them. We need more companies like Shopify and Bombardier and the creation of homegrown versions of Tesla, Nvidia, Google, and Disney. This is where we fall down.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...mestic_product
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._1970_and_1979
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...itories_by_GDP

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Over the last 40 years, Canada has consistently fallen down these tables. Our manufacturing sector imploded, but unlike the US, we've been unable to replace those high paying jobs with high paying tech jobs. Our productivity (dollar output/hour worked) is abysmal and has not kept pace.
...As a highly urbanized country, there's no reason we couldn't attain similar GDP per capita as California.

I'm not denying that a large chunk of GDP growth in the US has come from large tech firms capturing value around the world and transferring that money to the US, but I don't think that this money was spent on tech worker salaries. Tech workers are paid well relative to to other professions, but there aren't many of them.

Tech, tv/film, tourism, professional services, etc. These are the industries that create wealth in California but they also happen to be industries we have a good foundation in. Moving up these tables requires us to properly exploit them. We need more companies like Shopify and Bombardier and the creation of homegrown versions of Tesla, Nvidia, Google, and Disney. This is where we fall down.

We may create a few unicorns in niche applications and even another company on the scale of a Shopify, but we will never create a Canadian competitor to Google. Much larger advanced economies like Japan and Germany have not pulled this off, either. There really are only two countries that have been able to support powerful tech giants: the United States and China.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

1) lower gas prices (notoriously volatile)
20 lower flights: news that Flair & Lynx might merge and AC worrying about the cost of a new pilot labour agreement mean that won't be low for long
3) that leaves lower clothing costs

The cost of wage increases has barely begun to ripple through the economy but housing pimps are desperately anxious to say lower rates are just around the corner!

Quite the analysis there. Forgive me if I trust the experts like Tombe over you.

[Nashe]

Wasn't sure which tread this fit under, but why not here?

Do office wellness programs work? A new study suggests they're not helping staff

Mixed feedback on the study, but it's findings don't surprise me.

Originally Posted by the study

"Fleming told CBC Radio's The Current that his own study led him to conclude that well-being initiatives often aren't engaging with the root causes of work stress. He thinks companies need to focus on things like pay, workload and what autonomy employees have over how, when and where they work."

No surprise there. I know I'd be a lot happier at work if either I had less of it with the same pay or the same amount of it with more pay. I've attended a few of these seminars and it's generally common-sense stuff like:

1) Eat healthy - I generally do, though that's getting more expensive to do so
2) Exercise - I cycle-commute 9 months a year and ride and hike outside of that. Aside from stress I'm 5x healthier than my dad was at my age, easy. He'd had 2 attacks by now!
3) Get lots of rest - Haha. I would GET lots of rest if work/economics didn't keep me awake, lol.

Live feeback to the presenter from one of my (more blunt) co-attendees in the last virtual one I participated in (last week: "how to avoid burnout") was "What made you assume we don't exercise or eat healthy? The problem is those aren't cutting it anymore!"

A lot of the suggestions are really "what can the employee do to become tolerant of burn out?" as opposed to "how can we change our work culture so we stop burning people out?"

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

We fare poorly on these metrics (especially when stacked against Australia, which I found to be extremely expensive both times that I have visited). At the same time, I dislike seeing city-states represented, as they do not have hinterlands to support, which almost always bring down the national figures. Luxembourg is not a city-state, but very nearly so. Singapore? Come on. Qatar has no residents (only a tenth of its population are citizens: the population of Qatar is 2.6 million, with only 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and with the other 2.3 million as expatriates).

There is also a massive disparity across different rankings by different outfits. The overall size of Canada's economy has apparently surpassed that of Italy, despite the latter having 19 million more people (not a trivial rounding error!).

Agreed that hinterlands can bring down certain national figures, but in a country like Canada they actually provide a lot of the resource wealth that sustains the impressive figures of major urban cities.

A significant chunk of Toronto's wealth, for example, comes from resource-based industries that are churning it out in remote regions thousands of km from the CN Tower.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Nashe

Wasn't sure which tread this fit under, but why not here?

Do office wellness programs work? A new study suggests they're not helping staff

Mixed feedback on the study, but it's findings don't surprise me.



No surprise there. I know I'd be a lot happier at work if either I had less of it with the same pay or the same amount of it with more pay. I've attended a few of these seminars and it's generally common-sense stuff like:

1) Eat healthy - I generally do, though that's getting more expensive to do so
2) Exercise - I cycle-commute 9 months a year and ride and hike outside of that. Aside from stress I'm 5x healthier than my dad was at my age, easy. He'd had 2 attacks by now!
3) Get lots of rest - Haha. I would GET lots of rest if work/economics didn't keep me awake, lol.

Live feeback to the presenter from one of my (more blunt) co-attendees in the last virtual one I participated in (last week: "how to avoid burnout") was "What made you assume we don't exercise or eat healthy? The problem is those aren't cutting it anymore!"

A lot of the suggestions are really "what can the employee do to become tolerant of burn out?" as opposed to "how can we change our work culture so we stop burning people out?"

Yup, those workshops or initiatives are all bullshit, and are meant to cover the asses of the execs and the board by transferring the guilt and responsibility onto regular workers.

It took me many years in the corporate world, but the two things I learned to maintain work-life balance are:

1. Be firm with your boss about how many projects you can take on, and stick to it. If you're being triaged to take on a very important project that just came up and needs you, tell them immediately that you have to drop one of your other ones.

2. Companies allocate more budget room for new hires than they do for compensation of existing workers, so always negotiate your salary when you're hired rather than wait for a pay raise that will never come.

[Build.It]

"Employee well-being" programs are mostly bullshit.

Ultimately all that matters is:

1. How much does your skillset contribute to the success of the organization, in dollars?

2. How much are you getting paid for your skillset relative to how much it provides to the organization?

3. Could your current skillset be sold for more to another organization who is able to package it in a more profitable way (and therefore justifying a higher salary for you)?

Also some other important things to remember:

When you're an employee you're really just selling your skills. Your skills are the product and your employer is the customer. The one holding the money generally gets to dictate the terms.

If your skills are easy to replace, then your employer gets to call the shots.

If your skills are hard to replace, then you get to call the shots (and the organization would be smart to make you a partner).

If you're not happy with how much you have to work vs how much you're getting paid, and you are unable to get paid more dollars/hour somewhere else, then the onus is on you to improve your skills so that you can become more valuable to organizations you wish to work for.

[whatnext]

Andrew Coyne today on Canada's continued economic decline:

[B]Canada is no longer one of the richest nations on Earth. Country after country is passing us by[/B]
ANDREW COYNE
PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO

...If you took a poll, I suspect you would find most Canadians still think of us as one of the richest countries on Earth: maybe fifth or sixth. And at one time we were. As late as 1981, Canada ranked sixth among OECD countries in GDP per capita, behind only Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, the United States and Denmark.

But we’re not any more. As of 2022 we were 15th. Over the 40-odd years in between, Canada’s per capita GDP grew more slowly than that of 22 other OECD members. Countries that used to be poorer than us – Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Finland – are now richer than we are.

And over the next 40 years? You may recall that arresting chart in the 2022 budget, projecting Canada would have the slowest growth in per capita GDP among OECD countries out to 2060. We need to fully comprehend what this means. We are no longer one of the richest countries on Earth. Among the richer countries, we are on course to being one of the poorer....

....Simply put, our workers are less productive than other countries’ workers because they have less capital to work with. As recently as a decade ago, gross fixed capital formation per worker in Canada was within striking distance of the United States: about 95 per cent. It has since declined to roughly two-thirds. A similar decline has been observed relative to the OECD generally....

...Disaggregate investment into its component parts, and you find a striking, and potentially troubling, trend.

Since around 2000, while business investment in residential structures has roughly doubled as a percentage of GDP, investment in machinery and equipment has roughly halved. Could this go some way to explain why our relative productivity growth fell off so sharply after then? Have we been so busy capitalizing on rising housing prices that we neglected to invest in the sorts of things that make it possible to afford a house?...(bold mine)


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...country-after/

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Andrew Coyne today on Canada's continued economic decline:

[B]Canada is no longer one of the richest nations on Earth. Country after country is passing us by[/B]
ANDREW COYNE
PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO

...If you took a poll, I suspect you would find most Canadians still think of us as one of the richest countries on Earth: maybe fifth or sixth. And at one time we were. As late as 1981, Canada ranked sixth among OECD countries in GDP per capita, behind only Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, the United States and Denmark.

But we’re not any more. As of 2022 we were 15th. Over the 40-odd years in between, Canada’s per capita GDP grew more slowly than that of 22 other OECD members. Countries that used to be poorer than us – Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Finland – are now richer than we are.

And over the next 40 years? You may recall that arresting chart in the 2022 budget, projecting Canada would have the slowest growth in per capita GDP among OECD countries out to 2060. We need to fully comprehend what this means. We are no longer one of the richest countries on Earth. Among the richer countries, we are on course to being one of the poorer....

....Simply put, our workers are less productive than other countries’ workers because they have less capital to work with. As recently as a decade ago, gross fixed capital formation per worker in Canada was within striking distance of the United States: about 95 per cent. It has since declined to roughly two-thirds. A similar decline has been observed relative to the OECD generally....

...Disaggregate investment into its component parts, and you find a striking, and potentially troubling, trend.

Since around 2000, while business investment in residential structures has roughly doubled as a percentage of GDP, investment in machinery and equipment has roughly halved. Could this go some way to explain why our relative productivity growth fell off so sharply after then? Have we been so busy capitalizing on rising housing prices that we neglected to invest in the sorts of things that make it possible to afford a house?...(bold mine)


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...country-after/

I don't dispute the theory but how does it explain a country like Australia?

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Build.It

"Employee well-being" programs are mostly bullshit.

Ultimately all that matters is:

1. How much does your skillset contribute to the success of the organization, in dollars?

2. How much are you getting paid for your skillset relative to how much it provides to the organization?

3. Could your current skillset be sold for more to another organization who is able to package it in a more profitable way (and therefore justifying a higher salary for you)?

Also some other important things to remember:

When you're an employee you're really just selling your skills. Your skills are the product and your employer is the customer. The one holding the money generally gets to dictate the terms.

If your skills are easy to replace, then your employer gets to call the shots.

If your skills are hard to replace, then you get to call the shots (and the organization would be smart to make you a partner).

If you're not happy with how much you have to work vs how much you're getting paid, and you are unable to get paid more dollars/hour somewhere else, then the onus is on you to improve your skills so that you can become more valuable to organizations you wish to work for.

Employee well-being programs are seen by many companies as a way to improve the value employees see in their compensation package (and therefore retention) without costly wage increases, or with less costly wage increases.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

I don't dispute the theory but how does it explain a country like Australia?

Unabashed exploitation of natural resources without all the handwringing.

[Acajack]

I was gonna say. Australia simply makes decisions that are different from ours.

A better question is: what's preventing Canada from being more like Australia, and if we could, would doing that come at too high a price in terms of downsides?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I was gonna say. Australia simply makes decisions that are different from ours.

A better question is: what's preventing Canada from being more like Australia, and if we could, would doing that come at too high a price in terms of downsides?

According to the OECD, Canada's Corporate spending puts us last as a proportion of GFCF (Gross Investment), at 45.4% in 2022. It's slightly up over the past two years, and it's been generally around or below 50% in the past 20 years.

Australia has the third lowest Corporate investment at 47.1% in 2021 (the most recent data) and has been as high as 61.8% in 2012, but has been on a generally downward trajectory in the past 10 years.

So we've had consistenly low Corporate investment for many years, and theirs has been steadily worsening, and is now pretty much the same as Canada. I'm not sure we want to be 'more like Australia' in corporate investment terms.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Changing City

According to the OECD, Canada's Corporate spending puts us last as a proportion of GFCF (Gross Investment), at 45.4% in 2022. It's slightly up over the past two years, and it's been generally around or below 50% in the past 20 years.

Australia has the third lowest Corporate investment at 47.1% in 2021 (the most recent data) and has been as high as 61.8% in 2012, but has been on a generally downward trajectory in the past 10 years.

So we've had consistenly low Corporate investment for many years, and theirs has been steadily worsening, and is now pretty much the same as Canada. I'm not sure we want to be 'more like Australia' in corporate investment terms.

I don't care too much about corporate investment (at least not in isolation) unless it has a tangible impact on people's standard of living.

Even GDP per capita isn't always a good metric but nonetheless when I look at Australia's it's a good 10 000 USD above Canada's. Generally 64 000 whereas we are at 54 000.

Their jobless rate is about 1.5% lower than ours but their poverty rate is slightly higher than ours.

Housing prices in Sydney are at Toronto and Vancouver levels of insanity but after that it drops off and even Melbourne is in the range of Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary.