All you have to do is look at Japan to see the future for most western countries.
They speedran this whole situation a few decades ago.
That feels a bit different to me because Japan refuses basically all immigration and their population is declining, while Canada is accepting record numbers of immigrants and is by far the fastest growing population in the G7.
Japan’s population skyrocketted, and land prices got extremely high, it took another two decades before population started to decline.
Doesn’t matter if it was births or immigration. We’re seeing the population increase and land going up.
Soon we’ll see immigration cut off as people get mad, and the population will take a decade or two before it starts declining.
Look at the demographics. Understand WHY Canada is hoovering up young professionals like it’s Coke at MaraLago:
- our population is ageing.
- we’re a tax n’ spend economy, because it saves money
- we need people to support an ageing population near or over retirement
- rental barons are rakin’ it in on the house prices
- we can’t kill the oldies
- we can’t back off on services, or the cost to the taxpayer (without consolidation and the reverse monopoly) is gonna be cruel and horrible like America but they’re not cognitively dissonant about it and will be in shock
- we can’t adjust the retirement age*
so.
Immigrants, excluding refugees
- are young
- are professionals
- are healthy and so need little healthcare
- pay lots of delicious taxes
- are sometimes doctors (yay!)
- need somewhere to live
Okay, too much information to be hit with all at once, but those are the predicates. So it follows:
The problem isn’t immigration, despite what the russian bots and conservatives will tell you: it’s that we have an ageing population not working - as mentioned - who needs more care to stay alive and whom we want to stay alive; and all the indolent hillbillies high on russian-anti-vax hate and rejecting basic social responsibility made the experienced doctors fucking quit by being dickheads. But it’s the imm’grints’ fault? Housing is an issue because rental barons are raking it in and voting for the guys who promise no services, no taxes, because hoarding greenspace and greenbacks is the American way; and imm’grints are the issue?
Look. We can’t kill Nana, and she’s done with work anyway, so we can’t send her back to work as the only job she’ll score at her age is stocking shelves at the loblaws and I know that for a familial fact. We can’t claw back a bunch of years of retirement and hope Uncle Bob will reopen his bait shop happily and pay more taxes. And we have to keep them alive because we don’t have that loophole where the poors and retirees and soldiers die from being poor like in America because we don’t do that (and we like them because she makes good cookies and he tells us all the dumb things Dad did as a kid).
We need:
- more young pros to immigrate because if we have to suffer population growth it needs to be earners.
- more housing density because Nana and Uncle Bob both still have their homed and we’ve already eaten too much farmland for bungalows and we’ve cut down our version of the rainforest for bungalows while telling Brazil not to do the same - what hypocrites. So we need to revert more land back for food and forest, and have to bulldoze in the urban centers and consolidate people there into shared space that happens to also cost munis waayyy less to serve anyway because bungalow sprawl doesn’t even pay for itself at these rates… So it’s towers, not fucking laneway tryhard housing outside fucking bungalows, and it’s shared parks and not hoarded greenspace lawns, and we’re gonna do all property taxes by distance from city hall and square feet divided by density so Chad and Alicia can pay more of their rightful share or give up their mansion in the hills so we can stop maintaining all that pipe and wiring. Right. We also need …
- the knowledge that angry voters choose trumps and polievres even though it’s a horrible idea for everyone not rich. It’s a fact borne out by study after study.
- the understanding that fucking immigrants are the best chance we have of not becoming the states and losing our EI and Healthcare and other things that make us happy and awesome.
- the maturity to thank immigrants for helping us in our journey to not suck like the parts of America we fear the most, and hope they stay a long time but maybe go back home (as they often do) when they’re no longer young. Because thanks!
- the courage to tell Billy-joe-Bob to get back in his Dodge RAM and go find another city to blockade, but just leave our earners the hell alone aside from a heartfelt thanks for saving his kids’ asses.
Sadly, we’re gonna have to raise retirement. But let’s do it slowly, like a half-a-year each year or so, so Uncle Bob can stay retired and a few people to near the age can fulfill that wish and the rest who are almost as close can still accomplish it sooner just not right away, etc, etc, just stay in the job they have a little longer and use their experience. We’re all living longer, and that’s awesome. Let’s still be Canadian and try to care for one another if we still can.
(If you own a dodge ram and no cowboy hats, this is probably not about you, but your downvote will be lost among the people who don’t know better, so a flash of spite on the mouse-click is all good)
I’d posit that a point you’re missing under “We need” is "to tax the rich more to pay for the services and supports needed to manage the number of immigrants we plan to build.
You’re right about immigration, but the problem, like anything our governments (LPC or CPC) do is that they’ll do half the solution; the easy, cheap part (immigration, decriminalizing drugs, setting healthcare and education standards) but not the hard and expensive part (building infrastructure, providing treatment and housing-first at scale, actually spending money on teachers, doctors and/or nurses), and the reason they do the cheap part is they’re ideologically unable to ask the rich to make do with less.
Hang on, your solution is to raise the retirement age at a time when wages are actively being suppressed across multiple sectors because there are too many people competing for the same jobs?
Let’s revisit that when applicants for near-minimum wage unskilled labour jobs aren’t lining up around the block (virtually and sometimes physically) for a single opening.
Part of the issue with raising retirement age, though, is that you can only go so far before the majority of people are unfit to work. Things like osteoarthritis have a much larger effect on your ability to work than they do on your life expectancy. Plus, the burden of continuing to work disproportionately falls on poor people whose work is more physical—well-educated people with desk jobs usually earn more money, have somewhat better savings, and can thus afford to retire a few years before their government pension kicks in.
The other issue is that people who plan to retire at x year will fucking riot if it turn into y year. I’m one of them.
And many desk jobs don’t physically destroy your body like labour and trades do. On average a desk job will let you retire earlier and in better health.
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Don’t plan on making it past 40?
In this economy?
