Overpriced means it is priced so high people will not pay. The reality is with a low inventory and high demand levels prices will go higher. High demand justifies higher prices when inventory is low. I don't see demand reducing or inventory levels increasing for a few years interest rate notwithstanding. I would buy now because prices are only going up.
Overpriced in my mind means priced so high people can't realistically pay without being extremely wealthy or committing mortgage fraud, or priced so high that the practical value that could be derived from it as an intrinsically useful asset is significantly smaller than what you have to pay.
Does $600k for a studio, or like $3500/month seem appropriately priced?
Sure some people are willing to spend $9k on a pair of shoes, but they're still overpriced.
Canadian culture IS mediocre. Everyone's ambition here is to do what everyone else does. Restaurants are mostly the same. Businesses don't innovate, they merely do what someone else who was already successful did.
The parent may not have elaborated the reasons perfectly but everyone here knows it.
If given the chance to work and live in the states for $50k more, or in Europe for the same amount or less than I currently make, I might choose the latter for the novelty, but not the former to climb a ladder, so what's the comparison worth? That said, I'm not about to move to the suburbs where everyone and everything is pretty bland and same.
New York seems neat, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there. Pretty happy here in Vancouver. The rent and housing costs are absurd, but they'd be worse in New York. I like parts of the states quite a bit, but I don't think I'd like to live there, at least not long-term. Not my vibe.
People say the difference is much greater than $50k, but I think it's often overblown. You have the top few companies with crazy stock compensations on top of higher base salaries, but I'm not getting into those companies anyway. Some places can compete with that, but not as many as simply moving to the states, especially with no degree, and just automatically making so much more. It would be ladder climbing, and I don't care enough about hocking more bs products at people that I'd put so much of myself into that.
I think your coping man. I come from a similar area. Instead of the $70k or $90k CAD your making, your making $350k or $400k USD ($400-550k CAD see https://levels.fyi/) as a bog standard sr engineer with many, many things being cheaper in the USA than canada itself, and you get healthcare better than canada because your well paid.
If you took off 3 months to go leetcode the return on investment is there, and you could make it into those companies. You can get work visas based on years of experience alone without a degree, and google et all don't discriminate on not having a degree either. On top of that as a lucky canadian, you get one of the easiest work visas to get in the world, the TN visa. It might not work in this recessionary environment, but in a year or two when it passes you'll be all ready to go to get the promotion of a lifetime.
Vancouver is not a city beyond it's tiny downtown. It's much like SF bay that way, vast reams of suburbia with a commuter rail train system that barely services vast swaths of the city.
Get out of your comfort zone, and you will do amazing. I'm rooting for you.
Seems sincere enough, albeit with a tinge of overt condescension towards my chosen city I've been to a fair number of cities, sure af wouldn't want to live in Toronto, New York, SF, LA. There are a few that I'd consider, but I never really think of them, and I definitely wouldn't do it for a company that just offered me a position. Too much tangible risk, unless I had no option. I'm sure I could get a job at the one of the spiffy companies, but I limit my search to remote only or here in Van, or mainland Europe. I've been through the interview process at one, it was fine, I could and might tidy up and try again. The money is compelling somewhat, but not so much so after reaching six figures that I'd sacrifice much for it.
And what is that sacrifice? Well, firstly I absolutely do not want to live in a downtown anywhere. In some ways, they're just as boring as the burbs, except maybe Portland. I like being in a more low key but still dense and wooded area near everything I need and close to the downtown. I have friends here, access to nature/mountains, bars, restaurants, fiber, it's chill. If I made more money, I'd use it to live here, if housing was more reasonable, or rent more slace if I felt that was a sensible move.
Not to say I won't move or even move out of country, maybe even for a job, but I'm not arbitrarily chasing career numbers, it hollows a person. Probably best would be a small team remotely for a U.S company billing in USD
Fair, I don't like everything about the US but I do wish we had a bit more of their hustle and ambition. And maybe held our politicians to account for the way our institutions are crumbling.
That point is different than the other point. If you're not Canadian you wouldn't know that all our government institutions are way worse than they were, say, 10 years ago. Trying to access healthcare, trying to contact the CRA, trying to get a passport, etc... All these institutions have gone to shit fairly recently.
My experience is that these institutions were largely fine pre-COVID, certainly I never had any issue getting seen at Service Canada or contacting the CRA. Things have certainly gotten worse in the last 3 years, but it seems likely that these are the same pressures causing issues in other comparable nations. The UK passport office, for example, is struggling in much the same way [0], and I believe that is also true elsewhere in Europe.
I am Canadian, and as bpye notes - it seems to be COVID pressure explaining the slowdown for those systems. I'm also unsure how "a bit more of their hustle and ambition" would get you your passport faster - hustle and ambition are famously not part of ANY government anywhere.
1. Other countries have more ambition, hustle and grit on a cultural level.
2. Our institutions are decaying.
Maybe let's add a few more.
3. Oligarchs run the country.
4. People don't care and will defend our mediocrity.
Separate points. But all pertinent.
Also, in many ways, the attitude from our government does shape cultural attitudes as our federal government is by far the largest employer in the country.
I'd say these examples would partially prove their point, the first being defunct since 1962, and the second having been acquired by AMD (an American company) for over 15 years. For Yoshua, well this excerpt from Wikipedia may be useful here:
"In October 2016, Bengio co-founded Element AI, a Montreal-based artificial intelligence incubator that turns AI research into real-world business applications. Having failed to develop marketable products and losing several partnerships, by 2020 the company was running out of money and options and announced its sale to American software company ServiceNow in November. The sale will see largely Canadian taxpayer funded intellectual property exported to the United States, contrary to Bengio's desire to found Element AI as a Canadian company to rival the world's tech giants. Bengio will stay employed as an advisor while the vast majority of employees were terminated with their stock options voided and cancelled with no value in lieu provided."
Well more recently we have startups like Shopify and Wealthsimple? D-Wave is also Canadian. Canadian game studios produce some of the most critically acclaimed titles, studios like Relic, BioWare, Eidos-Montreal, etc - admittedly many of these were either started as subsidiaries or have since been acquired, but the talent absolutely exists in Canada.
As someone else has mentioned, Canada has 1/10th the population of the USA, less still compared to the EU, and about 1/2th of the UK. I wouldn't say we do badly...
One thing that younger Canadians and foreigners don't seem to grasp is that Canada's economy is basically a handful of abusive corporations pretending to be a country.
The Maritimes are dominated completely by the holdings of a single family. The West is dominated by resource extraction and banking. Ontario and Quebec are owned by banking and manufacturing families. And then there's Robellus...
But that said, there's also that raising Canadian capital is historically a fool's errand. Raising loonies is so hard it's basically pointless, it's almost always better for entrepreneurs to register as American corporations, pretend to be American, and raise American money.
Because, at the end of the day, every party in Canada is beholden to their campaign financiers. Every party. And no money wants to flow outside of the proven channels.
>One thing that younger Canadians and foreigners don't seem to grasp is that Canada's economy is basically a handful of abusive corporations pretending to be a country.
That's also true for Europe.
If you look at the top companies in Europe, most are 50 to 100 years old, with a sensible portion of their stake still in the hands of the family of the founders. HMLV, Nestle, Porsche, etc. you name it.
Any new innovative company gets immediately bought by US or Chinese money as the local money is too busy speculating on real estate.
I think it's tough to speak in generalizations about vast populations. There's certainly very wealthy people & families in all the major economies, but European countries have some of the highest scores for social mobility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
> One thing that younger Canadians and foreigners don't seem to grasp is that Canada's economy is basically a handful of abusive corporations pretending to be a country.
I think that's a gross oversimplification. There certainly is a tiny fraction of the population that holds the vast majority of Canada's wealth, but you could say the same of the US or really a lot of other countries, and it's not like all those companies have existed since confederation, so I don't think that's really a reasonable way to define Canada's economy. The Canadian GDP is $1.6 trillion USD, and those companies certainly have a hand in a lot of it, but you'd have to make a pretty long list of companies to even get to $1 trillion...
> But that said, there's also that raising Canadian capital is historically a fool's errand. Raising loonies is so hard it's basically pointless, it's almost always better for entrepreneurs to register as American corporations, pretend to be American, and raise American money.
>
> Because, at the end of the day, every party in Canada is beholden to their campaign financiers. Every party. And no money wants to flow outside of the proven channels.
It's more a function of Canadian banking and money management, at least historically, being far more conservative the the US's wild west. There's a reason Canada largely avoided the financial crisis of 2008, and it's not because Canadians are smarter than everyone else.
That said, it's fair to say there have been a number of Canadian tech startups that have done quite well for themselves, not to mention non-tech companies that have managed to be quite successful on the world stage. Maybe not at the same level as the US, but then, few countries can really measure up to that standard (and the consequences that come with it).
While I would say Canada's political parties are beholden to their campaign financiers, that hasn't exactly produced what I'd call "stability" in the political arena... and there's a fair bit of independence between the political arena and the economy (despite how inconvenient that is for some narratives). I wouldn't agree that money can't flow outside of proven channels for that reason. It's more that you have to make a much more solid case to get any significant funding from Canadian sources.
It's not an oversimplification; it's the cruel reality of Canada outside of the major urban centres, where relatively tiny companies can flourish before either listing themselves on a foreign exchange, being purchased, or failing. In every major sector of the Canadian economy you'll find one or two dominant corporations, and most of them are helmed by, or advised by, hereditary rulership; sometimes you'll find a cartel operating with the support of the provincial government.
Sometimes it seems like there's competition and diversity in the market, but in practice there's not. Like in BC, where Forestry appears to have many players, but they mostly isolate themselves from one another and form a monopoly in their regions and they negotiate together with the Province to set the terms of their business; and the very small forestry corporations often take their product to market through channels provided by the larger players.
Where I live, the local Forestry company has been barricading public access roads and using rentacops to drive people off Crown Land; and it's tolerated and allowed, because forestry companies are given great leeway to act above the law.
> It's not an oversimplification; it's the cruel reality of Canada outside of the major urban centres, where relatively tiny companies can flourish before either listing themselves on a foreign exchange, being purchased, or failing.
Sure, if you exclude the vast majority of the country, there's really not a lot there. ;--)
Seriously, by the kind estimates of statscan, outside the major population centers you have just over six and a half million people (and that's after the big bump from COVID-19 migration). I think those six and a half million are about as financially independent as you could reasonable expect from an economy that is expressly outside of even local financial & trade centers.
> Where I live, the local Forestry company has been barricading public access roads and using rentacops to drive people off Crown Land; and it's tolerated and allowed, because forestry companies are given great leeway to act above the law.
Very much unlike, say the US, where large corporations are routinely reigned in by government oversight? ;-)
Outside of urban centres Canadians survive at the behest of the local largest employer. In some places that's forestry, some it's fisheries, some it's oil, some canola, tourism, etc. And usually it's the one big employer, surrounded by small employers that exist as a result of the opportunities that flourish around the big one.
If by reasonably independent you mean almost wholly dependent, then sure.
It's why the Tories do so well out there; when Grit and NDP policies seem hell bent on gutting or decimating the local employer the decision of who to vote for is a matter of paying the bills and keeping the heat on.
> Very much unlike, say the US, where large corporations are routinely reigned in by government oversight? ;-)
At least in the USA it's far easier to raise capital, and regulatory capture hasn't yet gotten so bad that new entrants are completely shut out of major industries.
> If by reasonably independent you mean almost wholly dependent, then sure.
First, I've lived in company towns, and there's definitely a thing in Canada, but not all towns outside of major population areas in Canada are company towns (if for no other reason than there just aren't enough companies to cover them all, and in some places the population is too sparse to really have an economic system that ties them all to one employer). There's plenty of towns with no major employer.
But yeah, if you are outside of local economic centers, you're either at the whim of those economic centers or you've got your own conglomerate/co-op that collectively gives the local community some leverage with the larger economy that's out there. That's not specific to one country.
> At least in the USA it's far easier to raise capital, and regulatory capture hasn't yet gotten so bad that new entrants are completely shut out of major industries.
In the US it's far easier to raise capital, but otherwise I think there's a "grass is greener" phenomenon playing out against you.
Interesting article, but the one footnote reads: “It’s interesting how ‘Solid State’ and ‘Tek’ as an abbreviation for ‘Tech’ have disappeared from common use”
reply