House wise, I am pretty sure me and my wife could have qualified for a house that would have really made us house poor. We opted for a house that either of us could support on our single income and still save some. Being house poor would be awful, I have zero desire to be stuck in a job because of my mortgage.
On a side note, see more people talking about FIRE and I am interested if it is truly a new phenomenon or if it just gets a louder voice because of the internet.
FIRE being the opposite of "drowning in debt" of course. Can't FIRE unless you have a life to live (sitting on the couch and having all the time in the world to munch on cheesiepoofs whilst catching up all seasons of Simpsons AND Southpark does not count as a quality life).
FIRE is not new, been a thing for a few decades but certainly in the last 5 years has become a "phenomena". Granted FIRE is about how you save, not how much you make, but generally you need a decent wage to start.
That just taxes people for not having as much money as the person who can afford to live closer. I think the lot size tax addresses the consequences of that. If you mean from Airdrie I think the benefit of not having to support below median property values is actually an advantage. Since the median house price in Airdrie is lower than the median house price in Calgary if all of Airdrie was in Calgary the median amount collected per house would drop.
So I’m not sure the parasite communities are actually parasites like people think.
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Originally Posted by GirlySports
And tolls for driving into Calgary.
Eff that! There's enough big retailers in Okotoks that I don't have to drive to Calgary very often. No more Calgary and it's I have to get somewhere fast drivers on the Deerfoot
This is true but it isn’t based on the cost the city incurs as a result of property size. It’s based on the perceived value to a perspective buyer. It also doesn’t account for the class of home either. If you look at a 450k inner city condo vs a 450k suburban home they pay the same property tax. A person who chooses the 450k condo has less impact on the city but that isn’t reflected in tax rate.
What I want the system to do is reflect cost to the city in a component of city taxes but not just be punitive on people who can’t afford to live closer.
Why does location matter? Isn’t that just a function of the ability to afford and zoning restrictions. I’m not seeing a cost to the city based on where the impact occurs. The total acreage of the city remains unchanged.
I don't disagree that a $450k condo/townhouse in the inner city vs a $450k suburban home obviously have a totally different foot prints and costs to the city for hooking up utilities, roads, infrastructure etc. However, the costs to maintain the infrastructure in the inner city are significantly higher when you have higher end amenities in the inner city as well as higher usage on roads/infrastructure, +15 etc. than that of suburbia. I don't think there's an issue with both properties paying the same amount of tax. This is the result if you have a smoothing type of system that our municipality has. It's also hard to differentiate usage unless you charge specifically for extra usage. This would probably manifest as things such as zone fees for transit, toll roads etc. is how you'd penalize those that live further away. By the way, Calgary already has a basic level of zone fee for transit. It literally is the free fare zone down town and then flat fee for the rest of the city for 90 minutes.
Honestly speaking, this is the first time I've ever heard the weighted property tax debate based on geographic location in the city. The suburbs are already taxed slightly extra with the extra hook up fees that the city has been putting on developers who then just pass the cost on to the buyer. It does make sense to charge extra to hook up these new communities at times as extra infrastructure is required to build more servicing nodes the further out you go. But after they're hooked up and the infrastructure is in place, isn't it no different than any other place in the city? Over tweak property tax and it's no worse than watching condos with high condo fees plummet in sale price because of the extra cost required to retain said property via condo fees. Do anymore than this, I can't help but imagine you'd see an inadvertent effect that causes Chestermere, Okotoks, Cochrane and Airdrie explode in population growth, then implode under the strains which are placed in their infrastructure/utilities which would just defer the issue then cause even more headache once it hits the point where Calgary just annexes them into Calgary. This also isn't considering other serious effects to smaller communities like DeWinton, Langdon, Priddis etc. that also would see sudden migration.
I seriously feel like this is a solution looking for a problem and it's a solution based on some odd sense of wanting to penalize those that live in the suburbs.
Another facet that I've noticed lately has nothing to do with age. Somewhere along the lines things changed with the way we as people behaved. We as a populace no longer behave in a way that reflects a citizen of a nation that will do his/her part for the common good or give strangers the benefit of a doubt. There is a significant portion of the population that is exceptionally selfish, never admits fault and constantly points fingers at everyone else at being at fault. I don't know what it is but it certainly isn't solely an attribute of millennials as I feel like I've witnessed an equal proportion of boomers doing the same thing. What the hell happened? Is it a concept of "the customer is always right" and a spectrum of age ranges that feels used to ripping other people down to make themselves feel better?
I feel like it used to be common to agree to disagree, but still be able to respect one another. This doesn't seem common anymore. In unity is strength. I still remember that old adage, but I haven't felt that there's been true unity and collaboration in a long time. Nowadays, I feel like outright warfare and disrespect is the common mentality out there. Maybe it's history repeating itself, because it sure feels like an eye for an eye out there right now. To me it's always insane everyone always thinks they're right. Because to me, I always consider it's plausible that everyone is wrong or everyone is right/partially right.
... god damn I feel old.
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What was once a good thread has been kind of mashed into a big mess.
Just to recap, we want to make life in the ‘burbs more expensive by launching taxes and increasing tolls to access the core but then meanwhile at the same time we need to be building more housing (where people won’t buy them because now they’re too expensive) and lastly as long as we remember that it’s all the other peoples fault than all is well?
There are shades of truth to all sides of this debt debate. People in general do spend money like complete idiots, let’s just be honest about that one. And guess who spends money like idiots? Men, women, old people, young people, middle aged people, all ethnicities, all genders and all people. Literally every demographic has idiots with spending problems.
So, financial literacy should be a key core course or at the very least a math module required in high school. And I’m not talking that BS Calm course where you took a quiz and then it told you your career should be a florist or whatever. A real actual serious course required for graduation that teaches you such things as:
- money is real
- debt is real
- borrowing more now means you have to pay it back later (hint- it’s not free)
- as SNL puts it, don’t buy #### you don’t need
I agree with most of your post, especially the "everyone" portion of it, but I don't know if the bolded is even effective.
The way that I consider it is that it's not a awareness issue. Most people know that excessive debt is bad. They just don't pay attention to their own situation as much as they should. A while ago, the Thai government put out a TSA that had children walking around asking smokers to help them light a cigarette. The smokers often would scold the kids and refuse, telling them that smoking is bad. The children would then give the smoker a slip of paper and walk away. On the slip of paper, "You worry about me, but why not yourself?"
I think inherently, most people understand the concept. However, there's a ton of, I'm not as bad as the next guy, everyone else does it too, it doesn't really hurt anyone, it's temporary until I make more etc. Isn't that similar to addiction?
I stand on the side of, "You have to be responsible for your own actions." but I am not going to deny the possibility that external forces are also a detriment to some people's financial health as well. Going back to the original basis of this thread, if 47% of Canadians must borrow to pay for a basic living expense, that's a harrowing stat.
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Originally Posted by jayswin
But it's still important to make the best decisions as a society to weather it as best as possible. Hint: Guaranteed minimum income and bringing the class disparity as close to together as humanly possible.
It's great to sit back and say "It's communism to take anything from anyone who's earned it!!!!" and try to latch on to policies that allow those with wealth to continue to keep inner city home values high, hoard wealth and then pass it on within family, but the reality is there will be a large correction coming and to continue to operate this way will likely contribute majorly to how we crater as a country compared to the other countries who will face the same correction.
UBI is an interesting concept but IMO, inherently flawed. The stat in the thread title is literally that 47% individuals have to borrow to pay for costs. A significant amount of assumption throughout this thread is that these individuals are not in a poverty situation, therefore are prioritizing consumerism over a balance budget.
Universal basic income doesn't address this at all. Those below the poverty line in Canada is around 10%. Sure, UBI helps these people, but those with issues with consumerism are either enabled to do further consumerism and god forbid that UBI comes with additional access to credit.
Consumerism literally has way too many similarities with other vices out there to be ignored. People literally should run their finances based on the discretionary income concept which is money minus tax minus bills = discretionary income. However, I believe most people run it based on the disposable income concept which is money minus tax = disposable income. It further doesn't help when people mix up the concepts of disposable income and discretionary income. When individuals use up the disposable income and run into an unpaid bill, they then have to borrow to pay for those bills related to cost of living. I think that's the titles of the thread, right?
I don't know how long ago I started hearing of people saying that they don't buy Christmas presents anymore. "Not much we want at Christmas time anyways. When we see something we want, we buy it ourselves." I also seem to recall that statistically on Netflix, Canadians have some of the highest rate of binge watching shows. I don't know what it is, but something about our country's society is really hinged upon a serious lack of patience and instant gratification.
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I don’t usually like generalizing but I do like the surge of boomer talk because many of them often labelled millennials as entitled snowflakes, and (as a GenXer stuck in the middle) it’s fun watching the same talk being thrown back at them.
Of course millennials would be doing the same things as boomers if they were born during the same time period. That doesn’t absolve boomers of their sins though. You can’t brush off being called selfish by saying someone is jealous they didn’t have the same opportunity to be selfish.
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Canadian shoppers are feeling more optimistic about the economy and their personal finances, and will increase holiday spending by 1.9% from last year to an average $1,593, according to PwC Canada’s annual Holiday Outlook report.
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I don’t usually like generalizing but I do like the surge of boomer talk because many of them often labelled millennials as entitled snowflakes, and (as a GenXer stuck in the middle) it’s fun watching the same talk being thrown back at them.
Of course millennials would be doing the same things as boomers if they were born during the same time period. That doesn’t absolve boomers of their sins though. You can’t brush off being called selfish by saying someone is jealous they didn’t have the same opportunity to be selfish.
Ok someone needs to ELI5 what exactly the boomers did that was so bad that ruined it for us? (Economically speaking). Peter12's week long pity party for himself is really making me wonder what they did to us. I am a millennial.
Is that per person??? On gifts? That's mad. I think I spend about $300 max.
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The majority of Canadians will focus their spending on family ($869), followed by themselves ($537), friends ($118), pets ($40), and others ($29). Men are expected to spend $1,820 this year, and women are expected to spend $1,384, on average.
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