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Average Wealth of Canadians now greater than Americans... why?

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blankslate said:
In the past we also supported college education by making it cheap enough for someone to work through college and emerge from it largely debt free with just a part time job.

Sadly those days are gone.
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Colleges where never "made" cheap. They however remained relatively low cost in the past because the costs for attending were not subsidized via dead easy to attain student loans and students who were not suited to attend and were incapable of passing college were basically filtered out. In other words the supply was allowed keep pace with the demand for those being able or capable to attend and the system was not flooded by students with access to easy to attain credit.
 
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When I graduated after 4 years, just before Reagan took office, I had a student loans of 3,800. About the cost of new compact car.
Today a graduate owes about half the cost of house.

If I were going to do it today I would choose a major that would let me pay off my loan, not necessarily what I was best suited to study. That is just a waste of material.

In the 1950's as the WW2 vets were finishing up with their GI bill educations many states had free colleges and those that weren't were heavily supported by the states. So for like 35 years from the end of WW2 until about 1980 going to college was not a crushing economic burden and the US was turning out the best educated people on the planet. Since then it has become more and more expensive and we are now at the point where going to college and assuming a crushing debt is being weighed against not going to college and going to work
 
It seems like the 80s brought about some radical philosophical change in how Americans think. The US was on the upswing from WW2 through then and has been on a downward slide, propped up by credit and the occasional bubble, since. That downward slide has rapidly increased in the last decade. But nothing ever gets done because once we start talking about solutions everyone gets entrenched in their political dogma.
 
Orignal Earl said:
Meanwhile King Harper is trying to turn us into little America.
Tossing aside all the things that led Canada into the place it is in now.
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He's doing nothing of the sort. And he's certainly not doing it against the wishes of the populace. If anything he's hewed closely to the mid-90s policies of the Liberals and we should all be thankful for that.
 
The rsing $ has to be the #1
10 yrs ago it was 60c on the US $
The QE policy drove down US net worth not only against C$ but globally
 
The average Canadian has quietly become richer than the average American
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Quietly? I mean maybe everything was quiet after the giant housing market explosion burst your ear drums but I am going to go out on a limb and say that the event that erased $7.38 trillion in wealth had something to do with this...

yllus said:
90% of the reason is because we in Canada haven't suffered from a housing market crash - in fact, we're still climbing and are will into outrageous figures in Toronto and Vancouver.
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Agreed. Most of middle class to lower class' wealth was in their house - on average about ~90%. When the housing market tanked the average American homeowner lost 55% of the wealth in their home (according to marketwatch). So - the average American homeowner lost 50% of their total wealth from the housing market crash. I think thats going to have a pretty big impact on any wealth comparisons 🙂

mect said:
Granted, I do agree the housing market has had an influence due to the number of people underwater on their home loans.
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I think it was more than just an influence 😛

Edit: Doing the math the 7.38 trillion = $23,684 lost per person in the US. The average US household is 2.6 people in size so the average household loss was $61,580
 
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Pr0d1gy said:
If you're not bothered by it you should have rode the short bus to school.
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This makes absolutely no sense. Why should I be bothered by this? It's not like prices of durable goods is less expensive in Canada. In fact, it's the opposite.
 
yllus said:
He's doing nothing of the sort. And he's certainly not doing it against the wishes of the populace. If anything he's hewed closely to the mid-90s policies of the Liberals and we should all be thankful for that.
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Let's just say there is a lot in C-38 I very much disagree with, and Harper is the guy who is going to get my blame.
 
yllus said:
90% of the reason is because we in Canada haven't suffered from a housing market crash - in fact, we're still climbing and are will into outrageous figures in Toronto and Vancouver.
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^ This. Americans have derived a very large portion of their wealth from the appreciation of their houses.
 
blankslate said:
Average Wealth of Canadians now greater than Americans... why?
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Lots of reasons

You didn't send all your manufacturing to China.

You aren't controlled by your Corporations.

You still believe in Science because not dominated by the anti-Science Religious like in the U.S.

You don't spend more than half your wages for health care.

The U.S. is being destroyed by the Rich Republicans.

Somehow you guys are keeping yours in check.
 
Doppel said:
Canadians still don't realize they are in a bubble. When it pops they'll lose a lot of this wealth, too.
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There is a concern about housing prices in parts of Canada. However, since Canada is smarter than us in that they have kept a relatively tight leash on their banks. It's unlikely that there are many people in Canada who have bought houses when they should not have been given the loan in the first place.
 
DucatiMonster696 said:
Colleges where never "made" cheap.
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Perhaps they weren't made cheap but the shift of funding away from education to tax cuts for people who didn't really need them didn't help much either...

The fact is that college much much more affordable in the 60s and 70s and in the early 80s but during the late 80s they started going up rapidly.
 
techs said:
When I graduated after 4 years, just before Reagan took office, I had a student loans of 3,800. About the cost of new compact car.
Today a graduate owes about half the cost of house.

If I were going to do it today I would choose a major that would let me pay off my loan, not necessarily what I was best suited to study. That is just a waste of material.

In the 1950's as the WW2 vets were finishing up with their GI bill educations many states had free colleges and those that weren't were heavily supported by the states. So for like 35 years from the end of WW2 until about 1980 going to college was not a crushing economic burden and the US was turning out the best educated people on the planet. Since then it has become more and more expensive and we are now at the point where going to college and assuming a crushing debt is being weighed against not going to college and going to work
Click to expand...

Part of the problem was that all the "help" students received. As more credit was made available to students, the colleges raised their tuition to match.
 
I'd be more interested in the median. I don't think the housing bubble would have nearly the same effect on the median that it would the mean, and it takes some of the skew effect from natural resources as well.
 
jhu said:
Here's what matters more:

USA: $48,500 / capita
Canada: $40,000 / capita

Take that Canada!!!
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

USA: $50,266 / capita (103%)
Canada: $29,625 / capita (64%)

Note: those two wiki links don't jive, as the % of GDP and the actual debt numbers don't work out to what you have above (it's pretty close for the US though). One of them is wrong and I'm not sure which one.

Edit: it's due to PPP adjustments. Our actual GDP / capita is higher at $50,400.
 
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techs said:
When I graduated after 4 years, just before Reagan took office, I had a student loans of 3,800. About the cost of new compact car.
Today a graduate owes about half the cost of house.

If I were going to do it today I would choose a major that would let me pay off my loan, not necessarily what I was best suited to study. That is just a waste of material.

In the 1950's as the WW2 vets were finishing up with their GI bill educations many states had free colleges and those that weren't were heavily supported by the states. So for like 35 years from the end of WW2 until about 1980 going to college was not a crushing economic burden and the US was turning out the best educated people on the planet. Since then it has become more and more expensive and we are now at the point where going to college and assuming a crushing debt is being weighed against not going to college and going to work
Click to expand...

I graduated in 2007 with $0 debt.

And I believe average debt is around $25,000. I know housing prices have plummeted. But outside say urban Detroit where are you finding houses for $50,000?
 
You all are amusing. It's this and nothing more:

Infohawk said:
My hypotheses:

1) Higher natural resources to population ratio (similar to why Australia is doing well);
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We get upwards of 20% of our oil from a country with 1/10th our population. They are going to make money.
 
MomentsofSanity said:
Except that immigrants make up about 20% of the population in Canada vs. about 12-13 in the US. perhaps the better question is why are those immigrants not poor burdens like they are in the US.
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Because Canada is only physically connected to one country. The vast majority of immigrants coming into Canada must have means to even reach the country. The vast majority of the illegals in America are from Mexico and do not need any means to get into the country.
 
blankslate said:
In the past we also supported college education by making it cheap enough for someone to work through college and emerge from it largely debt free with just a part time job.

Sadly those days are gone.
Click to expand...


What? No. That just isn't true.

People's expectations of the college experience are to blame for the ridiculous cost.

You can go to Junior College for free basically with grants and scholarships and working. The problem is people think they are entitled to a $40K year program and are entitled to a brand new computer, phone, etc and everything else they think they need for school.

There are plenty of people who go to college and emerge without debt or very little debt, it happens all the time. These people aren't as vocal about their college experience as those morons who cram 4 years into 8 years and emerge with $200K in debt - and of course they didn't work a day during that time so they have no job experience and can't get a job.

There isn't anything wrong the the education system - there IS something wrong with the students. They're idiots - so are their parents.
 
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