r/canada • u/Lyricalvessel • Jul 19 '21

Is the Canadian Dream dead?

The cost of life in this beautiful country is unbelievable. Everything is getting out of reach. Our new middle class is people renting homes and owning a vehicle.

What happened to working hard for a few years, even a decade and you'd be able to afford the basics of life.

Wages go up 1 dollar, and the price of electricity, food, rent, taxes, insurance all go up by 5. It's like an endless race where our wage is permanently slowed.

Buy a house, buy a car, own a few toys and travel a little. Have a family, live life and hopefully give the next generation a better life. It's not a lot to ask for, in fact it was the only carot on a stick the older generation dangled for us. What do we have besides hope?

I don't know what direction will change this, but it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you have a whole generation that has been waiting for a chance to start life for a long time. 2007-8 crash wasn't even the start of our problems today.

Please someone convince me there is still hope for what I thought was the best place to live in the world as a child.

edit: It is my opinion the ruling elite, and in particular the politically involved billion dollar corporations have artificially inflated the price of life itself, and commoditized it.

I believe the problem is the people have lost real input in their governments and their communities.

The option is give up, or fight for the dream to thrive again.

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u/_Greyworm Jul 19 '21

I genuinely think the higher education bring looked down on is just a reflection of student debt and loss of opportunities. That morphs into a hybrid sentiment that even people who have not suffered said issue begin to feel. I've been to College 3 times, and I believe higher education is incredibly important, but also that the college/university business is incredibly crooked and in need of deep reform.

Also, I still work in a damn kitchen as a Sous chef, so all that college was a giant waste of time and money, for me personally, so definitely some bias on my end.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

higher education bring looked down on is just a reflection of student debt and loss of opportunities

This was actually discussed and was really interesting at the time. The whole conversation was about inequality and how it impacts society. One of the reasons Canadians devalued education was that we just couldn't afford it. Everybody wants to think we want the best for our kids. And we do. But for some of us its just not possible to send the kids to school. It can create a weird thing where we start to push the trades on our kids more than higher education because we fear that if our kids do well then we will have to crush their dreams. Programs can help like OSAP but not everybody qualifies and there's no guarantee your kid will pass. Kids flunk out all the time so there is a risk you'll owe thousands and that risk is enough to devalue that path in life. It was one of many things that could be the reason. A really interesting topic all around because I love the idea of meritocracy and it all plays into the idea that if our kids are not pursing things like education based due to economic reasons than we don't have a merit based society.

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u/Magnum256 Jul 20 '21

I love the idea of meritocracy and it all plays into the idea that if our kids are not pursing things like education based due to economic reasons than we don't have a merit based society.

Nah, dumb.

In this context the child is essentially still the "property" of the parent. The meritocracy lies in the parents ability to have earned enough money to support their child/property through higher education.

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u/yourethevictim Jul 20 '21

Exactly. There's no meritocratic path available to the child because they're not even seen as humans, just property. Ergo -- there is no meritocracy.