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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

This should surprise absolutely nobody. Canada's middle class gets to bear the brunt of the costs of running the country, it would take a much larger population to be able to do so responsibly, on top of that your average Canadian spends far more on consumer goods than is probably wise given their income. In places where the future arrived a little early you can already see this, I've known people to burn up their furniture and inner walls of their house to stay warm in winter. Todays middle-class has a fair chance of ending up in the poor house or on the streets when the final bills arrive. Some parts of Canada make Northern Michigan look good by comparison. Just drive around Northern Ontario for a bit if you want to have an idea of what poverty in a first world country looks like.

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How is that even relevant to this article? The middle class family described wasn't forced into debt by expensive essentials. It sank into it by living beyond its means by overspending on non-essentials.

Nobody made them spend two months income and 60% of their savings on a vacation. That's patently idiotic.

> > Canadian spends far more on consumer goods than is probably wise given their income.

I think I covered that. The reason they do is because Canadians are very much conditioned (and Americans too) to describe everything they buy in terms of monthly payments. That works, as long as the paychecks keep rolling in. But it does not take much to upset that.

As for the infrastructure spending and other bits in that comment: if there were more people carrying the load then everybody would end up a little wealthier. As it is the only place where real money is being made in Canada is in banking, which is almost predatory as to how it treats the population. The interest rates are off the scale compared to the rest of the world and the various low key trade-wars with the US do not help either.

>Just drive around Northern Ontario for a bit if you want to have an idea of what poverty in a first world country looks like.

As someone born and raised in Northern Ontario, I have no idea what you're talking about.

You want to know what modern poverty looks like, go to San Francisco.

> As someone born and raised in Northern Ontario, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Been to Wawa, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay or Timmins recently? What about the smaller towns like Desbarats, what about the rural areas?

It's - to me - incredible that in a first world country people would be living like that, I've seen poverty in other countries as well, but not in places where the winters are that cold. In Panama or Colombia you can get away with living in a shack, in Northern Ontario it is not an option.

If you feel that Northern Ontario is doing well then you are not in agreement with the people that live there, younger people - if they have any marketable skills - move to the large cities, mostly Toronto but also in the United States as soon as they are able to.

Sure, San Francisco has poverty too, but at least the climate won't outright kill you (in case you were wondering why there aren't so many street people in Northern Ontario: the ones that try usually do not last a single season).

>Been to Wawa, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay or Timmins recently? What about the smaller towns like Desbarats, what about the rural areas?

Yes, in fact I have. I lived in North Bay for many years. I have family there still. I played NOJHL hockey. I still spend 4 weeks a year on vacation (best fishing in the world!) in the North.

>If you feel that Northern Ontario is doing well then you are not in agreement with the people that live there, younger people

Not "doing well" isn't the same as "first world poverty". Sure, there are isolated First Nations reservations, like Attawapiskat, that have serious issues. It is nowhere near the norm, or in fact much worse than places like, say, the Appalachian coal regions.

But I'll concede the climate argument. Thankfully, our country has a decent safety net.

>younger people - if they have any marketable skills - move to the large cities, mostly Toronto but also in the United States as soon as they are able to.

Do they? Because I was and know many of those young people. Yes, there's movement to the cities like everywhere else on the planet; it's where the white collar work is. But many people want to stay in the North.

For what it's worth, I'm in the tech industry and moved from Northern Ontario to the city. Now I'm in PEI, another beautiful rural area that I hear people are fleeing....

> For what it's worth, I'm in the tech industry

You don't feel that skews your perspective just a little bit?

I work in Tech (programmer) in Sudbury.

Their is far more money here than appears on the surface. Years of 10,000+ miners making 100K+ per year + nickel bonus saw to a rather well off retirement community and thriving big ticket item market. Yup, lots of them borrowed to get there quickly. But it was also paid off quickly.

Now, that being said, Sudbury is a very different place 15 years later. The vast majority of the mining jobs are gone, the infrastructure is falling apart. But I wouldn't even come close to calling it poor. Is the future bright here. Nope. But I wouldn't call lots of the major centers to the south prosperous either.

Myself. I never had a CC until I was in my 40's. Even then, they are rarely used, and, paid off immediately. Despite what I think is an artificially inflated local housing market, I manage to save a significant chunk of my income every month. The root cause of the debt problem, I think, is the lack of education. Schools haven't taught 'money' in ages. Managing a household is no different than managing a small business. People have been purposely NOT taught how to manage their money by our education system, it borders on the negligent.

Sudbury is kind of special on account of a certain comet landing there.

Doesn't matter if its a nickel delivered from space, or timber or diamonds or gold. What matters is that it's a resource based economy that has been sold and sold resold to different companies

Anecdotal evidence of money issues is my buddy who does repo's and is baliff. Just before the economy goes into the tank as a whole, he's called it each time because repo's and defaults shoot way up just before.

Unfortunately, he's very busy at the moment.

I'm very sorry to hear that. I spent 5 years in all in your beautiful country, have spent many days in and around Sudbury and the Timmins area.

"This should surprise absolutely nobody"

It surprises me, because I've never been up there. I do accept that we have issues, and that people have been getting hit by harsher bills, like Hydro recently.

The article doesn't want to seem to load for me, but what is the source of cost issues in that part of the country? Cost of living vs what jobs pay out there? Or is it more deep than that?

I primarily have been wanting to see an increase on taxes on the higher earning bracket. Also we should probably have more brackets on the high end 250k+ all paying the same tax rate doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Anyways, my hope is that we can use that to reduce costs of services this way. Not sure if it would solve the issues you speak of not.

> The article doesn't want to seem to load for me

I had to wait a bit but it eventually loads. Not sure what is wrong with the website.

> what is the source of cost issues in that part of the country? Cost of living vs what jobs pay out there? Or is it more deep than that?

Article concludes frivolous spending coupled with negative life events: Loss of job, "ignore their tax bill while shelling out for rep hockey and baseball", relationship gone wrong.

"Thanks to all the cheap credit, many of us can bridge our financial shortfalls for years before realizing we are on the brink of ruin."

Much of rural Michigan is rather poor but I wonder about the comparison you are making. There aren't people living in anything resembling shacks in Michigan. At least not meaningful numbers of them.

There's even probably a bit of an inversion by now where the poorest areas are apartments in small towns rather than isolated rural homes.

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