There are five workers supporting every retiree, and this is still happening.
If you are approaching 40, there will be about two workers supporting you when you retire.
I’m thinking this is the start of something much bigger.
If you are approaching 40, there will be about two workers supporting you when you retire.
I’m thinking this is the start of something much bigger.
Canada has two major problems with immigration right now:
1) the rapid increase in numbers is a shock that the immigration systems (including immigrant community resources) can't handle, that shock is exacerbating the housing crisis (and health care crisis and ...)
2) the family reunification program defeats one of the major purposes of immigration, increase the ratio of working age citizens to elderly citizens.
I say this as someone who has traditionally been pretty gung ho about immigration.
The problem is that it's not a solution, the solution is to constantly push against inequility and increase social mobility while investing in productive industries (less housing speculations more manufacturing).
those are tough bills to swallow and they will lead any elected goverment out of the office, because strong shifts to an economy like this come with a lot of short term pain. and no one is willing to setdown and deal with 10 years of poor economy so that the future of the country is better.
Traditionally, it has been helping. It's not been helping for a couple of years now.
> strong shifts to an economy like this come with a lot of short term pain. and no one is willing to setdown and deal with 10 years of poor economy so that the future of the country is better.
This is the problem in a nutshell, we need to make changes and we can't stomach it politically.
Increasing productivity doesn't fix the loss of workers per retiree if the profits of that productivity only flow to the top. This can be fixed, but I don't expect a massive increase in wages at the cost of shareholder returns happening any time soon. I think it's more likely that those who haven't saved and invested enough to compensate for the shifting economic landscape (or those who made bad investments) will just end up with a lower standard of living than the previous generations of retirees.