Canada: A Nation of Lemmings, Rushing to the Cliff Edge

An organization called The World Happiness Report has determined that, overall, Canada is a relatively happy place, ranking No. 15 out of 140 nations. 

How exactly do they know?

Easy. They asked people the "Cantril ladder life-evaluation question." 

LOL. 

Specifically, they asked a representative sample of around 1000 people in each country in each of three years the following question:

"Think of a ladder, with the best possible life for you being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. Now rate your own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale." 

On that basis, Canada ranked Nunber 15 out of 140 countries -- not bad  for a cold and mostly uninhabitable land headed by Justin Trudeau. 

Not so good is that, contrary to what one might expect, Canadian youth is a lot less happy that elderly Canadians. 

Based on the "happiness" of those over the age of 60, Canada ranked No. 8 among nations, but among those under 30, Canada's ranking fell 50 spots to No. 58 -- behind not only obviously nice places like Denmark, New Zealand (despite that woman), Switzerland, and war-torn Israel, but even behind such places as Nicaragua, Honduras, Bosnia, and Bulgaria. 

As a member of the "every morning when I wake up I know I'm a winner" class, I say with the authority of experience, that old age is no picnic.

So what, then, ails our Canadian youth? 

Easy to see. 

They are right royally screwed by Canada's criminally incompetant, or merely criminal economic and population policies. 

The results of said mismanagement?

Sky high real estate prices, an interest rate rocketing from 0.25% in 2022 to 4.5% now, and possibly headed higher as the bank of Canada seeks to throttle the Trudeau-massive-debt-based-spending-binge-induced inflation. 

Why do those economic stats matter to Canadians under 30?

Because those under 30's are the folks -- and the're not kids, seeking to form a household and raise a family. And here's how ordure-smeared the prospect is compared with the experience of these youngsters' happy elders. 

Today, the average Canadian home price is around $792,200, while median family income  is under $100,000, so the ratio of house price to young family income must be at least eight to one, and must, in fact, be much higher since incomes mostly rise with age. 

How does that compare with the conditions faced by today's happy oldsters at the time that most of them  bought a home? 

Well I won't lay out a lot of boring stats, but here in Victoria, BC, perhaps the nicest place to live anywhere in Canada, and in the suburb of Oak Bay, undoubtedly the most upscale neighborhood in Victoria, we purchased a modest home on a double-sized lot for $68,000 (lot value around $8,000). That was in 1974 when our joint, not-much-above-average, family income was $40,000: so a house price to family income of just 1.7. Today, 50 years later, that house is valued at just under two million with a ot value of about $1.6 million, or about 200 times what we paid for it. 

Now do you see why old folks are cheerful and the young are, um, well I don't use vulgar language here, but you see what I'm getting at. We bought a house, for what was, by today's standards, even after accounting for inflation, peanuts and for which we paid in cash from the savings from our modest earnings. But when we're dead, that house will likely go for millions to some hyper-mortgaged young couple. 

So, yeah, we oldsters are laughing and you youngsters are either weeping or just mad as Hell. 

Oh, and to toughen the struggle, the Trudeau genius administration has opened the floodgates to immigration, which is to reach a record 484,000 this year, rising to half a million next year. Thats 142,097 more than the number of Canadian births in 2023. And it's an influx of mostly young adults who will compete with Canada's young families not only for homes, but for jobs too. 

No wonder the Canadian fertility rate is in free-fall, reaching 1.1 in 2023, when the mere replacement rate would be 2.1. For most young Canadian adults, no family home means no family. Thus, under the present administration, Canada is a country bent on self-genocide. We are replacing ourselves with people from elsewhere. For the most part good people, no doubt. BUT THEY'RE NOT CANADIANS.

Not Canadians yet, that is. But they soon will be, and not only Canadians but the  majority and ultimately the replacement for the historic Canadian nation. 

Inflation, consumer prices, house prices, stock prices and gold

The following are titles of recent articles appearing at Zero Hedge:

5 Reasons The Fed's New Policy Won't Create Inflation

and

Inflation - Running Out Of Road

The first contends that however much money the US Federal Reserve prints it will not succeed in creating a substantial rise in the consumer price index. The second asserts that far from there being no price inflation, an honest consumer price index would show inflation running at an annual rate of 10%.

So how to resolve the contradiction? First, it is necessary to be clear as to what inflation is. As Milton Friedman put it shortly:

Inflation is a monetary phenomenon -- always. 

This of course was not an original insight. Adam Smith wrote at length of the process whereby monetary inflation was achieved by re-minting gold and silver coinage in increased quantities through the addition of base metal.

But the supply of money is not unrelated to prices. As Samuel Johnson observed in 1775, during a visit to the Western Isles of Scotland, eggs were a half-pence a dozen not because eggs were abundant but because pence were scarce.

But the effect of monetary inflation on prices is not necessarily uniform. Thus, inflation does not necessarily affect the consumer price index directly or even at all. In Western economies today, money is chiefly created by banks, central or private, that create money out of thin air by making loans.

These loans are, in the case of the commercial banks, made primarily to facilitate the purchase of big-ticket items, particularly houses and cars, to support speculative stock investments, or to allow corporate stock buy-backs.

Such lending has little effect on the consumer price index, since it does nothing to increase consumption of items, the price of which determine the level of the price index.

Rather, mortgage debt and car loans will tend to suppress the consumer price index by forcing borrowers to divert an increased share of income to interest and capital repayments.

What such loans do affect is the price of houses, cars and stocks that are bid up by the loan-based spending. Thus, if we want to gauge the effect of monetary inflation on prices, we need to look at home prices and stock prices as well as the prices of bread or milk. 

When we take that broader view, we see that the US and many other countries are in the midst of a rapid money-printing-induced price inflation, which greatly enriches the already rich, i.e., the owners of stocks and real estate, while making the poor, relatively speaking, much poorer.

As for gold, the price reflects fear of the consequences of monetary inflation--which is to say fear of the loss of purchasing power of the unit of currency--among those with money but no desire to invest it in stocks or real estate.

COVID-19, an Agent of Demographic Change: How the New Corona Virus Will Change the World

 The novel corona virus COVID-19 has three interesting properties:

(1) It is highly infectious;
(2) It has a high lethality, killing something like 3% of those infected;
(3) Risk of mortality increases with age.

What that means is that:

(a) Most people throughout the world will likely contract the disease within the next couple of years;
(b) Several hundred million people worldwide will die from the disease;
(c) Most deaths will be of pensioners in the most developed nations.

What that all means is that:

(i)  The burden of social security in the most developed nations will be radically lifted as the number of pensioners is cut by 10 to 30%, and perhaps by well over half if the virus returns over a number of years;
(ii) The number of young people engaged in the "eldercare" business will be radically reduced;
(iii) The cost of housing will fall and fertility rates will rise as the transfer of assets from the old to the young accelerates.

The most important net effect will be to save the Western nations from self genocide by suppression of native fertility (due to the burden of high housing and social services costs) and an end to mass population replacement immigration as native workers are released from service to the older generation, and thus freed to take the jobs that "natives won't do."

Whether as the result of a lucky accident or the planned release of an engineered virus, the overall effects will likely be judged by historians to have been beneficial.

Related: 
CanSpeccy: The novel Corona Virus Is Going Global and If You're Old, It May Just Have Been Targeted On You
Real Clear Science: Five Reasons not to Panic About the COVID-19 Coronavirus

Emerg. Micr. & Infections: Discovery of a subgenotype of human coronavirus NL63 associated with severe lower respiratory tract infection in China, 2018
ZH: Did China Close First Lab To Sequence Covid-19 Out Of Fear It Would Lose Bat Soup Narrative?
NY Post: Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab
ZH: UK Prepares Giant Morgue in London's Hyde Park
The Economist: A broadguess is that 25-70% of the population of any infected country may catch the disease
The Lancet: RETRACTED: Chinese medical staff request international medical assistance in fighting against COVID-19
James Howard Kunstler: Hey, It’s Not Just Corona Virus
DM: Now a DOG tests positive for coronavirus

Independent: Coronavirus could kill half a million Brits and infect 80% of UK population

ZH: Japan, China Close Schools Nationwide\
South China Morning Post: Coronavirus far more likely than Sars to bond to human cells due to HIV-like mutation, scientists say
ZH: Covid-19 Infects Iranian Vice President, Kills Iran Ambassador To Vatican
ZH: Pope Cancels Event Over "Slight Illness" After Shaking Hands With 'Mask-Wearing' Public In St. Peter's Square