Overall I feel that’s their idea. Aggressive rate hikes in quick succession slows down the red hot economy quickly, but also creates an air of uncertainty. This causes corporations to panic and start thinking about pausing promotions and even begin layoffs. And we all know, the best way to reduce inflation and slow down an economy is to have more unemployed and poor people. The government knows that as long as companies keep paying people a lot of money, people gonna a keep buying shit.
Who’s getting paid a lot of money? I was under the impression everyone’s been getting paid shit for the past 30 years and things keep getting more expensive.
By everyone, I think you mean at the lower end of the pay Spectrum. Minimum wage hasn’t kept up for the past 30 years, but as you climb higher, the pay has certainly skyrocketed. And it’s these people that drive up the cost of housing. If everyone was being paid like shit, house prices wouldn’t have skyrocketed.
In 1980, a person making minimum wage could afford a house and a CEO coukd afford 5 houses. Today, minimum wage makers can afford 0 houses, while the CEO can afford 20. On average, house buying capacity has gone up Imo. It’s just the split that fucks over the poor people.
Mortgage rates in Canada were running over 15% in 1980 and peaked at near 22% in 1981. Minimum wage was about $3.25 depending on province, about $11.76/hr in today’s money. They weren’t buying houses. A lot of people were absolutely slammed if they had to renew their previous 11-13% mortgage at 22%.
There’s a bunch of other factors involved too. Median house size has doubled since 1970 (1200sq ft to 2600 sq ft), restrictive zoning and forcing contractors to also develop single use subdivisions puts their costs up, and promoted higher margin developments. Also, the feds and provinces have drastically reduced the construction of public housing.
it’s not even CEOs as a class. It’s a tiny percentage of the CEOs of the largest companies, and even the richest Canadian CEOs are chump change compared to the “globally wealthy” that have real power. The richest Canadians, who don’t work as CEOs, aren’t in the top 2000 global wealth.
CEO is a job. Rich people don’t have jobs. They make their money by being rich, raking it in under ALL economic scenarios.
