I hate that I can't do it so I guess we're even?

Without writing out my whole life story: student loans, unexpected vehicle issues (public transit isn't an option where I live), out of pocket medical costs not covered by benefits or gov't, long commutes with expensive gas and no feasible alternatives and few job opportunities closer to home in my field. Can't afford to move due to high rents so I'm stuck driving.

There's more but I'm hungry and wanna eat dinner and don't feel like going into it. We save everything that isn't essential and barely go out for fun, anything extra goes towards a down payment but the way things are going right not it doesn't look like we'll be able to buy for years unless we can put away like 2k a month.

When people say pay cheque to pay cheque in this type of situation they're still putting money away into savings typically but are out of reach of where they need to be. There's usually large debts, medical costs or other financial burdens that aren't mentioned like maybe taking care of a family member. Their pay cheque to pay cheque situation is a bit different than someone working minimum wage and will be out on the streets as they still have money going into some sort of savings

Start with income perspective. The average annual salary in 2022 was just under $60,000. Nationally, the average house price in summer 2023 was a bit over $750,000. These incomes and house prices are affected pretty strongly by the lower incomes and lower housing costs in rural Canada vs the major cities like Vancouver and Toronto

So.. shift attention to the cities. In Toronto and Vancouver, the average house price is around $1,200,000 give or take a little. You need at a combined income of least $280,000 to qualify for a house like that (or have substantial equity built up in previous home purchases). Most people are earning at or close to the national average... with a few - especially those in STEM careers (sw devs for example) up over $100,000 per year.

I live in a suburb city (I own my house)... it's inconveniently located if you want/need to be in the core city centre for work (I'm about 3 hours commute right now if I needed to go in to a downtown office.. thankfully I don't). Houses on my street are relatively new (most built in 2019 and 2020). The houses currently for sale are listing between $1,250,000 and $2,350,000.

Renting can be really awful in Canada too... you get stunts like this https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-is-egregious-sisters-shocked-when-toronto-landlord-raises-rent-to-9-500-a-month-1.6548845 simply because they can...

tl;dr Housing in Canada is bonkers

The issue is that investors are buying houses 100k over asking price same or next day because they don't plan on living in them, they just want to make the investment and prop up the housing market bubble for as long as they can.

I bought a townhouse that was 1700sqft (~150m^2) in Markharm, a suburb of the GTA (1hr to the center of toronto by car, 1.5hrs by bus), in a pretty bad area for 800K CAD during a slight market crash during covid. By all accounts this was an exceptionally good deal, by realtor didn't think we could get anything for under 900. I sold that townhouse for 1.1 mil in 2023.

Look at what we did to the planet with the current (and smaller) population sizes. You think adding MORE people isn’t going to become an issue?

We are, in the near future, going to have a mass migration of people away from no longer inhabitable land.

Those people you’re talking about aren’t going to give up power and let “average people” right the ship. And those same “average people” have been placated and conditioned to buy shiny trinkets and celebrate touchdowns and home runs instead of organizing and uprooting the real problem makers.

By just about every measure? Would you rather have a smaller population and the same standard of living, or a larger population and a considerably lower standard of living? The earth's resources and abilities to heal itself are finite. The more people we have, the more restrictive our quality of life needs to be. Instead of having a house on some usable land, a garden, and some chickens, you're forced into a stacked box, with one window, and no yard, surrounded by other stacked boxes. Plus the impact of everything you do is magnified. Oh, you want to drive to the store? Better walk 20 blocks instead, because we're already at our carbon capacity. That last example was hyperbole, but it's not that far fetched. Basically a lower population gives us a lot more leeway to live our lives comfortably.

By what measure?

Literally every objective measure of our planet's health? We are permanently changing the atmosphere, simultaneously causing a mass extinction event, and virtually every environmental preserve and tourist attraction is facing huge damage from overuse.

Every human being has a carbon cost, none of us are carbon negative or neutral, until we build systems that change that, every extra human we add is destroying our planet faster.