Vinny in Vancouver

111%

At least 69%

This would surely require Advanced Statistics!!

I feel it's a combination of things (also add ferry workers to the list)....

The expense here in the city...people can't afford to live here and it's impacting businesses. Our greedy powers that be think it's ok for corporations and foreign investors to gobble up property, flip and speculate but this is what happens. You don't have people "living" here, you have people parking money here and checking in/out like it's an atm. Much of which is laundered $$ and numbered corporations with no record of where the cash payments are coming from.

My ex neighbour (can't stand him) is a good example of all that's wrong here...came here and paid cash for properties (yes, more than one) and is now trying to rent the place next door for....$4,200/month. It's a 50+ year old building and he's done his own shoddy reno's. He's a money monger and the latest tenants told me what he's now asking. They paid $2200/month but it was being increased to $2500 so they said see ya. He and I had a few spats when he lived here as he NO respect for his neighbours. Used to trample on my ferns/plants because he couldn't reach his damn figs so he'd tromp on my side of the garden. Cares only about money...no sense of community.

COVID also impacted things, as people re-thought what's important in life and working for scraps became a bit lower on the list. Grinding it out. People could stay at home and collect CERB instead.

Also, as stated, people have been put at risk in the service industry due to maniacs with no manners or self restraint. Lashing out (especially over mask guidelines, etc.). 

It really is a combination of people retiring, competition for workers giving workers the option to try something different, and a lack of affordability in a lot of our cities.  A lot of people took advantage of the housing market to sell and make bank, and then move to rural, and either retire, or work from home with a better lifestyle bonus.  That in turn leads to housing affordability being a problem....everywhere.  There are so many homes being built, in a higher tax bracket, that when you have the choice to build, as a builder, a house that is expensive or affordable, you go to where the money is, which is tying up all of our house builders.  Then couple that with...not being able to afford housing, you just end up going round and round.  If BC Housing would just focus on housing, instead of social engineering, and pick a few places as up and coming and concentrate there, we'd be better off.  Then you provide financial relief for schooling, and places to live to do that schooling, for trades and services careers.  You chip away at the entire problem and move forward.  Which is the opposite of what our NDP government wants to do.

Always tried to joke about such bleak reality - but it's no laughing matter :^(

Globalization HAS been vunderbarr for well-positioned elites. & the other 99.9%? lifestyle-competition has become wayyy too pricey. The working class-poverty existence is basically under water, every step of the way.

& to this here layman, economists don't know/do shyte! What props up our own fiat currencies anyways? A question I'd been randomly asking folks over the past decade,+(approx). I fear we're about to alll go 1492-mode, & make a big, F***in' discovery in that realm.

As that currency-tsunami hits the plebs/hoi polloi, already the elites will have transitioned their ill-gotten gains into tangible assets, like farmland and pm's.

Every aspect seems outa' control. One will have to be mighty high up the food chain to avoid the coming pain.