The economy got richer. You didn’t. Check this out.

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:01]For decades, workers were told "Work harder, be more productive, embrace technology, adapt to change, and the economy would reward them."

[00:00:14]And to be fair, workers did become more productive, massively more productive.

[00:00:21]In the postwar era and up to around 1980, productivity more than doubled.

[00:00:27]And since 1981, productivity has increased another 60%.

[00:00:32]The problem is ordinary people stopped getting their share of the rewards.

[00:00:38]Median real wages in Canada have only increased 20% since 1981.

[00:00:45]Meanwhile, inflation has increased a cumulative 150 to 200%.

[00:00:51]Housing's up significantly more than that.

[00:00:54]And a whole lot of billionaires got very rich.

[00:00:59]Yeah, there's an estimated 60 to 70 billionaires in Canada today when it was a handful in 1981.

[00:01:07]Worker productivity rose 60%, wages only rose 20%, inflation's been close to 200%, and there are easily tenfold the number of billionaires.

[00:01:18]Hmm.

[00:01:19]Anyway, one thing I keep hearing from the professional bootlickers in my comment sections is, "Well, corporations provide jobs. Without them, there'd be no jobs."

[00:01:31]Folks, let's clear something up right now.

[00:01:35]Corporations aren't operating registered charities.

[00:01:38]They're not warm, fuzzy organizations spreading jobs around like Santa's elves throwing candy from a parade float.

[00:01:46]Corporations hire workers because workers create value.

[00:01:50]Workers produce the goods, they move the freight, stock the shelves, operate the machines. Workers keep the lights on.

[00:01:59]And if labor stopped tomorrow, the economy grinds to a halt. Money stops flowing. Products stop moving. Services collapse. Because workers are not some cute little side feature of capitalism.

[00:02:12]These large corporations are not doing us a favor. We're doing them a favor.

[00:02:17]Workers are the engine. Don't mix that up. We produce it the extreme and concentrated wealth they harvest from our labor and have not been rewarded for it fairly.

[00:02:28]Now, does that mean businesses are unnecessary? Of course not. Businesses matter. Entrepreneurship matters.

[00:02:35]Investment matters. But some people online act like billionaires descended from heaven carrying jobs down the mountain like the 10 Commandments.

[00:02:44]No, John. They only hire people because labor creates profit. Because they couldn't do all that work by their onesies. This isn't altruism as much as it's exploitation.

[00:02:57]That's how capitalism works.

[00:02:59]And here's the thing that really matters. Over the last several decades, workers became dramatically more productive.

[00:03:07]Technology improved. Automation, communication, transportation, logistics.

[00:03:13]Sure, companies invested in those technologies so they could extract more value from the labor.

[00:03:20]So one worker today produces vastly more economic value than workers of a few generations ago. Take farming. Back in the early and mid-1900s, farming was brutally labor-intensive. Today, modern equipment, genetics, irrigation systems, fertilizers, automation, and technology allows one farmer to produce yields that earlier generations could barely imagine.

[00:03:46]Corn yields per acre, for example, are several times higher than they were decades ago.

[00:03:52]One farmer today can feed dramatically more people than farmers could in the past. That's productivity.

[00:03:59]But is the farmer benefiting from that as much as the wholesaler who drives the hardest bargain possible and forces that hard-working farmer to settle for razor-thin margins?

[00:04:10]No.

[00:04:10]In fact, the farmer is at even greater risk because to compete, they have had to make significant investments in equipment and buildings and farm infrastructure, much of which they went into debt to acquire.

[00:04:24]And if unpredictable events like weather wipe out their yields, the corporation they sell to doesn't care.

[00:04:31]They have many contracts with other farmers.

[00:04:34]And it's not just farming. Factories became more efficient.

[00:04:39]Warehouses became more automated. Supply chains became globalized. Software accelerated everything.

[00:04:47]Workers became faster, more efficient, and more productive than at any human history.

[00:04:54]So logically, if workers are producing vastly more wealth than previous generations, ordinary people should be thriving, right?

[00:05:03]Except that's not what's happened, is it?

[00:05:06]No, because while productivity kept climbing, wages largely stopped keeping pace with both productivity and the rising cost of living.

[00:05:16]Housing, child care, groceries, insurance, utilities, everything. And housing is probably the clearest example of all this. A few generations ago, many middle-class families could buy homes on a single income. Housing cost about three to five times one's annual salary then.

[00:05:36]Today, in many parts of Canada, housing prices have risen to 10 to 12 times one's income.

[00:05:43]Young adults with decent jobs now struggle to afford homes. Not because they're lazy, not because of Starbucks and avocado toast, but because wages haven't kept pace to either productivity or inflation.

[00:05:58]Because the cost of assets, especially housing, exploded while wages failed to keep up.

[00:06:05]And while ordinary workers struggled harder, something else happened at exactly the same time. Corporate profits soared. Executive compensation exploded.

[00:06:16]Billionaire wealth skyrocketed.

[00:06:19]Some CEOs now make more in a month than ordinary workers make in an entire year.

[00:06:25]Think about that for a second.

[00:06:27]Workers became more productive, generated more wealth for others, technology became more advanced, and yet many ordinary people feel like they're running faster every year just to stay in the same place.

[00:06:40]That's not an accident.

[00:06:42]And this is where some folks get manipulated online. Because instead of asking, "Why are workers producing more value while wealth concentrates upward at an unprecedented rate?"

[00:06:53]Instead, people blame immigrants, public health care, taxes, bike lanes, poor people, or basically anything except concentrated corporate power.

[00:07:05]Meanwhile, the actual wealth extraction keeps happening quietly in the background.

[00:07:11]But look, markets themselves are not automatically evil.

[00:07:15]Competition can drive innovation.

[00:07:18]Businesses can create opportunity.

[00:07:20]Entrepreneurship matters.

[00:07:22]The problem starts when markets stop being truly competitive.

[00:07:27]When a handful of giant corporations dominate industries, when workers lose bargaining power, when unions weaken, when housing becomes an investment vehicle instead of shelter, when corporations prioritize quarterly shareholder profits above literally everything else, that's where things start to break down.

[00:07:50]And folks, I think deep down a lot of ordinary people feel this imbalance even if they don't always have the language to explain it.

[00:07:58]Because people know something feels wrong.

[00:08:01]They're working hard. They're exhausted.

[00:08:04]Life feels less stable.

[00:08:06]They know their parents or grandparents often built middle-class lives that now feel increasingly out of reach.

[00:08:13]And the frustrating part is workers did keep their side of the bargain. They became more productive. They adapted.

[00:08:20]They learned the technology. They worked longer hours. They hustled. They side gigged themselves into burnout.

[00:08:28]But increasingly, the rewards flowed upwards instead of outwards.

[00:08:34]And eventually, when enough people feel like the system no longer rewards effort fairly, society starts becoming unstable.

[00:08:42]People become angry, resentful, hopeless, divided.

[00:08:48]Because once workers stop believing hard work can realistically build stability anymore, the social contract itself starts cracking.

[00:08:57]And honestly, that's the conversation we should be having.

[00:09:01]Not whether billionaires are heroic job creators descending from the heavens to save us.

[00:09:08]Workers create the wealth. The question is, why are fewer and fewer workers receiving a fair share of it?

[00:09:16]Anyway, folks, let me know what you think below. And in the next episode, we're talking about corporate welfare and why billion-dollar corporations somehow keep needing taxpayer money.

[00:09:27]So make sure you're subscribed with notifications on so you don't miss a thing.

[00:09:32]Peace out. This is going to be a ride.