Three Vipers, Two Lamborghinis, and new Bentlies

This confirms what many have said in the past. Canada's standard of living is dismally low. Canadians, on average, are worse off than those living in the poorest state in the Union, Alabama.

Yeah. All the anti-Americanisms, and it turns out we are poorer than Alabamans. (I am not saying that Canada is not a better country, because I believe it is. On this important measure; however, we fail miserably.)

And if you don’t' believe a think tank to tell you we are worse off than Americans, I have anecdotal proof!

Last week I was at Newport Beach. It's not the richest neighborhood in Orange County, but it is fairly rich. (It ranks 111th on the list of richest towns in the US.) Median home price in the town was about $600,000 6 years ago but thanks to crazy real estate market in California it is now well over $1.5 million. (Yes, that's a really high IRR!) Anyway, other than being in California, the town, resembles the area of Toronto that I grew up in. In fact, my best friends lived in neighborhoods that were more affluent than Newport Beach.

So you would think that I would feel fairly at home at Newport Beach and that I would not be shocked by the luxuries I would find there. Well, you would be wrong.

I saw three Vipers, two Lamborghinis, and two new Bentleys in the span of 5 minutes! I had never seen so many expensive cars in one day. (In fact, like my old days in North York, I was riding in the cheapest car in the area and I was in a brand new Nissan.)

These people were really, really, really rich. They could buy out the folks in Post Road and Birdal Path five or six times over.

Like I said in my post about education, the only problem isn't that on average Canadians are not as rich as Americans. We should also have a problem with the fact that our rich people (our investor class) are not as rich as the rich people in the US.