I live in Toronto and can speak to what’s happening here. The financialization of housing is to blame. Most new builds are condos, many units are smaller than most people would want to have a family in.

https://thehub.ca/2025/05/17/chart-storm-five-graphs-on-torontos-historic-condo-market-collapse/

Some of the condo units for sale in Toronto are about 550 square feet, are cheaply made, have poor layouts and are listed for over $760,000; small, subpar quality, and expensive.

The quantity of unsold completed units has more than doubled compared to last year, marking the highest level of unsold completed units in Toronto since the first quarter of 1993. Experts at the real estate think tank Urbanation anticipate that the increase in completed and unsold inventory will persist in 2025, with an additional 2,411 unsold units expected to be finished by the close of 2025.

So what’s being built is designed to meet investor interests but not community needs.

These units are also listed at incredibly high prices, so that if interest rates drop a bit, units lose the value they are listed at pre-construction, and quickly become negative assets from the perspective of a homeowner versus a long-term investor.

And all this is market-priced housing, not the subsidized housing we desperately need in addition to affordable and adequate market-based housing.

Affordable housing was a non-partisan issue before the financialization of housing in Canada in the 1990s

I visited Chicago. Took a tour of Wrigley Field (where the Cubs play) and spent a little time in Wrigleyville (the surrounding area). I went to a White Sox game that evening (where my Blue Jays were playing). I got into a conversation with a gentleman in the seat behind me. He was talking disparagingly of the White Sox and I pointed that out, and he said “Oh I hate the White Sox. I’m only here because this is a free seat and a work outing.” The stands were very empty in the stadium. I don’t know if they offered stadium tours. I came away with the impression that the White Sox were a littler brother to the Cubs in Chicago than the Clippers are to the Lakers the or Mets are to the Yankees. So, if I was guessing, I’d guess a person affiliated with Chicago would be a Cubs fan if they’re a supporter of an MLB team in that city

As someone in their 30s who went back to university, I am seeing a lot of students use AI to summarize papers they were supposed to read for class or to write papers they were supposed to write for class. This is in addition to using the AI summary feature of a popular search engine as their default, if not only, means of looking up something they’re unsure about.

It’s often talked about by those that do it with a coolness about successfully skirting dumb rules. For one reason or another, it seems very reasonable to them. Maybe they see it as helping them with the onerous parts of school/ academia. Maybe they see it as the future, and current protests against it as silly.

More specifically, I’m seeing people use AI for things that are an area of weakness for them. By doing that, I think they’re missing opportunities to develop those skills, and they will continue to ‘miss milestones’ so to speak.

I think, in general, people’s reading, writing, and critical thinking abilities will go down over decades due to this behaviour. And that scares me. I think those skills are key to a rational electorate. E.g., Lack of such skills = Trump