Quote:
Originally Posted by jmt18325
With all of this going on, why is the GTAs per capita GDP so relatively small?
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The hollowing out of manufacturing is a large part of the equation. For decades it provided decent incomes for regular people. We can't all be software developers, insurance agents, or dentists. With the decline of manufacturing we just haven't found comparable paying jobs to replace what was lost or retrained people to take advantage of new growth industries. High tech is often cited as our saviour but it's coming off such a small base that it can't grow fast enough to mitigate the losses.
Downtown Toronto is NOT indicative of Toronto overall. One doesn't have to drive far from downtown before you hit massive swaths of Toronto that haven't taken part in the urban renewal and aren't doing all that well.
Yet the immigrants keep coming. Toronto does produce tons of jobs each year but the quality of those jobs just isn't there. A lot of them are positions at Walmart, 7Eleven, etc. They're a far cry from the mundane but relatively good income that could be had at a Christie biscuit or Massey-Ferguson factory back in the 70s or 80s. White collar 20 somethings look down upon manufacturing but that was Toronto's bread and butter for most of our history. Now it's gone and a huge proportion of our population are paying a heavy price for its implosion.
Canada is abit of an anomaly in the developed world in that its biggest cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) aren't among its wealthiest; they're in the bottom quintile of Canadian CMAs. Yorkville, the CBD, and Rosedale are what people think of when one mentions Toronto, but Parkdale, the Junction, and Scarborough are more the norm.