He's picking on a couple of numbers: cost of education and cost of housing. Both have outpaced inflation. Canada's had the same commodities boom as Australia,

He's picking on a couple of numbers: cost of education and cost of housing. Both have outpaced inflation. Canada's had the same commodities boom as Australia, Chile and Russia. Housing bubble obviously hadn't hit. yet. ( I hear they balance their budget and don't give away tax deductions for going into debt so maybe they won't have as bad a one). Other obvious question is : have houses improved over almost 30 years making the question of average priced house then vs average prices house now a bit cloudy. $6000 for tuition??? Not a bad deal. Canadian government must be subsidizing it. Maybe it was higher subsidies back then. Bottom line cherry picking your comparisons are hard. Unemployment was worse then: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=UNRATE&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1948-01-01&coed=2012-04-01&line_color=%230000ff&link_values=false&line_style=Solid&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&lw=1&ost=-99999&oet=99999&mma=0&fml=a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin&transformation=lin&vintage_date=2012-05-11&revision_date=2012-05-11 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&#3... But duration was better : http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=UEMPMEAN&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1948-01-01&coed=2012-04-01&line_color=%230000ff&link_values=false&line_style=Solid&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&lw=1&ost=-99999&oet=99999&mma=0&fml=a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin&transformation=lin&vintage_date=2012-05-11&revision_date=2012-05-11 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&#3...