Here's exactly how broken, with numbers. And here's what actually works.
You rinse the yogurt container. You peel the label off. You check the number on the bottom. You put it in the blue bin. You feel like you did something.
You drive past another new subdivision. Bare dirt where a farm used to be. A sign says 'Coming Soon: 400 homes.' The nearest grocery store is a 15-minute drive.
Your rent went up again. You do the math. Half your income, gone. You look at listings. Everything is worse. You stay and absorb it.
You turn on the tap and fill a glass. You drink it without thinking. Somewhere in northern Ontario, a mother is boiling water for her toddler's formula. She's been doing this every day since 1995.
You filled up the car. Gas costs more and you heard it's because of the carbon tax. Then the tax got killed. Gas still costs the same. The planet is still warming. What was that all about?
The sky turned orange. Your weather app said the air quality was 'hazardous.' You kept the windows shut and told your kids to stay inside. It's wildfire season again. It used to be a week. Now it's a month.
Standing in the checkout line doing math in your head. $200 used to fill the cart. Now it barely fills a bag.
You grab a bottle of water at the store. $2.50. The company that bottled it paid less than a penny for a thousand litres.
Your grandfather caught salmon every summer. The river is still there. The salmon aren't.
Saturday morning. The neighbour's mower starts at 8 AM. He's watering a monoculture that feeds nothing and drinks everything.
You drive through Nova Scotia. The forest looks fine from the road. Step 50 metres in and there's nothing. Just stumps and slash as far as you can see.
You're stuck in traffic again. The bus comes every 40 minutes. The train doesn't go where you need. You drive because there's no alternative. That's not an accident. That's a century of policy.
Another country is on fire. Your tax dollars bought some of the bombs. The defense stocks went up. The defense contractors got paid. The veterans came home broken. Nobody asked you.
You're arguing with a stranger on the internet about something that affects neither of your lives. Meanwhile, your rent went up, your groceries cost more, and your kids' school is underfunded. Someone is winning from this fight. It's not you.
You've been applying for months. You're qualified. You're willing. Nobody's hiring. The economy is 'strong.' You start to wonder if something is broken in you. It's not. The system needs you unemployed. You're not a failure. You're a feature.
You look at your pay stub. Nearly half is gone before you touch it. Your boss's income comes from capital gains — taxed at half the rate. The company you work for pays 15% federal tax but books profits through a subsidiary in Barbados. The road you drive to work has potholes. This is the system working as designed.
