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Why Nobody Can Afford to Have Fun Anymore · The Missing Middle Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a name for the rising price of the night out, funflation.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Concerts, games, a movie, a drink with friends, it all costs more than it used to.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: It would be easy to file that under first world problems, but we think it's a much bigger cost of living story than it looks.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: When fun gets expensive, people have less of it, and the knock-on effects pile up fast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: People see their friends less.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: They skip the date nights out that keep local businesses alive, and they lose the casual connections that lead to jobs, relationships, and a sense of community.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And younger Canadians who are already handing most of their paychecks to their landlords feel at first.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're digging into funflation, the rise of what some are calling the alone economy, and what that all means for our social lives and the wider economy.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Class Enomics, hosted by Sabrina Mado and Mike Moffat.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, Mike, I'd like to set the stage with some Canadian data here on what people are doing with their time and how that's changed over the years and who they're spending it with, which is increasingly themselves.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Stats Canada's time use survey says that in 1986, almost half of Canadians saw friend on an average day.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: By 2022, that was about only one in five.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest drop was among working age Canadians, 25 to 64, and that went from 42% down to 14%.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they found that even when people do see friends, the time together shrank from five hours to under four.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't something people are choosing to do really.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: More than 46% say they don't spend enough time with their friends and family, which is up from about a third in the early 1990s.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Canadians are feeling more pressed for time than at any point since StatCan started asking.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I do see this in my personal life as well, that certainly around, say, the last like decade, 15 years, that friends are spending less time together.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: When you do see each other, it's for shorter periods of time.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not by choice.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's influenced by different factors, which is the cost of a night out, funflation, like we were talking about at the beginning of the episode, but also people moving further away because of housing costs.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that it's harder to see each other.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's harder to coordinate because of bad traffic and construction and how hard it is to get around the city.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So all these things are adding up into people spending less time together and more time alone.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I certainly see it as well with the people I know in their 20s and early 30s.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I I look at all the things that I used to do in the late 90s, early 2000s, all the places I used to go.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so many of them are closed now.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like call the office in in London, Ontario, which was one of the best places to see uh live music.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think of all of these things that I used to do that are closed, and I haven't really seen them replaced uh by much.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, even somebody who's pushing 50, who, you know, doesn't spend a lot of time hanging out with 20-year-olds, I've kind of noticed it as well that you don't see these groups of young people hanging out with each other nearly as much as you did in my day.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the places that do exist are increasingly expensive.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: We like to say, my uh husband and I that to leave the house costs$200 these days.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you even go to a restaurant, you buy two drinks and an app, and you're at like$75 all of a sudden, which certainly did not used to be the case.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But Mike, how much of this really does come down to money?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is funflation real or just a catchy way of saying I'm broke and ticket fees are evil?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's absolutely real.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is not just young people complaining.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I know we we hear that from boomers and some Gen Xers.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's absolutely real.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And at least in my view, it's due to the combination of three things.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: That the first is just lackluster wage growth for young people over the last 20 or 30 years.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: That incomes haven't really gone up uh all that much.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Second is that rents have gone up faster than inflation and uh faster than income.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So your generation just doesn't have the same disposable income as my generation did.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there's less left over for fun.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the third is just the cost of doing those activities, things uh like tickets and all the fees around them, they've grown much faster than inflation.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this is gonna be an episode where I tell a lot of uh stories about uh, you know, being a 20-something Gen Xer, but I remember back in the early 2000s, the Toronto Blue Jays had a promotion where you could get a ticket to every single home game for a dollar each.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: They called it 81 games for$81.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like we used to buy them and then, you know, not even go to a lot of the games.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: We just like to have them, and then we could kind of go on a whim.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you kind of decide at 4 p.m.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: going, oh, what should we do today?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, you know, the Jays are playing Texas.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's let's go do that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody would do that anymore.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this kind of cheap entertainment has really gone away.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then that compounds like there's the ticket price alone, but then you look at the cost of food and drink in a stadium, right?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which has also gone up hugely.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you find yourself going to a Jays game, something that used to be incredibly accessible.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're likely going and spending again, like easily a couple hundred dollars uh for what should be something that you can just do easily with friends.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I really don't want to pick on the Jays here because Major League Baseball is still one of the most affordable tickets around, you know, kind of pro sports or otherwise.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's really the big ticket events where prices have run away.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Polestar is a company that tracks uh the world's top concert tour.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, they were saying that uh the average ticket price for a kind of big name concert's up about 40% since 2019.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we can certainly say that incomes aren't up 40% since 2019.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's you know, double the rate of inflation in Canada, you know, and that's stadium shows, that's playoff games, the World Cup.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we did an episode on that a few months ago.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're all luxury goods territory now, and you know, the people who can afford them are tend to be more people like me than than younger people.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's even you know things that are you know kind of less marquee, like movies, you know, the the competition bureau uh went after companies like Cineplex uh because they're packing all these extra charges onto the advertised price.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not even just the the price of the ticket, but it's all the kind of junk fees around it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I'm gonna go full Gen Xer here.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: That back in '97, my sister and I went to a radio head concert in London, Ontario.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they actually came to London.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the tickets were 20 bucks, you know, which was money, but it seemed fairly reasonable at the time.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember, you know, buying the the tickets for the two of us, and there was a service charge, and it was like a buck fifty.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like outraged by this.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my God, this is such a ripoff.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nowadays, you know, if you're gonna get those charges, there are a lot more than that.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I didn't realize how good uh we had it uh then.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Relative to my generation and my sister's generation, on average, young people are spending more in real terms than than we did, but you're getting a lot less because you're not getting those radio head tickets for 20 bucks.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then even in the last 10 years, that spending's flat.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: So these concerts, these uh sporting events, they're going kind of up and up in value or up and up in price.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you're kind of spending the same amount of money, but you know, overall in your budget, but you're getting less for it.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So your generation really is kind of getting cheated out of the uh experiences that my generation had.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the data does show that even the last 10 years, average real spending on recreation hasn't changed that much.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: But my guess is that average hides a lot.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So who's actually feeling the squeeze here?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Averages are absolutely misleading.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I always tell the uh story about the statistician with uh one uh foot in a bucket of ice and one foot in a bucket of boiling water, you know, kind of on average he was comfortable.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the kind of same idea here that uh you're someone like me who first bought a home decades ago when prices were cheaper, you know, you can absorb these higher entertainment costs because, you know, we're not getting bled dry by rents and mortgage costs and so on.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're 20s or your 30s and you live in a city like Toronto or even Ottawa, which is relatively less expensive, you know, your rent is gonna take the biggest bite out of your paycheck.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, going to concerts is gonna be one of the first things that that gets cut if you're trying to uh you know pay the bills.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd also say doubly so if you're single.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: That StatsCan spending data shows that people living on their own put a bigger share of their budget towards shelter, which makes sense because they're not splitting the cost with anyone.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't really have money for anything else.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm constantly reading headlines about Taylor Swift selling out arenas uh all over the world.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that gives the impression that young people can not only afford these high prices, but are often willing to travel to see their favorite shows.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's an extravagance that not many people in my generation would have considered unless they were making like bags and bags of money.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So can you make that make sense for us?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there are a few things at play.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, first of all, because cost of living has become so high and traditional milestones like owning a home, starting a family, maybe getting married, or even bigger things like a full vacation now feel out of reach for younger people that they're saying, oh, what the heck?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'm just gonna throw money at having fun and having an experience, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can't afford assets.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, people are human.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: They want to spend their money in some way to feel good, right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: To have memories.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so then they're spending sometimes more than they should on experiences because they don't think there's a point in saving up for that home that they don't believe they'll ever be able to afford, no matter how much they save.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they're often quite right about that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing is fun is turning as a result into a once-a-year splurge instead of a weekly habit.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, maybe people are saving up for that one big concert or even trip, but then they're quietly skipping a dozen small nights out to pay for it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not maybe having that weekly pizza night with friends or going out on dates or going to that bowling alley.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so while there's that one moment that we see on Instagram and it's a big splash because it's a really big deal, they're sitting at home the rest of the month or the rest of the year.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that leaves a big gap in their social lives.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing all these big events are now marketed as once-in-a-lifetime moments, and everyone's posting them.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So missing out often feels worse than overspending.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it also goes on the credit card.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we also see a lot of new ways to pay for things that aren't just credit cards, right?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have all these afterpay platforms now where you can put concert tickets or other experiences or travel on those as well.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But rent does at the end of the day, eat so much of the paycheck that quote unquote fun money is the first thing to go.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the fun that you usually cut is the stuff that keeps you connected to people like friends and family.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to pivot to a Bloomberg piece that I read recently.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Bloomberg's Allison Traeger wrote a column with a great title, Why Bowl Together When You Can Scroll Alone?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bowling used to be that classic cheap social middle class night out.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going to bowling birthday parties growing up, going as a teenager.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And even for me though, I don't know the last time I went.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you do go now, they seem to be all these luxury bowling places that are more like cocktail bars than what you'd think of as a bowling alley from the past.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening to this, Mike?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so first of all, I I love this uh title of this article.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh one thing people might not know about me is I absolutely love bowling.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I love, love, love bowling.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a perfect case study here.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, my my credentials to back it up, you know, kind of fun fact about me in the 1982, 1983 bowling season, I was named most valuable player, most improved player, and rookie of the year at uh Fairmont Lanes in London, Ontario.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then my parents still have the trophies somewhere in their basement.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I should uh find them and bring them out on an episode.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: But anyhow, you know, bowling has gone into substantial decline uh since I was terrorizing the lanes of uh of East London.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was very popular, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Nowadays, not so much.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Lucky Strike, uh, the biggest bowling company in the US, has lost almost half of its market value in in the past year.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh league membership there was about 10 million people in the in the 1970s, and now it's down to about a million.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gone from about 10 million to 1 million, a 90% drop.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Bloomberg article is absolutely correct that we're seeing this kind of massive decline in activities like bowling.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what happened there?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's mostly the same thing that happened to housing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's land cost that these are businesses that they take up a lot of land, they carry a lot of debts, uh, you know, you have to kind of build the lanes and maintain them and so on.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the business model just doesn't really work as well anymore.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the piece I think gets missed.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: That, you know, I look at all the cheap places that people used to hang out, whether it's bowling alleys, rec centers, community halls, uh, the bar with the pool table, you know, all of that needs a lot of square footage.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And in many cases, these places have actually been turned into housing.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was a mini golf place in the west end of London that I spent like way too much time at in high school, took a few dates there.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all of them ended up breaking up with me at some point, but you know, correlation is not causation.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that uh mini golf place it was sold off to build apartments.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not sure if they're completed yet, but kind of shows that you know the housing crisis has kind of bled into uh these activities.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because overall, like any business model uh that has low prices but requires cheap land to make the math work, from bowling to laser tag, it's all getting crushed.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the businesses that do survive are ones that can charge a lot per square foot.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you're losing that like$15 a night out, but you're, you know, the the places that you mentioned with the expensive apps and uh a couple of drinks where you, you know, you spend about 250 bucks a night per person, those places can stay open.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we've really kind of lost the lower end, uh, more affordable activities.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to stay on that because I think it's the heart of this.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: How much has runaway real estate pricing driven up the cost of fun and wiped out third spaces where people used to gather?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of it.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: I would actually say it's most of it.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so take the city of Toronto, for example.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Only about 5% of grassroots music venues own their own buildings, and that's uh according to the city itself.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like everyone else is a tenant, and because they're a tenant, they're exposed to every rent hike, every redevelopment offer, and so on.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of those places have turned into housing.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the city has lost about 30 of these venues uh in the years before the pandemic.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the Phoenix uh concert theater announced that it was closing to make way for condos.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So Toronto now gives live music venues a 50% property tax cut just to keep the lights on, and that's it looks like it's helping somewhat, but that can only go so far.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this kind of supply side problem, but you also have a demand side problem that you know, for younger people, every dollar that goes to rent or mortgage is a dollar you're not spending at the bowling alley or going to see live music.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the businesses are getting squeezed at both ends.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: They have both a supply problem and a demand problem, where on the one hand, they're getting squeezed by costs, and the other hand, their customers are getting squeezed and have less to spend.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, you know, you look at a music venue, a lot of the local artists have also been priced out of living in places like Toronto.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you also can't get the talent that people want to see because that talent can't afford to live in the city.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So then what do you do to entertain?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, a lot of people might say, okay, well, if I'm not going to go out to entertain, maybe I will just have people in, you know, um, we'll play board games or or what have you.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's become really difficult now, too, because we've got all these kind of like shoebox apartments and condos.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like, okay, do I do I really want to have eight people over in a 450 square foot place?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, expensive housing is pushing socializing out of the home and into paid spaces, but those paid spaces are becoming more and more exclusive and harder, harder to find.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we're getting this kind of doom loop happening where it's like, I can't, I can't afford to have people come in, but I also can't afford to go out.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the answer?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't see people.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I see that for sure with smaller spaces.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even for me in my condo, there's not an appropriate space or room to have a full like dining table.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I love hosting.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to have people over for dinner parties, but that's just not something that's gonna happen.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you can have people over and they can graze or, you know, people eat on their labs, but you know, that's not the same.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you see that throughout the city, that the ability to have a dinner party or have a larger group of people over.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I have a relatively larger condo as well.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I live in an older building, it's a two-bedroom plus den.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very lucky.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are many people who wouldn't be able to fit the amount of people I can in my condo if I do want to have people over for apps or a couple drinks.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's certainly um something that's discouraging people from hosting.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I have noticed over the years people hosting less and less.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And those that do host tend to be older and own their homes.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, also because they have a space that can be a designated, you know, living room or dining room or hosting space, so that when you have people over, it's not like, oh, they're having their apps and their drinks, but oh, there's your wardrobe in the corner, you know, and here's also my bed over here, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: That it's just a completely different type of atmosphere.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it really is.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a really kind of good segue to uh a piece that's kind of gotten viral on social media.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh Derek Thompson's article in The Atlantic on why Americans stop throwing dinner parties.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this is not just a Canadian phenomenon and it's not just a Sabrina phenomenon.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing this across North America.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: That the share of Americans who have friends or family over at least once a month has dropped by about 70% since the mid uh 1970s.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember the the dinner parties that that my parents threw, you know, and uh with some of the awful 70s and 80s food of you know, you know, like uh jello molds with weird food in it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, maybe we don't want to totally go back uh to the past, but you know, Sabrina, you you mentioned throwing dinner parties.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like when is the last time you you hosted one?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, could you kind of expand on why we're not seeing more of it?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I haven't hosted a proper dinner party without having the table and the sit-down, and even just having a really small kitchen in a condo, it's hard to cook for a really large group.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've had people over though, and certainly I've thrown like birthday parties, and again, I put out some appetizers, there's some drinks, and I love doing that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there's an impact there with friends, but you know, you also see it with family.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I at my age, I feel like a generation ago, you would host your parents or grandparents for Christmas or Thanksgiving.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but now everyone my age always goes to the parents or the grandparents' home because they're the one with the space.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny, I've actually read a lot um of theories that a lot of older people actually don't want to downsize their homes because they feel they have to keep them as the family gathering spot so that kids come home and there's a bedroom to stay in and they can have dinner.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's again one of these doom loops where one thing leads into the other and it has these cascading effects.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but in terms of that piece you mentioned, Thompson's main explanation was busier dual earner households, much more time also spent on parenting, drinking friend groups, and home uh also being so entertaining that nobody needs to invite anyone over anymore.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is there are more options to entertain oneself alone these days, that you don't have to have a real person in your house.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can talk to your AI bot, or you can watch something like Netflix, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or just scroll on TikTok, which more and more people are doing.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a class angle to it as well.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: People without a college degree were among the most likely to say they hadn't had anyone over all year.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So having friends over is starting to look like a real luxury.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And for young Canadians, a big missing piece is the space.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But also the cost of attending or being hosted has risen as well.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to bring a host gift, that's more expensive.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, getting somewhere across the city, if that's an Uber or taxi or even transit, that's more expensive and more difficult as well.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Everything adds up.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I also think people are just staying in in general, even if they're not the ones doing their hosting.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying, oh, it's just too expensive for me to leave my house.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think that housing story is a big part of it.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think uh you you and I are very kind of different uh people and probably have different kinds of expectations when we uh visit people.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm more of a uh backyard barbecue kind of guy, and that's kind of what we did um that keeps costs low.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's I love a backyard barbecue.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mike, there are no backyards though.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, that that's what I was going to get to, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: That uh that there are no uh backyards for your generation.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh for my generation, it was really cheap, particularly in the summer, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because you you know, you make a bunch of hot dogs and and hamburgers, and everybody would bring some some cheap beer, uh and it was relatively inexpensive, but that necessitates having a backyard.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: So these kind of cheap uh get-togethers, less expensive get-togethers, are are harder to do now uh because we don't have that green space in in our homes, right?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's assuming, first of all, that uh young people have a home.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we know in the 2021 census, uh more than a third of Canadians aged, you know, between 20 and 34 lived with at least one parent.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: The city of uh Toronto, or actually the GTA as a whole, uh was closer to half, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: So not only do you not have a backyard, you know, you don't even have a home of your own.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of makes it awkward, you know, uh kind of having to ask mom and dad's permission to have a dinner party or barbecue.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you do have a home, right, you it's not the kind of place where you can uh have a barbecue or even, you know, necessarily have people inside that you know, if we look at The types of homes that are getting built today, you know, back in the late 80s, you know, our average Toronto new condo size is about a thousand square feet.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you could have quite a few people in there and be, you know, have it be comfortable.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that's shrunk over time.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now we've seen over the last few years, you know, the advent of these 450 square foot investor shoebox condos.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't really uh facilitate themselves well to having people over.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's all of these things around housing.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh, you know, the loss of backyards, you know, the the shrinking of apartment spaces, uh shrinking of balconies, all of these things made it really difficult to entertain.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads me to a term that keeps popping up, the alone economy, which refers to businesses built around people doing things by themselves.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And my question for you, is this just giving the market people what they want, or is it something sadder?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's a bit of both.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: That, you know, living alone is now the most common household type in in Canada.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh a lot of that is just people kind of adapting to a new reality.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then, you know, that causes things like single serve groceries, solo dining, you know, one-person travel deals, and so on.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, a lot of people like living alone, but it does cause a certain level of inefficiency.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember one of the most exciting uh things uh I've remember, and this is kind of a nerdy thing, but uh when my then girlfriend, now wife, and I moved in together, it was amazing because we went through all of our stuff and we go, okay, your coffee maker's nicer than mine, so we'll keep that one.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh we could get you know nice appliances and things like that because we were splitting the cost two ways, right?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that creates efficiency.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if if you're paying for things on your own, you know, that crowds out spending and it's not just nice appliances, but it's things uh like cable TV and Wi-Fi and so on, right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So by being able to kind of couple up, you do uh end up sharing a lot of costs, uh, and that certainly helps your ability to go out.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, I also think that just the sort of economics of the era we're living in um has caused this kind of um distributional issue where you've got things in the high end and things uh in the low end, and we really do have kind of a missing middle um plug for the show.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I'll say that this is just kind of a theory of conjecture on on my part, but uh, you know, it really does seem to be that on the one end, we do have these kind of really super premium events.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we mentioned Taylor Swift, and uh, you know, you go to Vegas uh nowadays, and you know, the bottle service is you know in the thousands of dollars and so on.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got this like really high-end stuff.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the other end, you have stuff that's basically free because you've already paid a f a fixed cost.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's like doom scrolling on TikTok, that's watching Netflix, that's uh playing uh video games, most of which you do alone.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: And again, particularly if um you don't have the space to you know invite people over uh to play video games with you.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got this kind of divided reality, and what we've kind of lost is that stuff in the middle.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's that inviting eight to ten people over for a barbecue, it's the bowling league, it's the potluck, uh, and so on.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the missing middle of fun.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this really does matter beyond just what it does to people's weekends.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, stat can found that nearly one in four Canadians aged 15 to 24 felt lonely always or often in 2021.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Canada already tracks loneliness as an official quality of life indicator, and the UK and Japan both have ministers for it, actually.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Fewer friends also means things like fewer job leads, fewer relationships, and less trust in each other, um, communities that aren't as close, that neighborhood or village effect is gone.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those are economic costs, even if they never show up on a receipt and social costs as well, in terms of our cohesion as a democracy and a healthy one where people care about each other and there's kindness as well.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a through line to everything we cover on this show: a housing system that squeezes young people, the costs spilling into places you wouldn't expect, like whether you can afford to see your friends or family.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Thompson ended his piece with a line I keep coming back to, which was not all progress is progress.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, we have TikTok, we have scrolling.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like there's more to do than ever in theory.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we've moved forward, but I think we've also moved backwards in a lot of ways on that very human front, which we're seeing show up in this social data.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so too.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad you said it because I don't want to be the old guy saying how much better things were in the past, but you know, I definitely think this is one area where the situation has gotten worse over the last 20 to 30 years.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: So let's see what we can do.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bring back the bowling alleys, bring back the live music venues, and uh, you know, make sure that uh your generation and the ones younger than you uh can go back to having fun.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you everyone for watching and listening.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Our producer is Meredith Martin and our editor is Sean Foreman.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have any thoughts or questions about 1980s youth bowling leagues, please send us an email to missing middle podcast at gmail.com.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see you next time.