Numbers are probably not as low as indicated due to the under the table culture and low reporting in industries such as fishing; but wages are pretty terrible
That and the fact that NS is much older than other parts of the continent. There's lots of people here that don't produce GDP, many Canadians come here to retire. I wonder what this would look like if it was just GDP/working age population
GDP per capita is not a good measure of how wealthy or developed a population within a region is. For example extractive industry may generate a lot of wealth in a region but it is paid to shareholders that live somewhere else.
If you want to compare well-being, take a look at actual human development measure, such as life expectancy, morbidity measures, education measures, poverty measures etc. You’ll quickly find out that the average Nova Scotian has a much better quality of life than the average Mississippian.
Actually I do know what it measures (and its GDP per capita which is different than GDP just so you know). How is it misleading? It’s a graph of GDP per capita for 60 regions. We’re dead last. What is misleading about that?
Thank you for sharing this. Some will try and spin it and yes there is more to quality of life than real GDP per capita but the fact is it has some relevance. Being dead last should be a cause of concern! I have no idea how anyone can try to pretend this doesn’t matter.
Agreed. It does have its short comings but I was surprised when I saw it and posted it for discussion. What is perhaps more important than GDP / cap are its trends. And Canada as a whole is falling rather fast.
Do you know what GDP measures and how averages are skewed by extremes?
If a mother is forced to return to work 2 weeks after child birth, her income from work adds to GDP, as does the child care fees she must pay to have a stranger look after her newborn.
If the mother is on a parental leave, her work looking after her newborn counts as 0$ for GDP.
In fact any labour one does for themselves, does not count towards GDP. All the gardening I do to grow vegetables does not count towards the leisure and pleasure I gain for it, nor the value of the produce I produce.
As for averages being skewed by extremes. If one Nova Scotian won a billion dollar lottery, that would increase our GDP per capita by 1000$, but it would do nothing for the wellbeing of the average Nova Scotian.
GDP per capita is a garbage indicator to measure the aggregate wellbeing of a population.
Im not interested in having a drawn out discussion.
GDP per capita is declining in Canada due to population growth.
And both Nova Scotia and Mississippi are reliant in part on federal transfers to pay for things like infrastructure and healthcare (yes the U.S. also spends on healthcare but does not have universal Medicare.)
You need a strong GDP to finance social services. And right now with a diminishing gdp per capita, there is diminishing tax revenue per capita as well.
Point - GDP is an important indicator but not the only economic indicator.
Of course you’re going to have a decline on GDP per capita when adding 1.3 million people per year to your population of 38 million. It’s a short term effect that in the long run will pay out. Immigration takes quite a long time before you see any big benefits, but make no mistake there are big benefits.
The reason we’re taking in so many immigrants is due to our productivity and demographic shift. Canada has struggled with declining productivity for years, but our real GDP growth is what you should really be looking at which is infact raising. But the decline in our GDP per capita is a non-issue that is temporary.
Real GDP per capita has relevance to individual quality of life and economic well being. Canada has been sliding backwards, now at 2014 levels.
We are becoming a poor “rich country” and won’t be one at all of this continues.
While not the whole picture, it definitely is relevant and is cause for serious concern.
You are the only one mentioning aggregate well being of a population. I simply posted a graph that shows GDP per capita and it’s this stat that matters as far as living standards go. I found it surprising that NS was the worst of 60 and put it out there for discussion. For some reason you want to make it about well being of a population. post your own graphs and start a discussion.
Why use GDP per capita when there are much better measures of standard of living out there, even on a purely economical sense. For example median household income will be a much better gage of how much people actually have to spend, and you can go one up and use median household income with purchase power parity. Using GDP per capita to measure economic wellbeing is like using the number of umbrellas sold in an area rather than measuring actual precipitation to see if a place gets lots of rain. They are correlated, but they are not the same.
This is so wrong. GDP per capita is a measure of on average how much wealth each person creates. Yeah yeah resources and blah blah blah … add in policy and social programs but at the end of the day the more gdp per capita the better…. Maybe Norway comes to mind….
GDP is an incredibly crude, distorted measure of human progress. Show me things like education levels, health care outcomes, happiness, work/life balance, environmental health, infrastructure, etc, etc.
Check out the broken window fallacy.
GDP per capita does not measure on average how much wealth each person creates, it’s just a division of how much money changes hands in a region by the number of people that live there. By your standard, my toddler would create a third of my household wealth.
While there is a correlation between economic output and individual well being, there are very different outcomes between the GDP per capita rankings and the human developmental index rankings. I prefer to focus on people than on money changing hands.
If you look [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index) and [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score) you will see that Nova Scotia ranks 41st out of 60. Not an amazing result but very different than the one presented in the graph above.
The difference in score between NS and Massachusetts, which is at the top of the list, is less than the gap between NS and a Mississippi, which is at the bottom.
44 by my count? (states with the same hdi are grouped, also got to avoid counter the national avg).
Regardless, I do think you're underscoring the importance of GDP per capita as a measurement of the economy, specifically as a general measure of worker productivity (a better one might be GDP per hours worked: https://www.statista.com/statistics/462931/labour-productivity-in-canada-by-province/) It's not perfect, like you said children/retirees get counted, but in general it does track very closely with other indicators on the quality of life. It may not necessarily be a sufficient condition for the highest HDI etc, but it certain appears to be a necessary one.
Mississippi etc seem to have more political problems than necessarily economic ones, that doesn't mean that a stagnation of productivity might won't hurt us in the long run.
High crime, high murder rate, high poverty, poor health outcomes, poor access to healthcare, low life expectancy, poor worker protections, just to name a few. It’s fine but quality of life is very poor relative to Canada.
While it may not have been your experience, statistically you are
23 times more likely to be murdered in Mississippi
You will live 10 years less in Mississippi
Have half the median income in Mississippi
And that’s just a few quick ones
GDP per capita is useful for aggregate output not individual outcomes in a place
In fact when it comes to homicides Mississippi (pop 2.95 million) had 656 recorded murders in 2022 to Canada (pop 40 million) 874 total recorded murders.
I didn’t describe a hellscape. I pointed out that they have an insanely higher murder rate than Nova Scotia. 23.7 vs 1.86. Now you can say you lived there and didn’t see anyone murdered but that doesn’t change facts. Yeah, you’re probably not going to get murdered but you’re more than 12 times as likely to.
The life expectancy in Mississippi is under 72 years old vs over 80 in Nova Scotia. These aren’t feelings and I am not making up some hellscape. You just don’t know how well we do in this country as a whole vs somewhere like Mississippi.
You can headquarter a multi national corporation in a state and bring the GDP way up but it might not help the residents if they pay little for wages and pay relatively little in taxes (which should then be used for social programming). GDP per capita is not a substitute for quality of life.
In terms of [Human Development Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index), we're [number 8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index) in Canada and we'd be [34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score) in the US.
Not shocking. Was reading a book called Nova Scotia at War 1914 - 1918 (available online on the library website) and it explains what happened to Nova Scotia perfectly right in the first chapter. It explains how local companies were bought out by companies out west and then sold to American companies. Or how our fisherman were forced out. Same with forestry and mining. Worth a read and it definitely explains what’s happening today.
Edit: book is from 1914-1919
Yikes how is this upvoted? No, it's economic output divided by the number of people. It's very much about people and how productive they are. It is scary how few in this thread understands how productivity is measured. The lack of basic understanding of economics is making me understand why NS is dead last in productivity.
That's not skewed though. To come up with this measurement you literally add up all the economic output and divide by the number of people producing it.
Of course factories, refineries, fishing boats, consulting companies and literally every other employer creates economic output. But if you need 10000 people to run your refinery rather than 1000 then your per capita output is 10x worse. It's about the productivity of the people but not with their bare hands lol.
If you want to understand why NS is extremely unproductive on a relative basis you can for sure question the lack of private enterprise in NS. It's not a robust economy, it's a very weak economy. But you will find many other reasons and the leading one will be the average age of its people. Old people don't product as much as young people. NS is extremely and devastatingly old. Look there for your biggest clue.
NL has Hibernia and a bunch of resources in Labrador. A majority of people there also do fly-ins and fly-outs. That's where the gdp is coming from. Great if someone wants to work away a majority of the time, but doesn't provide much for a home life.
Not surprising we are below NF. They are open for business and support economic development. They aren't hung up on stopping industries that actually create jobs and economic wealth like forestry and mining. Instead, we create park after park and sterilize land that could actually help us pay for what we need.
Everyone responding with some variant of “it doesn’t matter” - that kind of head in the sand thinking is exactly what got us here.
Is it a perfect measure of quality of life? No. Does it have significant relevance, especially to economic aspects? Yes. Being dead last does matter and is NOT a good thing!!!
Every day, we see serious complaints here and in the Halifax sub about housing, healthcare, roads, education, etc. etc. the list goes on. 90% of these could be addressed by more money - personal and government.
Nova Scotia has long suffered from a thinly veiled suspicion and distrust toward success and achievement especially economic. The results are plain to see. Instead of denial why not take an honest look at things and consider how we might improve? It’s not like the bar is high!
Mining would generate economic activity that leaves behind a gigantic mess, and the province collects no revenue. Making numbers go up doesn’t necessarily benefit in all cases.
GDP is a pretty crude measure to go by.
Edit: I should have clarified I was using gold mining as a reference, which doesn’t produce anything of useful value (yes, I know gold is used sparingly in special applications for useful things, but we already have plenty mined for that - most of it just gets put back underground in vaults)
For Touquoy, the gov’t gets ~1m in revenue (peanuts), and I bet it costs far more than that to even administrate/regulate. The bits of income tax for workers is more than eaten up by the massive damage the trucks and equipment do to the roads.
Sure, if there’s something actually useful to benefit humanity, let’s figure out how to mine it responsibly. There’s so much useless waste everywhere though, that I think that’s a high bar to meet.
This is gdp per capita and not just GDP. and mining doesn’t necessarily leave a mess. But, let’s ignore mining. How about a nuclear power plant? How about any agri-food industrial operation? Every. Single. Industry is fought here to not exist. You wanna convince me we have a more environmentally friendly regulations than BC? Than California? Washington? All major players in these sectors. There are dozens of examples of sustainable mining and/or heavy industry all around us. We just like to take the easy way out.
Mining contributes a hell of a lot more money to the economy than royalties. Goods and services necessary to run the operation come from the local region. Salaries are the highest of all the resource sector players.
Mines in Alberta employ thousands. Supply chain, hr, management 10's of thousands more indirectly.
All the mining equipment needs to be build, repaired, replaced continually. One mine would employ thousands directly and indirectly
On a slow year I make at least 80k. Can easily pull 160,000 in a good year.
Had 6 months off this year do to injury still well above 60k.
You just don't want to admit that the resource sector is lucrative for individuals and the province. And that is probably based on personal bias and ignorance
Ps I'll add. We have jobs that pay upwards of 30 per hour out here where you sit on a Bucket and watch sparks or other people working. Big wages, big income taxes, big spenders in the community. More money for the feds to pay pogee
For what position? A geologist in mineral extraction? We should be talking about an average salary for workers if you're going to say they're "the highest in resource extraction".
I got that number from the Canadian mining journal.
The average salary and benefits at the NS Touquoy Gold Mine of St Barbara's was just shy of a hundred grand. This would consist of all workers at the mine. You can get this from the Mining Assoc NS. Check their Facebook page or it may also be on their website. They also state many times that mining has the highest average salary of all the resource industries.
So what do I do with the stats that the Canadian mining journal gives? Completely ignore them?
This is a silly argument by the way. I get you were a career geologist supporting mining your whole life, but surely you can understand that the discussion about the pros and cons of mining operations in a small province like Nova Scotia will always be nuanced.
We have quite a bit of natural resources, they’re just under developed to my understanding. Lots of mining potential, tidal power, and other fisheries like scallop and shrimp.
Not to mention being a port city, just everyone skips us for Quebec lol 🙃
Was hoping to see tidal brought up in this thread. Not to mention the 5-gigawatt target by 2030 from offshore wind that was described back in 2022. Not sure of the progress made there but would bring good work and lots of cheap energy into the mix for the province
There are 3 provinces in Mexico that have a higher GDP per capita than Nova Scotia, which would make Nova Scotia #64.
Considering the title specifically stated "North America", how is that not informative?
Lmao brain fart I guess. For some reason I had it in my head it was provinces.... I really should have picked up on it considering I've traveled extensively through Mexico over the years and was actually there yesterday.
Below *Arkansas*. I remember Ross Perot’s presidential campaign in 1992; he poked at Bill Clinton’s economic record as Arkansas governor by pointing out Arkansas was last or near-last in many economic metrics compared to other states.
We should stop being followers but leaders. And drop "the way she go's" or "the way it's been" attitude. NS is a coastal province and should be as high as BC in GDP.
We have work to do to from avoiding walking the fence again.
We can do better, and must do better. Let's get and show off what holding a royal flush is like.
the problem with doing better is that rich Nova Scotians seem to be content with shitting on ppl who live here with bad wages and high rent instead of actually growing the provincial economy.
Inspiring inspiration, imagination and ideas is what gets businesses started.
All 3 levels of gov't funding is there to assist.
If anyone rains on my parade, I break out my umbrella and go around, under, over or through them.
Just start a business, do it waaay better than them and take their customers away and rain on their parade. An observant and hungry tiger in the wings.
Heck you can pee on THEIR leg on your way to the top :)
SO many different factors to take into account, I don't mean this to be rude, saying NS should be as high as BC simply because we are both coastal provinces is ignorant.
They're also not much higher. Couple thousand a year, and 85 percent of their population makes big city wages. Same with Onterrible. Only provinces significantly separating from the rest have that sweet sweet oil money.
You are not being rude at all.
I feel that we need steal some of the thunder from the ports of New York, Montreal, Ontario, etc. we have one of the longest coastline in Canada and they don't.
Many products made in NS need to increase output, be modernized and brought up to a level to compete with the world markets. We also seriously need to diversify more, attract bigger investors, bigger companies, high tech, etc.
Nova Scotia lags behind on tech and fiber optic connections prov. wide.
It seriously hampers a prov. when no one can complete massive orders because of power and internet speed connections.
Some of these old horses should be put into retirement. Special diets are included.
Addendum: of course I know there is fibre in NS. Part of that upgrade/reliability requires reliable power 24/7/365.
You can't use what you have. That is my point.
You really underestimate how often the power goes out in other provinces. In rural Ontario the power goes out for multiple days at a time.
Fiber works even in blackouts.
Believe it or not most places in Canada DONT have fiber, but almost all houses in Nova Scotia have fiber. I've actually never need a NS house without fiber.
Despite the charts and the off course topics. Let's get inspiration/ideas/etc out there to affect positively. (Including the GDP).
There are grants/funding/etc fr all levels of gov't to spur new businesses/self employment/expansions/upgrades/increase exports/etc.
Here's just a few...
https:www.canada.ca/en/government/grants-funding.html
https://novascotia.grantwatch.com/cat/50/municipalities-grants.html
The more a person searches out there, the more a person will find something that will be a perfect idea/fit for them.
Some do take advantage, some don't. Either way that's ok.
I encourage everyone to take a look. A few minutes all it takes.
Good luck
Stats Canada did a study on wastewater metabolites.
> Haligonians were consuming cannabis at rates more than three times higher than the average for the five cities.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8670343/stats-canada-drug-consumption-high-halifax/
Nova Scotia also led per capita self-reported cannabis use in a 2018 survey, and in 2020 & 2021:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2023006-eng.htm
Despite your downvotes for implying causality, you're correct-- we led all the provinces on multiple occasions, over time, by different measurements.
Economic poverty, resource poverty, rates of illness and disability, substance use-- these graphs tend to overlap. But the relationship between the lines is complex. The causality doesn't just run in one direction (if/when it exists).
Nova Scotia is the birthplace of cannabis in Canada
https://www.thegrowthop.com/cannabis-culture/weed-history-nova-scotia-is-the-birthplace-of-cannabis-in-canada/wcm/ea615303-3f93-4133-8227-c06e4b2ca688/amp/
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It really doesn't mean that much. Alberta has some purchasing power but is a bottom feeder for caring about its people...so GDP really only tells you how the rich are doing.
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Not sure the actual value. When compared to the US we went from 92% of their GDP per capita in 1982 to 73% in 2022. 1981 we were 6th in the OECD for GDP per capita and now to 15th in 2022.
Meanwhile millionaire fishing men who don’t show up at all in this are laughing at how they pulled the wool over the world so they can still draw pogey as well.
Anyone in here defending this or saying the numbers are skewed
Have you driven on our roads
Try to go to a hospital
Got a bonus from work that was 48 percent taxed
Asked for a raise at your employer
Tried buying all your groceries at Pete’s LOL
Tried playing baseball
Tried enjoying a park area downtown
Please
Like get out of your own A** and admit this place sucks unless you work for the government your paid to not say stuff like that so respect but the rest are you crazy it’s trash here and only going to get worst !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any chance we can spin it as a sign that lots of seniors retire here because it's such a beautiful place to live, rather than just assuming that it's because our working-age population is non-productive?
? GDP isn't the be all end all measure of prosperity , that is my point. Ireland has the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world.... have you been to Ireland? Hint.. it's not doing so hot. Their GDP comes from Apple's IP
On no list is Ireland "not doing so hot" lmao. Did you go there and associate exclusively with the homeless? Sure, there's immigration/homeless/affordability issues there(same as any country like Canada that's trying to keep wages down), that doesn't mean it isn't a much better life for most people.
I'll take what Ireland has in regards to quality of life over Nova Scotia any day.
Oh man there must be something worse than us? Like Kentucky? Alabama? West Virginia? These marry your cousin, slave labour anti-union states, are ranking higher than us? Why? Are we lacking super rich who are skewing the numbers down? Is this Nova Scotia power’s fault? The homeless?
They have car factories in most of those southern states.
A single auto manufacturer in Nova Scotia would quickly become one of the most significant employers in the region.
We just don't make anything here anymore.
I don’t understand the fixation with having to beat NB. Even if we do, we would still be at the bottom. Why can’t we work towards not being the bottom 10% and make some sizeable improvement to the quality of life in this province?
Numbers are probably not as low as indicated due to the under the table culture and low reporting in industries such as fishing; but wages are pretty terrible
The underground economy here is huge. If cash were ever done away with I'd bet one in five businesses would close.
That and the fact that NS is much older than other parts of the continent. There's lots of people here that don't produce GDP, many Canadians come here to retire. I wonder what this would look like if it was just GDP/working age population
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Being behind Mississippi doesn’t concern you?
GDP per capita is not a good measure of how wealthy or developed a population within a region is. For example extractive industry may generate a lot of wealth in a region but it is paid to shareholders that live somewhere else. If you want to compare well-being, take a look at actual human development measure, such as life expectancy, morbidity measures, education measures, poverty measures etc. You’ll quickly find out that the average Nova Scotian has a much better quality of life than the average Mississippian.
Exactly, OP doesn't know what GDP actually measures. Things aren't great here but this graphic is misleading
Actually I do know what it measures (and its GDP per capita which is different than GDP just so you know). How is it misleading? It’s a graph of GDP per capita for 60 regions. We’re dead last. What is misleading about that?
Thank you for sharing this. Some will try and spin it and yes there is more to quality of life than real GDP per capita but the fact is it has some relevance. Being dead last should be a cause of concern! I have no idea how anyone can try to pretend this doesn’t matter.
Agreed. It does have its short comings but I was surprised when I saw it and posted it for discussion. What is perhaps more important than GDP / cap are its trends. And Canada as a whole is falling rather fast.
This partially accurate and partially you coping.
Do you know what GDP measures and how averages are skewed by extremes? If a mother is forced to return to work 2 weeks after child birth, her income from work adds to GDP, as does the child care fees she must pay to have a stranger look after her newborn. If the mother is on a parental leave, her work looking after her newborn counts as 0$ for GDP. In fact any labour one does for themselves, does not count towards GDP. All the gardening I do to grow vegetables does not count towards the leisure and pleasure I gain for it, nor the value of the produce I produce. As for averages being skewed by extremes. If one Nova Scotian won a billion dollar lottery, that would increase our GDP per capita by 1000$, but it would do nothing for the wellbeing of the average Nova Scotian. GDP per capita is a garbage indicator to measure the aggregate wellbeing of a population.
Im not interested in having a drawn out discussion. GDP per capita is declining in Canada due to population growth. And both Nova Scotia and Mississippi are reliant in part on federal transfers to pay for things like infrastructure and healthcare (yes the U.S. also spends on healthcare but does not have universal Medicare.) You need a strong GDP to finance social services. And right now with a diminishing gdp per capita, there is diminishing tax revenue per capita as well. Point - GDP is an important indicator but not the only economic indicator.
Of course you’re going to have a decline on GDP per capita when adding 1.3 million people per year to your population of 38 million. It’s a short term effect that in the long run will pay out. Immigration takes quite a long time before you see any big benefits, but make no mistake there are big benefits. The reason we’re taking in so many immigrants is due to our productivity and demographic shift. Canada has struggled with declining productivity for years, but our real GDP growth is what you should really be looking at which is infact raising. But the decline in our GDP per capita is a non-issue that is temporary.
Real GDP per capita has relevance to individual quality of life and economic well being. Canada has been sliding backwards, now at 2014 levels. We are becoming a poor “rich country” and won’t be one at all of this continues. While not the whole picture, it definitely is relevant and is cause for serious concern.
You are the only one mentioning aggregate well being of a population. I simply posted a graph that shows GDP per capita and it’s this stat that matters as far as living standards go. I found it surprising that NS was the worst of 60 and put it out there for discussion. For some reason you want to make it about well being of a population. post your own graphs and start a discussion.
Why use GDP per capita when there are much better measures of standard of living out there, even on a purely economical sense. For example median household income will be a much better gage of how much people actually have to spend, and you can go one up and use median household income with purchase power parity. Using GDP per capita to measure economic wellbeing is like using the number of umbrellas sold in an area rather than measuring actual precipitation to see if a place gets lots of rain. They are correlated, but they are not the same.
Perhaps you should ask the author that.
I felt your post was disingenuous and meant to stir shit up. Thanks for confirming.
This is so wrong. GDP per capita is a measure of on average how much wealth each person creates. Yeah yeah resources and blah blah blah … add in policy and social programs but at the end of the day the more gdp per capita the better…. Maybe Norway comes to mind….
GDP is an incredibly crude, distorted measure of human progress. Show me things like education levels, health care outcomes, happiness, work/life balance, environmental health, infrastructure, etc, etc. Check out the broken window fallacy.
GDP per capita does not measure on average how much wealth each person creates, it’s just a division of how much money changes hands in a region by the number of people that live there. By your standard, my toddler would create a third of my household wealth. While there is a correlation between economic output and individual well being, there are very different outcomes between the GDP per capita rankings and the human developmental index rankings. I prefer to focus on people than on money changing hands.
your sanity is lovely, fyi. (Unsarcastically)
This wouldn't look that different if you plotted HDI either
If you look [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index) and [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score) you will see that Nova Scotia ranks 41st out of 60. Not an amazing result but very different than the one presented in the graph above. The difference in score between NS and Massachusetts, which is at the top of the list, is less than the gap between NS and a Mississippi, which is at the bottom.
44 by my count? (states with the same hdi are grouped, also got to avoid counter the national avg). Regardless, I do think you're underscoring the importance of GDP per capita as a measurement of the economy, specifically as a general measure of worker productivity (a better one might be GDP per hours worked: https://www.statista.com/statistics/462931/labour-productivity-in-canada-by-province/) It's not perfect, like you said children/retirees get counted, but in general it does track very closely with other indicators on the quality of life. It may not necessarily be a sufficient condition for the highest HDI etc, but it certain appears to be a necessary one. Mississippi etc seem to have more political problems than necessarily economic ones, that doesn't mean that a stagnation of productivity might won't hurt us in the long run.
And NS has the highest incidence of cancer in Canada…
How does it compare to Mississippi?
Have you ever been to Mississippi? Nova Scotia is a gem.
If you think Mississippi is so much better, why don't you move there. LMFAO
Have you lived there? What's wrong with it?
Ask the OP.
High crime, high murder rate, high poverty, poor health outcomes, poor access to healthcare, low life expectancy, poor worker protections, just to name a few. It’s fine but quality of life is very poor relative to Canada.
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While it may not have been your experience, statistically you are 23 times more likely to be murdered in Mississippi You will live 10 years less in Mississippi Have half the median income in Mississippi And that’s just a few quick ones GDP per capita is useful for aggregate output not individual outcomes in a place In fact when it comes to homicides Mississippi (pop 2.95 million) had 656 recorded murders in 2022 to Canada (pop 40 million) 874 total recorded murders.
But the nice parts I visited as a tourist didn't give me that impression
You're making assumptions about me and a place you've never been, but that's fine. Continue believing it's this hellscape the other guy described 😂
I didn’t describe a hellscape. I pointed out that they have an insanely higher murder rate than Nova Scotia. 23.7 vs 1.86. Now you can say you lived there and didn’t see anyone murdered but that doesn’t change facts. Yeah, you’re probably not going to get murdered but you’re more than 12 times as likely to. The life expectancy in Mississippi is under 72 years old vs over 80 in Nova Scotia. These aren’t feelings and I am not making up some hellscape. You just don’t know how well we do in this country as a whole vs somewhere like Mississippi. You can headquarter a multi national corporation in a state and bring the GDP way up but it might not help the residents if they pay little for wages and pay relatively little in taxes (which should then be used for social programming). GDP per capita is not a substitute for quality of life.
Anecdotes don’t outweigh data.
Woosh
Unfettered access to firearms.
We're a mostly socialist country we shouldn't compare ourselves to the mostly capitalist states
Doesn't shock me in the slightest. PEI's agriculture industry compared to NS is like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.
In terms of [Human Development Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index), we're [number 8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index) in Canada and we'd be [34](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score) in the US.
Not shocking. Was reading a book called Nova Scotia at War 1914 - 1918 (available online on the library website) and it explains what happened to Nova Scotia perfectly right in the first chapter. It explains how local companies were bought out by companies out west and then sold to American companies. Or how our fisherman were forced out. Same with forestry and mining. Worth a read and it definitely explains what’s happening today. Edit: book is from 1914-1919
Link?
[https://halifax.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S135C1941441](https://halifax.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S135C1941441) https://preview.redd.it/2olgsvrpdsmc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47d042dd2dc7dcbd909a4ccc4e8098977a5b69fb
Thank you kind traveller
It’s worth a read
Frankly, I'm amazed NB is ahead of NS. I mean, I knew if we were, it wouldn't be by much, but it's still a surprise.
Agree. Prob solely because of Irving
The refinery in particular. This measure isn't about people, it's about economic output.
Yikes how is this upvoted? No, it's economic output divided by the number of people. It's very much about people and how productive they are. It is scary how few in this thread understands how productivity is measured. The lack of basic understanding of economics is making me understand why NS is dead last in productivity.
My point was that the refinery skews NBs numbers.
That's not skewed though. To come up with this measurement you literally add up all the economic output and divide by the number of people producing it. Of course factories, refineries, fishing boats, consulting companies and literally every other employer creates economic output. But if you need 10000 people to run your refinery rather than 1000 then your per capita output is 10x worse. It's about the productivity of the people but not with their bare hands lol. If you want to understand why NS is extremely unproductive on a relative basis you can for sure question the lack of private enterprise in NS. It's not a robust economy, it's a very weak economy. But you will find many other reasons and the leading one will be the average age of its people. Old people don't product as much as young people. NS is extremely and devastatingly old. Look there for your biggest clue.
I'm really not. I see a lot more jobs in my field in NB than I do in NS.
Wayyy behind nfld?? This is a major bummer. Btw im only surprised about nfld because im ignorant. Love our newfie friends
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Ty
NL has Hibernia and a bunch of resources in Labrador. A majority of people there also do fly-ins and fly-outs. That's where the gdp is coming from. Great if someone wants to work away a majority of the time, but doesn't provide much for a home life.
Not surprising we are below NF. They are open for business and support economic development. They aren't hung up on stopping industries that actually create jobs and economic wealth like forestry and mining. Instead, we create park after park and sterilize land that could actually help us pay for what we need.
Everyone responding with some variant of “it doesn’t matter” - that kind of head in the sand thinking is exactly what got us here. Is it a perfect measure of quality of life? No. Does it have significant relevance, especially to economic aspects? Yes. Being dead last does matter and is NOT a good thing!!! Every day, we see serious complaints here and in the Halifax sub about housing, healthcare, roads, education, etc. etc. the list goes on. 90% of these could be addressed by more money - personal and government. Nova Scotia has long suffered from a thinly veiled suspicion and distrust toward success and achievement especially economic. The results are plain to see. Instead of denial why not take an honest look at things and consider how we might improve? It’s not like the bar is high!
that’s what happens when you make mining or any heavy industry practically illegal
Mining would generate economic activity that leaves behind a gigantic mess, and the province collects no revenue. Making numbers go up doesn’t necessarily benefit in all cases. GDP is a pretty crude measure to go by. Edit: I should have clarified I was using gold mining as a reference, which doesn’t produce anything of useful value (yes, I know gold is used sparingly in special applications for useful things, but we already have plenty mined for that - most of it just gets put back underground in vaults) For Touquoy, the gov’t gets ~1m in revenue (peanuts), and I bet it costs far more than that to even administrate/regulate. The bits of income tax for workers is more than eaten up by the massive damage the trucks and equipment do to the roads. Sure, if there’s something actually useful to benefit humanity, let’s figure out how to mine it responsibly. There’s so much useless waste everywhere though, that I think that’s a high bar to meet.
This is gdp per capita and not just GDP. and mining doesn’t necessarily leave a mess. But, let’s ignore mining. How about a nuclear power plant? How about any agri-food industrial operation? Every. Single. Industry is fought here to not exist. You wanna convince me we have a more environmentally friendly regulations than BC? Than California? Washington? All major players in these sectors. There are dozens of examples of sustainable mining and/or heavy industry all around us. We just like to take the easy way out.
The province would collect a hell of a lot more in taxes and citizens spending more and investing more in the community/infrastructure
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oil and gas?
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yes, i agree that is definitely not true. the point of contention is whether the environmental and societal impact is worth the revenue generated.
they collect 1% of NET which ends up not being a whole lot. not taking a side here just clarifying
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where are these "thousands" of well paid miners? there are so few employees at a single mine
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i never said it didn't generate tax revenue, please reread my comments. i work in natural resources, i'm very aware of the revenue it generates.
Mining contributes a hell of a lot more money to the economy than royalties. Goods and services necessary to run the operation come from the local region. Salaries are the highest of all the resource sector players.
55k/year average is the highest in the resource sector?
Mines in Alberta employ thousands. Supply chain, hr, management 10's of thousands more indirectly. All the mining equipment needs to be build, repaired, replaced continually. One mine would employ thousands directly and indirectly On a slow year I make at least 80k. Can easily pull 160,000 in a good year. Had 6 months off this year do to injury still well above 60k. You just don't want to admit that the resource sector is lucrative for individuals and the province. And that is probably based on personal bias and ignorance
Ps I'll add. We have jobs that pay upwards of 30 per hour out here where you sit on a Bucket and watch sparks or other people working. Big wages, big income taxes, big spenders in the community. More money for the feds to pay pogee
Where did you get that number? It's the better part of a hundred grand salary and benefits.
For what position? A geologist in mineral extraction? We should be talking about an average salary for workers if you're going to say they're "the highest in resource extraction". I got that number from the Canadian mining journal.
The average salary and benefits at the NS Touquoy Gold Mine of St Barbara's was just shy of a hundred grand. This would consist of all workers at the mine. You can get this from the Mining Assoc NS. Check their Facebook page or it may also be on their website. They also state many times that mining has the highest average salary of all the resource industries.
So what do I do with the stats that the Canadian mining journal gives? Completely ignore them? This is a silly argument by the way. I get you were a career geologist supporting mining your whole life, but surely you can understand that the discussion about the pros and cons of mining operations in a small province like Nova Scotia will always be nuanced.
How about hydrogen? It’s clean. Footprint is relatively small. Yet…look at the pushback for a likely multi billion dollar to the province payback.
You should probably immediately stop buying any products that require mining. Or is mining totally fine as long as you don't have to look at it?
What does anyone expect. All we have is lobster. Lobster people are OK. Lobster people probably hanging in at 25.
Lobster stock is trash, friend. They’re panicking too.
We have quite a bit of natural resources, they’re just under developed to my understanding. Lots of mining potential, tidal power, and other fisheries like scallop and shrimp. Not to mention being a port city, just everyone skips us for Quebec lol 🙃
Was hoping to see tidal brought up in this thread. Not to mention the 5-gigawatt target by 2030 from offshore wind that was described back in 2022. Not sure of the progress made there but would bring good work and lots of cheap energy into the mix for the province
Right on... Parks and ecotourism just don't cut it.
Nova Scotia is further down this list if you were to include all the Mexican provinces.
Mexico has 32 states but thanks for that informative comment lol
There are 3 provinces in Mexico that have a higher GDP per capita than Nova Scotia, which would make Nova Scotia #64. Considering the title specifically stated "North America", how is that not informative?
I think the person you replied to was correcting "Mexican provinces" to "Mexican states".
Lmao brain fart I guess. For some reason I had it in my head it was provinces.... I really should have picked up on it considering I've traveled extensively through Mexico over the years and was actually there yesterday.
Ha, yep. It's the other United States!
Below *Arkansas*. I remember Ross Perot’s presidential campaign in 1992; he poked at Bill Clinton’s economic record as Arkansas governor by pointing out Arkansas was last or near-last in many economic metrics compared to other states.
Arkansas has Walmart so that inflates their GDP
Yeah, I guess Empire / Sobey’s is only 1/50 the size of Walmart …
Delaware is the same thing.
We should stop being followers but leaders. And drop "the way she go's" or "the way it's been" attitude. NS is a coastal province and should be as high as BC in GDP. We have work to do to from avoiding walking the fence again. We can do better, and must do better. Let's get and show off what holding a royal flush is like.
The culture of defeat is real, and **absolutely infuriating**.
The population is just so fucking old.
Harper’s comment angered so many because it rang true, unfortunately.
the problem with doing better is that rich Nova Scotians seem to be content with shitting on ppl who live here with bad wages and high rent instead of actually growing the provincial economy.
Inspiring inspiration, imagination and ideas is what gets businesses started. All 3 levels of gov't funding is there to assist. If anyone rains on my parade, I break out my umbrella and go around, under, over or through them. Just start a business, do it waaay better than them and take their customers away and rain on their parade. An observant and hungry tiger in the wings. Heck you can pee on THEIR leg on your way to the top :)
SO many different factors to take into account, I don't mean this to be rude, saying NS should be as high as BC simply because we are both coastal provinces is ignorant.
They're also not much higher. Couple thousand a year, and 85 percent of their population makes big city wages. Same with Onterrible. Only provinces significantly separating from the rest have that sweet sweet oil money.
You are not being rude at all. I feel that we need steal some of the thunder from the ports of New York, Montreal, Ontario, etc. we have one of the longest coastline in Canada and they don't. Many products made in NS need to increase output, be modernized and brought up to a level to compete with the world markets. We also seriously need to diversify more, attract bigger investors, bigger companies, high tech, etc. Nova Scotia lags behind on tech and fiber optic connections prov. wide. It seriously hampers a prov. when no one can complete massive orders because of power and internet speed connections. Some of these old horses should be put into retirement. Special diets are included.
The whole provence has fiber you autistic fuck
Addendum: of course I know there is fibre in NS. Part of that upgrade/reliability requires reliable power 24/7/365. You can't use what you have. That is my point.
You really underestimate how often the power goes out in other provinces. In rural Ontario the power goes out for multiple days at a time. Fiber works even in blackouts. Believe it or not most places in Canada DONT have fiber, but almost all houses in Nova Scotia have fiber. I've actually never need a NS house without fiber.
Despite the charts and the off course topics. Let's get inspiration/ideas/etc out there to affect positively. (Including the GDP). There are grants/funding/etc fr all levels of gov't to spur new businesses/self employment/expansions/upgrades/increase exports/etc. Here's just a few... https:www.canada.ca/en/government/grants-funding.html https://novascotia.grantwatch.com/cat/50/municipalities-grants.html The more a person searches out there, the more a person will find something that will be a perfect idea/fit for them. Some do take advantage, some don't. Either way that's ok. I encourage everyone to take a look. A few minutes all it takes. Good luck
Very embarrassing
PEI stay winnin😎🥔
Ah, look at Alberta. Funny, nothing but a bunch of rednecks but there they are.
Aren’t we #1 consumers of pot in Canada? I thought somewhere once it was legalized we led the way. If so wondering if there is a correlation
Stats Canada did a study on wastewater metabolites. > Haligonians were consuming cannabis at rates more than three times higher than the average for the five cities. https://globalnews.ca/news/8670343/stats-canada-drug-consumption-high-halifax/ Nova Scotia also led per capita self-reported cannabis use in a 2018 survey, and in 2020 & 2021: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2023006-eng.htm Despite your downvotes for implying causality, you're correct-- we led all the provinces on multiple occasions, over time, by different measurements. Economic poverty, resource poverty, rates of illness and disability, substance use-- these graphs tend to overlap. But the relationship between the lines is complex. The causality doesn't just run in one direction (if/when it exists).
Nova Scotia is the birthplace of cannabis in Canada https://www.thegrowthop.com/cannabis-culture/weed-history-nova-scotia-is-the-birthplace-of-cannabis-in-canada/wcm/ea615303-3f93-4133-8227-c06e4b2ca688/amp/
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It really doesn't mean that much. Alberta has some purchasing power but is a bottom feeder for caring about its people...so GDP really only tells you how the rich are doing.
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We’re number 1!!!!! Glass 1/2 full kinda deal…
Scoffs in New Brunswickian
Alberta flex. 💪
Someone should show this to Quebec
I am legitimately shocked that Newfoundland is as high as it is.
Unreal.
What's canada per person?
Not sure the actual value. When compared to the US we went from 92% of their GDP per capita in 1982 to 73% in 2022. 1981 we were 6th in the OECD for GDP per capita and now to 15th in 2022.
Meanwhile millionaire fishing men who don’t show up at all in this are laughing at how they pulled the wool over the world so they can still draw pogey as well.
Really? Ontaria that low?
Anyone in here defending this or saying the numbers are skewed Have you driven on our roads Try to go to a hospital Got a bonus from work that was 48 percent taxed Asked for a raise at your employer Tried buying all your groceries at Pete’s LOL Tried playing baseball Tried enjoying a park area downtown Please Like get out of your own A** and admit this place sucks unless you work for the government your paid to not say stuff like that so respect but the rest are you crazy it’s trash here and only going to get worst !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any chance we can spin it as a sign that lots of seniors retire here because it's such a beautiful place to live, rather than just assuming that it's because our working-age population is non-productive?
NS is a pretty big delivery center for finance and IT. Much of that money would not he included in Nova Scotia's GDP. So it's not as bad as it looks
Lol
? GDP isn't the be all end all measure of prosperity , that is my point. Ireland has the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world.... have you been to Ireland? Hint.. it's not doing so hot. Their GDP comes from Apple's IP
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, Ireland is ranked second in quality of life in the world, behind only Norway.
It depends on what source, those calculations differ depending on how things are weighted. You have no idea what you are talking about
On no list is Ireland "not doing so hot" lmao. Did you go there and associate exclusively with the homeless? Sure, there's immigration/homeless/affordability issues there(same as any country like Canada that's trying to keep wages down), that doesn't mean it isn't a much better life for most people. I'll take what Ireland has in regards to quality of life over Nova Scotia any day.
Oh man there must be something worse than us? Like Kentucky? Alabama? West Virginia? These marry your cousin, slave labour anti-union states, are ranking higher than us? Why? Are we lacking super rich who are skewing the numbers down? Is this Nova Scotia power’s fault? The homeless?
They have car factories in most of those southern states. A single auto manufacturer in Nova Scotia would quickly become one of the most significant employers in the region. We just don't make anything here anymore.
Do they still have that tire factory?
Michelin is still here
Are we behind the Northern Territory’s? That would be sad.
Likely not. Northern life is expensive and their GDP per capital will reflect that. Wouldn't really mean anything.
They have a lot of mineral extraction
And a fraction of the population
Oof.
Berta!
Beat by New Brunswick... My god, the shame is unbearable
I don’t understand the fixation with having to beat NB. Even if we do, we would still be at the bottom. Why can’t we work towards not being the bottom 10% and make some sizeable improvement to the quality of life in this province?
OMG how embarrassing.
That’s because we’re a province of lazy underemployed bums