WELP, I guess you guys should come up here to the great white north, full of less economic troubles then its southern counterpart! and 100% more Moose!
Yep the North is nicer if you don't mind the cold winter otherwise its nice ^_^
Hows that housing bubble going for you guys? Good for now, but we'll see.
The only thing that Canada (and the West) has going for them is parasitically taking the educated classes of 3rd world countries and using them to the benefit of the Great White North through taxation, basically leaving the 3rd world nation with the debt of educating the immigrants, and Canada (and the West) reaping the benefits through taxes. But I will agree your cities are beautiful and clean(don't get me started on New York:P), the drinking age is lower, and the Poutine is great!
Housing bubble, Dollar bubble, Dow Jones bubble; it is so obvious it is painful; inflation is kept a bit low by the capital destruction, lies of the official CPI and low velocity but it will not last for ever and they will all pop
They will say it is because of Russia, war, terrorist or something else but it will be because of the FED policies
if they're smart, they're going to use the oil money to develop an another source of income before they deplete the reservoirs
They are not, and they are not used to working hard (like, say, the Chinese or Japanese) which could make up for it. If they were, they wouldn't build useless skyscrapers or meaningless islands, but rather build research centers and production facilities instead, that is anything which creates real wealth (cf. Israel or Iran to a degree).
true, they're wasting money
but islands attract tourists, skyscapers could too
I get your point, they're wasting their money foolishly
Income from tourists won't be enough even to maintain everything in order.
I think you exaggerate maintenance costs or how much is needed. Petronas Towers in Malaysia have been predicted to last 5000 years if humans disappeared and didn't perform maintenance. There's people living in skyscrapers and towers in New York that go back a hundred years. There's even apartment buildings in Europe that go back 400 years.
Dubai may run out of the oil and could have debt issues over that but the towers and infrastructure wouldn't disappear, neither would the financial exchange, the tourism or the all the shopping commerce.
Ironically that could lead to some interesting developments in Dubai. Arabs are already a minority in that country, no? I bet once the oil money goes it becomes a dominion of India.
Dubai doesn't have any substantial amount of Oil though
