JohnAmardeil.com

A recent Globe and Mail article gave me pause for thought. In it, the writer quoted a consumer poll that asked almost 4,800 people in Canada and the US whether they considered themselves wealthy.

Here’s what the pollsters found.

Almost 50% of the people polled who make between $50,000 and $60,000 said they’d consider themselves wealthy if they earned at least $100,000. Yet, of the people who actually do make $100,000 or more, only 16% thought of themselves as wealthy.

Is the owner a wealthy person?

It gets better: 43% of the people making over $100,000 said they’d need at least $250,000 a year to be wealthy. Twenty-four per cent said they’d need half a million, and 11% said they’d need at least one million.

The conclusion, it would seem, is that people are never satisfied. This is indeed what the writer herself concluded, as did some of the article’s readers.

Other commenters raised a good point, namely that wealth is not just about your income. For example, a person who earns $35,000 and has little debt is doubtless wealthier than another who makes $200,000 but has prohibitive expenses.

So it’s arguably true that some of the people who were polled aren’t wealthy — even if they’re making $100K.

One way or the other, it’s an undeniable fact of life that most people will never settle for whatever they have. It may be a whole lot better than what they had before. It may even be a whole lot better than what the vast majority of people in the world have. (In fact, if you live in Canada or the US, you automatically are better off than most human beings.)

No matter. Whatever you have now won’t do. You’ll always want more.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I’m not suggesting we should overwork ourselves to death. Nor am I saying we should take on expenses beyond our means. And I’m certainly not saying we should work to the point where we barely spend time with our family.

Yet if we didn’t want more, we’d still be back in the caves. We wouldn’t have evolved as much as we have. We wouldn’t have modern medicine and airplanes and heated homes and more food than we know what to do with.

Of course, this isn’t to say the world is perfect. Senseless wars are still fought. Children still die from preventable diseases. Women are still oppressed. Even more depressingly, these things will likely continue to happen for quite some time. Perhaps forever.

But the evidence is that these awful realities have decreased throughout the last few centuries — and will continue to decrease.

Why? Because we fought. We innovated. We wanted more — and we reached out and we got it. This is our basic impulse, and it can take us too far, but it can certainly improve our lives.

So next time someone asks whether you’re wealthy, realize that you probably are, and then go about becoming wealthier, not necessarily because you make more money, but maybe because you reduce your expenses, or because you put some of that money to use in a way that contributes to making someone somewhere wealthier.

More to come?

Many people worry that our housing market will burst. Others say we’ll be fine. This article summarizes both points of view.

Published last week in The Globe and Mail, it depicts a best-case scenario where homes prices will likely end 2012 flat despite an initial slight contraction.

In the worst-case scenario painted by the author, a spike in the unemployment rate and a pullback in credit demand might make the housing market experience a hard landing.

I for one don’t think there is a bubble in our housing market. Bubbles tend to grow quickly before they explode, and they never last long.

The current state of affairs has lasted too long to be called a bubble, although it may merit being called a balloon. If so, I hope it won’t explode, as it’s very inflated right now.

What’s your take? Do you think we should brace ourselves? Or will everything work out fine?

One way or the other, I thank you for reading my blog and wish you a very happy New Year!

You’ve seen one in the subway and on the bus. You’ve seen one on the highway. You’ve even seen one on a urinal.

I’m talking about ads, of course. Not the typical kind. I’m talking about ads that encourage you to be nice. To do good deeds such as sharing the newspaper with a fellow commuter or foregoing a prime parking spot.

(By the way, if you’re curious as to how an ad on a urinal would encourage someone to be good, know that “real men are measured by the size of their generosity.”)

Funny, sure. Witty. But what’s the catch? What are these ads trying to sell you?

Nothing, according to a Toronto Star article published on July 30.

Surprised? I was. The campaign (called People for Good) must have, after all, cost serious money. It’s not just featured on billboards and transit shelter ads and radio spots and an iPhone app, but it’s also underway in Toronto and Vancouver and Edmonton and Calgary and Montreal and Halifax.

Still, Mark Sherman, the man who created the campaign along with advertising agency Zulu Alpha Kilo, maintains that all they want is to encourage a positive change in behaviour.

After giving this some thought, I’m no longer surprised.

I’ve known for awhile that you can do good while making a profit, as I wrote in my recent blog post “Making Money and Doing Good Needn’t Be at Odds.” Witness what our client Highmark Homes is doing with the Triumph Musician Search Contest. (If you didn’t read that post, suffice it to know the contest is currently open to all GTA musicians, who just need to upload a video of an original song for a chance to win $2,500.)

You could argue that this contest will help Highmark Homes portray itself as a supporter of the arts (which it is). But the reality of the matter is that Highmark Homes could easily sell Triumph homes without this contest. In launching it, our client may have publicly shown itself to be a supporter of music, but it’s also helping make a concrete and beneficial difference in someone’s life.

Also witness what builders such as Brookfield Homes and Mason Homes are doing to further the cause of New Urbanism. This movement aims to make communities more liveable and enjoyable by reducing car usage, adding parks, featuring pedestrian-friendly street design, and emphasizing aesthetics and comfort.

A cynic will say these builders just want to sell to socially minded buyers. But these cynics haven’t seen the glitter in our clients’ eyes when a family says they love their community. They haven’t seen the pride our builders take in improving people’s lives.

In fact, you could argue that advertising, for all the criticism we in the industry get from the public and the media, helps many people, either by providing them with information or by helping spread word about altruistic missions and organizations.

Granted, what People for Good is doing seems to go further than this. As its creator says:

“I hope that aside from encouraging every Canadian to do a good deed or something nice, (…) we can also inspire other people in other industries, in other companies, to take stock of what their collective can do and try and use some of the energy… to do something socially responsible.

“Each of us, and in each of our companies, we can kind of redeploy some of our commercial energy into a socially responsible direction. And my belief is that if we don’t, the trajectory of the world is not really very good.”

For this reason, BAM asked People for Good this week to be an ambassador for the campaign. Consider us inspired.

Not very pedestrian-friendly.

Hazel McCallion, the long-time Mississauga mayor, has had a change of heart.

According to a recent Globe and Mail article, the same Mayor who “presided over a proliferation of cookie-cutter subdivisions” now champions intensification, pedestrian-friendly streets, and integrated transit.

And to prove she’s a true convert to New Urbanism,  the Mayor just inaugurated a new public square and opened a new Sheridan College campus. She also says she’s working hard to build a Convention Centre in downtown Mississauga within the next 10 years, as well as a new stadium, a larger museum, and a larger art gallery.

More to the point, the Mayor also wants to make Mississauga a pedestrian-friendly city and to host architectural contests for all future downtown buildings.

To me, the most interesting part in the article came when the Mayor was asked why she’s doing all this only now rather than when the core started building up.

To answer the question, Ms. McCallion implied landowners and developers were responsible. Then she added that the city needed more control over site plans.

Whether landowners and developers are responsible or not for the suburban feel of Mississauga, its lack of street life, and its wide bustling roads, I think the real reasons why the Mayor now waves the New Urbanism flag are:

• All the greenfields have already been consumed.

• Mississauga needs revenue from development changes.

• Smart Growth legislation is forcing intensification and redevelopment on Mississauga and all municipalities.

• The city will get more revenue from property taxes.

Read the article here.  As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.