In the last 10 years, the cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver has more than doubled. The price of groceries has gone up about 40 per cent, and gas costs nearly 50 per cent more today than it did in 2015.
Meanwhile, (assuming wages continued to grow at the same rate as 2016-2021) median income has probably only increased about 24 per cent over the last decade.
Most of us don’t need to hear those numbers to know the truth they expose: money has become more scarce. The average Canadian is doing more with less, and spending a bigger proportion of their income on basic needs like housing, food, and transport. When we pay rent, pop to the grocery store, or fill up the gas tank, we experience the familiar feeling that we don’t quite have enough.
But, in one crucial way, we do have enough. Since 2015, total global wealth has grown from roughly US$250 trillion to US$471 trillion. On a global scale, money isn’t actually scarce: there’s more wealth in the world today than at any point in human history.
So what gives?
Here’s a clue. In 2024 alone, the wealth of the world’s billionaires grew by $2 trillion. That means last year the wealthiest 3,000 people on the planet collectively made $5.5 billion every day, $228 million every hour, and $3.8 million every minute.
I think most of us know, in an abstract way, that the wealth is here, it’s just not ending up in our pockets. But it’s hard to understand the extent of that upwards flow of funds, in part because the numbers involved are so incomprehensible.
For example: with a good salary and a generous pension plan, you might be able to save $500/month for retirement. If you did that every month from age 25 to 65, you could retire with $1 million in the bank—enough to live comfortably for many years, and more than most will ever see in their lifetimes.
Those billionaires? Last year they made $1 million every 20 seconds.
This absurd inequity makes me angry, of course. But it doesn’t really surprise me that, when given the opportunity, some people will pursue the accumulation of wealth beyond any logical limit.
And it also wouldn’t surprise me if, even today, they still don’t feel they have enough.
Because, as the author Robin Wall Kimmerer has said, “modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity.”
In today’s world, however much we have, we rarely feel we have enough. And not just money. We don’t have enough time, enough energy, enough friends, enough experiences. We’re not successful enough or attractive enough or fit enough. That sense of scarcity is so deeply engrained in the Western psyche that we assume it’s a natural part of the experience of being human.
But not all people and cultures conceptualize our shared resources and wealth as finite and scarce, as something to be hoarded and scrapped over. Many Indigenous cultures see the world as inherently abundant, containing everything we need for all living things to thrive, if only we know how to engage with it wisely.
For those of us who grew up in Western cultures, this perspective shift can be hard to square. After all, our day-to-day experiences constantly reinforce that niggling feeling of scarcity. Money is hard to find and even harder to hold on to. Many people do struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. In this context, it feels almost churlish to suggest we should be focusing on the abundance we have around us.
But I can’t put it better than Wall Kimmerer: “recognizing ‘enoughness’ is a radical act.”
Because to play the game of scarcity is to play the game of the billionaires. To agree that we don’t have enough, and to dedicate our efforts to accumulating more, is to say we accept the rules of a game we can’t win. Because let’s be honest: when some can make $3.8 million a minute, the rest of us aren’t catching up any time soon.
But if we recognize that we already have enough? There’s power in that.
It helps to create some space between us and the incessant messages telling us we’ll have enough soon. It gives us breathing room to decide what to do with the wealth we do have—our health, our relationships, our time, our energy.
So often, we feel we have no other choice but to trade those things in to stay in the endless game. And of course, sometimes we do. But we have more opportunities to say “enough” than we think we do.
When we choose to upgrade our iPhone, or finance a new car, or take on that extra project at work. When we choose between another commitment, or getting a good night’s sleep. When we scroll down to the next reel, or swipe left on the next guy, knowing what we’ll find won’t fill the void.
Every day, we each have tiny moments where we can choose to say: I’m good. I have what I need. This will do. It feels strange, even scary, because so much of the modern world depends on us believing the scarcity story. It doesn’t negate the very real constraints we face. But it does hand us back a little bit of power and agency in our own lives.
Because as long as we keep buying into the myth that stability, security, and happiness are just around the corner, the wheels will keep spinning, with the same predictable, unequal results. We’ll keep feeling like we don’t have enough, and we’ll keep chasing more, while others quietly take it all.
On the other hand, if we all woke up tomorrow morning and decided we had enough, right now? What would happen then?
Lizi McLoughlin is a local non-profit leader, an average-but-enthusiastic mountain athlete, and an eternal optimist
