The Missing Middle Podcast

Gift cards might feel like free money or a clever budget hack, but they are really interest-free loans to stores that make billions in profit when you forget to spend them.
In this episode of Classonomics, Sabrina Maddeaux and Mike Moffatt break down whether holiday gift card deals and self-budgeting hacks actually save Canadians money or simply hand retailers interest-free loans, how corporate balance sheets turn billions in forgotten balances and "breakage" into pure profit, the mechanics of why the Starbucks app holds more customer deposits than a typical community bank, what happened when Hudson's Bay’s creditor protection left shoppers as empty-handed unsecured creditors, and why the behavioural psychology of "treat money," friction, and inflation makes holding onto gift cards a losing financial bet.
Chapters:
00:00 - Every Gift Card Is a Loan
00:55 - How Much Canadians Spend on Gift Cards
02:09 - Why People Buy Gift Cards for Themselves
04:27 - Accounting 101: Your Gift Card Is the Store's Debt
05:30 - Breakage: How Forgotten Balances Become Profit
07:34 - The Bank of Starbucks
11:37 - The $27 Billion Junk Drawer
12:29 - Why We Don't Spend Our Gift Cards
15:02 - Mall Cards, Visa Cards & Other Friction Traps
16:51 - Gift Cards vs. Inflation
17:54 - Are Gift Card Deals Actually a Good Deal?
19:12 - Why Parking Money on a Card Costs You
20:39 - Hudson's Bay: When Your Gift Card Becomes Worthless
21:49 - What Protections Do Canadians Have?
23:11 - Who Really Wins Gift Card Season
Links/Research:
Retail Council of Canada Reports on Holiday Spending 
Canadians Keep Gift Spending Steady — and Push Deal-Hunting to New Heights - Retail Council of Canada 
Canada Gift Card Business Report 2026: An $11.18 Billion 
With Their Eyes on Affordability, Consumers Increasingly Gift Themselves, Blackhawk Finds – Digital Transactions 
Gift Cards and Mental Accounting: Green‐lighting Hedonic Spending - Helion - 2014 - Journal of Behavioral Decision Making - Wiley Online Library 
While Most (72%) Canadians Give and Receive Gift Cards Each Year, Many Are Tossing Away Cash by Not Using Card's Full Value | Ipsos 
https://sherwood.news/business/starbucks-could-use-a-cio-to-invest-the-usd2-2b-float-from-its-rewards/
 https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/your-starbucks-balance-is-working-harder-than-you-think/ 
https://www.bankrate.com/f/102997/x/c53caa68d4/gift-card-survey-press-release.pdf 

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
Edited by Sean Foreman and Canadian Civil

Are property tax deferral programs really helping struggling seniors, or are they subsidizing wealthy homeowners at everyone else's expense?
In this episode of DemograFix, Cara Stern and Mike Moffatt unpack the hidden costs of senior property tax deferrals and why these well-intentioned programs may be making housing affordability worse for younger generations.
They explore how property tax breaks can become low-interest loans for multimillion-dollar homeowners, why some of the seniors most vulnerable to poverty don't qualify for these benefits, and how taxpayers end up footing the bill through higher property taxes and reduced municipal services.
They also dig into British Columbia's controversial program, where homeowners with multimillion-dollar properties could defer their entire property tax bill at heavily discounted interest rates, effectively turning a senior benefit into an investment opportunity for the wealthy.
So who really benefits from these programs? And why are governments subsidizing homeowners to stay in expensive family-sized houses while young families struggle to find homes they can afford?
Chapters:
00:00 - The Boomer Tax Break Bankrolled by Young Renters
01:45 - "House Rich, Cash Poor" is Just an Excuse
03:59 - The Hidden Incoherence Killing Family Neighborhoods
06:19 - B.C.’s Multi-Millionaire Tax Deferral Loophole
08:49 - Reverse Robin Hood: The Big Wealth Transfer
11:56 - Why Politicians Are Terrified to Fix This
14:13 - Real Solutions vs. The Downsizing Trap
18:50 - How to Expose the True Cost to Voters

Research/links:
How B.C.'s property tax system delivers big benefits to multimillionaires, and why some say it needs to change
How a Tax Break for Struggling Seniors Became a Billionaire Subsidy
Low income statistics by age, gender and economic family type
Underused Ontario schools could be sold by Ford government for housing in new education bill

Credits:
Mike Moffatt 
https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt
https://bsky.app/profile/mikepmoffatt.bsky.social

Cara Stern 
https://x.com/carastern
https://bsky.app/profile/carastern.bsky.social

Meredith Martin 
https://twitter.com/meredithmartin
https://bsky.app/profile/meredithmartin.bsky.social

Sean Foreman
@seanegertonforeman
https://bsky.app/profile/seanforeman.bsky.social

Canadian Civil
youtube.com/CanadianCivil

University Of Ottawa Co-op Student
Francis Gabriel Carmona, https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisgabrielcarmona/

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
Edited by Sean Foreman and Canadian Civil

Can Alberta keep its title as Canada's housing affordability champion, or is it about to become its own worst enemy?
In this episode of Classonomics, Mike Moffatt and Millennial Moron dig into Alberta's growing housing battles. Why is Danielle Smith stepping in to overrule municipal zoning decisions in Calgary and Edmonton? How did the humble eightplex become a controversial, compromise-filled housing option? And why can it take years of red tape, parking rules and neighbourhood opposition to get new homes built?
From the politics of infill to the hidden costs of endless approval delays, we explore what's standing in the way of more housing, and whether Alberta is putting its biggest affordability advantage at risk
Is Alberta showing the rest of Canada how to build more homes, or how to get in its own way?

Chapters:
00:00 - Alberta's Housing Model Under Pressure
03:36 - Construction Timelines: Alberta vs. Ontario
06:29 - Why Edmonton’s Infill Reforms Sparked Provincial Pushback
09:14 - The Flawed Design of Modern Multiplexes
11:43 - The Political Contradictions of Housing Deregulation
14:41 - Neighborhood Pushback & The Myth of Suburb Capacity
20:04 - Immigration, Housing Crises & Federal CMHC Loans
23:28 - Calgary’s Office-to-Residential Conversion Playbook
26:43 - How to Fix Community Engagement for Better Housing
31:07 - Danielle Smith and the Battle Over Parking Minimums
33:38 - Presumptive Upzoning: A Market-Based Solution
36:40 - Canadian Real Estate Listings vs. European Castles
40:35 - An Applied Math Approach to the Housing Bubble 

Research:
2025 Provincial HOMES Report Card
https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/2025-provincial-homes-report-card

Millennial Moron
https://www.youtube.com/@MillennialMoron

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
Edited by Sean Foreman and Canadian Civil

Why is housing so expensive? Parking might be part of the answer.

In this episode of DemograFix, Cara Stern talks to Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, about how parking minimums, parking costs and car dependency have shaped our cities and made housing more expensive.

We discuss why developers build so much parking, how parking requirements can delay or block new housing, what happens when cities eliminate parking minimums, and whether making parking harder is actually a good way to get people out of their cars.

Plus: why are there at least three parking spaces for every car in America?

Pick up Henry's book, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, wherever you get your books.

#Parking #Housing #urbanplanning 

Chapters:

00:00 Parking vs. Housing: The Real Cost
01:28 The "Free Parking" Fallacy
03:18 Ridiculous Zoning Laws
05:15 How Parking Drives Up Your Rent
07:58 Why SimCity Left Out Parking
11:09 Why NIMBYs Fight New Housing
15:33 Why Carrots Don't Work on Drivers
18:33 The Dark Side of Parking Fines
20:29 How Parking Kills Small Towns
24:43 Why American Cities Look Empty

Research/links:

Paved Paradise
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/634461/paved-paradise-by-henry-grabar/9781984881151

Henry Grabar
https://www.henrygrabar.com/

Not-So-Free Parking
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2023/08/paved-paradise-grabar

America, Land of the Free Parking
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/books/review/paved-paradise-henry-grabar.html

The Edmonton Exception
https://2067journal.ca/the-edmonton-exception/

Credits:
Mike Moffatt 
https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt
https://bsky.app/profile/mikepmoffatt.bsky.social

Cara Stern 
https://x.com/carastern
https://bsky.app/profile/carastern.bsky.social

Meredith Martin 
https://twitter.com/meredithmartin
https://bsky.app/profile/meredithmartin.bsky.social

Sean Foreman
@seanegertonforeman
https://bsky.app/profile/seanforeman.bsky.social

Canadian Civil
youtube.com/CanadianCivil

Co-op Student
Francis Gabriel Carmona
Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
Edited by Sean Foreman and Canadian Civil

In this episode of Classonomix, Sabrina Maddeaux and Mike Moffatt break down what actually makes a home “family-friendly,” and what a survey of 4,000 Canadians reveals about whether townhomes, strawberry-box bungalows, and apartment towers are truly fit for raising kids. They unpack the developmental science behind childhood outcomes, introduce the “kitchen window test” for fostering independent play, and explain why the family-friendly courtyard apartments popular across Europe remain effectively illegal to build under Canadian zoning and building codes.
Chapters:
00:00 The Great Family Exodus
00:58 Defining Family Friendly Homes
05:15 Rating Canadian Homes: Suburbs to Condos
10:05 The Low-Rise vs. High-Rise Trap for Kids
14:38 What Science Says About Raising Kids in Suburbs
18:05 Why Public Parks Fail Young Families
19:23 The "Kitchen Window Test"
20:15 The European Courtyard Alternative
22:41 Why It’s So Hard to Build Family Housing

Research:
Social housing: A key part of past and future housing policyhttps://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2020/10/social-housing-a-key-part-of-past-and-future-housing-policy_ef96d6d9/5b54f96b-en.pdf
Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
Edited by Sean Foreman and Canadian Civil