The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - February 24, 2026


Liberals UPSET that Canada is poorer than Alabama!


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

184.65353

Word count

3,053

Sentence count

201

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Is Canada Really Poorer Than Alabama? - Is this a myth or a fact? - Is it true? - Does it really matter? - What's the difference between Canada and Alabama in terms of GDP per capita? - Which is worse? - Canada's GDP or Alabama's GDP?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.000 I have a hilarious story for you all today that highlights just how much cognitive dissonance
00:00:12.160 there is on the liberal side of Canadian politics. To be a liberal voter, you basically have to be
00:00:18.480 willing to believe a bunch of lies about the country, and this story exposes just how stewed
00:00:24.520 in elbows-up rhetoric some Canadians have been over the past year. So there's this controversy
00:00:30.760 about Alabama having a higher GDP per capita than Canada. Now, this is true, but there are people
00:00:39.480 like the guy who runs the Polling Canada X account who just cannot believe it. Polling Canada here says,
00:00:46.500 genuinely very funny. People are arguing Alabama has a higher standard of living than Canada.
00:00:51.760 Are they smoking crack? And as you can see, there was 2,200 replies to this and a community note that
00:00:59.880 is pending, because it is in fact true that Alabama has a higher GDP per capita than Canada. And if you
00:01:07.480 know American states, you will know that in terms of income, Alabama is below average in the United
00:01:13.920 States. We are being beaten by a below average state. They do not have the resources that Canada
00:01:19.980 has overall. They do not even have the level of education that Canadians have. But because you 0.99
00:01:26.220 can actually start a business and not have the government interfere with it, you can do way
00:01:31.020 better in Alabama than you can do in Canada on average. So I want to move up to this article that
00:01:36.840 started the controversy right here. This Global News article was posted on X, and it caused a big stir,
00:01:45.120 the title of it being, out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama. How is that possible?
00:01:52.440 Now, good on the Globe and Mail for actually reporting about this fact, but even the way they
00:01:57.440 title it is kind of funny. If you know the Globe and Mail, you will know it's a very liberal publication.
00:02:03.380 It says, out of nowhere, Canada has become poorer than Alabama. It's not out of nowhere,
00:02:08.960 it's been 10 years of terrible liberal governments, awful liberal policy, subsidizing industry rather
00:02:16.840 than cutting taxes and actually letting industry grow organically. That's what Alabama does. They 0.99
00:02:22.600 have low taxes, and they let the economy grow without being interfered with by the government.
00:02:28.720 They don't have endless amounts of regulations telling you how cold you have to transport green
00:02:34.780 beans from location A to location B. They actually, you know, believe in people's ability to think
00:02:40.880 logically and run their own lives, unlike Canada's government that seems to never not have a reason
00:02:47.640 to interfere in what you're doing. So in just a second here, I want to jump over to a CBC news segment
00:02:54.880 that just came out today, where they start trying to, you know, like squint and turn their heads at this
00:03:01.460 fact that Alabama is outpacing Canada and try and argue against it, because the liberals cannot take
00:03:07.940 it. The average viewer of the CBC cannot handle that Alabama is doing better in terms of GDP per
00:03:14.280 capita than Canada, and they need the CBC to whisper sweet nothings in their ear about how, don't worry
00:03:20.380 about it, if you look at these other stats, we're technically doing better than them. But before I get
00:03:25.580 into this next segment, I do just want to remind you guys, if you like the channel, make sure to leave a
00:03:30.360 like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber, leave a comment about what you think
00:03:36.420 about this mess. And if you want to help financially support the channel, you can always hit the join
00:03:41.500 button below the video and make a small monthly contribution. It helps make the channel more
00:03:46.360 sustainable for me and allows me to be less reliant on the YouTube algorithm. And when I say that, I mean,
00:03:52.500 I can make videos that are not, I guess, as commercially viable, but I think they'd be interesting to you
00:03:58.180 guys. If I do sometimes interesting videos that don't do well on the algorithm, you'll have way
00:04:03.560 lower viewership and way lower revenue. So I find a lot of YouTubers are incentivized to only talk
00:04:08.600 about national news and only talk about the most shocking and salacious things rather than talking
00:04:13.700 about some more boring subjects that I find actually do matter and should be talked about.
00:04:18.920 But anyways, without further ado, let's get into the CBC news segment and I'll break it down with you
00:04:24.960 guys. Is Canada poorer than the U.S. state of Alabama? That question was at the center of some
00:04:33.080 debate this weekend. No, it was not. Alabama is, in fact, richer than Canada in terms of GDP per capita,
00:04:42.420 like much richer. I think there are like $60,000 in terms of their average GDP per capita. We're like
00:04:49.520 55,000. I'll pull up the stats in just a second here, but it's not up for debate. It's only up for
00:04:54.940 debate with just elbows up liberals who can't handle this fact. It was sparked by a headline in the Globe
00:05:00.820 and Mail. It read how Canada became poorer than Alabama. And that article was based on analysis by
00:05:07.520 the IMF, which found Canada's provinces had an average GDP per capita equivalent to Alabama back in
00:05:14.620 2022. But then that figure shrank over the next two years. This whole episode has sparked an awful
00:05:21.520 lot of debate among experts. Some said GDP per capita is a lousy way to measure wealth and
00:05:26.280 prosperity. Economist Jim Stanford with the Center for Future Work wrote, this far-fetched conclusion
00:05:32.680 reflects deep flaws in the use of per capita GDP as a measure of prosperity and living standards.
00:05:37.700 This simple ratio ignores important issues such as what's included in GDP, who owns it, and how it's
00:05:43.260 distributed. So how did we get here? And what do you... Terrible liberal policy. And again,
00:05:49.620 there's all this kind of like just whiny sounds, all this neighing and all of this like just like
00:05:57.040 farting around the fact that, well, what's included in the GDP? Well, who has the money? It doesn't
00:06:03.660 matter. GDP per capita is higher in Alabama than it is in Canada. And by the way, your money goes farther
00:06:09.720 in Alabama. $600,000 Canadian could buy you a really nice house in Alabama. $600,000 Canadian buys you a
00:06:17.340 starter home in even the cheaper cities. Maybe if you go really out into the sticks, you can buy a nice
00:06:22.860 house for that much money. But in somewhere like Vancouver, that doesn't even pay the down payment
00:06:28.600 on a crack shack. We're going to try and pretend like somehow we're better than Alabama on some
00:06:34.040 measures? Like, get out of here. Come on. But the problem is elbows up liberals cannot hear the facts.
00:06:41.540 So I looked it up. Canada's GDP per capita is around $54,000, $55,000 per capita per person
00:06:49.620 on average. And I believe Alabama was around like $60,000 or something like that. Significantly
00:06:56.860 higher than us. Not just a little bit, much wealthier than us.
00:07:02.060 Really need to know about the state of Canadian economic growth. Well, for that, we turn to
00:07:06.780 economist Mike Moffitt, who joins us now. And Mike, I'm going to ask if Canada is poorer than
00:07:11.660 Alabama. But before we even get there, is that the right question that we should?
00:07:16.120 Before we even get to that question, can you please pat the audience on the bum and tell
00:07:21.120 them everything's going to be all right, because it doesn't really matter?
00:07:24.020 Should be asking as we're trying to figure out where we are and where we need to be headed?
00:07:30.000 No, I don't think it is. I think we need to ask ourselves, you know, are we doing better in a
00:07:34.620 more holistic sense? So, you know, not just what GDP tells us, but, you know, quality of life,
00:07:41.900 standard of living, inequality, and so on. And I also think, you know, at the end of the day...
00:07:46.680 Yes, which is fairly reflected by GDP per capita. How Canadians are doing tends to be reflected by how
00:07:54.860 much money the average person has. Now, you could say, well, we should be talking about the median
00:08:00.000 income. Okay, fair enough. Medians, even better. Median income, Alabama's still beating us. So 0.96
00:08:05.900 what's their point? What's the point? It's just a bunch of distractions, a bunch of vague
00:08:11.280 noises about how, well, this isn't the end-all be-all. It's like, okay, well, name a metric where
00:08:18.900 we're doing better. They'll be like, oh, the lifespan or something like that. It's like, that has to do
00:08:25.400 more with demographic mixes and genetics than anything. It really is not going to be... You're
00:08:30.140 not going to pretend like Canadians have better healthcare than people in Alabama. You know,
00:08:34.860 maybe Canadians, on average, are living longer, but people in Alabama can get access to healthcare
00:08:39.900 if they want. We end up waiting years. Today, we should be asking ourselves, are we doing as well
00:08:45.640 as we could be doing? I think that's the most important part, that I don't think we should be
00:08:49.960 trying to compete with Alabama, but rather, you know, I always saw it in sports. I always wanted to be
00:08:55.060 better today than I was yesterday. And I think Canada should be taking the same attitude. You know,
00:09:00.040 we should be trying to be better than we were last year, you know, not comparing ourselves to
00:09:04.520 one of 50 U.S. states. And we've been worse off pretty much every year for the past about six or seven
00:09:11.680 years. Like, with Trudeau at the beginning, growth was bad. It wasn't good, but you're kind of going up
00:09:17.980 still. But that's more of just the fact that Harper left him a functional economy and eventually he
00:09:22.620 crashed it. GDP per capita has been going down every year in this country for, like, the past five years.
00:09:29.180 What is he even on about? Like, the idea that we're going to start doing this participation
00:09:33.580 trophy standard of, oh, let's not compare ourselves to Alabama. Let's compare ourselves to ourselves.
00:09:38.680 Okay, well, ourselves suck. So what's your point?
00:09:42.160 And I should note, everybody should go out and read the piece in the Globe. I think it's smart. I think it's a
00:09:46.020 really interesting jumping off point to have a broader conversation about the Canadian economy.
00:09:51.020 And if GDP per capita is the one we're going to use, sure. But the point of it is to have a broader
00:09:55.620 conversation. You looked at a whole bunch of figures. You were tweeting about this over the
00:09:59.800 weekend, not just GDP per capita, measuring are we better off than we were 20 years ago? And the
00:10:06.600 interesting thing that jumped out to me was... Are we better off than we were in 2005? Really,
00:10:10.860 that's going to be your measure. Are we better off than we were in 1932? Are we better off? Do we
00:10:16.540 have nicer things than we did in 1932? Oh, well, because we now have the internet and we now have,
00:10:21.800 like, nicer motor vehicles, I guess we don't even need to wonder if we're doing better than Alabama
00:10:26.840 because we're doing better than Canada was 700 years ago. Back before people were even on this
00:10:32.440 continent, are we better off now? How about we ask an actual smart person question? Like, are we better
00:10:37.880 than even a below average American state? The only one that seemed to have improved over the last
00:10:42.420 number of years was, in fact, GDP per capita. Everything else is in pretty precipitous decline.
00:10:47.580 No, GDP per capita is not even good. Like the past, like 12 quarters or something, it's always been
00:10:52.400 down. Yeah, there's this kind of ongoing debate. And I think both sides are somewhat wrong. You know,
00:10:58.500 you've got one side who's very reliant on GDP per capita as their measure of well-being. And
00:11:04.500 GDP per capita is correlated with well-being, but it's not well-being. There are other things to
00:11:09.500 consider. And then you've got to... Yes, we tend to have to use correlations to figure out how Canadians
00:11:15.080 are doing. There's no well-being measure that we can go pull from. I didn't... Who is... Which... How...
00:11:21.680 Where did this guy steal his degree in economics? He's really going to get up on, like, television and
00:11:27.260 say, you know, people... All sides of the debate are really wrong. Just say that you're here to make
00:11:31.720 people who watch the CBC feel better about themselves, feel that their elbows up economics
00:11:36.860 are still okay. Because really, we don't even need to be using normal measures of prosperity.
00:11:43.100 We can... We can say... We can use a happiness index. And let's only pull people who are elbows 1.00
00:11:47.900 up retired voters who don't give a crap about the economy, how the economy is doing.
00:11:52.000 Another side of the debate who's saying, well, we're actually doing much better than GDP per capita
00:11:56.460 wouldn't indicate. I'm kind of thinking the other approach is saying, well, actually not so fast.
00:12:00.600 So GDP per capita, we're doing pretty well in. But other indicators such as wealth and income
00:12:06.480 inequality, deaths of despair, and so on, we tend to actually be below the average of kind
00:12:15.160 of Western economies. So, you know, I looked at the UN Human Development Index.
00:12:21.120 Deaths of despair? Have they seen the MAID numbers? Now they'll say, well, those are people
00:12:26.720 using medical assistance and dying. That's different. There's a... We keep euthanizing
00:12:32.800 people for just having seasonal depression. What is he talking about? Oh, the deaths of despair are
00:12:37.180 not as bad as Finland. I didn't ask... Like, this is where I don't ask about Finland. Like,
00:12:43.260 I don't care about the worst. Or below average. Yes, if we are really dishonest about what counts
00:12:49.640 as a death of despair. Which takes into account a variety of different factors. Back in the 1990s,
00:12:55.180 we were consistently in the top three. We're now down to 16th place in the latest report.
00:13:01.800 There's a World Happiness Report, also a UN initiative. Just a decade ago, we were the
00:13:07.440 sixth best country in the world, according to that. Now we're 18th. And it's not to suggest that,
00:13:13.400 you know, things aren't getting better in some areas that they are, but rather that other countries
00:13:19.360 are getting better faster. And there are areas like inequality where Canada's performance has
00:13:25.780 deteriorated over the last decade or two. And I think as we saw this weekend's debate,
00:13:31.040 mostly on Twitter, but I was having it at sort of with friends as well. Everybody likes to point
00:13:36.480 at their favorite hobby horse. Some say it's, this is all Justin Trudeau's fault and the complete
00:13:39.940 the result of him. Others are pointing at Trump saying it's all completely because of him.
00:13:44.460 Yes, the first set of people's right. The second set of people's wrong. I have solved the mystery
00:13:49.460 for you. The second set of people are blaming something that happened well into the decline.
00:13:55.160 It's like, no, you cannot blame Trump for the state of the country. GDP per capita was falling off
00:14:02.000 during the Biden administration. It was falling off during Trump's first administration. And it was
00:14:06.460 falling during Obama's administration. What are we talking about? All this stuff has been getting
00:14:11.320 worse since Justin Trudeau got into office. Yes, we had like slight increases at times, but usually
00:14:16.560 they were slight because he was starting to hurt the economy even when he first took office. Yes, we
00:14:21.780 had some residual momentum from Stephen Harper, and then it started falling off a cliff. What are we
00:14:28.180 talking about? Well, there's a debate going on. No, there isn't. There are rational people talking,
00:14:32.080 and then there are irrational emotional people talking afterwards saying, well, all that doesn't
00:14:36.260 matter because, you know, it's Trump's fault and we're the best country on the world on the planet.
00:14:40.780 Elbows up. Oh my goodness. Again, what's the problem with all these people are just offended at being
00:14:46.800 compared to Alabama because they thought they were better than Alabama and they're not. They just simply
00:14:52.520 aren't better than Alabama. Now we can be proud of our country, but our pride in our country should also
00:14:58.560 extend to wanting it to be better and not feeling wounded by being compared to Alabama on GDP per
00:15:05.660 capita. Maybe we should be learning from Alabama, cutting our taxes, cutting our regulations, you
00:15:11.480 know, not kicking business owners in the face. That would be a great start. But anyways, that is it for
00:15:17.720 this video, guys. There was a lot of debate going on in X and I could have brought in a post after post
00:15:22.240 about people living in denial about the whole Alabama thing. But the CBC news segment is really the
00:15:28.280 culmination of all of it that the CBC had to get on and make it all right for people that don't
00:15:34.120 worry. Alabama might be better than us, but it doesn't really matter because on all these other
00:15:38.400 metrics, we're doing really well, except all the metrics we're doing bad. Ignore those. Don't worry,
00:15:42.920 guys. The UN says we're happy, but we're not anymore. We've actually fallen a lot. But don't
00:15:48.600 worry, we're doing better. Just other people are doing even better than us, like Alabama. But you can't
00:15:54.100 mention that because Alabama, I don't know, it's like the dirty state. It's full of rednecks 1.00
00:15:59.480 and crack users or whatever all these liberal Canadians are thinking. Well, they're also making
00:16:04.500 more money if all that other stuff is true. It's really not. Alabama is a nice place where you can
00:16:09.200 actually buy a real property made out of, you know, stuff that isn't just made of like plastic
00:16:13.940 veneers, putting up like a house in Vancouver, just made of like the cheapest materials possible
00:16:19.140 because it's impossible to build anything within a reasonable budget. But anyways, now this is truly
00:16:25.780 over. I always go into these little mini rants at the end. Thank you guys for watching. Like, share,
00:16:30.100 and subscribe. I'll see you all later.