Plus: seeking shelter from a SaaSpocalypse February 17, 2026 Sign Up | View online In This Issue 8 min read 📺 Cheap TVs 🤏 Shrinking staffs 🚽 Maximum fibre A consumer mystery explained: why do some goods (like food) keep getting more expensive and others (like TVs) keep getting cheaper? | Derek Brahney The Week in Markets Seeking shelter from the SaaSpocalypse So is the giant AI bubble finally about to pop? Or is AI a giant needle that’s about to pop everything else? Or could it be ... both? Consider the peculiar case of tiny Florida-based Algorhythm Holdings, a former karaoke-machine manufacturer that pivoted to AI logistics and appears to have single-handedly upended multiple software sectors by announcing that its core tech can streamline freight-trucking. This was taken as yet more evidence that the SaaSpocalypse could be upon us, and that yesterday’s karaoke act could be tomorrow’s market darling and/or destroyer. So where are investors seeking shelter now? Sturdy stuff: utilities. Energy. Health care. And the sturdiest safe haven of them all: long-term bonds. Feb. 9 – Feb. 13 TSX: +1.40% (+3.7% YTD) S&P 500: -1.2% (-0.3% YTD) The Big Important Story TVs Are Dirt Cheap. Food Is Super Expensive. Why? A TLDR Investigation You don’t need to read this newsletter to know a very basic (and lousy) economic fact: that nearly everything in Canada has gotten wildly more expensive over the past few years. Inflation peaked in 2022, but most stuff we buy still costs about 20% more than it did in 2020. The bitter cherry on top is that food prices are accelerating again. According to the latest data, restaurant prices are up 8.5% year-over-year, while groceries have risen by 6.2%. That’s double the U.S. rate, and it’s the highest in the G7. Here’s the really curious part: while food prices have soared, some products have gotten way cheaper, especially if you zoom out over the past 25 years. For instance: TVs. And the reasons reveal a lot about our changing economy. Let’s start with dinner. It wasn’t so long ago — 2001, to be precise — that a 42-inch TV cost $11,775. That was the sticker price for a cutting-edge Philips plasma, which would be about $20,000 in today’s money. Now you can grab one for $250 — a 97% price drop. Do you know what hasn’t dropped by 97%? A fancy chicken dinner for two at a nice restaurant. Since 2000, the price of such a meal is up nearly 140% — though we’re pretty sure chicken doesn’t taste 140% better. And if you add dessert and a nice bottle of wine, you would save money if you stayed home and bought a new TV instead. Two more quick examples: Toys are a tad cheaper than they were two and a half decades ago — about 6%. Good news for parents! The bad news? When your sweet, radiant klutz of a child falls and chips his tooth on his affordable new toy, your dentist bill will be more than twice as much — +134% — as it would have been back when 42-inch TVs cost five figures. OK, one more: Breaking news: housing is expensive! The average Canadian home still costs twice as much as it did in 2000. The teeny-tiny silver lining? If you are somehow able to buy a place, you won’t have to pay much for a camera to take a photo of it for Instagram. Yay? The Story Behind These Trends It’s no secret why tech gadgets have gotten cheaper Writer/engineer Brian Potter recently published a captivating essay about the hyper-efficiencies of TV manufacturing. The process involves etching tiny transistors into large sheets of glass and layering it, no kidding, with liquefied crystals. Companies have built billion-dollar factories to perform this miracle-adjacent work at scale and pump out millions of low-cost units. Semiconductor manufacturing has benefitted from similar technological gains, hence all manner of consumer tech goods have plunged in price. You can blame an economic phenomenon for your pricey chicken Keen readers probably noticed that pan-roasted chickens, dentist visits, and homes all share something in common: they’re service-intensive. And it’s hard to make service workers more productive. Sure, PCs and email have boosted office-worker efficiency, but technology hasn’t made dentists faster at cleaning teeth or construction workers quicker at framing houses. And yet service-industry workers get pay bumps over time anyway, since they exist in the same labour market as workers in industries that are more productive and profitable. Think of it in terms of keeping up: if a sharp young grad can make $200,000 in tech, a dental clinic has to offer competitive wages to attract talent. And these rising labour costs get passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. There’s a name for this economic phenomenon: “Baumol’s cost disease.” Baumol’s cost disease is especially pronounced in wealthy nations, like Canada and the U.S. Over the past 25 years, as consumer tech got cheaper to produce, tech companies grew increasingly profitable and started paying their employees more. These jumbo salaries put upward pressure on wages; banks, hospitals, and law firms all had to pony up. And the wage race quickly rippled out into industries that weren’t even chasing the same talent. When Big Tech engineers in Toronto and San Francisco started pulling mega-salaries, they drove up real-estate prices. Restaurants, in turn, had to raise wages so their own employees could afford their increasingly high rent, and menu prices reflected these costs. And that’s why a burger will set you back at least $18 now. So will housing or dentist visits ever get cheaper? Housing might! But it’ll likely require a leap in innovation — scalable 3D-printed houses, say, or robots that can do precision manual labour. Unfortunately, it’d be hard to speed up teeth cleaning more than we already have, and we’re a long, long way from automating it. That means any price relief would likely have to come from a different part of the equation — e.g., expanded government-subsidized dental coverage. Until robots learn how to scrape plaque off teeth or hang drywall, we’ll likely be stuck in this peculiar economy where you can afford a giant TV on which to stream any movie ever created — true magic! — but you can’t afford a root canal or a new apartment. Progress is weird like that. —Dan Xin Huang. Charts and data by Brennan Doherty TWO OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK Fibremaxxing is the latest food movement. Perhaps you saw Canadian icon William Shatner re-dub himself “Will Shat” last week in a Super Bowl ad for Raisin Bran? It was one of several fecal-themed spots that aired during the big game, an unfortunate by-product of a positive health trend: fibre is en fuego. Most of us need more of it, and food brands are hitting the gas (sorry) on products like fibre-boosted prebiotic soda. Comrade Murdoch pours one out for the proletariat. How bleak is it getting out there for the modern labour force? Even the noted pinko rag The Wall Street Journal is sounding an alarm about how today’s tech giants employ far fewer people than the market leaders a generation ago. In 1985, IBM had 405,000 employees and inflation-adjusted earnings of $18 billion; in 2025, Nvidia made roughly $73 billion with just 36,000. “Capital ... is triumphant,” the paper concluded, “while the average worker ekes out marginal gains.” From Our Sponsor The FOMO Index by Stacey Woods Important 😵 Survey reveals 42% of Canadians don’t have life insurance. Probably because another monthly bill would surely kill them. Source 🎮 Disney says it might start premiering movies inside Fortnite. It’ll be something fun for kids to do after school inside Fortnite. Source 🌒 Elon Musk wants to colonize the moon instead of Mars. It’s closer, and the food’s not as heavy, but it really lacks atmosphere. Source 🧀 Kraft Heinz decides to stay together after all. At least until Oscar Mayer grows up. Source Crash & Burn To the Moon 🤖 Study finds medical advice from AI is no better than your own search results. The bot’s sure you have cancer too. Source 🎶 Saskatoon man asks public for help finding a lost guitar strap signed by Joan Baez. The police dragnet only turned up some turquoise and leather headbands. Source 🍓 Central Ontario has “luxury strawberries” now, in case your 2026 goal is to blow all your money on fruit. Source 💕 Airbnb is offering an immersive Wuthering Heights experience on the moors (minus the TB and child abuse). Source Who Cares? Post of Wisdom The best response to that viral Something Big Is Happening essay on AI written by an AI investor… Thoughts on Today’s Issue? Love it Good So so This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Dan Xin Huang (writer), Claire Porter Robbins (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), Maude Campbell (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Eva Grace Clement Cruz (specialist, product engagement), Setareh Sarmadi (senior editorial producer), Matthew Karasz (markets editor), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief). Special thanks to Brent Donnelly for his help with The Week in Markets. TWIM: Total returns shown in local currency, via TradingView. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Have questions? Contact us. 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