I was not born in Canada, but I chose to immigrate here and it's one of the top 5 best choices I've ever made. I have access to so much that in other places would be wildly expensive. My life is richer due to the diversity of the people I am surrounded by, if I bought every book I borrowed from the library last year it would have cost $3000 or more, and even after moving away from a large city I have access to public transit good enough to cover most of my needs.
It's actually really wild to think I spent a couple of years working in Boston more than a decade ago, and I used my zipcar subscription way more often than I've ever had to use a communauto in fake london (a city no one would mistake for having good urban planning).
Being Dutch* it's such a strange concept that you don't have to pay to bring books to your home. I hope that we will see that over here as well in my lifetime. It would do wonders to increase literacy in the population.
I spent a lot of time in Latin America growing up, including in parts that didn't have public libraries. Your comment is shocking to me, I guess I just assumed most developed countries has libraries that function in similar ways. Wikipedia says there are about 600 libraries in the Netherlands, do you not get to borrow books for free?
They're integral to the fabric of society in my view.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I never knew there were libraries with a subscription model. Hopefully that means the catalogues are really good and well-taken care of.
Is this a strange concept due to you being European or because of your particular European country? I thought public libraries where you can borrow books is a common thing in Europe, but I could be wrong since I just assumed that.
So you say the highs aren’t as high and the lows certainly aren’t as low as in the US. Given that few really experience the highs, I think the Canadian choice is correct. It’s a stereotype, but the people do tend to be friendlier and the pace is slower. But I’ve found that the quality of work is a function of one’s inner makeup not the external environment. We’ll see what the next 5-10 years looks like in N America.
> But in the US, when I step outside the walled gardens of my community, I notice the brittleness underneath the shining streets, the way the wealth is not load-bearing. I notice the medical self-serve kiosks in grocery stores, the necessities behind locked shelves at CVS. Parents there are not given five hundred dollars a month to buy infant formula for their babies, even with a GDP per capita twice ours. To the extent that feeding our infants preclude Canada from investing more in The Next Big Technology, the regret I can muster up about it is half-hearted at best.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
I wonder if the author would have a better outlook on their counterfactual American self if that person had grown up in a smaller town like myself. I can walk to the library, grocery store, school, park and coffee shop; nothing is locked behind shelves in our pharmacies or stores; my nephews are in skating classes and play in a little league Hockey team, in rural Iowa of all places.
Yes, infant formula, and yes, student debt. Canada has the US beat for sure in social safety nets.
As a tangent: I wonder how writing a piece on appreciating my own upbringing in rural America might be received.
Have you had any stays in a hospital yet? Children?
I ask because a lot of Canadians can't fathom having to worry about those sorts of bills, given that many employers don't offer great insurance, and especially if you happen to be between employers. Like how do you handle a sudden $20k bill that insurance won't cover?
Yes to the hospital and no to children. My insurance covered the hospital without any issues, just a small copay and $300-ish bill that I paid over several months. I wouldn't say I have great insurance. It's some run of the mill bullshit conglomerate that covers most people in my area.
> especially if you happen to be between employers. Like how do you handle a sudden $20k bill that insurance won't cover?
My wife is, for all intents and purposes, unemployed (she's a photographer starting her own business). When she left her job at the end of 2023, she was able to get on state-sponsored insurance pretty quickly and easily without any hassle. It's better insurance than I have, they've covered every appointment, walk-in and emergency she's had without any charge to her. And this is in a deep red republican state that isn't known for supporting public health insurance.
As for how I would handle that bill? I'd first try to use the patient advocates at the hospital or my insurance company (that sounds scripted but I've used them before) to reverse the decision. At the same time I'd work with the hospital to set up a debt repayment/forgiveness plan. Tax-exempt hospitals in the US (which is almost all of them I think) are required to have financial assistance policies to maintain their tax-exempt status. If I'm broke and out of a job/insurance, I should be able to make it manageable or put it on forbearance until I'm able to pay it or get it forgiven.
Note: none of this is to say that I like the insurance situation here. I would prefer a public option.
You prefer a public option because you have never been to a Western country with public healthcare and tried to obtain emergency medical care. I have. I was in an overcrowded waiting room for 12 hours and watched one person die as they rushed him past me and around the corner. The whole character set and scene was extremely grim. There was ONE ER doctor on duty at night. Contrast that to the US where I received prompt emergency care and was only charged a couple hundred dollars which were eventually dropped because I qualified for their compassionate care write off since I make under a certain amount. Childcare hospital facility expenses (~$3000) were also written off each delivery because of the income qualification (400% of poverty line + household size factor in). The office of the doctor they contracted for the delivery stiffed me hard in my wife's third birth, but I am on a $100 a month payment plan for 12 months to pay it off. Considering the far better state of healthcare in the US than the extremely grim hospital scene I took part in the capital city of a Western European country, compounded with the discussions I had with the various characters I meet in the ER treatment waiting area, I can fully appreciate the disastrous effects public healthcare has. I'd rather fight a $50,000 bill than to go through the wringer again aka the public hospital. Coincidentally my grandmother died shortly after she there a few years after my incident. She slipped and fell on the front steps; they sent her home after a 5 minute cursory evaluation and she ended up dying from awful complications a few tens of hours later. Not to mention you have to actually pull strings with bribes to be seen sooner than 6+ months out for basic diagnostics or procedures. Each evaluation and treatment step is a wait of 6+ months.
To be clear, a public option means a government-backed health insurance plan that competes with private insurance plans to keep prices down. It doesn't mean abolishing private insurance and replacing it with public or universal healthcare. I don't personally believe European or Canadian-style healthcare systems would work in the US at this point and I don't want to try them here either.
In the US, you start a GoFundMe and beg everyone you know to help you pay your bills, and then work out a payment plan with the hospital, to be paid every paycheck for the next 3-20 years. What part of that seems unreasonable to you?
My personal story echos the author. Parents immigrated here under the skilled worker visa and worked hard to shield me from our poverty.
Despite this, like the author, I was able to have an incredibly well rounded childhood full of activities through our recreation centers, a short 10 minute walk from my home (not so short in the winter!)
There are many times I look with frustration at the payroll taxes I incur paying my colleagues. Articles like this serve as a great reminder that my capabilities are not innate, but built through the sweat and tears of those before me.
I love Canada, and though I have had the incredible privilege to visit (and for short periods, live in!) many countries and every continent, there's nowhere I'd rather call home, nowhere I'd rather contribute to.
Canada may have a "go for bronze" attitude, but it doesn't have to stay that way. We can decide to go for gold, one day at a time.
Going for bronze is absolutely perfect as well. I understand the folks here have a different opinion that lines up with technosolutionism or adjacent to it. There's nothing wrong with living a good life, doing honest work and not think that your latest SaaS idea is a game changer. Also, let's not feed the trolls. Lutke is a lunatic.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
I'm just a datapoint, but in Chicago suburbia i had all that the author laments as unavailable to American kids. Mom made sister and me take skating classes, though we already could (ice hockey on ponds with friends, figure skating classes for variety, though i didn't like that as much as hockey), no student debt (top 5 US engineering universities included one in my state), kick ass library bike ride away, awesome park district in a tree covered suburbia, and so on.
I mention this because I'm in no way unique among american kids (a couple decades or so later), and, with the author, we agree these things are great.
I grew up poor in the US. It was not super awesome, but not as bad as the article would make you fear. The public schools (and activities tied to them) were great, even in my "bad" district. Libraries were everywhere and very accessible, and the libraries in my schools were giant and frequently used. I never went hungry a day in my life, at times thanks to food stamps. It was possible to find cheap enough housing to survive on low income without government aid.
The biggest problem, by far, was medical care. I didn't see a dentist for the first time until I was in my 20s. Any medical problem felt like a disaster that could put us on the street if not managed carefully. I'm very envious of Canada on this front.
Interestingly, I have a similar feeling of gratitude to the US the author has to Canada. Food stamps, and eventually tuition wavers and scholarships, let me break out of poverty. I'm so, so grateful I had those opportunities.
Like the author, I feel we could do a hell of a lot better in a lot of ways (especially lately!), but the core we have is still pretty dang good and I still feel lucky for having access to it.
> There are many things wrong with Canada. It has a go for bronze mentality, the smartest of us keep going to the US because there is not enough opportunity here, much of its public infrastructure is crumbling and the housing prices are frightful. The nation is very obviously sick.
Is anyone currently moving from Canada to the US?
If so, are they the "smartest", or do they simply have different priorities than a lot of equally smart people?
Virtually all of the top performers at my school left for the USA immediately after graduation.
I think somewhere between 70-90% of Waterloo graduates in CS leave every year.
Turns out doubling or tripling your take home compensation is absolutely worth it.
You can buy a house instead of renting an apartment with roommates. You can afford to marry and have children. You can buy all the things the government would've provided you had it not been dysfunctional.
Plus, there are just more jobs in SWE in the USA. Many of my classmates graduating last year in June are still unemployed since you have to be exceptional to get a job here.
Pretty much anyone who can get TN1/H1B/L1B does, unless you were born wealthy, have an extreme sense of patriotism, or have a very strong attachment to family.
That's definitely true, though probably only limited to CS (and maybe the top 5% of people going to investment banking). The vast majority of the most intelligent people at any Canadian university will stay in Canada, and given the current political situation, I think that's probably only going to become more true.
Also, anecdotally, I would wager that schools with significant numbers of Americans (e.g., McGill) probably have more US students staying in Canada than vice versa at this point (with perhaps the exception of CS).
> Virtually all of the top performers at my school left for the USA immediately after graduation. [...] Turns out doubling or tripling your take home compensation is absolutely worth it. [...] You can buy a house instead of renting an apartment with roommates. You can afford to marry and have children. You can buy all the things the government would've provided you had it not been dysfunctional.
And how does the "dysfunction" of the current Canadian government compare to what is happening in the US, in your eyes?
> Plus, there are just more jobs in SWE in the USA.
There is the rational answer... for graduates in software.
I took issue with this too, but chose to interpret it charitably. It’s true that a lot of our most qualified people move to the US because of the money.
I like to think about what Canada would be like if it could take the best qualities from the US and leave the rest. What if Canada's capital markets were so robust that it was just as good a place as the US to start and scale a company? What if it could match the US in economic productivity? PM Carney seems to have made it a goal to get Canada there but time will tell whether that happens. Some other countries like Switzerland rival the US by per capita measures and many would say it's a great place to live with fewer sociocultural problems than the US has.
The biggest problem with Canadian capital markets is that investors aren't really that comfortable with taking risk, because the alternative for them is to park their money in real estate, which has done quite well with little risk in Canada.
If Carney really wants to make this happen, he'd have to thread the needle on deflating the property bubble in order to make venture capital and productivity investments more attractive compared to real estate, all while managing the rest of the highly US dependent economy for the upcoming years.
Switzerland has fewer sociocultural problems than the US, but it's also a smaller relatively homogenous society with far less immigration, and a highly educated and politically involved population.
There are some examples of companies that scaled really well in Canada but move to the US subsequently for better access to their market. Shopify is the first example that comes to mine.
I think about optimising between investment and consumption a lot recently. It's like GDP per capita vs. quality of life.
Canada, and much of Europe, optimise for QoL. But in Europe at least, this impinges on people's mental ability to invest in growth, to have a risk taker mentality and "ownership of your own life" kind of thing.
US is the opposite. Screw QoL, screw inequality, go for growth and the rest will come. The poor will get more crumbs if the country grows more quickly, and over time will be better off than those in generous but stagnant European countries. Maybe.
Is Canada somehow finding a happy path? I'm getting mixed opinions. But would be great to know what Europe could learn from our friendly North American cousins.
From my side I can say, I visited Canada twice in my life, a very long time ago, and absolutely loved it. So I'm always rooting for the Maple Leaf people vs Team Orange (headed by Agent Orange..?).
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
America has long been a place where hardship or trauma for a subset of the population has been seen as the system working "correctly".
It's just that the makeup of that subset has shifted over time (although much less so for black Americans).
You'll find many people here that will believe that without deprivation of basics and even comforts, nobody would want to pursue or achieve anything.
This is often believed by people living in communities that - because of wealth clustering -provide basics and comforts, as well as growth opportunities, and sometimes especially by the few people who escaped deprivation into comfort and security through their grit, thereby assuming that is the best route for all of society.
We think we did it all ourselves, without any helping hand up, while often being ignorant of our own privilege.
The biggest benefit of the EU is the single market, but it's tricky to take advantage of that when Canada and the EU are 3000km apart from each other. The other potential benefits are relatively minor, and wouldn't really make up for all the potential downsides.
I think it makes sense. The EU is possible because the founding countries are of more or less similar size. You can't really make a fair balanced partnership with a country 10 times bigger, we've just learned that. So Canada joining the EU makes sense from a political perspective. Carney had a point when talked about "middle powers" in Davos.
From an economical perspective, it makes less sense because of, well, the Atlantic ocean. Nevertheless, Canada has what Europe needs - oil, LNG, minerals. To a certain extent, things can work out.
It's just silly because we're not a European country. I think Canada would benefit a lot from a CANZUK-type agreement though. The lack of a large single market makes Canada less competitve compared to the US/EU/China in many ways like scaling a business.
Australia, New Zealand, and the UK aren't on the same continent as Canada either, so I fail to understand why that type of agreement doesn't get labeled as silly as well.
The European Union is strictly meant for European countries. CANZUK is a hypothetical agreement that would only include the above. I'd also say that one challenge the EU has is the free movement of citizens of poorer EU countries to richer ones. It might work well for the EU but Canadians are very concerned about immigration and the idea of newcomers undercutting domestic wages. The CANZUK countries all have similar levels of wealth and cultural similarities so that would be much less of a concern. Also, none of the CANZUK countries are in a common market as large as the European or American unions so they would all stand to benefit from that.
> The European Union is strictly meant for European countries.
In the (non-binding) "Briefing No 23 Legal questions of enlargement" of the European Parliamentary Research Service, this criteria is described as follows:
The sole material condition laid down by Article O of the TEU is that the applicant must be a 'European State'. There is no unequivocal interpretation of that criterion. It can be read equally well in geographical, cultural or political terms.
In 1987 an application to become a Member of the Communities was received from Morocco. The application was rejected by the Council on the grounds that Morocco was not a European State [...]. In the case of Turkey, Article 28 of the Association Agreement signed in 1963 incudes the option of Turkey's eventually acceding to the Communities. Turkey in fact lodged an application to accede on 14 April 1987. Historically, Turkey has formed part of the so-called 'European concert'. Although part of Turkey's territory is located geographically in Asia, Parliament, the Council and the Commission have confirmed Turkey's eligibility [...]. This example shows that the term 'European State' need not be interpreted in a strictly geographical sense. It is at all events a criterion subject to political assessment.[1]
I would personally add Cyprus to the list. Geographically it is situated in Western Asia, but is considered culturally European.
In this perspective, countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. might be electible for membership. -- And there is always the option that the EU amends or officially clarifies its accession conditions.
I moved to Canada almost two decades ago after spending two years in Europe. Many of my university colleagues ended up in the USA and a few others in Europe. Every country is indeed diversely multifaceted and multitiered but Canada indeed has a way more balanced social fabric. It offers generous social programs (within its means) and has a society that is highly welcoming and inclusive. I do agree that things were rosier when I first arrived, but in crazy times like this it remains a great place to call home. So, thank you Canada and fellow Canadians for making this such a special place.
Canada has its problems, and many of them tend to resemble the US's problems. But they are like 10-20 years behind on the same path. So, if you think things were maybe a bit less bad back then: Canada.
Most importantly—and this is not mentioned in the blog—Canadians take comfort in the fact that someone like Trump will never come to power in Canada. The Prime Minister is not chosen by direct popular vote. Rather, the leader of the party that wins control of the House becomes Prime Minister.
As to who becomes a party leader: Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races, not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" swayed by short-term issues like egg prices (as in the US), but by people who have gone through a qualification filter.
Post-election, the PM must sustain the House's confidence, with no-confidence votes possible anytime. So it is not necessary to watch helplessly for 4 years while your PM destroys the country.
> Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races
Correct.
> not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" […] but by people who have gone through a qualification filter
Not really. It's true that only party members can vote, but the only requirements to be a party member are to be a Canadian citizen and to not be a member of another party [0] [1], which is effectively the exact same requirements that the US primaries have.
I'm a bit disconnected from Canadian politics these days, but wasn't Pierre Poilièvre polling quite well compared to the liberals until the US election?
And while it's true that there are no confidence votes, Harper has prorogued the parliament before in order to prevent such a vote.
Canadian politics is healthier in general than in the US but it's not a panacea.
As another Canadian, some Western European countries have a compelling argument, assuming you're proficient in their languages. Nowhere's perfect, and the grass is always greener. I think Canada is definitely up there, but there are places where you could trade our set of downsides for a different one and be well off.
The only other country I'd ever consider to live in would be Quebec. :D. So much potential here. The author implies that the country is broken, this isn't true by any stretch of imagination. Things aren't perfect as you've pointed out but we've got the energy, the universities, the social net and all that we need to live a decent life. The author implies the best ones are leaving for the states. I find it quite amusing that people would see living in the States to be some kind of achievement. I for one have seen a few of my classmates go work in the valley after graduation. For what? Facebook, Twitter (at the time), a bunch of other shops that are blights on the face of this earth. Doesn't sound like an achievement to me to be spending your time optimizing for engagement, ads and other things that are for the most part net negatives for society.
Luckily, we still can choose to live in either one, unless the sovereignty movement flares up again. I wish I could, because I really appreciate what Quebec has going for it, especially as someone who was born in Europe. I'd pick QC over the US any day of the week for work, but sadly I wasn't taught French in my childhood and it would likely take me the rest of my life of dedicated studying to attain proficiency that's enough to be used in a professional setting.
My less cynical side hopes for that too, because English and my first language are worlds apart compared to how similar in some ways English is to French. I also live in a more bilingual area than others and get plenty of exposure to French. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem - to permanently live there for the immersion, you need to have a job there, and to have a job there you need to have perfect French.
I admire Quebec's taxpayer funded (or subsidized?) daycare. The GDP impact really speaks for itself. I hope that comes to the rest of Canada (and does not get abused)
There is a federal program for subsidized $10 per day daycare but some provinces have been a bit stubborn in signing up and making agreements with the federal government.
Because the US is, or for a long time has been, just the best place in the world for so many things. Want to be a SWE grunt? You'll earn twice the salary in the US. Do you have startup ambitions? There's nowhere better than the US, specifically the Bay Area, in nurturing and scaling a business. Filmmaking? Hollywood is the place to be. If you want to be at the center of fashion or finance or contemporary art, NYC. US dominance might be changing but a place being the top of a field means it attracts the best of the best from around the world, and for an ambitious person, the best place to be is among them.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
Is this what Canadians actually believe? NYC has, off the top of my head, the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art--does Toronto, or even the entire rest of Canada, have anything remotely comparable, to even just one of those institutions? And these museums, BTW, are typically free or "pay what you want" for NY residents and children. And the NYPL has plenty of locations, though I'm not sure what the author's definition of "walking distance" is: https://www.nypl.org/locations
I never thought I'd see someone describe life in NYC or LA as "stunting," especially relative to Toronto, yet here it is.
I grew up in Canada and live in the US now with kids.
The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.
There's wealthy America. The top 5% to 10% that have healthcare, have their own safety nets, don't need to worry about money, their kids go to select schools that they can buy into (mostly by buying into the right neighborhoods), an amazing pension plan, etc. My kids go to a fancy library with reading time, puppets and classical music. All the things I love about Canada and more.
That country is amazing and the quality of life is unparalleled unless you're obscenely wealthy.
The bottom 80 to 90% percent of Americans live a life that is far inferior to any western and even many developing countries. They have no safety nets, no job security, no retirement, housing insecurity, they're even the smallest accident away from ruin, etc.
In other countries people know roughly how badly or how well they're treated by the system. Only in the US have I experienced the level of brainwashing where people are thankful for the horrors of this system, and somehow wash away anything they see or hear about anywhere else in the world.
Because your family mostly decides if which America you live in, most people don't understand the other side at all and can't comprehend how they live.
The median American is, materially, much richer than the median person pretty much anywhere else. The US is a bad place, by rich-country standards, to be in the bottom 10%. But in terms of consumer wealth - how large your house is, how many cars your family has and how nice they are, if you have a dishwasher and home A/C, how often you eat at restaurants or travel long distances, can you afford a home repair or the latest gadget - typical American workers are second to essentially nobody. Having grown up in and left the US, I am deeply familiar with all of its downsides, but there's an abundance of data to support this.
The problem is that many Americans are so bogged down in expenses that they don't feel wealthy despite their median wealth. For example, it's basically assumed that you must have a car and pay its high recurring expenses, including ancilliary expenses like having a home big enough to have a parking space.
Being completely car dependent is to me a fundamental problem in much of both countries, and the advantage USA has is that the cost of running a car (or often 2 especially for a family) takes a smaller part of a middle class salary. In UK , Europe, many countries outside of N America you're just not forced to own a car in the same way. That's not just extra costs when you've got a family, but a source of isolation for people that are old or disabled. (Not to discount the many other wonderful fantastic things about life in N America. :) )
It's not like Americans are all buying X so they can't afford to buy Y - there isn't really a major category of consumption where the US median is below the OECD median. If the US had a higher savings rate, then people could smooth out consumption more (build up savings some years, draw them down in bad years or in retirement), and maybe enjoy more psychological security. But it doesn't really make sense to say that Americans are unusually "bogged down in expenses" and yet have more goods and services in every significant category.
To me it's want versus need. A lot of people feel like they're forced into things like that and don't feel wealthy despite being wealthy by any objective measure.
I think that's an indication of a successful society. How people feel about their wealth isn't something society should be responsible for. It's a personal, philosophical, and maybe spiritual struggle.
That having a bit more money matters when your employer can fire you for any reason. When college costs are astronomical. When you can lose your healthcare for any reason. When getting cancer might mean losing your house. When housing costs mean that anyone who rents could well be thrown out into the street.
But your tv is bigger than three average tv in Germany. For sure!
That's not quality of life. That's trinkets to hide the horrors. All good as long as you don't think about it and get lucky.
Median American pay for full-time workers was ~$62,000 USD in Q4 2024 (BLS), which is around $85,000 CAD. The median Canadian salary is very definitely not $85,000 CAD.
If you are going to play this game you also need to adjust for taxes. I lived a few years in Montreal, then a few years in Toronto and after that I moved to US. During this years my perception of income taxes went from “they are pretty high” in Montreal to “Wow, they are much lower” in Toronto to “how are public services funded? Taxes are almost 0” in the states..
There's a selfish case for the wealthy to care about this: rising tides lift all boats, including theirs. When the bottom 80% are struggling with housing insecurity and desperation, the consequences don't stay contained to poor neighbourhoods. San Francisco seems like a good example—the visible decline in public spaces, safety concerns, and urban decay affect everyone who lives there, regardless of income. The wealthy can insulate themselves to a degree, but they can't fully escape a deteriorating society. They'd be better off in a city where everyone has a baseline of stability.
In the US rich people have been separating themselves from the rest for a while now (gated communities is just the first stage of separation. Rich people would rather take a short flight than be stuck in traffic among the hoi polloi. Rich people are constantly surrounded by bodyguards)
So rich people do not care about the decaying infrastructure around them.
I think the US will end up like Brazil: rich people go from sky scrapers to sky scraper via helicopters, while the favelas surround the skyscrapers. The poor are kept in check in the favelas with the help of a brutal police force. BTW: Brazil is a democracy.
> The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.
If you live even just comfortably, you are the 1%. Such has been and continues to be the prevailing squalor of the world as a whole.
In the US, the polarisation between the poor (and working poor) and the wealthy is stark. But let's be clear that this is (sadly) nothing new in the history of human society. When the poor have had a chance, they have occasionally risen in starving, ragged fury against plutocrats.
But the US is still one nation under its current federal government. This government has consolidated its power over its own citizens. People are being seized without warrants; people are being killed by armed, masked government agents who appear to murder with impunity. The rule of law has vanished. Previously independent (or arm's length) government entities are now run by toadies and cronies of a brazen regime.
In perhaps the most tragic _self-own_ in modern history, the US has fallen to insidious elements from within. Other countries are watching not just a former ally -- but a former leading light -- extinguish itself and collapse into destructive dementia.
> The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.
I can't help but roll my eyes. I understand this is supposed to be figurative and not literally mean there are two countries, but I still roll my eyes because no, it is just one country. It is one country that collectively decides stratification to this extent is fine.
This reminds me of when some people say "America isn't bad, it's the other party that's keeping us hostage." The rest of the world really doesn't care and is waiting for the US to get it together already. Other countries couldn't care less about a completely different country's peculiar internal differences that contribute to its overall terrible behavior. The US is one country and the buck stops there. If you can't get your house in order, then yes, the house is bad and can't take responsibility for domestic affairs.
Achedemics recently claimed that herodtudus was wrong when he wrote in 500bc that the pyramids were built by slaves. Their evidence: archeolgy shows that the builders were given food, housing, and medicine. Were they "slaves" or did we just adjust the meaning of the word to conform to the barbarism of colonists?
so, if they WERE slaves...what would that make me in the modern US?
Growing up they were poor, but their family got 500 dollars a month, which is more than most families on this planet earn a year. People are so ignorant, it hurts.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto,
And just think, those are the American areas most common to Canada.
There are places in America where those counterfactuals do not exist, where the necessities aren't locked behind counters, where community is thriving, and where the normality of civic life is an expectation.
I expect no honors for those parts of the country. If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.
> If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.
Canada might be known for many things, but you're the first I've heard refer to an "air of superiority" that we carry around. "Nice" and "polite" maybe. Sorry you feel this way. Have a good day.
Canadians aren't crass enough to describe it as superiority, but it is true that the identity of English-speaking Canada is largely built on "not being America" and that the vast majority of the population is content as long as things are "better than in the USA".
ah yes, the places where women can expect to die if they happen to need medical care while pregnant and where LGBTQ people are not treated the same as most citizens. Sounds lovely.
Whatever the epithets, the truth of the matter is those urban areas are closer to what Canada aspires to be (and currently is). Whereas the parts of Canada she cares about are alive and well in the US (and used to be more like what Canada was).
The question becomes: if you're traveling on a line, and you see the destination looks dark ahead of you, do you turn around or keep going?
Canada's notoriously polite deference led them to align with those powerful tech, marketing, and financial hubs in the US. A cheerleader on the sidelines. But everyone gets to pick. There's a lack of acknowledgement that there's even a choice; the dog that didn't bark one could say. But it's part and parcel of why modern Canada is the way it is.
It was a time of post WWII boom and unrivalled economic prosperity. For the vast majority of human existence wealth like that was never offered to regular commoners.
Canada today might be expensive to rent in and buy in, but the quality of life in terms of safety, culture, political stability, nature, and medicine (minus the temporary shortage in health professionals) is still unmatched globally. Canadians who complain about Canada haven’t faced or lived life outside of Canada
Some of the HN community have lived in multiple places - look where they end up not where they go at the start of their career. Such people don't have to sweat families, health, ...
> Don’t fall for the americanism of being blind to the rest of the world and thinking we’re the best.
That's not what the person was saying, though. They never implied that Canada is the best, they only said that Canada is a good place to live in, and that people who try to say otherwise (like the parent of this thread) lack perspective. Any Canadian that lived in other first-world countries (except maybe the US) will probably say that in many ways, the other countries can be better than us. We've got plenty of issues, but Canada's still up there. There's some things that are good here, some that need a lot of work - but on average, it's still really good by world standards. There's nothing wrong with saying that we need to improve in many critical areas, but there is in posting ragebait talking about 'true Canada' being long gone, Canada being a failed state and so on, like what you see above and across many parts of the internet.
I think that’s up to interpretation. They said Canada is “unmatched globally”, which I interpreted as a belief that Canada is the best country in the world.
I find it very amusing the number of 'Canadians' in this thread saying how great a place it is after prefacing the comment explaining they now live in the USA.
Hard to know what accounts to bother responding to these days. This is likely one of them as it fails to offer any worthy substance beyond a barely whined grievance. But I have first hand experience that the things described in this post are absolutely not gone.
I suspect there are agents of lesser minds at work hoping to stir instability. We aren’t swindled as easily as other peoples.
Every province except Alberta is in dire financial states(Venezuela events will finish them off) . We have no gold reserves. In the next 5 years there will be a mortgage cliff for those who bought at the peak. Major Universities are about to be bankrupt.
Canada is going to get very poor soon. These social goods will be gone, and we will be worse for it.
They still have power, they still have food, they still have minerals and other stuff dug out of the ground. They still have water. Unless you think the world will cease being a consumer economy, they'll do ok. And Toronto and Vancouver can take all of the refugees from Silicon Valley when it implodes financially.
I was not born in Canada, but I chose to immigrate here and it's one of the top 5 best choices I've ever made. I have access to so much that in other places would be wildly expensive. My life is richer due to the diversity of the people I am surrounded by, if I bought every book I borrowed from the library last year it would have cost $3000 or more, and even after moving away from a large city I have access to public transit good enough to cover most of my needs.
It's actually really wild to think I spent a couple of years working in Boston more than a decade ago, and I used my zipcar subscription way more often than I've ever had to use a communauto in fake london (a city no one would mistake for having good urban planning).
Being Dutch* it's such a strange concept that you don't have to pay to bring books to your home. I hope that we will see that over here as well in my lifetime. It would do wonders to increase literacy in the population.
I spent a lot of time in Latin America growing up, including in parts that didn't have public libraries. Your comment is shocking to me, I guess I just assumed most developed countries has libraries that function in similar ways. Wikipedia says there are about 600 libraries in the Netherlands, do you not get to borrow books for free?
They're integral to the fabric of society in my view.
I looked it up and it will cost you €66 per year for unlimited book lending, e-books, audio books and magazines.
For low-income families and people up to 25 years old this drops to €48 per year.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I never knew there were libraries with a subscription model. Hopefully that means the catalogues are really good and well-taken care of.
>Being Dutch* it's such a strange concept that you don't have to pay to bring books to your home.
There aren't libraries in the Netherlands?
Is this a strange concept due to you being European or because of your particular European country? I thought public libraries where you can borrow books is a common thing in Europe, but I could be wrong since I just assumed that.
It's super common in Europe, at least in Germany. But I have never heard that it's different outside of Germany.
Correct, Germany also has the subscription model for taking books home.
It’s common in Europe with free libraries.
> Being European it's such a strange concept that you don't have to pay to bring books to your home.
Pretty sure Europe is diverse enough that there are countries where the access to public libraries is free.
So you say the highs aren’t as high and the lows certainly aren’t as low as in the US. Given that few really experience the highs, I think the Canadian choice is correct. It’s a stereotype, but the people do tend to be friendlier and the pace is slower. But I’ve found that the quality of work is a function of one’s inner makeup not the external environment. We’ll see what the next 5-10 years looks like in N America.
> But in the US, when I step outside the walled gardens of my community, I notice the brittleness underneath the shining streets, the way the wealth is not load-bearing. I notice the medical self-serve kiosks in grocery stores, the necessities behind locked shelves at CVS. Parents there are not given five hundred dollars a month to buy infant formula for their babies, even with a GDP per capita twice ours. To the extent that feeding our infants preclude Canada from investing more in The Next Big Technology, the regret I can muster up about it is half-hearted at best.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
I wonder if the author would have a better outlook on their counterfactual American self if that person had grown up in a smaller town like myself. I can walk to the library, grocery store, school, park and coffee shop; nothing is locked behind shelves in our pharmacies or stores; my nephews are in skating classes and play in a little league Hockey team, in rural Iowa of all places.
Yes, infant formula, and yes, student debt. Canada has the US beat for sure in social safety nets.
As a tangent: I wonder how writing a piece on appreciating my own upbringing in rural America might be received.
Have you had any stays in a hospital yet? Children?
I ask because a lot of Canadians can't fathom having to worry about those sorts of bills, given that many employers don't offer great insurance, and especially if you happen to be between employers. Like how do you handle a sudden $20k bill that insurance won't cover?
Yes to the hospital and no to children. My insurance covered the hospital without any issues, just a small copay and $300-ish bill that I paid over several months. I wouldn't say I have great insurance. It's some run of the mill bullshit conglomerate that covers most people in my area.
> especially if you happen to be between employers. Like how do you handle a sudden $20k bill that insurance won't cover?
My wife is, for all intents and purposes, unemployed (she's a photographer starting her own business). When she left her job at the end of 2023, she was able to get on state-sponsored insurance pretty quickly and easily without any hassle. It's better insurance than I have, they've covered every appointment, walk-in and emergency she's had without any charge to her. And this is in a deep red republican state that isn't known for supporting public health insurance.
As for how I would handle that bill? I'd first try to use the patient advocates at the hospital or my insurance company (that sounds scripted but I've used them before) to reverse the decision. At the same time I'd work with the hospital to set up a debt repayment/forgiveness plan. Tax-exempt hospitals in the US (which is almost all of them I think) are required to have financial assistance policies to maintain their tax-exempt status. If I'm broke and out of a job/insurance, I should be able to make it manageable or put it on forbearance until I'm able to pay it or get it forgiven.
Note: none of this is to say that I like the insurance situation here. I would prefer a public option.
You prefer a public option because you have never been to a Western country with public healthcare and tried to obtain emergency medical care. I have. I was in an overcrowded waiting room for 12 hours and watched one person die as they rushed him past me and around the corner. The whole character set and scene was extremely grim. There was ONE ER doctor on duty at night. Contrast that to the US where I received prompt emergency care and was only charged a couple hundred dollars which were eventually dropped because I qualified for their compassionate care write off since I make under a certain amount. Childcare hospital facility expenses (~$3000) were also written off each delivery because of the income qualification (400% of poverty line + household size factor in). The office of the doctor they contracted for the delivery stiffed me hard in my wife's third birth, but I am on a $100 a month payment plan for 12 months to pay it off. Considering the far better state of healthcare in the US than the extremely grim hospital scene I took part in the capital city of a Western European country, compounded with the discussions I had with the various characters I meet in the ER treatment waiting area, I can fully appreciate the disastrous effects public healthcare has. I'd rather fight a $50,000 bill than to go through the wringer again aka the public hospital. Coincidentally my grandmother died shortly after she there a few years after my incident. She slipped and fell on the front steps; they sent her home after a 5 minute cursory evaluation and she ended up dying from awful complications a few tens of hours later. Not to mention you have to actually pull strings with bribes to be seen sooner than 6+ months out for basic diagnostics or procedures. Each evaluation and treatment step is a wait of 6+ months.
To be clear, a public option means a government-backed health insurance plan that competes with private insurance plans to keep prices down. It doesn't mean abolishing private insurance and replacing it with public or universal healthcare. I don't personally believe European or Canadian-style healthcare systems would work in the US at this point and I don't want to try them here either.
In the US, you start a GoFundMe and beg everyone you know to help you pay your bills, and then work out a payment plan with the hospital, to be paid every paycheck for the next 3-20 years. What part of that seems unreasonable to you?
My personal story echos the author. Parents immigrated here under the skilled worker visa and worked hard to shield me from our poverty.
Despite this, like the author, I was able to have an incredibly well rounded childhood full of activities through our recreation centers, a short 10 minute walk from my home (not so short in the winter!)
There are many times I look with frustration at the payroll taxes I incur paying my colleagues. Articles like this serve as a great reminder that my capabilities are not innate, but built through the sweat and tears of those before me.
I love Canada, and though I have had the incredible privilege to visit (and for short periods, live in!) many countries and every continent, there's nowhere I'd rather call home, nowhere I'd rather contribute to.
Canada may have a "go for bronze" attitude, but it doesn't have to stay that way. We can decide to go for gold, one day at a time.
Going for bronze is absolutely perfect as well. I understand the folks here have a different opinion that lines up with technosolutionism or adjacent to it. There's nothing wrong with living a good life, doing honest work and not think that your latest SaaS idea is a game changer. Also, let's not feed the trolls. Lutke is a lunatic.
Money changes people. He used to be a cool guy.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
I'm just a datapoint, but in Chicago suburbia i had all that the author laments as unavailable to American kids. Mom made sister and me take skating classes, though we already could (ice hockey on ponds with friends, figure skating classes for variety, though i didn't like that as much as hockey), no student debt (top 5 US engineering universities included one in my state), kick ass library bike ride away, awesome park district in a tree covered suburbia, and so on.
I mention this because I'm in no way unique among american kids (a couple decades or so later), and, with the author, we agree these things are great.
I grew up poor in the US. It was not super awesome, but not as bad as the article would make you fear. The public schools (and activities tied to them) were great, even in my "bad" district. Libraries were everywhere and very accessible, and the libraries in my schools were giant and frequently used. I never went hungry a day in my life, at times thanks to food stamps. It was possible to find cheap enough housing to survive on low income without government aid.
The biggest problem, by far, was medical care. I didn't see a dentist for the first time until I was in my 20s. Any medical problem felt like a disaster that could put us on the street if not managed carefully. I'm very envious of Canada on this front.
Interestingly, I have a similar feeling of gratitude to the US the author has to Canada. Food stamps, and eventually tuition wavers and scholarships, let me break out of poverty. I'm so, so grateful I had those opportunities.
Like the author, I feel we could do a hell of a lot better in a lot of ways (especially lately!), but the core we have is still pretty dang good and I still feel lucky for having access to it.
Knowing my taxes go towards these things is the reason I stay.
I grew up leveraging many of the same programs, this post helped illuminate how lucky I was to have them. Thank you!
> There are many things wrong with Canada. It has a go for bronze mentality, the smartest of us keep going to the US because there is not enough opportunity here, much of its public infrastructure is crumbling and the housing prices are frightful. The nation is very obviously sick.
Is anyone currently moving from Canada to the US?
If so, are they the "smartest", or do they simply have different priorities than a lot of equally smart people?
Virtually all of the top performers at my school left for the USA immediately after graduation.
I think somewhere between 70-90% of Waterloo graduates in CS leave every year.
Turns out doubling or tripling your take home compensation is absolutely worth it.
You can buy a house instead of renting an apartment with roommates. You can afford to marry and have children. You can buy all the things the government would've provided you had it not been dysfunctional.
Plus, there are just more jobs in SWE in the USA. Many of my classmates graduating last year in June are still unemployed since you have to be exceptional to get a job here.
Pretty much anyone who can get TN1/H1B/L1B does, unless you were born wealthy, have an extreme sense of patriotism, or have a very strong attachment to family.
That's definitely true, though probably only limited to CS (and maybe the top 5% of people going to investment banking). The vast majority of the most intelligent people at any Canadian university will stay in Canada, and given the current political situation, I think that's probably only going to become more true.
Also, anecdotally, I would wager that schools with significant numbers of Americans (e.g., McGill) probably have more US students staying in Canada than vice versa at this point (with perhaps the exception of CS).
> Virtually all of the top performers at my school left for the USA immediately after graduation. [...] Turns out doubling or tripling your take home compensation is absolutely worth it. [...] You can buy a house instead of renting an apartment with roommates. You can afford to marry and have children. You can buy all the things the government would've provided you had it not been dysfunctional.
And how does the "dysfunction" of the current Canadian government compare to what is happening in the US, in your eyes?
> Plus, there are just more jobs in SWE in the USA.
There is the rational answer... for graduates in software.
I took issue with this too, but chose to interpret it charitably. It’s true that a lot of our most qualified people move to the US because of the money.
If you're young, healthy, and unattached there's almost no reason not to move to the US.
I like to think about what Canada would be like if it could take the best qualities from the US and leave the rest. What if Canada's capital markets were so robust that it was just as good a place as the US to start and scale a company? What if it could match the US in economic productivity? PM Carney seems to have made it a goal to get Canada there but time will tell whether that happens. Some other countries like Switzerland rival the US by per capita measures and many would say it's a great place to live with fewer sociocultural problems than the US has.
The biggest problem with Canadian capital markets is that investors aren't really that comfortable with taking risk, because the alternative for them is to park their money in real estate, which has done quite well with little risk in Canada.
If Carney really wants to make this happen, he'd have to thread the needle on deflating the property bubble in order to make venture capital and productivity investments more attractive compared to real estate, all while managing the rest of the highly US dependent economy for the upcoming years.
Switzerland has fewer sociocultural problems than the US, but it's also a smaller relatively homogenous society with far less immigration, and a highly educated and politically involved population.
There are some examples of companies that scaled really well in Canada but move to the US subsequently for better access to their market. Shopify is the first example that comes to mine.
Shopify hasn’t moved to the US any more than Toyota has.
Oh wow, thanks. I thought they moved to the US.
I think about optimising between investment and consumption a lot recently. It's like GDP per capita vs. quality of life.
Canada, and much of Europe, optimise for QoL. But in Europe at least, this impinges on people's mental ability to invest in growth, to have a risk taker mentality and "ownership of your own life" kind of thing.
US is the opposite. Screw QoL, screw inequality, go for growth and the rest will come. The poor will get more crumbs if the country grows more quickly, and over time will be better off than those in generous but stagnant European countries. Maybe.
Is Canada somehow finding a happy path? I'm getting mixed opinions. But would be great to know what Europe could learn from our friendly North American cousins.
From my side I can say, I visited Canada twice in my life, a very long time ago, and absolutely loved it. So I'm always rooting for the Maple Leaf people vs Team Orange (headed by Agent Orange..?).
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
America has long been a place where hardship or trauma for a subset of the population has been seen as the system working "correctly".
It's just that the makeup of that subset has shifted over time (although much less so for black Americans).
You'll find many people here that will believe that without deprivation of basics and even comforts, nobody would want to pursue or achieve anything.
This is often believed by people living in communities that - because of wealth clustering -provide basics and comforts, as well as growth opportunities, and sometimes especially by the few people who escaped deprivation into comfort and security through their grit, thereby assuming that is the best route for all of society.
We think we did it all ourselves, without any helping hand up, while often being ignorant of our own privilege.
European here. What do Canadians think about joining the EU?
Canada must first join Eurovision before even thinking about the EU
The biggest benefit of the EU is the single market, but it's tricky to take advantage of that when Canada and the EU are 3000km apart from each other. The other potential benefits are relatively minor, and wouldn't really make up for all the potential downsides.
I think it makes sense. The EU is possible because the founding countries are of more or less similar size. You can't really make a fair balanced partnership with a country 10 times bigger, we've just learned that. So Canada joining the EU makes sense from a political perspective. Carney had a point when talked about "middle powers" in Davos.
From an economical perspective, it makes less sense because of, well, the Atlantic ocean. Nevertheless, Canada has what Europe needs - oil, LNG, minerals. To a certain extent, things can work out.
It's just silly because we're not a European country. I think Canada would benefit a lot from a CANZUK-type agreement though. The lack of a large single market makes Canada less competitve compared to the US/EU/China in many ways like scaling a business.
Actually, Canada I think is closer to France and Denmark than the uk is :-).
For context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island#The_new_border_acc...
Australia, New Zealand, and the UK aren't on the same continent as Canada either, so I fail to understand why that type of agreement doesn't get labeled as silly as well.
The European Union is strictly meant for European countries. CANZUK is a hypothetical agreement that would only include the above. I'd also say that one challenge the EU has is the free movement of citizens of poorer EU countries to richer ones. It might work well for the EU but Canadians are very concerned about immigration and the idea of newcomers undercutting domestic wages. The CANZUK countries all have similar levels of wealth and cultural similarities so that would be much less of a concern. Also, none of the CANZUK countries are in a common market as large as the European or American unions so they would all stand to benefit from that.
> The European Union is strictly meant for European countries.
In the (non-binding) "Briefing No 23 Legal questions of enlargement" of the European Parliamentary Research Service, this criteria is described as follows:
I would personally add Cyprus to the list. Geographically it is situated in Western Asia, but is considered culturally European.In this perspective, countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. might be electible for membership. -- And there is always the option that the EU amends or officially clarifies its accession conditions.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/enlargement/briefings/23a2_en...
I moved to Canada almost two decades ago after spending two years in Europe. Many of my university colleagues ended up in the USA and a few others in Europe. Every country is indeed diversely multifaceted and multitiered but Canada indeed has a way more balanced social fabric. It offers generous social programs (within its means) and has a society that is highly welcoming and inclusive. I do agree that things were rosier when I first arrived, but in crazy times like this it remains a great place to call home. So, thank you Canada and fellow Canadians for making this such a special place.
I've heard Canada described as a "more moderate, and somewhat colder US".
Canada has its problems, and many of them tend to resemble the US's problems. But they are like 10-20 years behind on the same path. So, if you think things were maybe a bit less bad back then: Canada.
Also Canada has far better yogurt.
Most importantly—and this is not mentioned in the blog—Canadians take comfort in the fact that someone like Trump will never come to power in Canada. The Prime Minister is not chosen by direct popular vote. Rather, the leader of the party that wins control of the House becomes Prime Minister.
As to who becomes a party leader: Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races, not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" swayed by short-term issues like egg prices (as in the US), but by people who have gone through a qualification filter.
Post-election, the PM must sustain the House's confidence, with no-confidence votes possible anytime. So it is not necessary to watch helplessly for 4 years while your PM destroys the country.
> Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races
Correct.
> not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" […] but by people who have gone through a qualification filter
Not really. It's true that only party members can vote, but the only requirements to be a party member are to be a Canadian citizen and to not be a member of another party [0] [1], which is effectively the exact same requirements that the US primaries have.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Liberal_Party_of_Canada_l...
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/how-will-canadas-next...
I'm a bit disconnected from Canadian politics these days, but wasn't Pierre Poilièvre polling quite well compared to the liberals until the US election?
And while it's true that there are no confidence votes, Harper has prorogued the parliament before in order to prevent such a vote.
Canadian politics is healthier in general than in the US but it's not a panacea.
> Rather, the leader of the party that wins control of the House becomes Prime Minister.
That is literally how Adolf Hitler became Chancellor (Prime Minister), as leader of the NSDAP.
Canada is far from perfect but there is no other country in the world I would ever consider leaving it behind for.
As another Canadian, some Western European countries have a compelling argument, assuming you're proficient in their languages. Nowhere's perfect, and the grass is always greener. I think Canada is definitely up there, but there are places where you could trade our set of downsides for a different one and be well off.
The only other country I'd ever consider to live in would be Quebec. :D. So much potential here. The author implies that the country is broken, this isn't true by any stretch of imagination. Things aren't perfect as you've pointed out but we've got the energy, the universities, the social net and all that we need to live a decent life. The author implies the best ones are leaving for the states. I find it quite amusing that people would see living in the States to be some kind of achievement. I for one have seen a few of my classmates go work in the valley after graduation. For what? Facebook, Twitter (at the time), a bunch of other shops that are blights on the face of this earth. Doesn't sound like an achievement to me to be spending your time optimizing for engagement, ads and other things that are for the most part net negatives for society.
Luckily, we still can choose to live in either one, unless the sovereignty movement flares up again. I wish I could, because I really appreciate what Quebec has going for it, especially as someone who was born in Europe. I'd pick QC over the US any day of the week for work, but sadly I wasn't taught French in my childhood and it would likely take me the rest of my life of dedicated studying to attain proficiency that's enough to be used in a professional setting.
It would take less than you think. If you lived there and were fully immersed you'd pick it up fairly quickly.
My less cynical side hopes for that too, because English and my first language are worlds apart compared to how similar in some ways English is to French. I also live in a more bilingual area than others and get plenty of exposure to French. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem - to permanently live there for the immersion, you need to have a job there, and to have a job there you need to have perfect French.
I admire Quebec's taxpayer funded (or subsidized?) daycare. The GDP impact really speaks for itself. I hope that comes to the rest of Canada (and does not get abused)
There is a federal program for subsidized $10 per day daycare but some provinces have been a bit stubborn in signing up and making agreements with the federal government.
Because the US is, or for a long time has been, just the best place in the world for so many things. Want to be a SWE grunt? You'll earn twice the salary in the US. Do you have startup ambitions? There's nowhere better than the US, specifically the Bay Area, in nurturing and scaling a business. Filmmaking? Hollywood is the place to be. If you want to be at the center of fashion or finance or contemporary art, NYC. US dominance might be changing but a place being the top of a field means it attracts the best of the best from around the world, and for an ambitious person, the best place to be is among them.
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
Is this what Canadians actually believe? NYC has, off the top of my head, the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art--does Toronto, or even the entire rest of Canada, have anything remotely comparable, to even just one of those institutions? And these museums, BTW, are typically free or "pay what you want" for NY residents and children. And the NYPL has plenty of locations, though I'm not sure what the author's definition of "walking distance" is: https://www.nypl.org/locations
I never thought I'd see someone describe life in NYC or LA as "stunting," especially relative to Toronto, yet here it is.
I grew up in Canada and live in the US now with kids.
The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.
There's wealthy America. The top 5% to 10% that have healthcare, have their own safety nets, don't need to worry about money, their kids go to select schools that they can buy into (mostly by buying into the right neighborhoods), an amazing pension plan, etc. My kids go to a fancy library with reading time, puppets and classical music. All the things I love about Canada and more.
That country is amazing and the quality of life is unparalleled unless you're obscenely wealthy.
The bottom 80 to 90% percent of Americans live a life that is far inferior to any western and even many developing countries. They have no safety nets, no job security, no retirement, housing insecurity, they're even the smallest accident away from ruin, etc.
In other countries people know roughly how badly or how well they're treated by the system. Only in the US have I experienced the level of brainwashing where people are thankful for the horrors of this system, and somehow wash away anything they see or hear about anywhere else in the world.
Because your family mostly decides if which America you live in, most people don't understand the other side at all and can't comprehend how they live.
The median American is, materially, much richer than the median person pretty much anywhere else. The US is a bad place, by rich-country standards, to be in the bottom 10%. But in terms of consumer wealth - how large your house is, how many cars your family has and how nice they are, if you have a dishwasher and home A/C, how often you eat at restaurants or travel long distances, can you afford a home repair or the latest gadget - typical American workers are second to essentially nobody. Having grown up in and left the US, I am deeply familiar with all of its downsides, but there's an abundance of data to support this.
The problem is that many Americans are so bogged down in expenses that they don't feel wealthy despite their median wealth. For example, it's basically assumed that you must have a car and pay its high recurring expenses, including ancilliary expenses like having a home big enough to have a parking space.
Being completely car dependent is to me a fundamental problem in much of both countries, and the advantage USA has is that the cost of running a car (or often 2 especially for a family) takes a smaller part of a middle class salary. In UK , Europe, many countries outside of N America you're just not forced to own a car in the same way. That's not just extra costs when you've got a family, but a source of isolation for people that are old or disabled. (Not to discount the many other wonderful fantastic things about life in N America. :) )
It's not like Americans are all buying X so they can't afford to buy Y - there isn't really a major category of consumption where the US median is below the OECD median. If the US had a higher savings rate, then people could smooth out consumption more (build up savings some years, draw them down in bad years or in retirement), and maybe enjoy more psychological security. But it doesn't really make sense to say that Americans are unusually "bogged down in expenses" and yet have more goods and services in every significant category.
I read through your example but couldn't find the problem. This all sounds good to me.
To me it's want versus need. A lot of people feel like they're forced into things like that and don't feel wealthy despite being wealthy by any objective measure.
I think that's an indication of a successful society. How people feel about their wealth isn't something society should be responsible for. It's a personal, philosophical, and maybe spiritual struggle.
Yup. That's the brainwashing for you.
That having a bit more money matters when your employer can fire you for any reason. When college costs are astronomical. When you can lose your healthcare for any reason. When getting cancer might mean losing your house. When housing costs mean that anyone who rents could well be thrown out into the street.
But your tv is bigger than three average tv in Germany. For sure!
That's not quality of life. That's trinkets to hide the horrors. All good as long as you don't think about it and get lucky.
Wealthy America is great though.
You’re wrong, but this essay is about Canada so I’ll focus on that.
The median canadian earns more than the median USian and we do it without letting kids go hungry in schools or murder squads.
Median American pay for full-time workers was ~$62,000 USD in Q4 2024 (BLS), which is around $85,000 CAD. The median Canadian salary is very definitely not $85,000 CAD.
Now adjust for PPP and subtract healthcare costs. Not to mention all the other benefits Canada provides.
If you are going to play this game you also need to adjust for taxes. I lived a few years in Montreal, then a few years in Toronto and after that I moved to US. During this years my perception of income taxes went from “they are pretty high” in Montreal to “Wow, they are much lower” in Toronto to “how are public services funded? Taxes are almost 0” in the states..
I’m not playing a game, I’m comparing facts. The median person working in the US is poorer than the median person working in Canada. Fact.
Average tax rates for people with the median income are basically the same in Canada or the US.
Canadian income tax rates: [0]. Lowest tax rate for Ontario is about 19%(federal + provincial). For Quebec it is about 28% (!!!)
For WA state - we only pay federal tax so the comparable tax rate is 12% [1].
These rates mirror my perception when I lived in Montreal, Toronto, WA state.
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individ...
[1] https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brac...
In 2023, the median Canadian income was roughly $44K CAD. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111000...
Looks like the USA in 2024 was $51K USD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
I know we need to adjust for health care, but I think the median income in the USA is higher.
There's a selfish case for the wealthy to care about this: rising tides lift all boats, including theirs. When the bottom 80% are struggling with housing insecurity and desperation, the consequences don't stay contained to poor neighbourhoods. San Francisco seems like a good example—the visible decline in public spaces, safety concerns, and urban decay affect everyone who lives there, regardless of income. The wealthy can insulate themselves to a degree, but they can't fully escape a deteriorating society. They'd be better off in a city where everyone has a baseline of stability.
In the US rich people have been separating themselves from the rest for a while now (gated communities is just the first stage of separation. Rich people would rather take a short flight than be stuck in traffic among the hoi polloi. Rich people are constantly surrounded by bodyguards)
So rich people do not care about the decaying infrastructure around them.
I think the US will end up like Brazil: rich people go from sky scrapers to sky scraper via helicopters, while the favelas surround the skyscrapers. The poor are kept in check in the favelas with the help of a brutal police force. BTW: Brazil is a democracy.
But then _wrong_ people would get a benefit and they’d rather die than have that happen.
> The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.
If you live even just comfortably, you are the 1%. Such has been and continues to be the prevailing squalor of the world as a whole.
In the US, the polarisation between the poor (and working poor) and the wealthy is stark. But let's be clear that this is (sadly) nothing new in the history of human society. When the poor have had a chance, they have occasionally risen in starving, ragged fury against plutocrats.
But the US is still one nation under its current federal government. This government has consolidated its power over its own citizens. People are being seized without warrants; people are being killed by armed, masked government agents who appear to murder with impunity. The rule of law has vanished. Previously independent (or arm's length) government entities are now run by toadies and cronies of a brazen regime.
In perhaps the most tragic _self-own_ in modern history, the US has fallen to insidious elements from within. Other countries are watching not just a former ally -- but a former leading light -- extinguish itself and collapse into destructive dementia.
> The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.
I can't help but roll my eyes. I understand this is supposed to be figurative and not literally mean there are two countries, but I still roll my eyes because no, it is just one country. It is one country that collectively decides stratification to this extent is fine.
This reminds me of when some people say "America isn't bad, it's the other party that's keeping us hostage." The rest of the world really doesn't care and is waiting for the US to get it together already. Other countries couldn't care less about a completely different country's peculiar internal differences that contribute to its overall terrible behavior. The US is one country and the buck stops there. If you can't get your house in order, then yes, the house is bad and can't take responsibility for domestic affairs.
Im dying in the US. My wife and kids are too.
Achedemics recently claimed that herodtudus was wrong when he wrote in 500bc that the pyramids were built by slaves. Their evidence: archeolgy shows that the builders were given food, housing, and medicine. Were they "slaves" or did we just adjust the meaning of the word to conform to the barbarism of colonists?
so, if they WERE slaves...what would that make me in the modern US?
As a Canadian I say this is absolute copium.
Growing up they were poor, but their family got 500 dollars a month, which is more than most families on this planet earn a year. People are so ignorant, it hurts.
> 500 dollars a month, which is more than most families on this planet earn a year. People are so ignorant, it hurts.
Wildly inaccurate statistic.
Bottom 10% live on less than $800 per year. [1]
Bottom 30% around $2000 - $3000 per year. [2]
Global median income is about $3000 per person per year. [2]
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/poverty-prosperity-...
[2] https://wir2022.wid.world/chapter-1/
So that means a family with two median earners makes 500 dollars a month?
I don't get it, you seem to be confirming the claim.
Y̶o̶u̶ They wrote: "500 dollars a month, which is more than most families on this planet earn a year."
Than translates to "most families on this planet make less than $500 per year"
Oh, the year/month mixup, fair enough. (Wasn't me, BTW.)
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto,
And just think, those are the American areas most common to Canada.
There are places in America where those counterfactuals do not exist, where the necessities aren't locked behind counters, where community is thriving, and where the normality of civic life is an expectation.
I expect no honors for those parts of the country. If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.
> If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.
Canada might be known for many things, but you're the first I've heard refer to an "air of superiority" that we carry around. "Nice" and "polite" maybe. Sorry you feel this way. Have a good day.
Canadians aren't crass enough to describe it as superiority, but it is true that the identity of English-speaking Canada is largely built on "not being America" and that the vast majority of the population is content as long as things are "better than in the USA".
They of course are "not better than in the USA." But one can hold that weight long past you're drowned in the ocean.
ah yes, the places where women can expect to die if they happen to need medical care while pregnant and where LGBTQ people are not treated the same as most citizens. Sounds lovely.
Whatever the epithets, the truth of the matter is those urban areas are closer to what Canada aspires to be (and currently is). Whereas the parts of Canada she cares about are alive and well in the US (and used to be more like what Canada was).
The question becomes: if you're traveling on a line, and you see the destination looks dark ahead of you, do you turn around or keep going?
Canada's notoriously polite deference led them to align with those powerful tech, marketing, and financial hubs in the US. A cheerleader on the sidelines. But everyone gets to pick. There's a lack of acknowledgement that there's even a choice; the dog that didn't bark one could say. But it's part and parcel of why modern Canada is the way it is.
This comment is nonsensical. The parts of Canada the author cares about are also alive and well in Canada and your entire premise is that they're not
The Canada the author refers to is gone.
It was a time of post WWII boom and unrivalled economic prosperity. For the vast majority of human existence wealth like that was never offered to regular commoners.
Canada today might be expensive to rent in and buy in, but the quality of life in terms of safety, culture, political stability, nature, and medicine (minus the temporary shortage in health professionals) is still unmatched globally. Canadians who complain about Canada haven’t faced or lived life outside of Canada
Some of the HN community have lived in multiple places - look where they end up not where they go at the start of their career. Such people don't have to sweat families, health, ...
I’m Canadian, have lived in 4 different continents, and there’s plenty of countries that are just as good or better than Canada out there.
Case in point, I live in Japan. Some things are worse than Canada, but the things that are better line up with my priorities in life.
Don’t fall for the americanism of being blind to the rest of the world and thinking we’re the best. There’s plenty of areas for Canada to improve on.
> Don’t fall for the americanism of being blind to the rest of the world and thinking we’re the best.
That's not what the person was saying, though. They never implied that Canada is the best, they only said that Canada is a good place to live in, and that people who try to say otherwise (like the parent of this thread) lack perspective. Any Canadian that lived in other first-world countries (except maybe the US) will probably say that in many ways, the other countries can be better than us. We've got plenty of issues, but Canada's still up there. There's some things that are good here, some that need a lot of work - but on average, it's still really good by world standards. There's nothing wrong with saying that we need to improve in many critical areas, but there is in posting ragebait talking about 'true Canada' being long gone, Canada being a failed state and so on, like what you see above and across many parts of the internet.
I think that’s up to interpretation. They said Canada is “unmatched globally”, which I interpreted as a belief that Canada is the best country in the world.
Agreed on the second half though.
If I may ask, how did you end up in Japan?
I liked it well enough when I was travelling that I decided to try and live here, so I got a job and a work visa. That was almost 4 years ago now.
I find it very amusing the number of 'Canadians' in this thread saying how great a place it is after prefacing the comment explaining they now live in the USA.
Hard to know what accounts to bother responding to these days. This is likely one of them as it fails to offer any worthy substance beyond a barely whined grievance. But I have first hand experience that the things described in this post are absolutely not gone.
I suspect there are agents of lesser minds at work hoping to stir instability. We aren’t swindled as easily as other peoples.
This is not a greivence this is a lamentation.
Quite the statement there bud. Care to back it up?
Every province except Alberta is in dire financial states(Venezuela events will finish them off) . We have no gold reserves. In the next 5 years there will be a mortgage cliff for those who bought at the peak. Major Universities are about to be bankrupt.
Canada is going to get very poor soon. These social goods will be gone, and we will be worse for it.
Is this the new "We're going to turn into Greece" scaremongering the Conservatives were slinging 15 years ago.
They still have power, they still have food, they still have minerals and other stuff dug out of the ground. They still have water. Unless you think the world will cease being a consumer economy, they'll do ok. And Toronto and Vancouver can take all of the refugees from Silicon Valley when it implodes financially.