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Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

The Canadian dollar went from ~parity to <70c over the course of less than 4 years. So that slashed a significant part of your cost of living, in US$ terms, by 30%.

It's a lot of the same companies, e.g. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, so I don't think we can say the can't pay as much. Other than that it's market forces.

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If you're living in Canada on a savings account that is in USD, then yes, you're ahead by 30%. Otherwise you're making cdn dollars and spending cdn dollars, so you don't see the 30% difference in cost of living.

And as far as I know the big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, do pay more than market salary in Canada. Their Canadian offices are not nearly as large though, they don't influence the wages/benefits culture as much as they do in the States.

My point is the cost of living didn't go up 30% with the currency. I.e. there wasn't 30% inflation over those 4 years. While your salary is down 30% vs. the US$ due to currency exchange rates your cost of living is mostly unchanged. You have to keep that in mind when you compare salaries between the US and Canada. If you work for a US company and have equity as part of your compensation you just got a 30% raise in CDN$ out of that as well. ;)

So in "real" terms, e.g. purchase power of your salary, Canadians are paid reasonably well compared to their US peers while at the same time it seems there's a lot less inequality. Throw in free health, free education, vacation, severance, etc. and it's not such a bad deal for Canadians employees. At the same time their employers get all sorts of benefits for operating here. SRED and other programs. A more reasonable immigration system. Win-win.

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