Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans

4 university degrees is probably cheaper than 1 private school degree from the US

At some point, it's a better financial move to rent instead of own. That is true in many American cities (much of NYC, for example). Housing bubbles happen. Try not to buy into one.

The growth of HELOCS has been >7% for the past few years and the Bank of Canada (BOC) is starting to get worried. Canadians are not only taking on debt to buy housing, they are also leveraging housing equity for other expenses as well.[1]

BoC staff add that, “Home equity extraction may also be concealing emerging financial distress if borrowers are taking equity out of their homes to manage other debt obligations or to finance their daily expenses because they lack other sources of funds.”

[1]https://www.ratespy.com/heloc-growth-isnt-what-everyone-thou...

> It boggles my mind that the average house in Vancouver or Toronto costs ~20 years of average wages (Assuming you don't eat, sleep under a bridge, and don't pay any taxes.)

If you're sleeping under a bridge, are you renting out the home you've bought? If so, won't that recoup your costs sooner?

When the bubble bursts, the banks probably won't need bailing out, so that won't trigger a recession like happened in 2008.

But a huge number of Canadians being underwater on their mortgage will make for a drastic decrease in consumer spending, which may trigger a recession...

Is a loan deemed not risky by the bank necessarily not risky for the loaner? (That's a genuine question, I have no clue)

What do tax breaks have to do with private debt, namely mortgage and HELOC debt?

> It's hard to imagine that Canada really manages to get a dramatically different safety net for the same money

Hard for you to imagine maybe, yet the numbers speak for themselves.

> The fact is that Canada spends almost exactly the same percentage of GDP on social welfare as the U.S.

If by spending social welfare you mean transfering taxpayer dollars to big health corporation dividends, then yes, the US and Canada spend about the same amount of GDP on "social welfare".

I live in an area of New York State, near a tertiary city, where the median household income is ~$50,000. Parent's comment that to earn this would be an "intense burden" is borderline offensive. I agree with you that urban elite likely have little experience with American (or even Canadian) families living in these conditions. For perspective, such an income puts these families in the 90th percentile, globally.

Parent described how grateful they are to have the opportunities they do. They are obviously very privileged, they should be very grateful.

I have thought about this quite a bit and tried to word my initial post as a personal statement (not an objective fact of the inferiority of making $50k in Kansas as opposed to Quebec).

I entirely agree with your point that American families in Kansas, et al. seem reasonably content and the kind of fears that would lead me to look to Canada over the U.S. if I made $50-100k are perhaps entirely irrational.

My response though - again personal in nature, not objective in any sense - would be:

Canadians grew up in Canada with an imperfect healthcare system. Nevertheless, it's there and assessable whenever it is needed. There's no fear of random bills or imperfect coverage (there is a fear of waiting weeks or months, however, which is perhaps more important).

Canadian immigrants only understand the U.S. healthcare system in the abstract -- so losing your health insurance or having it and getting dinged with a large bill is a bit of a boogeyman (scary, but perhaps only because we don't fully understand how it all works in practice).

Likewise K-12 and college in Canada is a much simpler affair. I grew up in a city of 100,000. We had no private schools so everyone went to K-12 together. When it came time to go to university, my top-ranked school (in Canada) cost $7,000 a year and was quite easy to get into.

So for a middle-class Canadian family the notion of setting up your child to have the very best Canadian education available isn't an overly stressful affair. K-12 is public and college is reasonably affordable with reasonably high acceptance rates. Importantly: even if private K-12 is available, it's not overly difficult to get into McGill, et al. so why bother?

For a middle-class American family - because private K-12 is available and likely helps with getting into the best colleges - you feel somewhat compelled to send your child there (lest you do them a disservice). Then - again because elite colleges are available and better than privates - you feel compelled to help your child get into and pay for an elite, private education (even the top public options are quite pricey).

In reality what America provides is better alternatives. An issue I see with many colleagues with children is spending $10k a year on private K-12, but feeling like a bad parent because they can't afford the $30k option that has superior outcomes (a classic urban insecurity that is likely not entirely rational). In Canada there are few choices (or in health care only one choice) and while they are inferior to American comparables, they are much more widely assessable. You send your child to the public K-12, because that's just what's available. Your child has just one healthcare option. Your child can only pick from four "elite" universities and if she or he applies to them all, will likely get into one (at a reasonable cost).

It's all the paradox of choice, I suppose.

I can only speculate why people are downvoting, but I suspect it's because sysbin's comment seems to suggest a particular state of mind:

- Ignorance of the First Amendment - Extreme sense of entitlement and expectation that others should do as he/she expects regardless of how the other person feels about it

Phrasing it as "I was surprised to find that doctors in the US can refuse treatment to transgenders based on their religious beliefs" would probably have led to far fewer downvotes.

I'm doubtful any of the downvotes are coming from people that have experienced what's offered for being in situations of misfortune in life. I sometimes think I have ptsd from the way everyone in the USA is quick to assume the person suffering is responsible for their own suffering; accusing when they've never experienced anything of the sort by how their life happened to play out. Makes seeking help harder than when I first attempted in the USA. I sometimes wonder if the USA adopted the blame victim psych by assuming that would be a solution of saving human & social resources.

My situation isn't happy. I would bet money you've never been denied healthcare because of religious ideology or suffered conversion therapy and from reading your response.

I'm visually transgender because of the abuse experienced in the USA. I find out after moving to Canada with a degree, that Starbucks will cover all surgeries a transgender person needs and only for USA employees. That's awesome but after living in the USA, I would still stick it out here in Canada and even if I end up committing suicide in the following months.

Sure, the first nations people have had awful experiences and it's comparable to African Americans in the USA. The thing is that the first nations people still can get the resources and benefits here in Canada that I listed; unlike what's in the USA.

> 80% of the canadian population

The Wikipedia article you linked to says it's actually closer to 50%.

Quote: "With more than 18 million people, it contains about half of the country's population"

It's not a policy issue, just a statistical artifact.

From variance alone you'd expect the US to be middle of the pack, and smaller countries to make up the extremes on any metric you can make up. Particularly if, as in the case of the OECD, you're essentially cherry-picking high performing, smaller countries.

You can't usefully compare ratios where the denominators differ that wildly.

If you want to measure the difference between Canada, nordic countries, the US, etc., you need to cluster them into reasonably-chosen and mostly uniformly-sized chunks, collect your metric on each chunk, and compare the distribution of chunks across systems of government/countries/etc. This would actually result in a statistically valid comparison.

That's a lot more work and as far as I know nobody ever does it.

Yes. It's the "greatest country to ever have existed" but whenever it's behind in something it's impossible to fix that because it's too big, too diverse or something else.

> same levels of happiness,

Because, it's harder to be happy when you consider your money is being spent for 'those people' in Alabama, who are really nothing like you, than it is for you to be upset that your poor neighbor -- who you see everyday -- is benefiting from your taxes.

The United States is a conglomeration of sovereign entities, the states, and thus you see exactly the kind of disarray as you see in other supra-sovereign entities, such as the EU. While many member countries are certainly quite harmonious, with high standards of living, the quality among countries is quite striking, as is the general distaste whenever someone suggests wealth transfers between them.

Canada is also a federation, but, there's so few Canadians, and most of them have a common enemy -- the Quebecois.

Taking it further, does this mean we should break the country into a bunch of small ones so we can all be better off?

Effective policy needs to reflect local conditions, including geographic, economic, cultural, and demographic factors, which vary enormously when the population spans 5000 kilometers as is the case in the US. As a consequence, there is a long history of national policy adversely impacting or being ineffective in some large region of the US because the "one-size-fits-all" policy was poorly suited to local conditions. The US has struggled with this its entire history. Individual States have geography and populations that are more in line with European countries, hence why most policy is decided there.

You see this even with relatively boring policy, like setting a national speed limit for driving.

This does not imply that local policy is always effective in the US, the reality is that it varies widely depending on where you live in the US and must also operate within certain practical and legal constraints. There are also many perverse interactions between national policy and state policy.

One reason is that quality of life improvements often manifest as some form of technological infrastructure (housing, medicine, goods, roads, clean pipes, etc.).

Population matters less than investment per capital per unit area (because people take up real space).

Canada and Australia are the only two countries with the population of over 20 million that are ranked higher than the USA in the OECD Better Life Index[1]. Therefore, it's safe to assume that the size of the country makes a huge difference in such rankings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD_Better_Life_Index

Completely agree with this, having lived for time in both countries.

While we might be a percentage of the overall US population, we are fortunate to have access to most of the same things as the USA, just with a few extra nice things like health care.

Actually, in principle larger means more markets and labor supply and more clout on the world markets. Furthermore the US has more usable land, and Canada's vast distances with low populations increases their expenses vs the US.

And indeed the US does have a higher per capita GDP. But because it's concentrated in so few hands, most Canadians are better off than most Americans.

As someone else in the thread has already pointed out, which one do you think will be less stressful and noticeably easier to manage - deciding what to do for dinner for a group of 3 people vs. a group of 30 people? It is much easier to converge on a decision that will leave everyone satisfied when you have 3 people. While with 30 people, it is almost guaranteed that there will be a few people who would be left unsatisfied, a few satisfied, while the remainder will just end up being "ok" with the compromise.

The distances between are a contributing factor.

I think the standard explanation is that a huge country like the US lacks the social cohesion necessary to pay higher tax rates in exchange for social programs that benefit everyone. Like, I believe Sweden's population is about 10 million- much easier to have the social 'glue' for 'let's all agree to pay very high tax rates, and we'll all get collective social programs with it!' Versus the US at over 300 million people, you don't feel as connected to the other folks who would presumably be benefiting, and it's tougher to get a 'we're all in this together' mentality. Think of the difference in social cohesion between a small town and a huge city.

Like, I'm an American and I've literally never even been to most red states, never been to Texas, don't really know anyone from any of those areas of the country, etc. I don't feel a lot of connection with them.

Then there's, frankly, the racial angle. Most of the Nordic countries have traditionally been pretty ethnically homogeneous, which helps the social cohesion/let's all chip in for government programs together mentality. The US is of course not, and racial fears about 'those people' getting unearned benefits is a HUGE part of the American story.

Basically, the US is the most right-wing of the developed countries, and we tend to have bell-shaped unequal systems where a small % live very well and a larger % are below European standards. Healthcare is like the best example of this.

I've also heard a little talk that our political system is more amenable to lobbying by corporations than a parliamentary system, but I don't know enough about that argument to really advance it

More people to manage, more local governments with more layers of hierarchies and more bureaucracy overall and I've never heard of bureaucracies scaling well

If everyone agrees with each other, then yeah, a large population is better. But when you've got a ton of people it's harder to find a solution that everyone likes. It's like the difference between two people trying to decide where to get lunch, and 30 people trying to decide. It also doesn't help that the West and East coast are culturally different, even among people of the same political party.

Canada is known for being very accepting of middle class and educated or skilled immigrants. Poor immigrants (which is what the original comment was specifying) not so much, and Canada's border enforcement is more effective than that of the US.

Yes, but much of Canada's immigration is points based - i.e. you get well educated, employable people. The vast majority of US immigration is family based where your elderly grandmother from back home can come and live in the US.