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Comment by 908B64B197 | Hacker News Reader

Remember the C-Series plane?

Trudeau did absolutely nothing for the industry and immediately bowed down to Trump after he slapped tariffs later judged to be illegal. Well, not exactly, there was whining and a vague threat to switch an order of fighter jets from Boeing to Lockheed. Couldn't inject a little bit of capital at the right time. Airbus swooped in and bought the whole thing at a heavy discount.

Engineering shipped to France and manufacturing to Alabama.

And now Canadians expects a big investment in semi-conductor for highly experimental fabs?

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Canada is basically just an economic extension to the US. I find it funny when people talk about us developing our own industry for X. We don't do that. Our approach is to be a pool of specialized and culturally similar people for the US to use as cheaper labor (when the loonie is low).

I think it's even more degrading than that. Canada basically exports healthy, educated, wealthy people to the US for little in return (well, other than being best friends with the world superpower anyway).

As long as there's favorable compensation and tax policies on the US side, Canada's brightest, healthiest, and wealthiest will just hop over to benefit from the more favorable conditions there after reaping the expensive taxpayer funded social benefits (healthy upbringing, affordable higher education).

> Canada's brightest, healthiest, and wealthiest will just hop over to benefit from the more favorable conditions there after reaping the expensive taxpayer funded social benefits

I see this repeated often on the web, but I hate this saying. I work in engineering. I'm surrounded by bright individuals, both fresh and experienced. Saying the brightest people leave Canada implies only the dumb and at most the mediocre remain in Canada, which I find not only offensive, but also not matching the reality.

Most of the Canadians I worked with in the US have gone back to Canada.

Our Principle Engineer at my last gig did like ~10 years around the DC area and then pissed off back to Calgary to raise kids and settle down. Still works remotely for the said US gig.

Plus have you ever been through a winter where it dips to -40C? Fuck that noise. I'm from the south and live in Canada and never though I'd miss bitter VA winters...

> Plus have you ever been through a winter where it dips to -40C?

Yes. I live in Calgary.

We do have it good with chinooks, let's be fair.

True, we are not Edmonton.

There are certainly bright people who remain in Canada, but they usually have clear reasons that convince them to stay rather than double their salaries.

Again, you are presenting (In Canada AND Bright) as a rarity, something very unusual to see in reality. This is offensive to the many many bright people in this country and it does not match the reality.

So long as we aren't talking hard stats, I don't see how one statement is incongruent or not. Companies found in places like e.g. Kitchener, Ontario because they believe there are bright people, 100%. They are still not willing to pay them Silicon Valley salaries overall (exceptions exist)

> Canada's brightest, healthiest, and wealthiest will just hop over to benefit from the more favorable conditions there after reaping the expensive taxpayer funded social benefits

The bulk of Canadian taxes are paid by the "brightest, healthiest and wealthiest" [0], so the expensive social benefits Canadians enjoy are largely funded by extracting taxes from these people, not the other way around.

Thus, I can hardly blame them for moving to a place where they don't have to subsidize others as much.

[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111000...

Nice argument, but when you look at the data, it doesn't make sense.

According to your link, the top 10% of Canadians pay about 50% of the taxes in Canada. In the US, the top 10% pay a larger share: 70% (although this is only federal data).[1]

So moving to the US to avoid subsidizing others is probably not the best rationale.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...

A 90th percentile Canadian in BC would make ~$100k and pay 25.37% to taxes.

A 90th percentile American in Washington right across the boarder would make $125k and pay 24.53% to taxes.

While true, it has no relevance to my comment. And it's a bit silly to compare with a state with no state income tax. Why not compare with NY, CA or OR?

Because it's the state right next to Canada with a major tech hub.

We can compare NY to Quebec where at $125k/$100k respectively Quebec has a slight tax advantage (33.65%NY vs 32.70%QC) that goes back in favor of NY with +$20k (34.48%NY vs 35.43%QC).

Ontario fares better though. Maybe that's the cause of the US rust belt.

Nevermind that if you're 90th percentile of California or NY, you'd be making near $300k. So your tax rate might be 10% higher, but your take home is easily triple of what you'd have if you stayed in Canada.

As of Jan 1, 2022, WA will take 1% of W2 (employee) income for taxes. 0.4% for family leave insurance/sick leave insurance and 0.6% for long term disability insurance. It’s income tax in everything but name.

Does Canada claw any of that back through expat income taxes?

That would seem to be a more realistic and mutually beneficial economic arrangement than expecting people to ignore an opportunity to make substantially more lifetime income out of allegiance to their birth country. We stole one in Ohio, she even married into the family. Her parents are absolutely amazing folks, just saw them on their way back from wintering in Florida (where they were actually able to get vaccinated, unlike back home where nobody is vaccinated and the cops are facetiming neighbors to make sure there are no visitors.)

Maybe Canada can stabilize as an incubator for cool people and recoup those expenses through the impact they have on the world.

> Does Canada claw any of that back through expat income taxes?

The US is the only country anyone cares about that taxes their expats.

Maybe we're on to something there.

By 'we', do you mean the US?

It's generally considered one of the worst aspects of the American tax system.

See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_American#Taxation_o...

Yeah is a PITA if you're overseas.

Regarding the US and Canada, there are NAFTA cross-border tax rules which are complex and annoying, but not especially onerous in terms of tax obligations.

Most overseas American don't pay American income taxes either, because of minimum thresholds and widespread (anti) double taxation agreements.

Those people still have the hassle of having to declare American taxes, without generating any revenue for the fisc. That's a pure deadweight loss, if there ever was one.

It's true and sad.

Canada used to count Avro and Bombardier in their aerospace industry. We used to have Nortel and blackberry as leaders in telecommunications. We can have our own industry for X and we can be competitive world leaders in it.

You have (present tense) Shopify.

You’re not wrong, but this actually illustrates why we need to establish industry to counteract this problem. What you’re describing will always be true if we don’t have the initiative to correct it.

This stuff seriously concerns me because apart from natural resources, we have very little to leverage. I worry for my kids and their kids. Canada is in a very precarious economic and political position from my perspective.

Canada has lots and lots of fresh water. And global warming will open lots of farm land.

Could easily see Canada become the agricultural leader of North America.

Did you know that the northeast of the United States was once quite agriculturally productive? The current situation is the result of economics and will benefit long before Canada does and to a much greater extent.

> Could easily see Canada become the agricultural leader of North America.

The agricultural leaders of <anything> are countries that are nearly universally dirt-poor.

The Dutch disagree.

(Not just now, but also historically.)

Except that the Netherlands aren't rich because of their agriculture. They're rich and happend to be good at agriculture on the side as an added bonus.

Sounds like we are moving the goalposts now?

In any case, have a look at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-dutch-economy-in-the-golden-...

Agriculture has been important for the Dutch for a long, long time.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio... which arguably allowed Britain to become the wealthiest place on the planet for a while.

Ok, my mistake.

Then there's California, arguably North America's current agricultural leader.

California isn't rich because of agriculture. It's a rich state that happens to do some agriculture.

Illinois is 100% agriculture. All the tech from Schaumburg and Naperville (W. Chicago) has been hollowed out. It's still relatively rich as a state ... You are forgetting that until recently in Brazil the USA had double the agricultural productivity of any place else on Earth...

Chicago GDP = $619B IL GDP = $897B

Agriculture is a small fraction of what IL produces.

> You’re not wrong, but this actually illustrates why we need to establish industry to counteract this problem.

Who is we?

Sorry - we is Canada in this case. I didn’t make that clear.

So much of Canadian tax payer money has been poured into Bombardier. What could Trudeau do when Boeing had won the case in a US court against Bombardier, which allowed Airbus to swoop in?

> when Boeing had won the case in a US court against Bombardier

They didn't win https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-boeing-tariffs-1...

> Trudeau did absolutely nothing for the industry and immediately bowed down to Trump after he slapped tariffs later judged to be illegal.

(a) The amount of money funnelled into Bomardier was a lot, and BBD was/is IMHO not much more than a personal piggy back for the founding family who still runs thing. The two-class shares are crazy and should have been eliminated in any one of multiple bailouts that the company received over the years/decades.

(b) Canada has put retaliatory tariffs on all sorts of products when the US has acted in a silly fashion (and not just under Trump): it doesn't do much because of the relative sizes of the two countries.

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