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Comment by lucasyvas | Hacker News Reader

Am Canadian. No offense to my southern neighbours, but if it ever comes time to move because of this, my direction won't be south.

I'll probably play twister and hope the direction it lands is a good one.

North American trends have not been great lately in general.

Maybe I'll finally get that European passport I've been putting off.

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Yup I'm applying for an EU country passport myself (via family ties). Canada is a terrible place if you want to start a business, now house prices are getting insane and the recent encroachment on freedoms as well as lack of pushback from the population is pretty much the last straw for me. You can make more money and pay less taxes while having more affordable housing and better healthcare and education in a number of countries.

I wouldn't agree it's as bad as you make it sound.

However, I'm also not sure which other first world country has lower taxes, more "freedoms", higher salaries and cheap housing though.

The US is a very obvious example.

Take a look at housing affordability indexes, Canada is behind the EU average and certainly behind the top EU destinations. Also behind Australia, the UK, the US. Toronto and Vancouver are literally 2 of the most unaffordable places on the planet.

Also the US, UK and half the EU have lower taxes. The only places with comparable taxes have better healthcare and cheaper or free education.

Honestly, go to the US, UK, Australia, nearly any EU country and you'll find housing prices more in line with local salaries, better infrastructure, better services, more bang for your tax dollar, etc...

In what country can you give away 40% of your paycheck making less than 6 figures to then pay for dental work, prescriptions and education out of pocket while needing to make 3x the average salary to afford an average house?

> In what country can you give away 40% of your paycheck making less than 6 figures to then pay for dental work, prescriptions and education out of pocket while needing to make 3x the average salary to afford an average house?

Yeah, I dunno... Maybe there's a little bit of the "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" effect going on here, but as an American, if I hadn't read the rest of your post, I would have sworn you were giving a brutally accurate description of the US in that last sentence.

I think a big difference between the US and Canada is that living in Denver, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, etc... is way more desirable than living in Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa or Winnipeg...

In Canada, Toronto and Vancouver are the only real 'destinations' and they're SF and NYC expensive but with jobs that pay less than half...

A quick verification reveal that at 100k you pay 33% income tax in Quebec, and this is before any deductions. Education is very affordable at about 3k/year for university.

House are out hand tho, but this is more related to older generation greed than gouvernement..

The point is that EU countries with comparable taxes (or even slightly lower) that offer free dental, drugs and university.

And the house prices absolutely can be pinned on governments, we're one of the few countries globally that allows non residents to buy property.

As a European who immigrated to Canada I will respectfully disagree. Yes house prices are insane but this is true of much of the world now. However, Canada has a friendly society that is open to newcomers. The Europeans especially in the northern and western parts fancy themselves as tolerant peoples but this is just skin deep fakery. Don't fall for it. Even coming from a western country you will never be truly embraced as one of them. What sets Canada apart and the US to a lesser degree is that here if you make an effort you can actually integrate into the society and be considered a real Canadian even if you grew up elsewhere. By that I mean you will be invited to the Sunday game and your kids will be welcome to the sports team and treated as any other no matter skin color, accent or religion.

Also in Canada there is a certain level of maturity and compassion that most other societies do not have. This is well illustrated by the COVID vaccination figures and the whole response to this crisis as well as the previous ones.

No country is perfect but one would need to search long and hard to beat Canada.

Europe is a big place with a lot of cultural differences. You can get away with painting Canada (35mm people) with a broad brush, but you probably shouldn’t do broad comparisons to Europe as a whole (750mm people).

Yes, I will make a bit of an exception to the rule and say that Southern Europeans are maybe a bit warmer than the rest.

Eastern Europe though is just the meaner, cruder version of Western Europe with the xenophobia dialed up from 8 to 11.

I mean, there is no Canadian identity so in that sense we're welcoming. I grew up with family that spoke Ukrainian every day on one side and French on the other (and I have never lived in Quebec either). I have no idea what Canadian identity is despite having been born here. To me Canada is prairies, mountains, and small Ukrainian, French, Nordic and German enclaves/towns dotting the countryside. I can't relate to a 10th generation Canadian from Ontario.

Economically though things were way better 20 years ago. We're losing ground on every single economic metric. Almost all of my family has already left for the US or back to Europe. All of my classmates I kind of kept up with have left the country. A bunch of the immigrants I used to know left.

If you have a good job and a house I'm sure things are fine. You can live a good life here if you do have a good income stream and already own a home. You can live well anywhere. I'm currently in the rocky mountains and it is nice.

But just looking at things critically (since my partner and I are looking to settle down and have kids, she has an EU country passport, I have a Canadian one, we both have family everywhere, she just bought an investment property in Europe), our taxes are too high for the services we receive, wages are too low for the cost of living, and things are objectively worse than they were before.

I don’t have this frame of reference since taxes haven’t changed much since I arrived. And yes I have a tract house with a two car garage and hardwood floors. Nothing exuberant but I’m content. This is more than I could buy in the countries I used to live in. Yes, the European cities are awesome by comparison but unfortunately they are inhabited by snobby cliquey Europeans. I’d know because I used to be one of them.

Gotcha. Anyhow I did update my post a little as I thought about it. And for the record Canada isn't awful. Just kind of sad seeing it become a lot less affordable just in my lifetime (and I'm only a millennial!).

As a Canadian who has lived in Europe as well as America, I experienced more sameness than difference. As Saskia Sassen writes, global metropoles of elites all have the same culture really. You can get a craft beer everywhere now. As I write from St. Petersburg, I can say that it too fits this, but, there is a sense of alienation - in a good way - wherein people ..don't even imagine what you are thinking or judge what you are up to .. it's hard to describe - like they do in the West. For example, there are signs everywhere for masks but few wear them, and I do sometimes and sometimes I do not. No one really notices. Vs in the West there is a mask fetish as it stands for one's inner moral position or something. That space - the space we all inhabit most of the time of our own fantasies and stuff we say to ourselves - remains inviolate here. I am not saying anything else about the problems in this country which are legion and I don't want to wade into that here - but on a subjectival level, in the context of 2021, I feel calm here.

Same. Am Canadian, already south. This is not the place.

I'm looking at Northern Europe (good privacy laws) or Singapore (the rules are draconian, but very clear).

Netherlands, although not perfect still has some classical liberal ideals. Singapore is a "Disneyland with the Death Penalty", who in their right mind would go there.

And the death penalty is applicable to a tiny proportion of the population (disproportionately drug smugglers). It might not be your ideal, but please refrain from implying someone else is crazy for living there.

I lived in Eindhoven for three years. I found it very uncomfortable.

In what ways if I may ask?

Singapore would be a toss up in terms of privacy, but it is excellent and friendly for work-focused, law-abiding, norm-conforming kind of people. I don't mean it in a bad way.

Canada is 'becoming a police state' somehow, and the answer is to move to a bastion of freedom like Singapore. Just... I... ugh.

Yeah, I found that pretty questionable of a move as well.

On the opposite side of the political isle, you could observe the same thing, with a bunch of republicans loudly proclaiming on the internet their "plans" to move to Canada whenever Obama implemented Obamacare or tried to raise taxes on anything. Given that Canada has socialized healthcare and higher taxes, they looked just as ridiculous as people in this thread "planning" a move to Singapore due to Canada pushing anti-privacy laws. That's the taste of self-hating north americans for you.

A good quote in relation to this comes to mind: "There is no geographical solution to personal problems." Note: it doesn't mean that moving to another country due to your current one becoming unlivable is bad idea. But it seems weird to want to leave your country due to poor internet laws for a country with even worse internet laws and privacy. Which is what you can see with those mentions of Singapore, they didn't quite think it through at all. That's the taste of a group of self-hating north americans for you.

And when it gets worse there too, what then?

There seems to be a lot more pushback against government overreach in most EU countries as well as the US.

In Canada, most people applaud more government overreach. Just like everyone was more than happy to snitch on their neighbours during the pandemic.

>Just like everyone was more than happy to snitch on their neighbours during the pandemic.

This is what set me off the most in the start. Canada has an history of encouraging snitching (software piracy, zoning requirements, work permits, social gatherings). Hoe they think this is good for social cohesion is beyond me. I've only seen it fuel hatred between neighbors.

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