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Comment by david-gpu | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if they may be confusing cause and effect. The cost of living in Canada's major cities is very high, while salaries are stagnant. The primary cause of that is the elevated price of housing.

The result is that large portions of the population, particularly younger folks, barely have the financial means to survive. This plus extreme weather and an absence of third places means they stay home. What do people do, then? Browse the Internet, social media, TV.

What else are they going to do, realistically? At least in places like Toronto.

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I dunno. Leave? The economics increasingly don't make sense here relative to other places in the world.

It is a bizarre spin on the situation here but the executive summary from the World Happiness Report does indeed put "social media" front and center. I guess.. No interest in digging into the minutiae right now.

I agree the economics here don’t make sense, but leave where? The rest of the world has increasingly strange, or at least unattractive, economics too.

The US is a difficult and long process to get a green card. Other English-speaking countries aren’t necessarily better: Australia seems similar in terms of being a natural resource extraction economy with insanely high real estate prices. Same productivity and salary concerns with the UK.

Non-English speaking country? One alternative is the Philippines. Most of the population is able to speak English.

It's trivial to move to the USA on a TN1 from Canada compared to any other visa category.

If you have a job letter, you show up to the airport and CBP can issue it immediately.

This includes software development which is responsible for GDP growth. Which is why 80-90% of CS students at the University of Waterloo immediately move to the USA after graduation.

If I could, I wouldn't. The U.S is fine usually to visit, but I wouldn't prefer to live there. Thankfully there are theoretically other alternatives that are much more appealing regardless of absolute earnings. The vibes could be better north of the border, but the U.S gives the ick

> Which is why 80-90% of CS students at the University of Waterloo immediately move to the USA after graduation.

I am familiar with this statistic. It explains a lot about the Toronto tech community, especially versus Waterloo's.

> It's trivial to move to the USA on a TN1 from Canada compared to any other visa category

Okay, but as a Canadian, why would I? American seems like a shithole. All of my American friends are trying to get out asap

There is no tech talent in Canada due to the pay/tax difference and TN1 is good for SWEs.

e.g. Nobody at my office has heard of Gas Town yet. I had to get an invite to a predominantly American Teams chat to discuss it. It's a very draining environment.

Also, senior devs make US$110k and a detached home costs US$800k. I would pay less in taxes and a home would be cheaper relative to income in California.

I've made a good living as a software developer in Canada and I own a detached home...

Just not in Toronto, Vancouver, or Victoria

But I guess I'm not tech talent, idk.

The "there is no tech talent in Canada" folks have their heads buried in the sand. Markham is a tech hub, and so are a bunch of other places. Obviously it doesn't have the scale of the Bay Area, and the salaries are indeed lower than the Bay Area.

Many of us choose to live in Canada for a variety of reasons, and it is not because we couldn't get a job down south. Some of us even had to turn down moving to the US multiple times in our careers, but that idea is uncomfortable for some folks. It is almost as if some people value other things in addition to money.

Governments and societal institutions love to blame external bugbears. Newspapers are certainly no fans of competition from social media.

You can replace Canada here with almost any other OECD country and this would be accurate.

I encourage anybody to go look at the magnitude of the largest housing bubbles in the past few decades. Canada's ranks near or at the top in any comparison from any source.

Housing affordability has been in the dumps for years now and Canada's happiness ranking was much higher in previous years.

Things are getting worse in a variety of areas, not only housing. But no, it must be that we never heard of social media until two years ago.

I agree that the social media explanation is weak, but the things dragging Canada down are the same amongst most of the western world in my opinion, is all.

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