61. So, what do these cultural/economic differences actually mean about life in Canada?
In broad strokes, Canadians are mostly poorer than Americans of similar socioeconomic status, except in areas where Americans deprive themselves of wealth in service of political signaling.
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62. In terms of material wealth, Canadians have (on average) lower incomes and lower purchasing power parity (something like 80 cents on the dollar, in exchange rate neutral terms).
Canadians can't afford to buy as much stuff because everything is just much more expensive.
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63. An example that Canadians will recognize is books. Most paperbacks with prices printed on the back list much higher Canadian prices, even adjusting for the CAD/USD exchange rate.
Last I checked, there wasn't a satisfying answer about why this even is:
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64. Canadians are mostly in denial about the degree to which they are poorer, in material terms, than Americans.
There's honestly a lot of cope about this and not a lot of serious analysis. No one wants to admit there's a problem!
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65. If you talk to people or look at discussions online, you'll see Canadians who are really eager to justify the higher prices north of the border.
It's the exchange rate!
It's our small population!
It's because we're a frozen tundra wasteland!
All transparently false.
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66. A common retreat tactic is to cite a "lower cost of living". This is fundamentally confused, since PPPP already adjusts for that.
I think a lot of Canadians don't grok how cheap most goods and services are in the US. There's a lot of this going on:
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When someone points this out, people will then fall back on "quality of life" but, when pressed, they'll usually cite things that are actually better in the U.S., indicating that they not only have no idea what U.S. tech is like, they simply have no idea what the U.S. is like.
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67. Another factor here is that upper-middle class people usually pay considerably more in taxes in Canada than in the US.
This is hard to see by looking at tax brackets: the top marginal tax rate in the US (37%) is actually higher than the top marginal tax rate in Canada! (33%)
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68. There are some differences in how the brackets are constructed, but the primary difference is that the US had a broad range of tax deductions laser-targeted at people making, say, more than $200k but less than $1 million/year.
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The US has deductions like SALT (a current political football as a de facto subsidy to high tax blue states), the mortgage interest deduction (recently reduced to cover "only" the first $750k in mortgage debt), etc. etc.
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Canadian tax deductions are much less generous, and are also usually calculated as "non-refundable tax credits", unlike American deductions.
In the US, deductions are worth *more* if you make more. In Canada, they are always calculated against a fixed tax bracket, and so aren't.
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69. Why did I keep qualifying my claim with "in material terms"?
As far as I can tell, Canadians are actually richer than Americans in a few keys ways. They are unified by the fact that they are aspects of life that the US has completely screwed up.
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70. The big one is housing, but in a subtle way. Measure like housing price-to-income ratio are actually often *worse* in Canada than in the US (e.g., 10:1 in Toronto vs. 7.5:1 in San Francisco).
Urban Canadians spend also about as much as urban Americans on housing.
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71. From what I can see, the biggest difference is that Canadian housing tends to be much higher quality than similarly-accessible housing in (coastal metros in) the US.
Most of this is because Canadian housing is usually much more recently built.
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72. A typical young professional in Boston or SF lives in a somewhat-renovated multi-family building built between 1890 and 1930. The same professional in Toronto probably lives in CityPlace: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityPlace
Is CityPlace especially inspiring? No. But...
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A cookie cutter CityPlace condo probably has elevator access, in-unit laundry, and heat pump air conditioning, none of which are common in the old multi-family housing that dominate American cites.
These things don't show up in housing prices, but still matter.
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[That's all for today. I should be able to finish this giant thread up tomorrow. 😄]
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[My past few days were unexpectedly busy re-arranging travel plans around Omicron. Topically, a primary concern was making sure that I don't get caught in a potential border closure! Should have time to finish this up soon. 🤞]
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[Whew, long delay due to, uh, world events. Let's see if I can wrap this up in 2021!]
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73. One the starkest difference in Canadian vs. American housing is insulation.
When I lived in LA I thought that bad insulation was a California thing, but the Boston area is full of $1 million+ homes that are... completely uninsulated?!?
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I'm not sure if this is because of different building standards, older housing stock, or... tradition?
My previous apartment (build in 2007 or so) had drafty double-hung windows, whereas most Toronto housing built after ~1970 is 100% casement windows.
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In Massachusetts, it's not uncommon to put giant pieces of cling wrap over windows to provide some additional insulation/draft protection.
I suppose that this probably exists in Canada, but I've never encountered it there, presumably because most people have much better windows.
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74. Both Canada and the United States are highly suburban but the standard style of suburban development is pretty different.
In particular, even remote Canadian suburbs tend to be denser than American ones.
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This picture reminds me of why new Canadian suburbs are so great. Very high lot coverage, real grids so they can be served by transit, and ADUs are generally legal so in the long run they’re all duplexes. I like the customizations/additions too twitter.com/globeandmail/s…
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Canadian suburbs, especially new ones, tend to place really large single-family homes on small lots, with tiny setbacks and high lot coverage compared to American suburbs.
Here's an example near where I grew up in Pickering, Ontario:
google.com/maps/@43.82961
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And here's another one that I stayed in while visiting relatives in East Gwillimbury (nearly 60 km from downtown!).
google.com/maps/@44.08621
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75. Despite this, the central parts of Anglo-Canadian cities (Quebec is totally different) feel much less dense than central American cities, despite having high nominal density.
Check out the vibe of Cityplace, Toronto (left) vs. Back Bay, Boston (right):
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The big difference is height! Zoning makes it difficult to build taller than four or five stories even in Central parts of Boston, but Toronto is full of highrises.
Building taller means you can fit the same number of people, but leave much more space for things like sidewalks.
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Enough about housing! Let's talk about healthcare!
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76. If you talk to Canadians and Americans about the differences between their countries, it's nearly certain that healthcare will come up, even though Canadians basically don't understand the American system, and Americans basically don't understand the Canadian system.
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77. Canadian healthcare is extremely overrated by both Canadians and (left/liberal) Americans.
Healthcare is a point of national pride for Canadians, so it's nigh impossible to even have a discussion about these shortcomings without offending someone.
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24. In some cases, this fuzzy thing creates serious real-world consequences.
I think that Canadians are unwilling to address the shortcomings in their healthcare system in part because "we have 'free' healthcare and Americans don't" is such an integral part of national identity.
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78. The Canadian healthcare system provides, on average, similar-to-modestly better outcomes than the American one, at ~2/3 the cost as a fraction of GDP.
This is decent, but hardly a point of national pride.
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79. For Americans: the Canadian healthcare system functions sort of like a mediocre HMO. A government bureaucrat decides what care is/isn't worth it, and then that's the care that gets provided. Everything that the bureaucrat decides to cover is ~free at the point-of-care.
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80. This analogy tells you basically all the pros and cons:
Pros:
- Predictable pricing
- Good quality median care
- Egalitarian: your healthcare quality won't depend on your ability to "work the system"
- Good cost control with "utilitarian" aesthetic
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(Re: that last point: American hospitals can be bizarrely fancy.
I once accompanied a friend to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. The emergency room had crown molding. The surgical recovery room had *plush carpeting*. I was stunned; this is not what Canadian hospitals look like.)
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81. On the other hand, the cons are pretty significant, at least for me.
First, wait times. Like the US, Canada has a significant shortage of doctors. I have not dug into this in detail, but I think it has roughly the same source: not enough medical school/residency slots.
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Wait times, especially for "important but not urgent" healthcare like "elective" surgeries are ridiculous.
Canadians mostly think that this is an inevitable consequence of "universal healthcare", when it's really a sign of a mismanaged labour supply.
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As a child, I waited more than 6 months for a tonsillectomy while being ~continuously on antibiotics (!). A relative of mine waited more than a year for a hip replacement, during which time they basically couldn't walk (!!).
Wealthy Canadians travel to the US to avoid this.
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I was once in an American ENT specialist's office on a Thursday afternoon. They recommended that I get an MRI and warned me that it could be "a bit of a wait".
I asked them how many months it would be; they stared back at me and clarified that I'd have to wait until Monday. 🙃
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82. The second disadvantage is subtler: I broadly refer to it as the low agency or gatekeeper model of healthcare.
Broadly, in Canada, if you have a health problem, the doctor decides what to do about it. In the US, if you have a health problem, *you* decide what to do about it.
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83. In the US, the main gatekeeper of healthcare is your insurance company. If you have the resources, though, you can just ignore what they say and get ~whatever healthcare you want. You can easily shop around for a different doctor if you aren't getting the treatment you want.
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84. In Canada (or at least Ontario), the system is much more centralized. If the government hasn't authorized a treatment,there's little you can do to work around it (except go to another country).
Put another way, Canadians mostly look at all health as public health.
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85. All of this means that if you're trying to solve a health problem that's a huge deal *to you*, but not legibly a big deal to a government bureaucrat, the Canadian healthcare system will fail you.
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