[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

vs a medical system that costs 1.9 times as much per capita, but leaves 15% of the people without coverage and bankrupts employers and families.

It's also a medical system that your country DEPENDS on. Your premiers and ministers come here for health care needs, your Provinces routinely send their ICU cases to the USA because your amazing system only has 20% of the ICU beds per capita that the USA has.

http://www.criticalcare.utoronto.ca/Ass ... Canada.pdf

And then your total PICU beds across all of Canada are less than 100 beds, a statistic that's eclipsed by just five hospitals in relatively rural Montana.

andyt andyt:

Canada's education system is ranked 6th in the world for reading, science and math, by the OECD - the US isn't even in the top 10.

And you still have a bloated education bureacracy that educates exactly NO children. Send all of that wasted money to the classroom level and Canada would have a shot at #1, don't you think?

andyt andyt:

Transportation - huge country, small population, we're doing OK, but could do better if we raised more taxes.

Better yet, just have your government stop diverting petrol tax money to their pet programs and spend what you already collect on transportation and you'll be just fine.

andyt andyt:

Providing services for immigrants - what are we going to do, make them live in tepees?

No, but you could go back to Canada's old policy which was to only admit immigrants who didn't set foot in Canada and head straight to the welfare office first thing.

andyt andyt:

As we see every time there's a huge cut back the govt movement - we start having problems and the same party that cut back soon starts spending again. Joe the Plumber wants his govt services, he just doesn't want to pay for them and thinks his services are necessities, but the next guys' are waste.

How about this, Andy, cut the bloat and the slackass immigrants, leave the taxes the way they are, and then you'll have more money for medical care, transportation, and etc.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

@Caleb - I see what you did here. I think you were trying to resurrect the discussion we were having at the beginning of the thread. But, for some reason you chose to use a quote where I was replying to OTI - don't know why you would do that? Makes the discussion go in a totally different direction.

Exactly Andy! No one doubts your assertions about the poor, nor the fact they pay less in tax than most of us. The point of the article was that *Canadians* in general are now paying more in taxes than we do for *basic* necessities.

I quoted that post of your because it's the first where you made the jump from *basic* necessities to "people pay less in taxes than *necessities*", skipping the 'basic' part and then heading into roads and schools. . . ; therefore my "If oil shoots up, so will food" so we should just eat oil - style of logic.

But I guess that part of the conversation is just jumping the shark now.

[DonHowson]

Articles such as this don't tell the whole story.

I have lived in Texas for 15 years, and I am often asked if taxes here are less than in Canada. At best it is a hard question to answer.

My gross salary is about 55K and my employer pays my health plan, which may cost me as much as $5000/yr in deductibles if have any major medical issues (like a double hip replacement a couple of years ago.) If my employer wasn't paying for my health plan, it would cost me 8-12K/year to buy individual insurance. And without a health plan, any major medical issue (oh, like a double hip replacement) would have me facing bankruptcy.

There is no state income tax in Texas, but I pay about 3 times as much property tax as my sister in Montreal west island does.

University tuition is another matter. While tuition rates vary considerably between state and private colleges, you can expect to pay about double to send a child to a state college, and 5 times or more to a private school.

The matter in which personal income tax is calculated in Canada and the US (I do this for a living) makes them hard to compare. Personal deductions in the U.S. can mean two persons with same the income may pay substantially different amounts of income tax. A couple of year ago I tested out a couple of scenarios to see how they differed. I compared two single persons, no kids, not home owners, one in Michigan, one in Ontario. Tested for 50K and 100K incomes. In both cases the combined federal, state, social security/CPP and medicare/OHIP differed by just a few hundred dollars. But the guy in Ontario had health coverage and the guy in Michigan didn't.

I'm hoping to retire in a couple of years and tried to determine whether I would be better to stay in Texas or move back to Canada. I came up with what I thought would be a reasonable mix of investment and other types of income. In Texas I would stay in my house (no mortgage) and pay $1000/mo for medical. In Canada, I would pay $1000/mo for rent, and "nothing" for medical. In this scenario, my income tax in Canada was just about half of what it would be in Texas!

What it really comes down to is: where are you better off over the long term, owning a home, putting a couple of kids through college, having your medical needs met, having decent maternity leave and vacation time, and having a decent support system if bad things happen to you?

I tell people it's in Canada.

.../don

[fifeboy]

Andy, for what it is worth, I think you are 100'%correct here.

[BartSimpson]

DonHowson DonHowson:

What it really comes down to is: where are you better off over the long term, owning a home, putting a couple of kids through college, having your medical needs met, having decent maternity leave and vacation time, and having a decent support system if bad things happen to you?

I tell people it's in Canada.

.../don

And the upside of the USA is that no one's stopping you from moving to Canada. Have at it.

Myself, I'd like to retire to Victoria because it is a beautiful place, the people are wonderful, and the climate is perfect to me.

The difference here is that I'm enamored of Canada for being Canada and you're essentially saying you like it because of what you can get from it.

So while I'm just peachy with the prospect of your departing from the USA and moving to Canada you may wish to look at one of my previous posts in this topic where I'm advising Canadians to invite people like yourself to stay home.

[Lemmy]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

It's also a medical system that your country DEPENDS on. Your premiers and ministers come here for health care needs, your Provinces routinely send their ICU cases to the USA because your amazing system only has 20% of the ICU beds per capita that the USA has.

"Depends on" is an exaggeration. But having some for-profit services available, with lower wait times, just nextdoor sure is handy. I suspect we'll do more of that domestically as we move forward. The truth is that both our healthcare system and yours can learn something from one another. As the costs of healthcare continue to rise and our populations continue to age, we sure as hell better.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

And you still have a bloated education bureacracy that educates exactly NO children. Send all of that wasted money to the classroom level and Canada would have a shot at #1, don't you think?

[BartSimpson]

Lemmy Lemmy:

"Depends on" is an exaggeration.

I was ready for that but I expected it from Andy.

Anyhow... http://www.komonews.com/news/10216201.html

The point is that Canada is depending on the US system to handle a lot of things that Canada is not equipped for. And if Obamacare goes into full swing one of the provisions is a prohibition on allowing foreigners to access *any* medical care in the USA. You folks might want to ask Health Canada to prepare for that happenstance. Just saying.

And thanks for the support on the bureacracy matter. I don't want to cut education but I sure don't see why we need to support bureacrats in fancy offices while teachers buy pencils and the kids go cold in the winter because their school can't afford heating oil.

[ShepherdsDog]

$1:

kids go cold in the winter because their school can't afford heating oil.

Hasn't happened in Canada, but programs like art and music have been cut. Only thing is the bureacracy has swollen like a parasistic tick, feeding on limited funds for schools.

[andyt]

fifeboy fifeboy:

Andy, for what it is worth, I think you are 100'%correct here.

Thanks. It's just a meh report by the Fraser Institute. Everybody's got their idea where tax money is wasted, but it never includes any of the benefits they get from tax money. It's the what the next guy gets that's the waste.

[Lemmy]

andyt andyt:

Thanks. It's just a meh report by the Fraser Institute. Everybody's got their idea where tax money is wasted, but it never includes any of the benefits they get from tax money. It's the what the next guy gets that's the waste.

In education, it's EASY to find the waste. I went to a secondary professional development day just this past Monday. Teachers were given a presentation by Ross Greene on "collaborative problem solving". Essentially the premise is that you can fix kids' behavioural problems by negotiating with them. Teachers were shown a series of ridiculous scenarios about how to negotiate with kids for classroom management. Watch this one about a kid tapping his pencil on the desk and Greene's solution to this "problem":

http://www.livesinthebalance.org/simple-plan-b

Are you kidding me? This is what we're spending our tax dollars on? This is what we're doing to help our teachers teach our children better? You don't negotiate classroom rules/disruptions with a teenager. You tell the kid to stop tapping his goddamn pencil on his desk or get the fuck out. Then you call his dad so his dad can kick his ass when he gets home. Take a guess what Greene pocketed for his appearance. Guess the highest number you can imagine then double it.

Then the teachers (180, approximately) had lunch provided for them. It was a buffet with potato salad, garden salad, pasta, chicken and roast beef sandwiches, pickles, cheeses, etc. Nice, but basically cafeteria fare. The bill for lunch was $4500. Yeah, $4500. That's $25 per person! They could have given every teacher $20 cash and been farther ahead.

So no, in education the waste isn't "what the next guy gets" it's what the powers that be piss away on lipservice, all the while lining their pockets with kickbacks. It's the dirtiest secret in public spending and I'm very near a complete 180 degree switch of my research efforts because the time I've spent learning about this system is only raging my desire to firebomb schoolboard offices.

[ShepherdsDog]

make sure those tapeworms(Supers, deputy supers, assistant deputy supers and all their consulting staff too) are in the office when you do sterilize the place. As my wife told me...they had to spend every penny of their budget or they were effectively 'punished' by the division office. Saving money was not encouraged.

[Zipperfish]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

$1:

kids go cold in the winter because their school can't afford heating oil.

Hasn't happened in Canada, but programs like art and music have been cut. Only thing is the bureacracy has swollen like a parasistic tick, feeding on limited funds for schools.

In the immortal words of John Fogerty "Lord don't they help themselves."

[bootlegga]

andyt andyt:

So an education system, medical system, military, transportation infrastructure, policing, firefighting, water, sewers............... aren't basic necessities?

The problem is it's a case of apples and oranges - personal needs vs. societal needs.

Basic necessities for people are food, shelter and clothing, but at the same time, I'd argue your list are basic necessities for governments.

The trick is finding a happy medium between the two sets of needs.

[ShepherdsDog]

Some wants have actually morphed into needs. Telephones(landline and cellular) for one. In remote/rural areas a vehicle is pretty much a need too

[fifeboy]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

make sure those tapeworms(Supers, deputy supers, assistant deputy supers and all their consulting staff too) are in the office when you do sterilize the place. As my wife told me...they had to spend every penny of their budget or they were effectively 'punished' by the division office. Saving money was not encoraged.

AMEN!