Growing up they were poor, but their family got 500 dollars a month, which is more than most families on this planet earn a year. People are so ignorant, it hurts.
Canada
31–40 of 131 posts
Re: Canada
#32Canada is far from perfect but there is no other country in the world I would ever consider leaving it behind for.
The only other country I'd ever consider to live in would be Quebec. :D. So much potential here. The author implies that the country is broken, this isn't true by any stretch of imagination. Things aren't perfect as you've pointed out but we've got the energy, the universities, the social net and all that we need to live a decent life. The author implies the best ones are leaving for the states. I find it quite amusi…
Because the US is, or for a long time has been, just the best place in the world for so many things. Want to be a SWE grunt? You'll earn twice the salary in the US. Do you have startup ambitions? There's nowhere better than the US, specifically the Bay Area, in nurturing and scaling a business. Filmmaking? Hollywood is the place to be. If you want to be at the center of fashion or finance or contemporary art, NYC. US dominance might be changing but a place being the top of a field means it attracts the best of the best from around the world, and for an ambitious person, the best place to be is among them.
Re: Canada
#33Canada is far from perfect but there is no other country in the world I would ever consider leaving it behind for.
The only other country I'd ever consider to live in would be Quebec. :D. So much potential here. The author implies that the country is broken, this isn't true by any stretch of imagination. Things aren't perfect as you've pointed out but we've got the energy, the universities, the social net and all that we need to live a decent life. The author implies the best ones are leaving for the states. I find it quite amusi…
Luckily, we still can choose to live in either one, unless the sovereignty movement flares up again. I wish I could, because I really appreciate what Quebec has going for it, especially as someone who was born in Europe. I'd pick QC over the US any day of the week for work, but sadly I wasn't taught French in my childhood and it would likely take me the rest of my life of dedicated studying to attain proficiency that's enough to be used in a professional setting.
Re: Canada
#34> There are many things wrong with Canada. It has a go for bronze mentality, the smartest of us keep going to the US because there is not enough opportunity here, much of its public infrastructure is crumbling and the housing prices are frightful. The nation is very obviously sick. Is anyone currently moving from Canada to the US? If so, are they the "smartest", or do they simply have different priorities than a lot…
I took issue with this too, but chose to interpret it charitably. It’s true that a lot of our most qualified people move to the US because of the money.
Re: Canada
#35I grew up in Canada and live in the US now with kids. The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different. There's wealthy America. The top 5% to 10% that have healthcare, have their own safety nets, don't need to worry about money, their kids go to select schools that they can buy into (mostly by buying into the right neighborhoods), an amazing pension plan, etc. My kids go to a fancy library with readi…
The median American is, materially, much richer than the median person pretty much anywhere else. The US is a bad place, by rich-country standards, to be in the bottom 10%. But in terms of consumer wealth - how large your house is, how many cars your family has and how nice they are, if you have a dishwasher and home A/C, how often you eat at restaurants or travel long distances, can you afford a home repair or the latest gadget - typical American workers are second to essentially nobody. Having grown up in and left the US, I am deeply familiar with all of its downsides, but there's an abundance of data to support this.
Re: Canada
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only other country I'd ever consider to live in would be Quebec. :D. So much potential here. The author implies that the country is broken, this isn't true by any stretch of imagination. Things aren't perfect as you've pointed out but we've got the energy, the universities, the social net and all that we need to live a decent life. The author implies the best ones are leaving for the states. I find it quite amusi…
Luckily, we still can choose to live in either one, unless the sovereignty movement flares up again. I wish I could, because I really appreciate what Quebec has going for it, especially as someone who was born in Europe. I'd pick QC over the US any day of the week for work, but sadly I wasn't taught French in my childhood and it would likely take me the rest of my life of dedicated studying to attain proficiency that…
It would take less than you think. If you lived there and were fully immersed you'd pick it up fairly quickly.
Re: Canada
#37> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.
I'm just a datapoint, but in Chicago suburbia i had all that the author laments as unavailable to American kids. Mom made sister and me take skating classes, though we already could (ice hockey on ponds with friends, figure skating classes for variety, though i didn't like that as much as hockey), no student debt (top 5 US engineering universities included one in my state), kick ass library bike ride away, awesome park district in a tree covered suburbia, and so on.
I mention this because I'm in no way unique among american kids (a couple decades or so later), and, with the author, we agree these things are great.
Re: Canada
#38I like to think about what Canada would be like if it could take the best qualities from the US and leave the rest. What if Canada's capital markets were so robust that it was just as good a place as the US to start and scale a company? What if it could match the US in economic productivity? PM Carney seems to have made it a goal to get Canada there but time will tell whether that happens. Some other countries like S…
There are some examples of companies that scaled really well in Canada but move to the US subsequently for better access to their market. Shopify is the first example that comes to mine.
Shopify hasn’t moved to the US any more than Toyota has.
Re: Canada
#39I moved to Canada almost two decades ago after spending two years in Europe. Many of my university colleagues ended up in the USA and a few others in Europe. Every country is indeed diversely multifaceted and multitiered but Canada indeed has a way more balanced social fabric. It offers generous social programs (within its means) and has a society that is highly welcoming and inclusive. I do agree that things were rosier when I first arrived, but in crazy times like this it remains a great place to call home. So, thank you Canada and fellow Canadians for making this such a special place.
Re: Canada
#40The Canada the author refers to is gone.
Hard to know what accounts to bother responding to these days. This is likely one of them as it fails to offer any worthy substance beyond a barely whined grievance. But I have first hand experience that the things described in this post are absolutely not gone. I suspect there are agents of lesser minds at work hoping to stir instability. We aren’t swindled as easily as other peoples.
This is not a greivence this is a lamentation.