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0 pointsarcticbull4y ago0 comments

My father is an anesthesiologist in Canada and my mother an audiologist, so my position isn't exactly arms-length [edit] and my father has always been very opinionated about the role of the public service within a civil society - before the Alzheimers anyways. I agree with you that they aren't paid the same, just that the band is tighter than in the US. Canadian doctors get paid a good deal less than American doctors. For instance.

A US anesthesiologist is paid a median of $400K USD (500K CAD). In Canada the median pay is $393K CAD ($300K USD). In real terms anyways. In PPP adjusted terms, it's closer.

> Berkeley alone has as many Nobel Prize winners as Canada entire. That’s the kind of society we build here. Winners. And sometimes there’s a price we will pay for that.

Winners and losers. I'm not passing judgement I'm just saying that the American society isn't full exclusively of winners, it's full of winners and the folks I pass on my way home shooting heroin. At the end of the day we all live in a society.

> EDIT: Pay your doctors what you pay your street cleaners and you’ll see what they do. They won’t stay in Canada for that.

Unless you pay them both an upper middle class wage ;)

Either way, thank you for engaging in my thought exercise!

> Oh and sorry about the edit style responses. I have hit my comment rate limit.

Nothing to apologize for, I appreciate your thoughts! I know this is a bit of a third-rail topic - but that's why I'm extra interested in what the HN community has to say.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

stale20024y ago· 2 in thread

> Unless you pay them both an upper middle class wage ;)

Feel free to give an example of an actual major country that does that then.

If you can't think of such a real life example, then maybe that is your answer as for why this does not work.

As someone who lives in America, I am more than supportive of Canada spending all of their money, overpaying their trash collectors.

That way, Canada can get their trash collections, and we in America can get their engineers.

Go ahead, other countries. Overpay everyone. I'd love that. That way we can poach your high value citizens who are overtaxed.

arcticbullOP4y ago

This is quite an incomplete analysis.

First off, neither Democrats nor Republicans are interested in supporting immigration into America. The last major immigration tightening was Clinton with the IIRAIRA and the last amnesty was under Reagan. Since then, neither side has been interested in bringing more legal immigrants to the US. After all, the Biden administration is about to allow 100,000 green cards to expire unprocessed and disappear into the aether. At least Donny was honest about it.

> As someone who lives in America, I am more than supportive of Canada spending all of their money, overpaying their trash collectors.

I also live in America, and I am not saying anyone's overpaying trash collectors.

> That way, Canada can get their trash collections, and we in America can get their engineers.

And yet this is only part of the story.

> That way we can poach your high value citizens who are overtaxed.

The lowest tax rate in the US/CA is Alberta and the highest is Quebec. The rest of the US and Canada exist in between these two Canadian provinces. If you factor in health care, basically all of Canada costs less to live in than America for the average individual. YMMV of course.

However, saying Canadians on the whole are "overtaxed" is an indication you haven't given an honest look at what the rest of the western world looks like outside of the US.

As I've been saying, that's only part of the equation. Folks don't move to the US to evade taxes lol - Silicon Valley is among the highest taxed places on earth but still attracts the world's best talent. It's not about the taxes - it never has been. Some small tax break isn't going to get me to leave the Bay Area. I'm confident my opportunity here will outperform the delta. Until that opportunity no longer exists, then I will leave without looking back.

stale20024y ago

> The lowest tax rate in the US/CA is Alberta and the highest is Quebec

> However, saying Canadians on the whole are "overtaxed"

I was talking about the total amount of money that engineers take home. So just replace the word "overtaxed" with underpaid, and the argument holds.

Engineers in america get way way more take home money, regardless of any tax rates.

> Folks don't move to the US to evade taxes

Ok, they do it to get the high salary. Or a lot of them do.

> but still attracts the world's best talent

Yes. Because engineers get paid way more money than trash collectors.

So great, canada should go ahead and pay their engineers the same as trash collections (through a method that will certainly result in them having to spend a bunch of money to do it), and we in the USA can poach a lot of those engineers.

Once again, feel free to show the example of a real country that is spending an equal amount of money on their trash collectors, and their engineers, and I point out how that country is likely having a lot of its engineers leave.

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