hitops

Assuming the mean and median would be similar, I would agree. But history categorically demonstrates that the middle in the US has a lower cost of living and higher access to pretty much everything, than here. Comparing both in equivalent USD, the middle income American earns more and each USD equivalent earned goes much further. This has basically always been the case, except for the anomalous period 2-4 years ago when our dollar was puffed by oil.

People who vote left, largely are incapable of seeing the big picture or understanding how wealth is generated in order to provide anyone with anything. They stand against the very things that will increase the capacity of the economy to provide them and others with more opportunities and access to more goods and services. The left is mostly about being angry at productive people because they have more than others. They want a great, high paying and lifetime stable job, but vote every time for policies most likely to eradicate those jobs and prevent new ones from forming. In nearly every part of our economy, we have tons of regs with the stated intent of protecting some group or category of jobs, which do the exact opposite in the long run. If we can't learn this lesson from Europe and the countless other examples in history, we are not going to learn it.

Not a sentence. The political left has removed more people from the planet than any other force in history. And a larger percentage of the world's population has better access to food, medicine and better work than ever before. In many countries with dire poverty, these changes are dramatic. But to the left this is bad if it comes with the rich getting richer. For them, better everyone in the world return to 80's or 90's levels of poverty, so long as the richest are also less rich.

Our brain drain is historical fact whether or not you can smell it. Family is a powerful incentive, but at some point the calculation is overwhelming.

To be honest I'd be perfectly happy living in the middle of nowhere, as long as I can get to work. One of the great things about the US is they have way more treatment centers in relatively rural areas. Cities in the US 1/3 the size of mine, have better facilities and treatment options.

When you try to provide everything to everyone, you wind up poor and unproductive. When you let the market provide things through pricing, you wind up much richer, with much more of everything for everyone. If I moved to the US, I would be providing my services to more people per unit time, and making more money. Not only would more people be served, but my consumption and that of my family would provide more dollars to more businesses and employees. But to the liberal thinker, this is bad because it is bad when somebody succeeds and somebody else succeeds less. It would be better to earn less, help less people and buy fewer things, employing fewer people, circulating fewer dollars. Because even though poorer people are even poorer and less mobile in that scenario, at least the successful person is less successful. And that makes angry liberal-minded people feel a little better, I suppose.

I understand the (fairly misleading) theory that the poor will spend more of their income. I don't see how that has anything to do with my question though.

No other reasons help keep me here - proximity to extended family mainly. Also the modest headache of US exams, though not a huge deal in the end. But as the tax regime and general political climate become more acrimonious and demonizing to those who bust their butt to achieve the fruits of that....the busting becomes less appealing. At some point the calculation tips towards heading south. But really this has nothing to do with me specifically. Highly educated, high performing people of all stripes will consider it. We have certainly lost many for those reasons in the past. Yes true if I wanted to transfer everything. I would probably just start earning there, and leave my CDN accounts in Canada for use when I'm visiting, or to help family etc. Being early in my career, most of my earning potential is ahead. You are quite right I would favor a place with a reasonable tax burden. I have heard however that sometimes a low or absent state tax can mean a high property tax.

I would suggest some are better and some are significantly worse. The NHS being an example of the latter. Basically take the problems and drawbacks of our system, and amplify them. A colleague of mine (a chemotherapy doc) who used to work in the UK once told me "giving chemotherapy in the UK is easy....nothing is covered, so your options are simple to think about". We get plenty of UK and Australians applying to come work here. No Americans though.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'good private coverage'. The pre-ACA widely quoted number of people with private insurance is around 64%. Obviously with the ACA, employers are more likely to offload that cost onto ACA and not offer it, so without a doubt those numbers will drop. Sorry to hear it. My guess would be that is specific to sparsely populated areas. I doubt that alternative funding models would make proper specialists more accessible if the problem is population density. The ACA is not likely to improve that, since the real-world effect is to reduce competition and encourages monopoly building. This is podcast I enjoy where they did an episode on it. Also lots of links on the page that will give you the info I think you seek, including link to the study and commentaries on it. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/05/jim_manzi_on_th.html

http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/the-tax-effect-how-a-revenue-neutral-move-will-wind-up-costing-billions-and-could-push-top-talent-to-seek-work-south-of-the-border\ Is anyone actually surprised by this? As far as the top skilled professionals leaving - I'm definitely tempted. I would earn around 2 - 2.5x when factoring in the exchange rate and Trudeau's plans. Some might say, well go ahead we don't need people who think like that. Simultaneously, those people will want great care and no wait times, demonstrating possible early signs of schizophrenia.

The problem on the left, is that there seems to be this idea that the successful people just sort of 'should' do a whole bunch for poor people, even though those same folks on the left themselves do nothing for others. It is always 'somebody else' who should do it, or 'somebody else's' money that should be used. It is never about letting individuals help others (which they do), it is about coercing 'everybody else' into doing some thing whether it helps others or not.

Explain further?

The wait time presented included government insured systems, which will drag the average down. Medicare and Medicaid in the US are the world's largest single payer health care systems.

"Few priviledged" I believe is a gross exageration. The vast majority of Americans had health insurance long before the ACA, and it worked just fine for them. Also, not having private insurance does not mean you do not get care. Many people without their own insurance are simply young and used their parents. Many others were on medicare or medicaid. Even without any of that, you do not get thrown out on the street, you still get cared for. American hospitals factor non-payment for services into their business model. And lastly, the assumption that if only you provided insurance, people would use it, is not necessarily true. The Oregon medicaid study proved this clearly. They randomized people with no insurance into a lottery were you got government insurance or you did not, and followed usage patterns and outcomes. The interested finding was not the outcomes (no improvement for those with insurance, btw), but that even among those offered insurance. the majority could not even be bothered to fill out the forms to get it.

That government-created cartel is a perfect example of how government intervention does not = better. The more rules we add on big corps or wealthy people, the more the smaller corps or less wealthy people have to play by those rules as well. The result - the big guys use their accountants and lawyers (that they already have, incurring no extra costs) to deal easily with the regime, while the smaller guys suffer because the smaller business owner who is already owner/manager/cleaup crew/driver/merchandiser/customer service rep does not have time to also become a crack accountant and lawyer, and cannot afford to hire them. The thing that I believe a good 60-70% of our population (including many here) does not understand about adding more regs, taxing the rich, trying to redistribute, etc, is that just because a chunk of the population might be brainless lemmings who accept whatever direction they are pushed in, does not mean everyone is. They assume (just like Trudeau) that if you just turn the tax dial, nothing else changes and the money rolls in. But lots changes. High-earning professionals and the rich did not get there because a magic fairy bestowed it upon them. They are smart, and know what they are doing. They change their habits, more their assets into different vehicles, diversify in various ways, or just defer income and wait it out until a more sensible government. There is no legislation that will turn talented, intelligent, innovative, creative and/or hard working people into being brainless lemmings who just hand you the fruits of their labor. Folks on the left really just don't see that.

Quite right. Our (SK) biggest wait problems are MRI's, and elective surgeries. Private MRI's and private surgery centers put far more people through in the same amount of time, no surprise there. Brad Wall made a loud promise to bring surgical waits down. They contracted lots of ortho work to the private center, and waits fell to best in the country. They made their announcement, patted themselves on the back, published the results, and then did not renew the private contract. Now not even a year later, our waits are right back where they were. Same comical/sad irony here. Worker's comp itself knows waiting for the public system is useless, they have their own private MRI. Workers comp patients get MRI's immediately. Everyone else waits and waits.

Some politicians and bureaucrats might actually not understand that, but most fully understand it but know that it is far more popular to promise everyone freebies/handouts from everyone else, than to tell the truth that those freebies and handouts ultimately cost them more in the long run than if they didn't receive them. It is only obvious for military, law enforcement, the court system and perhaps transportation infrastructure. For all others, it is far from obvious that government is the best option. Depending on the government, that can mean anything.

And this matters why?

Uh no the root causes of communism were revolutions against unelected monarchs. Too bad the people got something even worse, exchanging one tyrant for an even worse one. Social benefits can be described as benefiting anyone you want, but the rich pay far, far more in contributions than they ever use in social benefits, obviously. Rich people are the lowest users of social benefits. Instead of a race to the bottom, we get a race to export all our jobs because so few are competitive.

Well if sea level rise continues in the way it has, that won't be for a couple of hundred years. At this pace we will easily and gradually adapt to changing coastlines, if at all. I fully agree let the dollar go to the best ROI on energy. Unfortunately, right now the ROI for renewables is zero or negative in most cases, in the absence of your and my taxpayer dollar propping it up. If we remove subsides from fossil, gas will cost a few cents more. If we remove them from renewable, 90% of current renewable will disappear (exception for hydro).

Surely even you can see the irony in this comment. The idea that we would value pragmatism over equal treatment when it comes to the CRA, is deeply concerning. So your belief is that it is the CRA, who writes tax law and regulation? That's ridiculous on it's face, considering the difficulty in moving cash of that magnitude. Perhaps the highest earning drug kingpins, but nobody else. Your anti-rich campaign is goofy, but the sad part is that you don't understand that the mechanisms you support from government to supposedly punish them, just make them stronger and richer and send more middle-income jobs outta here. The biggest corps love more rules and regs, because it punishes their smaller competitors far more than them. They already have the teams of lawyers and accountants to deal with it, but the small guys don't. They already have ways to avoid more taxes, but the small guys don't. More government inference just means more monopolies and more dominance by the biggest players, and less competition and less work for the rest.

What happened is that the almighty dollar moved away from one kind of fossil to another, one that happens to be cleaner burning and cheap. And now this technology is available to other countries who want to get away from coal. Available only because of the big ugly capitalists and for no other reason.

A primary difference between Christianity and Islam that may matter to you, is that Christianity is a mandate for personal morality imposed on oneself, whereas Islam legitimizes enforced group morality. One endorses the consent of the individual to exercise control over their own person, and the other endorses the imposition of morality and control over others with or without their consent.

Or maybe you don't. One of the most ironic facts, is that the western country most resistant to a climate deal historically, the US, is one of the only countries now in compliance with kyoto, which they never ratified. And the reason is completely due to rampant old fashioned market-driven capitalist innovation, ie fracking. It is also killing coal, without the need for coal regulations.