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by Kluny 3389 days ago
Yes, but you get healthcare and being non-white isn't illegal, so that helps.

Also - not really? The highest federal tax bracket in Canada is 33%. The highest in the states is 39%. The highest provincial rate in BC is 12% and that's about the same as California. I'm sure there's a lot of variation depending on an individual's situation, but you're really deluding yourself if you think American taxes are low, for the shit deal you guys get.

[1] California: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/state-taxes-california...

[2] BC: http://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/bc.htm

[3] US Federal: https://www.irs.com/articles/projected-us-tax-rates-2016

[4] Canada Federal: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html

2 comments

Yes, but you get healthcare and being non-white isn't illegal, so that helps.

That made me chuckle. You think Canada doesn't have racists? Good lord.

And sure, if you just look at the income tax rates BC looks reasonable. Of course, if you look closer at the actual income brackets for each rate, it looks very different. That doesn't even include the sales tax (up to 15% in some provinces), taxes on alcohol, gas, etc.

I was being facetious, and yes, we do absolutely have racists, and yes, most of the people in our prisons are not white (they're First Nations, in our case).

Even so, we don't quite have the same legal system that seems to systematically lock up non-white people in bulk. A lower percentage of our population is in jail, they stay in for less time, and we have less violent crime overall. If you aren't white, I feel confident in saying you'll feel welcome here and won't get arrested for walking down the wrong street along at night.

You mean the same Canada whose police would pick up drunk First Nations men, drive them out of town and let them freeze to death?[1]

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths

I'm sure Canada has had several such incidents (some that happened more recently than 17 years ago), but I'd wager that you're still safer here from the police (across the board, but especially for minorities), than you are in the U.S.
Frankly, seen from Europe, most things 'police', 'safety', 'justice' are nothing short of wtf-grade in the US. It's surreal, it's one of the closest thing there is to dystopia (of the wrong kind) in the west. Arguably SF/Bay is a bit of an island (even politically) but still deeply embedded in the rather 'extreme' US culture.

By comparison Canada, much like Sweden or Switzerland here, feels like a pretty 'normal' country overall, much more reasonable in many regards. And it's safer there's no question about it.

How much of the wtf-grade is due to media hype vs. reality? The US is a large country.

I'm sure you could find a lot of wtf-grade police stories across the entire EU.

I assure you, there are sales taxes, as well as taxes on alcohol, gas, tobacco, and pot in California.

It also serves to mention that your biggest life expenses are highly unlikely to be affected by sales tax.

> and being non-white isn't illegal

You sure about that? Canada is, 78% white, 92% white + asian, only 1.2% hispanic and only 2.9% black. 700 million hispanics in the Americas, and Canada somehow only has ~300,000. The US is around 15%-16% black by comparison, and 20% or more hispanic. Sure sounds like it may be illegal to be non-white in Canada, how else to explain the lack of diversity?