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But guess who ends up paying for all of that in the end?

Everybody.

All the University tuition and the lower daycare costs do is take it out of the hands of the individual, and spread it out over the broader public.

Ontario Tax Rates

http://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm

Quebec Tax Rates

http://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/qc.htm

But guess who ends up paying for all of that in the end?

Everybody.

All the University tuition and the lower daycare costs do is take it out of the hands of the individual, and spread it out over the broader public.

Ontario Tax Rates

http://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm

Quebec Tax Rates

http://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/qc.htm

I was astounded to find that you are right. Federal tax in Canada caps out at 29% http://www.taxtips.ca/fedtax.htm Where the United States caps out at 35%http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=164272,00.html. One could probubly make an argument that the US federal rates are lower for low income, but there is no doubt that they are higher overall.

Sales tax may be a diffrent story however. The rates in Canada range from 6% in one province, to 13%-16.6% in all the others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provincial_Sales_Tax I have never seen a US sales tax rate over 7% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States

In any event I thank you for pointing out the Federal rate difference.

This is interesting point since the average Canadian only paid 11.18% in income taxes in 2002 http://www.taxtips.ca/statistics.htm, while the average American paid 13.5% the same year http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02in01tr.xls.

Of course this doesn't account for all the other forms of taxation, but still Americans pay a higher income taxes but still have yearly budget deficits.

It's hard to keep our (American) current political situation out of it, but which is more important affordable healthcare for all or seemingly cheaper oil prices and the occupation of foreign nations?

That article doesn't says "The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes each year", which is different matter entirely from the "almost 50% income tax" that you suggest. I can only assume that this estimate also includes property taxes and sales taxes, because it clearly isn't true for federal and provincial income tax:

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/individuals/faq/taxra tes-e.html
http://www.taxtips.ca/tax_rates.htm

People always find a way to adapt.

The province of Quebec (where Montreal is situated) is the most taxed jurisdiction in North America.

As a result, Montreal is well known as having North America's largest underground economy (per capita of course). People are sick of being overtaxed, have inadequate health care, crappy infrastructure, and have to pay 15% of taxes on almost everything they buy.

Watching movies in the theaters used to be much cheaper; things changed after the Paramount theater came into town.

Guess when movie piracy started to take off?

Guess what will happen if they further restrict/delay movie distributions? Things will only get worse.

Oh yea, Go Habs Go.

Up to 15% more? Where? Must be somewhere in Canada, ...

Yup. GST is 7% across the country, and then some provinces tack on a PST on top of that. According to that link, PST (in the provinces that even have it) varies from 7% to 10%, making sales tax in those provinces 14% to 17% in total.

I make more than $50K a year and I pay ~35% (including CPP and EI).

Reality is that the taxes in Canada are anything but bad, and btw, the highest tax bracket start at CAN$115,739.

Second, I said "almost 50% income tax", which I think any reasonable reader could interpret to mean that we have a tax bracket well over 40% occupied by people without egregiously large incomes (which is, in fact, what I meant).

What is "well over 40%"? Given that this was said in the context of comparing Canadian taxes against American, I don't think it's too unreasonable to say that residents of a province with a tax bracket over 43% would quality, since that puts them at 47% total tax when the GST (a tax Americans don't pay) is included, and that's "almost 50%". With this criterion, 8 of the 10 provinces qualify. If we consider only a reasonable income for a junior software developer (say, $65000/yr) then three provinces still qualify: Quebec, Nowfoundland, and Manitoba. As for the other 5 provinces, their top tax bracket starts at CDN$104648, which is certainly a reasonable salary for someone with a .edu email address.

So, while you may disagree with some of the above logic, does it at least absolve me of "stupidest person in the world" status? :-)

I think it depends on the Province. My marginal income tax rate last year in Ontario was 43%, but my average was 27%. I considered moving to Quebec and looked at the tax rates there: I would see my marginal rate shoot up to 53%!

This gives some information about the combined rates: http://www.taxtips.ca/tax_rates.htm#CombinedTaxRat es

Taxes are really, really high

2003/2004 Canadian tax rates

Actually the Canadian dollar has jumped due to a weak US dollar. The exchange rate is 1.35 now, rather than 1.65.

Second, my heating bill is cheap. I live in Vancouver, and it snows maybe once a year. The farther north you go, the better insulated the houses are.

Third, your tax calculates are way off.

$8000 CDN (or about $5200 US) is tax free. From there to $35,000, you pay 16%. From 35K to 70K, you pay 22%. From 70K to 113K, you pay 26%. Over 113K, you pay 29%. Then you add provincial taxes onto that. Now, look at this page and compare tax rates between 2003 and 2004. Notice they are going down? Do a Google on Canadian budget surpluses.

Fourth, Canada is not a socialist country. We are a capitalist country with a more comprehensive social net.

Finally, yes, MRIs are difficult to get in Canada. But that's pretty recent, with budget cuts to health care; ten years ago, the systems were pretty comparible. Canada is paying off a big national debt, and it costs $30 billion to service it a year. Once that's paid off, healthcare spending will rebound. It's also nice to know that while I'm not getting and MRI on demand, no one else is either :)

And as someone pointed, out, we can alwasy cross the border to the US and get one for $600 US ($800 CDN).