Slashdot Mirror
Corporate Work in the US vs. Canada?
No One You Know asks: "I've been working as a sysadmin for an insurance company in the US for the past six years, and have decided to move to Canada. I've had it with corporate America, but I'm trying to keep an open mind while job hunting. How does Canadian corporate life compare to that of the US?"
...same as the old boss. Corporate life in Ireland, Germany, Holland, France and here in the US is the same, mostly. I've work at least one year in each of those countries, for local and American corporations. Varying degrees of formality and autonomy, but basically the same crap in different languages.
People are not nearly so uptight as in the US. Gor crying out loud, we had an office party here for Christmas and everyone got a drunk — those who didn't still sang and danced and had a good time. Contrast this with my experience with typical American office parties where they order some bland catered food, sip on mineral water and itch at their cotton-polyester blend polo shirts waiting to go home so they can work some more.
There's much more of an "open collar" atmosphere in Canada. Everyone trusts everyone else, we're all ready to get to know one another, and we certainly don't stay uptight after the regional manager has ended his visit to our office. Working in Canada is much less conducive to heart attacks.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
I have no idea if this is actually a difference, but I definitely find that IT workers here (in Toronto) are not one bit concerned about outsourcing..
/.
Of course, I have no idea if the general IT population in the states are either, or if it's just especially strong here on
How is the outsourcing situation there?
We have them in New England, they're called "rotaries" here. And frankly, if you've ever driven in New England, you'll know why in this imperfect world of ours, rotaries are not superior to traffic-lighted intersections: because most people either don't know or don't care what the YIELD sign means!
Hi my name is Noah I'm calling to promote my computer services company IT Goes Click, does your company use computers in you day to day operations?
Well you're expected to be a lot more polite about everything that's not just a myth and if you're not polite expect to have a polite awakening to your assishness
Corporations and employees are immeasurably more loyal to one another up here than down there
There's lots of great holidays and excuses not to work.
You don't need a benefits plan at work to have great medical coverage
Your co-workers are now your friends not your competition and your job is now your job not self promotion disguised as a job.
Incompetence and mistakes are rewarded with a kick in the butt not a promotion
Everything is far less Political Correct except when dealing with the French or Natives.
And remember when any product or service is in review it's not new is better it's
1. If it's new it's bad
2. If it's old it's probably also bad
3. If it's foreign it's bad
4. If it's American it's foreign
5. If it's cheap it's probably foreign and or new
6. If it's expensive it's probably American or German see #4
7. If it claims to work it'd better do it, unless it was cheap
8. It'd better have French labels on it
9. If it doesn't work or doesn't have French labels on it, use it to make a donation to an American charity.
No selective service and no draft in Canada. There was conscription at the end of World War 2 (you know, the one that started in 1939), but it divided the country.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Bullshit.
... but it sounds as though you've been buying the propaganda about the Canadian healthcare system.
... and that was a walk-in without an appointment.
I don't know if you're American, Canadian, or from some little island in the Pacific
Yes, it's been in better shape. But it's not as bad as some people (mostly those in the US who are trying to justify their system over ours) makes it out to be.
First: everyone is guaranteed basic health care. Regardless of whether the company you work for has a health plan or not. Compare and contrast to your healthcare system.
Second: The wait times are usually not as long as people make them out to be. My father recently decided to undergo surgery to alleviate some trouble he's been having lately. How long did he wait between making the decision and having the surgery? 2 weeks. Is my family going to be out $25,000? Nope. Covered.
Popped into the doctor's office the other day - total wait time for me, 20 mins
And I've never heard of Canadians being described as "rabbidly anti-gun" (there are more than a few around here that would take exception to that). We just don't see the need for assault rifles to protect our homes. It's actually a positive thing here.
Several years ago I got a job offer from a Canadian software company without any interview. I decided to take a look at their office before accepting their offer.
There were a ton of Dilbert cartoons posted on almost every cubicle wall. The big boss in charge of engineering was a big sexy woman in a rather flashy red dress. I was pretty sure she was not trying to charm the lowly engineers. All engineers I talked to were very timid. It was during the peak of high tech boom, all American engineers I met at that time were beaming with undeserved confidence. But those Canadian engineers didn't have any spirit whatsoever. Enough to say I lost any interest moving up there since then.
I came to Canada 15 years ago (from the UK) as a computer consultant, loved it, and stayed here in Toronto ever since, except for a few months working in the Boston area of the US. And for what it's worth, I'm married to an American ex-attorney :-)
:-) and someone from San Francisco might miss the hills. A visitor from the South gaped in awe at the mixed-race couples everywhere here in Toronto.
:-) and today it's over 80 degrees with a dry warm breeze. It depends where you live; Toronto is pretty far south, further than most people realise, and we get weather not that much different from new York City. But you could live within the Arctic Circle if you really wanted to :-)
An unpleasant job is unpleasant anywhere. I can't comment on the insurance industry, I don't know about it.
When you're comparing countries, remember that Canada is geographically larger than the US, and has a lot of variation, as of course does the US. A factory worker assembling cars in suburban Detroit might be amazed that the houses in Ontario are not all the same shape
The highest tax rate is indeed 51% but get an accountant: you'll find there are more deductibles that reduce your taxes here, and a rate of around 30% is more common, assuming you are earning more than Cad$60,000/year.
Yes, you'll quite likely be paid less here. But the cost of living is lower. Make sure you get at least the same dollar amount and it shouldn't be too bad.
The healthcare is in fact better than someone commented: my partner has had a lot of health problems, and for some things Canada is much better than the US, for some it's not. In some cases, the Canadian health programme will send you to the US for treatment and cover the cost too, although it's rare. You are much less likely to have doctors trying to sell you on expensive drugs or treatments here, and more likely to find doctors who want to help you.
In much of Canada, at least in the more rural parts, there's much better public transport than you might be used to, depending on which part of the US you're from. It's a symptom of a greater emphasis on community, on the need for everyone to live together and get along, and to respect each other's differences, celebrating diversity. This comes at a cost of a lower emphasis on the individual, especially on the rights of the individual where they might adversely affect the community. Hate speech, for example, is a crime.
It took my husband (yes, we are a gay couple, and yes, we have same-sex marriage here) about 18 months before he stopped saying "Canada is so far behind the US" and started to realise that in fact we're going in a different direction. After a few more years he came to appreciate that direction, and decided to immigrate. I've heard similar stories from others: it can take two or three years to get used to a different way of thinking and to stop judging what you see based on experiences gained in another country.
Canada is far from perfect, but we don't have George Bush, and many of the Americans who move here are dissatisfied with the US in some way, and often relatively left-wing. But you should come and see for yourself.
The Immigration Canada Web site is useful - http://www.cic.gc.ca/ - and will help you get a visa. You can get a NAFTA work permit I think, but you'll need a certified job offer to do that. if you decide to immigrate and then find a job, there's about a year's waiting list and a non-refundable fee.
You could also start reading online papers such as the Glbe and Mail, and depending on where you are planning to go, daily papers like the Globe and Mail.
Oh, and on climate - yes, it gets as cold as Minnisota in the winter at times
I hope this helps.
Oh, one more thing (I know this is already long).. I travel a lot... and always notice when I come home how different the people are in the service industry here. Go and get a meal at a food court in Det
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
From the CIA World Factbook
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
I never looked at Quebec as having that distinct of a culture unless you include redubbing most American shows into French as being a culture. I would recommend skipping Quebec and just going to Europe. Once you get into the deep dark depths of Quebec you just have rednecks that speak French.
Montreal and Southern Quebec is more or less exempt from the above.
My credentials:
-Canadian-born citizen
-been working in the US for the past 5 years in Silicon Valley
-worked at two large corporations in Toronto
Almost perfect description, except for health care.
I'm using Kaiser Permanente in California, and it is an HMO. As a Canadian, you hear the absolute worst things about HMOs, but frankly Kaiser is heads and tails above anything I would ever see in Canada.
Things like medical tests, responsivitiy, etc are far better here than in Canada. My other Canadian co-workers told me tales of their parents being told to wait for cancer treatment in the East coast, and how pregnant women get way less ultrasounds than here. My own parents wait 3 weeks for their own tests such as looking for things such as colon or stomach cancer. In the US, there would be no such wait, at least with my HMO.
Canada's health care system is breaking down, and something really needs to be done to fix things.
East of Ontario, people are extremely sociable and close. Southern Ontario is exactly like the Eastern US(not much more to say there), and West of Ontario, are there people there?(kidding)
For the places that I've lived in the West, it's hate or love, if it's not one or the other then you really don't exist in their eyes except if you cross the street, cars will stop alarmingly even if they're not even close to you.
But hey, honestly what you see in a place is what you make of it. Cool people will find cool people and the challenged will find the a*holes.
One thing that is pretty nice about everywhere is that the new generations have almost no bias towards different people, they've learned to dislike people for their individual qualities and not as a group... that's cool in my book.
bla
Just be sure to leave a fake name and address when they ask...
500,000 people in the US go bankrupt every year due to medical costs, thats nearly 2% of the total Canadian population every year!
Reminds me of these two women (mother and daughter, I think) I saw in Jerusalem a few months ago, essentially wearing Canadian flags held together by random pieces of clothing. One, apparently feeling her University of Waterloo hat might not be sufficient, had safety-pinned a Canadian flag patch to the side.
If you've ever done a lot of traveling abroad, you'd be surprised to find the number of *Americans* who stick Canadian flags on their backpacks, etc. The general rule is that Canadians are much better respected globally than Americans for whatever reason.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
You might ask Michael Moore, the guy who is religous about "America", you know, the one who exposed the large corporations that were shipping jobs out of the United States to foreign countries?
Our local news station recently did a piece on him -- apparently he has hired out the work to create and support his web site to a small firm in Canada. So, he should know about the advantages of taking jobs to a different country...
i'd move up to canada just for the mountain biking!!!!!! we have some great places here in the US but you have to travel 1500 miles to get to them.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Oh? From the link:
As members and friends of the Second Unitarian Church of Chicago, we feel compelled to speak out against the tragic, unnecessary death of Chris Sercye. This fifteen-year-old black youth lay for half an hour on the sidewalk adjoining Ravenswood Hospital, bleeding from a gunshot wound. Hospital officials refused to allow employees to carry Chris inside for treatment until it was too late.
and
This is health care for profit where people are packed into an under-staffed ER rather than moved to a room. This is the same system that turned away a young mother and her infant because the mother couldn't pay the $25 clinic visit. The child, who was being breast-fed, died of malnutrition. But it's the mother who is being blamed and accused of manslaughter, not the hospital who refused to examine the baby.
What?
If you want to compare it that way then you can do the same against other countries eg:
... bla, bla, bla.
The british pound is worth more than the US dollar so getting a wage in pounds is worth so much more
If the end WHO CARES? There are only two times most people care about the exchange rate:
1. When you buy something from another country.
2. When you go overseas.
You could also talk about how the Japanese get paid alot more than most people but that doesn't take into considertion the cost of living and lifestyle. Don't understand?
Mac Hall explains this one quite well:
Servay Says
Basically if you get paid less but can buy more and have a better lifestyle then who cares?
No kidding, our tax money payed for a comedy show about Jebb Fink, "An American in Canada". I think it's one of the most honest opinions about Canada you can find and its hilarious, especially because it's from an outside perspective. It might be kind of hard to find, I don't think its got the same popularity as the Trailer Park Boys I'm a developer and sys-admin for a small company in Red Deer, Alberta.
I was born and raised in Canada. The first time I ever heard of "Canadian bacon" was on a visit to California, when I was 17*. The next time was here at Slashdot (today) and I'm now more than twice that age, now.
* It was also the first time I ever head of Moosehead beer, but I've had a few encounters with that one here since then.
2) David Dodge did same thing here in Canada, and, for the first time ever was successful in controlling it where you Americans failed -- there was no recession.
3) Just because the Iraqis do it to you doesn't make it right to do it to them
4) On topic, I really have no basis for comparison, but having grown up and now going to school and working in Canada, I don't think I could possibly want to be anywhere else. The only real downsides are there are only 10 stat holidays in the year, there is a slightly higher tax rate (but that goes to pay for health care among a lot of other government programs), and if you commute, driving through snowstorms sucks -- but it doesn't snow everywhere...B.C. hardly gets any.
I haven't really seen these issues addressed yet.
Canadians are much left of Americans politically. Polls consistently show that only 10% of Canadians would vote Republican. This is reflected in their views on many social and political issues. If you are republican you should move to Alberta which is the most 'American' of the Canadian provinces. I've heard that this is true in all Western countries: most of the population would vote Democrat if they could. (This probably pleases the Democrats, but doesn't bother the Republicans at all.)
Canadians are less religious than Americans. Well, they are still religious but in a quieter and political way. Religion is a much less politically and geographically focussed in Canada. For example, being strongly religious in the US makes you vastly more likely to vote Republic and to live in certain parts of the country. This is not true in Canada. (BTW, I think that Canada is more Catholic and the US is more protestant).
The media is also much different. I compared the Canadian, American, and British media during the recent war in Iraq (and much of its aftermath). The American coverage was totally different than that in the other two countries.
Here's an example of two of these that caught my attention recently. I heard that Fox news is having a spat with the Globe and Mail. Fox is accusing the G&M of being too left wing. What's bizarre about this is that the G&M has been the voice of the business community in Canada for as long as I can remember. No one in Canada would ever accuse it of being to left wing.
Oddly enough I was talking to a friend about this last night at dinner.
It blows random particles off and from inside your clothing onto a tray. This tray is then analyzed by a machine to see if theres any dangerous particles (such as major elements to create explosives/bombs). If its detected they then search to see if you are carrying any explosives or what not.
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).
In my experience for middle class individuals in comperable areas it is about the same. The spread is wider in the US. Upper middle class is a bit higher, lower is a bit lower.r dale/2004/ 05/11/455050.html
Now lets attack the myths.
#1 Taxes
They are nearly 50% in Ontario.
http://money.canoe.ca/Columnists/Leathe
Note this includes income tax, sales tax, property tax, and the hidden taxes (user fees for government services, sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and gas taxes.
#2 Lifestyle
In my opinion you need somewhere about halfway between the exchange rate and the direct dollar figure assuming comperable areas. $40k US would be about $50k CDN
#3 Unemployment
I agree basically, Also note different states have different laws.
#4 You have to play the game right and have skills, it takes a year or so. But some people may take years. And of course demand occupations or those wtih big money are easier.
EI only covers maternity leave for a short time, maternity 15 weeks, parental 20, and sickness 15. I'd check it out before I knocked up my gf.
Hockey is easily the most popular, but so are other sports. You can go to a lot of sports bars and get any sport that is played. European football (soccer) time gets pretty nuts in some areas.
Work environments are about the same, but you really have to consider the city attitude, working in different US cities probaly has about as much variation as working across Canada.
You forgot coffee, everyone drinks it, and there are coffee shops everywhere (I'm from Ontario remember)
As an American working in Montreal for more than 2 years now, I have always said that Montreal is a wonderful city, and in my opinion, the best city I have ever been to (and I have been to quite a few, including Europe and the US). The people here are fantastic, and it's just a wonderful environment. And even for a non french speaking person like myself, adjusting to the city and the culture was no problem.
Now, granted, I had some help (I moved up here for work and for my girl, who I met online (IRC), and yes, we are still together), so I may have had it easier.
But still, it's a great city. Much more free up here than in the US, as the minds of people are more European, and much more liberal.
Jason Lotito
It is not always the case that taxes will be lower. I worked in California a few years ago, and my taxes were actually higher than Alberta. It really depends on what state and province are being compared.
It doesn't matter anyhow. It's all really a scam. You use the lowest octane recommended by your engine manufacturer - unless you mess with your compression ratios or mod your engine to run at much higher temps, higher octane does absolutely nothing in a car other than prevent engine knock by delaying combustion.
There is actually more energy/volume in lower octane gas - octane just prevents early burning. If you already aren't getting early burning, you aren't in need of higher octane.
Actually...there was a documentary by Michael Moore called "Bowling for columbine", one of the points in the movie was why we had more gun violence than canada and he broke down the points most people make (More violence on US TV, more guns in US, etc..) and these points were basically false (as he proved one by one), for the most part US and Canada have the same number of gun ownerships per person....
The second clip is just as bogus as the first. Clinton didn't influence the advent of HTML and the resulting, massive speculation on the stock market. It's ludicrous to blame a president for that.
Hmm, you sound convincing. Perhaps one shouldn't blame (or credit) a president for flukes in the economy (even if you don't understand what caused the dot-com bubble...hint: it wasn't HTML).
blame Reagan and all the easily fooled people who voted for a Hollywood actor with wonderful, soundbite answers to complex issues.
Wow, hope you didn't injure yourself spinning around that quickly.
The truth of the matter is that Enron and their ilk ignored laws already on the books. New laws would change nothing. Instead, enforcement of existing laws is the real answer, and the lack of enforcement during the Clinton administration was the cause of not just the accounting debacles at Enron and company, but also the dot-com bubble (which were really two sides of the same coin). For more information, see here.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is Canadian labour laws. In Canada, they are:
There's a lot more legal recourse here, so when the companies screw over their employees, they at least have to use lube.
2) David Dodge did same thing here in Canada, and, for the first time ever was successful in controlling it where you Americans failed -- there was no recession.
No recession here? Hahahahaha!
Okay, maybe there wasn't a recession in the strictest sense, but I can assure you...
Personally, I'll go stateside in a second as soon as George Dubya is out of office. He's even more draconian than the Canadian government "protecting" us from unpleasant things and "erosion of Canadian culture".
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I've been to Eastern and Western Canada (never middle Canada) several times.
It seemed to be very expensive to live there. I live on the low side of middle class in a moderately priced West Coast USA city, and BC seemed to be rather expensive. Especially the provincial coupled with the federal sales tax, the various GSTs PSTs VATs whatever. The last time that I went I was really happy to get back to Washington state where everything was cheaper.
La situation en Quebec est plus difficulte si vous ne parlez pas ce que on crois serait francais la.
If you couldn't read the sentence above as fast as the one before it, reconsider moving to Quebec. They tend to rather touchy about their quaint local legacy language. If you studied a little French in school because French was the cool language to study instead of studying Spanish (which is the only language that Americans should seriously consider studying as it's not even a 'foreign' language here anymore), well then, yes, check out Quebec. Do, however, spend a few months watching DVDs with the language track set to French beforehand.
French is deceptively difficult language for Americans: it's spoken about 20-30% faster than English and has many subtle differences in the vowel sounds that aren't recognized in English. By the way, if you set the DVD audio track to French and the subtitles to French, you'll find that they are rarely the same. It seems that the movies generally get translated twice at different times, once for audio and once for titles. Plus neither of the two translator teams go by the original screenplay. Bit of a pain for language learners, but that was not its intended purpose. All in all, it's worth the trouble, because Quebec is North America's lost undiscovered country. [It's strange that due to NAFTA even Mexican products sold primarily in Mexico often have French translations on their boxes]
One last tip, don't hide sensitive materials from BC in your car at the same height of a dog's nose. Hollow door handles, tail lights, door panels, ect... Bad idea. Best leave Canadian pleasures behind, after all, America is best handled in typical American style: drunk.
I live in Michigan so I meet quite a number of ex-Candadian who left and will never go back. Mostly because of the healthcare system. Sure it's free, but the problem is that you're always on waiting lists for even simple procedures. Some people die waiting for treatment. Also, they complain about the very high taxes.
But like my title says, my opinion is biased because I only hear from those who left Canada, not from those who love it and choose to stay.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Ravenswood Hospital is actually a mental health facility...
Oh, my...that explains why I was born there. My mom must have escaped before the papers were signed.
What?
Actually, the U.S. has way more guns than Canada, even per capita. Something like 0.25 for Canada and 0.82 for the U.S. We kick their ass when it comes to gun ownership. I got those numbers from some Canadian gun control site, but they are probably accurate.
* Canadian business seems more fixated on process and bureaucracy. My employer is a global corporation, and even within the same company there is more paperwork and business processes seem more combersome than in our American offices.
Do you by any chance make software in Vancouver? That's spot on with my observations of the Vancouver branch of the company I work for. They have bureaucracy ad absurdum, and it doesn't do very much good. Process is a good thing, and our American offices are sorely lacking it it, yet the process-burdened Vancouver office consistently produces our worst quality software. As in, the uptime of said software is measured in days. I was doing some tests once that involved a Vancouver produced product and accidentally left it running over the weekend. When I came in Monday the system wasn't accepting any network connections. I turned on the monitor and discovered the system was out of virutal memory. A memory leak in the Vancouver program had eaten it all in less than 60 hours. And by the way, this system had a gig of RAM.
A little bit of an off topic rant. Standard business processes can be a good thing, but if you have them, then please make sure they're actually accomplishing something other than killing a lot of trees to make the documents.
(No, I'm not going to say what company I work for.)
Actually, we do get a few Jehovah's Witnesses and a small proportion of enthusiastic (generally born again) Christians, but there is no overall cultural pressure for this sort of thing.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
ACtually, the rise of the megacorps is due to the insane way we tax investments in the U.S.
Read Milton Friedman's analysis for the details, but essentially since investors are taxed more heavily for investing in companies that pay dividends than for investing in companies that plow their profits into expansion, naturally the investors invest in companies that keep reinvesting their income in favor of growth. This is why Enron and MCI were so popular, they kept growin dramatically by acquiring companies left and right.
The best way to end this troubling trend is to dramatically reduce the taxation of dividends like was done by Bush the younger ( I didn't vote for him, don't like his policies much, but occasionally he does something sensible).
Of course most people who oppose the dominance of huge corporations seem to oppose the very steps required to gently bring about the end to their dominance...
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Note that the current Administration spent months denigrating the above mentioned BLS numbers when they made the economy look like it was in bad shape and now that it makes it look good they claim it to be the gold standard.
The "opposition" has been doing the exact reverse, so don't try and claim they're any better.
I know people in many places, including Denver and Silicon Valley who are now at 3-4 years out of work. I know a ton of recruiters, I know a lot of HR people in a lot of states. It's not getting better.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I'm a Canadian. I've lived on the West Coast, in Winnipeg, and in Eastern Ontario. I also spent a year in the U.S., living in L.A. (Pasadena), and have been close to several Americans over the past 15 years.
I've worked in the public sector (universities and health care as a medical physicist) and in the private sector (largish public software company, several smaller private firms.) I now own my own company (http://www.predictivepatterns.com).
In one of my previous positions the company was run by Americans but staffed by Canadians, and it made me acutely aware of the cultural differences between the two countries. The Americans wanted cheer and ethusiasm. The Canadians weren't having any. They produced solid results, but they just couldn't be all happy and excited about it, and they found the Americans' attitudes extremely wearing. The Canadians' attitudes drove the Americans nuts.
So an American coming to Canada shouldn't be fooled by the fact that most of us speak something like the same language and have some other similarities. Canadians are different. We are more small-c conservative and more small-l liberal. We are stupid and wasteful in less obvious ways than Americans. We own lots and lots of guns but hardly ever shoot anyone with them.
Our national govenment is the only one in the G8 that has its fiscal house properly in order--we have run a surplus for long enough that I can't remember offhand the last time we had a deficit (sometime in the mid-90's) and we are steadly paying down our national debt. Most provincial governments are in less good shape, but still take fiscal probity seriously.
As a business-person, I love it here. You can incorporate nationally on-line for a total of $220. The federal government is a world-leader in supplying services electronically. Labour laws are a lot tighter here than in the U.S., but the work-force is generally well-educated and even unions are a lot more reasonable than they were 20 years ago. Taxes are somewhat higher, but this is largely compensated for by not having to pay for private health insurance.
The per-capita cost of health care is significantly lower in Canada than the US. We have a three-tier health care system, in which basic service is paid for via taxes, small levels of enhanced service are available for relatively small fees, and the very rich have U.S. hospitals ready to serve them right across the border.
The basic level of care for a wide range of things is as good or better as the U.S. average, but it's widely recognized that the basic health-care system is increasingly broken. If how we dealt with the federal deficit is any indication, there will be a decade of sometimes quite nasty debate that will end in a fairly broad concensus on what to do, and we'll do it.
Americans sometimes see that we are polite, and think us weak. They see that we are calm, and think us passive. They see that we are content, and think us stupid. They are wrong on all counts.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Unfortunately we do have a patriot act that was introduced soon after USA introduced theirs.
e /b ills/government/C-17/C-17_3/C-17TOCE.html
http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/chambus/hous
I'm a Canadian and must point out that the weather will affect you win ways you never considered. Depending on how far north were talking about. Southern Ontario is like the northern states but go to the weather network website and look at the average yearly weather patterns of the cities you're considering and decide if you want to hack those conditions. Considered BC because they kinda get the best of both the summer and winter world.
Also make sure that you're going to meet the requirements for getting a SIN number that will let you work. (Not easy with the level of Asian competition from main land Chain these days. (Seem stupid that we don't let Americans and Canadian move freely within North America. It's not like ether sides is going to rush over the boarder)
- CEOs usually don't have to take responsibility for screw-ups beyond losing their jobs. This lowers the bar for deciding to buy another company.
- Companies have the rights of individuals. This means:
- During tough economic times, weaker parties can't survive on their own, but hold IP that their competitors don't want to go to someone else.
- Companies can sue each other into oblivion, resulting in #1.
- Companies have little real incentive to pay dividends, thus most don't, instead churning money back into themselves.
- By its very nature, capitalism tends to lead to either oligopoly or monopoly (though they usually eventually collapse) because in a sufficiently large group of competing forces, one or a few of them will always come up with some significant cost-cutting or quality-enhancing measure that puts them way ahead of their competition, resulting in an artificial imbalance that tends towards consolidation (or bankruptcy, if the stronger companies have nothing to gain from buying the weaker ones).
If anything, reducing the taxation of dividends will make things worse. Figure that most people don't pay much attention to the issue and just let their tax preparer handle those issues. The ones who pay attention to taxation of dividends are the uber-rich---the ones investing large sums of money. Thus, this will result in the richest few percent of the population having significantly more money that they can play on the stock market.While government can be one of the forces that creates the artificial imbalance, that imbalance is more often related to cost of entry into some aspect of the market.
Take, for example:
- IBM
- Ma Bell
- Microsoft
- TV, Radio, Motion Picture, and Music industries
- Microprocessors (just a handful of major players)
A business could be one tiny company out of a thousand or a much larger company out of five. Guess which one most businesspeople would rather run?Now, tell me... do you think they'll spend their money on a company that isn't trying to grow or a company whose goal is to become the single dominant player in a market? Don't you think that CEOs of companies will thus continue to try to buy other companies (particularly since many of these are the same people)?
No, the rise of the megacorps was inevitable. It's a product of a broken system whereby corporations have too many rights and are too unregulated. As long as consolidation is rewarded through -significantly- lower bills, more value for investors, and much higher overall profit, no amount of reduction in dividend taxation is going to make a significant dent in the situation.
The way to solve this is to avoid rewarding companies for merging. Make it economically undesirable for a company to make too much money without ploughing it into charitable causes or distributing it as dividends, in much the same way that people making huge amounts of money pay a larger percentage of the tax burden. This -directly- attacks the trend towards overconsolidation, and is the -only- effective means for controlling this natural tendency of the corporate world.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I was curious about these privately held companies. According to Forbes, the top ten largest (in terms of annual revenue) U.S. based privately held companies in 2003 were:
1. Cargill
2. Koch Industries Inc.
3. Mars
4. Publix Super Markets
5. PricewaterhouseCoopers
6. Ernst & Young
7. Bechtel
8. C&S Wholesale Grocers
9. Meijer
10. HE Butt Grocery
(I think 3. should read Mars Defense Force.)
So, do you work for any of these? Does anyone know if these companies are better ("nicer") employers than are public corporations? What about privately held companies in other countries?
Go to Germany if you want real beer. (Sorry, but it had to be said. I have not visited Prague but I have visited much of Canada and Germany (and Scotland). Canadian beer easily beats the "drink" called beer in the U.S. but compared to Europe, ... sorry Canada.)
A couple quick notes:
Companies have little real incentive to pay dividends, thus most don't, instead churning money back into themselves.
Right, that one was his argument.
No, the rise of the megacorps was inevitable. It's a product of a broken system whereby corporations have too many rights and are too unregulated.
I agree that it was inevitable, but the rest of your statement seems to presume that the very existence of megacorps is worse than a decrease in rights and an increase in regulation, a premise that I don't agree with. Especially since we've seen that with increased globalization, most corporations respond to regulation and taxation by moving more of their functions to less regulated countries. It's naive at best to tell corporations that they're the root of all evil, tax them, tell them what they can and can't do, then complain when they choose to take their business elsewhere.
Lastly, I think you left out the significance of branding and lock-in. People don't buy McDonalds or Sony or Microsoft more often just because there happens to be more of it out there. They buy those products because they are familiar with the brands, or because it will work with all their other Sony and Microsoft stuff. I'm not saying this contradicts your other reasons, simply that it should be added to your list.
Bottom line, I agree that corporations will tend to get larger, in that same laws-of-physics way that rocks tend to roll down hill. The only way to change that is repeated intervention - picking the rocks up and carrying them somewhere else, or picking individual companies and splitting them up by force of law. I personally think that intervention is a terrible idea.
I notice the same things. I moved from the states to Halifax area. I think it has been the best move. The healthcare sux for the first 6 months, but that f'n Aetna for ya... My US company is paying US Healthcare for the first 6 months, then I will be on the Canadian health care system.
Don't you just love COBRA, the company pays $1200 a month for me and my family. COBRA is meant to assist while you are laid off.... who the fuck can afford that!!!! I was in that situation in the states 2 years ago, and the cost was $1100 per month, sorry when the nice Unemployment checks cap at $470... it came down to Food/Rent or Healthcare.
Halifax is very nice, clean, medium size city. We did get hit with a Hurricane, which I missed by a week, and then a major record setting blizzard almost 4 feet in 24 hours. When all was done, the snow was upto the windows on my neighbors minivan. :) that was cool - Snow piles that were 16 to 20 feet high! Kids were climbing them touching the street lights. LOL!
I did notice the work ethic is less back-stabbing here. People work more as a team then the Fuck You It's My Turn attitudes in the states or the Not In Front Of Me Asshole driving skills. I notice drivers are very different here... I mean they actually are very defensive although you do get the rude asshole from time to time... assholes are everywhere.
Pedestrians rule here.. I mean they literally do - every crosswalk a person is at, you stop dead. If you don't you are scorned by the peds, all kinds of obscenities, and if a cop is near by, you just got your first ticket. People here walk into crosswalks, don't even wait for it to be clear, its like "Im walking here". Usually you hear cars skidding, everyone knows "Tourists".
I thought man, anyone here ever visits Montreal or anywhere in the US, they will become speed bumps.
I thought of that, it is actually very curtious for the drivers to allow peds the right of way. The DMV here is awesome, I never seen a high tech, well organized, efficient system as the Nova Scotia DMV. :)
As for taxes, do the math, I was paying more in the US. My wife said it for years, man there are a lot of hidden taxes in the US. One paying for water is laughed at, there is no city tax, no Privilidge to Work tax, no school tax, no property tax, no garbage tax, no recyling tax, the list goes on. I agree, the US nickle and dimes the taxpayer to the point you only think you are paying low taxes. Plus no more weekly contributions to healthcare, I remember that starting at $4/week almost 8 years ago, when I left it was $55/week. Hmm someone is fuckin the US workers.
Oh almost forgot, the mass transit system here is unreal. Many people use buses here. I live close to work so I fill my car every 2 weeks. Everything is close here, you don't have to drive all over the place for something. Where I used to live, I averaged about 1.5 tanks a week because everything was spread out.
Lastly, the beer is awesome! There must be 10 or more breweries here. :) There must be about 50 bars, 100 or more resturants, every kind of food you can think of, awesome scenery, musical and other cultural events, strangers actually say Hi.
TV is awesome, well what I watch. I never got into sitcoms or any of the US crap anyway. I like the CBC and Comedy network (Comedy central) uncensored. The first time I heard SHIT used in the evening news, I was like Whoa! Holy Shit! Then when I heard the word Fuck used, I was like Holy Fuck! This is unreal! But the kicker, Janet Jackson's breast - LOL CBC must of shown it 14 to 20 times that night... LOL no censoring smudge or black box here, her boob exposed over and over and over and over, every friggen angel imaginable... black and white, color, I think they bought all the feeds and show them all. Some were even extreme closeups! LOL! I told my wife, Canada TV rules! T