One thing the author fails to note is that Taxes in Canada consume more of the middle class budget than Food, Clothing, Housing and Transportation combined. http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/02/04/the-vanishing-middle-ground/

damn all that in taxes on top of healthcare and higher education? oh wait, they don't pay for that, do they?

Symptoms of the oil age include . . .

. . . the myth of the middle class. That a man was worth more than the pittance his daily labor was worth.

Why?

Because oil allowed him to extend his production beyond his body. Without that energy, he's just another 2 legged animal who can pick the cotton, drag the wood, move the rocks.

In the early 1980's, I worked as an engineer in an auto parts plant in Indiana, and visited a sister factory in Ontario, same company. My counterpart there could not afford to own both a car and a house, as a young married man. He owned a car, an older Camaro, and his parents owned a house where he and his wife lived. He was a sensible, frugal fellow, very careful with his money. He made about $20,000 Canadian at the time, and I made about $28,000 US then, with all medical insurance paid. With an exchange rate of 70 %, his wages were about $14,000 US--half what I made. He visited our plant, and read newspaper ads, went to stores here and saw that prices were the same or less in the US compared to what he was used to in Canada. Very tough times for him there. He moved to Vancouver and did a lot better soon after that, but the taxes still ate up about half his income, if I remember rightly.

I think things have gotten better for the Canadians since then, and truly hope so. Fine people that I respect a lot. But I do not wish to live under their system of taxation.

Canada has a population of 33M people of which about 16M are actual taxpayers. The rest are too rich, too poor, too young, disabled etc. The total Public debt is around 4 Trillion dollars. Probably the average family is worse off than the USA. Yes we have Universal Healthcare, Universal this and that. All of our social systems are broke and unfunded liabilities just like in the US. In the end there are no free lunches. We also have a criminal level of taxation to pay for it all.

Before you get all excited about univeral medicare note that the Canadian medical system is a very good maintanence system ( I would suggest the average Canadian has better health than the average American), but if you have to go in for surgery you will have to wait in a very long line, if your over eighty the line seems to get longer. There are few specialists and a very large nember of our medical school graduates head for the USA upon graduation.

Our medical system can be compared to the Cubian system where the doctors that treated Fidel were brought in from Spain.

I would also like to post a warning for any of you that want to visit Canada this summer because of the low Canadian dollar. Goods and services are much higher than in the United States. Equivalent hotel romms are about $20US higher, food about the same but portions are smaller. Goods range from about 10 to 30 percent higher in US dollars and gasoline is about $2.65US to $2.75 per US gallon. Also you will have to pay sales tax, however if you submit you receipts and fill in several "simple" forms you can get most of it back.

Where's Nickel when you need a foaming at the mouth nationalist to jump in and defend a place?

The fact is the Canadian Taxpayers are tapped out and our social safety net is unfunded.

Isn't it much the same in all countries where neo-liberal trickle down policies have been fashionable? The rich get richer while the other 99% get screwed.

Where do you get these tax statistics? Sounds like something from the Fraser Institute or other astroturf shills.

Let me guess you live in Canada, and you haven't figured out your own tax bill yet? Do you know how much of your property/money is confiscated in taxes each year in Canada?

héhé in belgium it's about 50%
and i would be ok with the system IF there was an opt-out

He has to take a break to recharge his foam glands every so often.

There has been a mercantile class since long before the age of oil. And many of them were considerably wealthy. The use of oil has just artificially expanded the size of the middle class.

You would certainly not be alone in suggesting that. The average Canadian has a life expectancy 2 years longer than the average American.



This is the discrepancy between a market based medical system and a rational medical system. In a market based medical system, 80 year olds get surgeries right and left, everyone sees a hand surgeon when they get a hang nail etc. In a rational medical system it is recognized doing more surgeries often means worse overall health not better overall health, especially when the patient is already elderly and in frail health. It is likewise recognized that specialist are expensive, overutilized, and generally don't do anything that a generalist couldn't have done for half the price.

The bottom line is that Canadians have a better healthcare system and live longer. Meanwhile the Canadian government pays much less per Canadian citizen for healthcare than the US government does per US citizen (that's not even considering all the money that individuals and insurance companies pump into the US health industry). I don't think that necessarily means that we can just import the Canadian system into the US. IMHO, socialized medicine in the US would almost certainly be contracted out to Halliburton who would spend billions of dollars figuring out more and more inventive ways to do nothing. Doctors would spend all day everyday filling out paperwork and absolutely no one would take care of the sick people. If you want to pit the two against each other though, there's just no contest. The Canadian system is WAY better.