What percentage of your yearly pay goes to the state? What kind of social protection does it give you? Free health care? Retirement? Or just the police and armed forces?

Canada tax is very high. 50% of your income goes to the government.

Health care : wait more than 5 hours to see a doctor in emergency. Wait for a couple of years for hip replacement.

Funny, stop being lazy and use Google.

They have universal health care in england as well.  A friend of a friend just had a baby over there.  Never saw the same doctor twice through the entire pregnancy.  Oh yeah, we need that here.

I think thats actually a bad thing. If you have the same doctor, he will be able to detect problems earlier because he already knows your clinical history.

And yeah, I could use Google, but asking people who live there gives way more information.

Never seeing the same doctor twice versus not being able to afford basic health care and/or being hounded into bankruptcy after being forced to seek treatment for some or other serious/catastrophic illness ... hmmm ....

*tap tap tap*

I'd choose to see different doctors each time.

Oh good - at least both sides have seized on the extremes as examples of the standard. :)

LOL!

I wasn't comparing to the US. Where I'm from you have the same doctor from craddle to grave. My entire family is watched by the same doctor on our local public clinic.

From an American perspective, Canadian taxes are very high.  That's compensated by wages being very low.  However, prices in Canada are also very low, at least for some things.  It's incredibly cheap to eat in Canada, and pharamaceuticals are very cheap as well, at least compared to the U.S. where there are no market forces in action.

It's cheap to eat in Canada? How much is a tuna roll in Toronto? Compared to one in Detroit?

Tuna rolls in vancouver are cheap :))))

When I was working in Canada it cost 1/2 to 1/4 to eat in Markham what it would cost in Grand Blanc for meals and restaurants of similar quality (equivalent town in terms of affluence, and conincidentally where I worked in Canada and lived in the U.S.).

As I recall, my marginally income tax rate was 46 or 47% last year.  This means that if I had made one more dollar, 47 cents of it would have went to the government.  On the other hand, I believe that in total income taxes I paid was closer to 30% of my gross total since we have a progessive income tax system.  On top of that we also have provincial sales tax, a federal goods and services tax, sin taxes on cigs + beer etc and municipal property taxes.  I have never tried to add up all of it but I believe tax freedom day was in July this year.

Ok, I looked it up and it was actually June 26th.

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=672

How can they set a date if income tax is different for each person?

Obviously, its an average.  With consumption taxes etc, its impossible to get it exact.  Unless you want to tell me exactly how many cigarette, beers etc you've had in the last year.

You can use this http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/taxcalc.asp to get a closer idea for an individual but its still only a guess.

"(Due to sample size limitations, please enter an income above $20,000 or below $120,000. Do not use a comma.)"

Interesting...

It's June 21st for me.

Nah, it's mostly useless since it doesn't tell me what benefits I get.

Teka-maki $2

In general, we find eating out to be cheaper in the US than in Canada, but prices are too regional to be very meaningful. 

OTOH, in Vancouver you can get really good food for not too much if you know where to look and if you don't mind the atmosphere.

When we were in Anaheim last month, we found it surprisingly cheap.  We ate at a couple mexican places and it was excellent (and cheap), also found a couple other good places.  Even inside Disneyland there were options that weren't too expensive.

nice sushi place in Toronto ...

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/toronto/D34351.html

nice sushi place in Chicago ...

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/chicago/D45123.html

Prices fairly close with Chicago being slightly more perhaps if tip is included.