It's actually really wild to think I spent a couple of years working in Boston more than a decade ago, and I used my zipcar subscription way more often than I've ever had to use a communauto in fake london (a city no one would mistake for having good urban planning).

The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.

There's wealthy America. The top 5% to 10% that have healthcare, have their own safety nets, don't need to worry about money, their kids go to select schools that they can buy into (mostly by buying into the right neighborhoods), an amazing pension plan, etc. My kids go to a fancy library with reading time, puppets and classical music. All the things I love about Canada and more.

That country is amazing and the quality of life is unparalleled unless you're obscenely wealthy.

The bottom 80 to 90% percent of Americans live a life that is far inferior to any western and even many developing countries. They have no safety nets, no job security, no retirement, housing insecurity, they're even the smallest accident away from ruin, etc.

In other countries people know roughly how badly or how well they're treated by the system. Only in the US have I experienced the level of brainwashing where people are thankful for the horrors of this system, and somehow wash away anything they see or hear about anywhere else in the world.

Because your family mostly decides if which America you live in, most people don't understand the other side at all and can't comprehend how they live.

And just think, those are the American areas most common to Canada.

There are places in America where those counterfactuals do not exist, where the necessities aren't locked behind counters, where community is thriving, and where the normality of civic life is an expectation.

I expect no honors for those parts of the country. If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.

Despite this, like the author, I was able to have an incredibly well rounded childhood full of activities through our recreation centers, a short 10 minute walk from my home (not so short in the winter!)

There are many times I look with frustration at the payroll taxes I incur paying my colleagues. Articles like this serve as a great reminder that my capabilities are not innate, but built through the sweat and tears of those before me.

I love Canada, and though I have had the incredible privilege to visit (and for short periods, live in!) many countries and every continent, there's nowhere I'd rather call home, nowhere I'd rather contribute to.

Canada may have a "go for bronze" attitude, but it doesn't have to stay that way. We can decide to go for gold, one day at a time.

I grew up leveraging many of the same programs, this post helped illuminate how lucky I was to have them. Thank you!

America has long been a place where hardship or trauma for a subset of the population has been seen as the system working "correctly".

It's just that the makeup of that subset has shifted over time (although much less so for black Americans).

You'll find many people here that will believe that without deprivation of basics and even comforts, nobody would want to pursue or achieve anything.

This is often believed by people living in communities that by virtue of wealth clustering provide all those things, and sometimes especially by the few people who escaped deprivation into comfort and security through their grit, thereby assuming that is the best route for all of society.

We think we did it all ourselves, without any helping hand up, while often being ignorant of our own privilege.

Achedemics recently claimed that herodtudus was wrong when he wrote in 500bc that the pyramids were built by slaves. Their evidence: archeolgy shows that the builders were given food, housing, and medicine. Were they "slaves" or did we just adjust the meaning of the word to conform to the barbarism of colonists?

so, if they WERE slaves...what would that make me in the modern US?

Is anyone currently moving from Canada to the US?

If so, are they the "smartest", or do they simply have different priorities than a lot of equally smart people?

I'm just a datapoint, but in Chicago suburbia i had all that the author laments as unavailable to American kids. Mom made sister and me take skating classes, though we already could (ice hockey on ponds with friends, figure skating classes for variety, though i didn't like that as much as hockey), no student debt (top 5 US engineering universities included one in my state), kick ass library bike ride away, awesome park district in a tree covered suburbia, and so on.

I mention this because I'm in no way unique among american kids (a couple decades or so later), and, with the author, we agree these things are great.

> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.

I wonder if the author would have a better outlook on their counterfactual American self if that person had grown up in a smaller town like myself. I can walk to the library, grocery store, school, park and coffee shop; nothing is locked behind shelves in our pharmacies or stores; my nephews are in skating classes and play in a little league Hockey team, in rural Iowa of all places.

Yes, infant formula, and yes, student debt. Canada has the US beat for sure in social safety nets.

As a tangent: I wonder how writing a piece on appreciating my own upbringing in rural America might be received.

As to who becomes a party leader: Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races, not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" swayed by short-term issues like egg prices (as in the US), but by people who have gone through a qualification filter.

Post-election, the PM must sustain the House's confidence, with no-confidence votes possible anytime. So it is not necessary to watch helplessly for 4 years while your PM destroys the country.