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America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. The difference is the US, you basically need a job, or else you're one

America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. The difference is the US, you basically need a job, or else you're one broken ankle, complex childbirth, or infected hangnail away from complete financial ruin. People being able to take extra time to find the right job is a good thing for the economy. Better than being driven by an abject fear of not having a job.

k33n 7y ago
I don't think it's terribly strange to view lower unemployment numbers as something to strive for. The idea that I might not need a job (when I haven't accumulated the resources to support myself without one) is totally foreign to me, and not attractive at all. I grew tremendously as a person working jobs I didn't enjoy. I only work on what I want to now, and I couldn't imagine I'd be very satisfied with my life I didn't navigate to this position through hard work.
- burkaman 7y ago
  Do you think it's possible to work hard at something you enjoy?
  - mamon 7y ago
    It is possible, but it is also quite rare, and usually happens for higly paid, white collar jobs. I'm yet to meet, say, trash pickup guy that enjoys his job. EDIT: to clarify - it's not that I look down on any jobs. Trash pickup is very much needed profession. What I'm saying is: Let's say person wins a lottery and suddenly has all the money they need for the rest of their lives. I can imagine that many software developers will still continue to program, writers or musicians would continue writing novels or songs, but I'm pretty sure noone would voluntarily continue their trash pickup work.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      I know plenty of tradespeople who enjoy their work and find value and some fulfillment in what they do. Do they love it like I love programming? Maybe; maybe not, but it seems possible.
      - adamsea 7y ago
        True but tradespeople !== trash man or inkjet-printer factory worker (similar to example from an above post).
        sokoloff 7y ago
        My primary point was that these were not highly-paid, white collar jobs.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      It's also possible that people with jobs you are judgy about won't tell you they actually like the work that you look down upon. This is one of the ways prejudice is self reinforcing. People tend to frame things selectively in response to the audience in question. People in vulnerable positions are usually aware of it and acting to protect themselves.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  There are jobs that you don't enjoy but that will help you achieve a better future. Then there are jobs that do nothing but provide a temporary stop gap from financial ruin. The idea isn't that you don't need a job, the idea is that you are less dependent on finding a job right away so that you can find a good fit between your skills and your goals and your job. This not only will lead to a better life for you, but more overall economic productivity.
  - k33n 7y ago
    If working a job will prevent financial ruin, then it's a good job. No job has to be permanent.
    - bsanr2 7y ago
      There's no reason people should have to suffer "busy work" while they're looking for some place to be truly productive, just to assuage the grievances of Puritan work ethic folk. "Any job" doesn't help people find stable work as well as training and a safety net do. SOME jobs provide this, but forcing people into jobs that don't is counterproductive. This is a common misunderstanding people have.
    - adamsea 7y ago
      What if the job has terrible safety conditions and a high injury rate. Is it still good? I’m not arguing that it doesn’t provide some value if it staves off financial ruin, but, the world is composed of more than only “good” and “bad”. If it wasn’t things would be so simple that sites like HN would not exist.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > If working a job will prevent financial ruin, then it's a good job. No job has to be permanent. That seems to be the definition of an acceptable job. To me a good job is one which you wouldn't mind doing every day for the rest of your life. The occupation needs to actually be desirable in the long run, and a decent paycheck does not fit the bill.
      - 7y ago
- alsoh 7y ago
  Would you prefer a system which teaches you in let's say a high quality education system? If yes: imagine a world where more people are willing to do other jobs more social because money becomes less relevant.
- zzzeek 7y ago
  note: this is an "old man yelling at clouds" post. I hope readers can consume it in a way that they find valuable to their current perspectives. I have experiences with many jobs that were not enjoyable. By "not enjoyable", I don't only mean they were dull office jobs. I had a lot of jobs in my early twenties, often through temp agencies but not always: working in warehouses, working as a manual laborer in large institutional buildings (moving furniture etc), two different jobs working on factory assembly lines, working in old office buildings to pull network cable through ceilings and floors, working on receiving docks, etc. Well over ten or fifteen jobs, as they tended to last for a summer, or a few months or weeks. As someone with computer skills and ultimately a pretty promising career ahead of me, I always had the sense in these temp jobs that they were just that, "temporary". However, most everyone I worked with in these roles were not there as temps, they were the people for whom life had worked out such that these kinds of jobs were close to the best they were going to get. There is no amount of "hard work" that someone in these roles can apply to move to a new station in life, there are too many strikes against them: educational, cognitive/developmental, health-wise, criminal backgrounds, etc. that make it extremely unlikely they would ever have much better of a station in life. And like me, all of these people were entirely aware of this element of who they were; they were the "lifers". One of the worst jobs I had which I could only handle for about two weeks was working in a factory that manufactured rolls of ink ribbon for line printers and typewriters. My job was to be handed a large metal bar called the "spindle" onto which I would pull out 30 or so rolls, stick all the rolls onto the spindle with spacers in between them, then hand them off to this other woman who had whatever minor skill was required to put this spindle into the machine that would roll the ink ribbon onto them. You do this in a dark and smelly factory for 8 hours a day. This job was for me, a valuable experience, as I can look back on it with all the perspective offered by doing that kind of job. But for all the other folks working in that place including the woman who I handed the spindle off towards, that was it for them. They were all at most high school grad or less, they were people for whom there were no opportunities. The job paid minimum wage. They were "lifers". These people are counted as part of "the employed". But they live paycheck to paycheck with minimal benefits or health care, in a dangerous and unhealthy environment, low life expectancy, poor nutrition, all of it. I don't consider low employment numbers to be very interesting when one notes how miserable life is for so many of the "employed".
dcolkitt 7y ago
Your hypothesis does not hold up to the data. The unemployed in Canada experience the same penalty in life satisfaction as the unemployed in the United States: > On average, the unemployed experience lower life satisfaction than the employed by about 0.3 standard deviations in Canada and the United States, by 0.32 standard deviations in the United Kingdom and by 0.47 standard deviations in Germany.[1] Your claims relies on the assumption that unemployment in Canada is more tolerable than unemployment in the US. Yet large-scale surveys do not reflect that for the average jobseeker. Therefore we can conclude that higher unemployment in Canada vis-a-vis the US is almost certainly driven by a lower supply of jobs, rather than as you posit a lower demand for employment. The same also holds true for the major Western European economies surveyed. [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2018408-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2018408...
- HenryKissinger 7y ago
  Health care is not tied to employment in Canada, for one.
  - CivBase 7y ago
    Heath insurance is a benefit offered by some US employers as an alternative form of compensation. Employers get discounted rates because of how many customers they bring to the insurer and they pocket some of those savings while passing the rest on to the employees. You can get health insurance without having a job. It's expensive, but it's not like it's cheap through employers. Just cheaper. Health care - at least, treatment for life-threatening emergencies - is a right protected by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in the US.
    - vertex-four 7y ago
      Try getting healthcare in the US without health insurance, and try affording health insurance when you don't have good enough work. Yeah... thought so. You edited your post to add a line about emergency healthcare being a legal obligation of hospitals - we both know that emergency healthcare (i.e. "I am literally dying right this second") is not the total of necessary healthcare for many people. I invite you to try surviving very long as a diabetic when the only treatment option is to go to A&E when you are literally dying.
koheripbal 7y ago
Unemployment is defined as the percentage of people employed of those who WANT to work. It does not count those taking time off. That would be the UNDERemployment rate.
- extra88 7y ago
  I thought “underemployment” referred to people working less than full-time (or less than they want) and/or working at a job far below their skill level, e.g. a skilled machinist or college graduate working as a cashier. But yes, the standard unemployment rate that’s talked about does not account for a lower participation rate, people who could be working or looking for a job but aren’t.
- williamDafoe 7y ago
  https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 Clinton found a way to exclude all those pesky minorities. He renamed them from "minority" to "discouraged" workers and dropped them off the books! Pig ...
seanmccann 7y ago
As far as I understand — without private insurance in Canada, somebody with few resources in Canada is at risk of financial ruin from any of the health conditions you mentioned. For older Canadians, a pre-existing condition may not be covered, which means a serious condition could rack up significant medical bills. Edit: I should have specifically said that I'm talking about expensive prescription drugs and required ancillary care that is not paid for by the province. Also, each province is different. Ex: cancertaintyforall.ca
- sanj 7y ago
  This is flatly incorrect. The Canadian healthcare system doesn’t even have the concept of “pre-existing condition”. That term is deeply flawed and was constructed by the healthcare insurance system in the USA. The term used in Canada is “medical history”. I’m at an age where I’m watching my friends in Canada deal with family suffering from long term illnesses and ultimately, death. They all deal with anguish, grief, heartbreak, and in some cases depression. But none of them are dealing with medical bills.
  - seanmccann 7y ago
    Perhaps my error was in saying that the specific conditions that the OP listed would result in financial ruin. My experience is anecdotal from close relatives in Alberta having severe diseases early in life. Their drugs and "required care" was expensive and not entirely covered by their private insurance. Their private insurance had caps (annual and/or lifetime), and after, their medical history made it difficult or impossible to get private insurance with adequate coverage. The bills were significant, but maybe each province has programs to cover the difference for those that cannot afford the bills?
    - sudosysgen 7y ago
      In Quebec at least everything is free before 18, after 65, and for those whose financial situation is dire, including vision, drugs etc...
    - 7y ago
avsteele 7y ago
If your AGI is below ~$27K you have medicaid. As i understand it, CHIP covers kids higher the he income scale this too.
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  If you cross that barrier switching between unemployed and employed, there is mounds of paperwork. I wish I could cite a study, but I'm pretty sure people procrastinate / preventative health measures are less prevalent because of this red type.
- jellicle 7y ago
  For a single individual, if you make $18K gross you make too much for Medicaid. In 14 US states, if you make $0 you make too much for Medicaid.
  - SaintGhurka 7y ago
    I don't understand this. Are there 14 states where nobody gets Medicaid?
    - sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
      Not exactly. The ACA included an expansion of the Medicaid program, almost entirely funded by the federal government, that provides coverage to anyone making below the amounts other posted quoted. However, the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of this "expansion" if they want, and several states did. In those states they still provide pre-ACA Medicaid services - children, pregnant women, and a couple other groups are covered - but don't have general coverage for low-income people.
- cma 7y ago
  Only in states that expanded Medicaid, and that number is too high.
zzzeek 7y ago
> America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada I don't think that's actually true, I think it's a political talking point that we are all hit over the head with repeatedly. A key progressive talking point is that the issue of so-called "prosperity" is not as simple as "everyone has a job". This is where the issue of people having multiple jobs, minimum wage, benefits, unions, etc. all come into play but that all requires more cognitive overhead, something that is in scarce supply with a nation steeped in distraction.
- ykevinator 7y ago
  So we agree that prosperity is not as simple as everyone has a job
Retric 7y ago
Yet the official unemployment rate is really closer to the job seeker rate and largely meaningless when compared between countries, what really matters economically is the employment rate where Canada has been 1+% ahead for most of 2019. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/employment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/employment-rate, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate
DoreenMichele 7y ago
To be fair, American smugness about this is likely driven by the fact that most Americans lack perspective concerning how other systems work. They just don't get it that a better medical system that doesn't tie medical access to having a job at all brings stress levels down enormously.
- dfilppi 7y ago
  You dont need a job to have access to health care in the US. All you need is the ability to pay for the services you use.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    For most people, no job means both no medical insurance and also no ability to pay out of pocket. So I'm baffled as to how this is supposed to be a rebuttal.
    - jkoudys 7y ago
      It's doubly confusing, as you'll find unhealthy people have a much harder time earning the money in order to get well so they can work.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Yes, I live this first-hand. It's quite crazy making stuff.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    This is extremely pedantic and misses the point entirely, and I'm sure you know it.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > You dont need a job to have access to health care in the US. All you need is the ability to pay for the services you use. About 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense, and most wouldn't even be able to borrow any money. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-...
cpitman 7y ago
I travel around the US constantly, and have never heard anything remotely close to comparing unemployment with Canada. Any talk of unemployment is always internally focused, comparing the rate to the past.
- adventured 7y ago
  Americans overwhelmingly have no idea what the unemployment rate is in Canada, in my opinion. They certainly don't spend much time boasting about the US rate vs the Canadian rate. It's a staged premise - which was entirely unsupported - to launch into the America Bad talking point. If you don't use a primer to launch into that, it looks particularly biased on a forum. So what you do instead, is you set up something ugly (those boasting Americans!) that can never be backed up, and that provides your on-ramp. This is a comedy routine here on HN at this point. Consider that the Americans boasting premise was the whole foundation to the parent comment and the parent made zero effort to back it up (it'd be impossible to support, the US is far too large, insular, and diverse for it to be likely true). The same country that, yes, largely doesn't know where Iran is at on a map, pays deep attention to Canadian economic statistics.
TheBobinator 7y ago
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/employment-population-ratio-59-point-7-percent-unemployment-rate-4-point-7-percent-in-may.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/employment-population-rati... Pre-2000, 65% of adults 18+ were in the workforce; Today that sits at shy of 60%. You'd expect the cycle of liquidity crisis driven by reserveless lending would result in a stable graph over long periods of time, instead over an elongated period of time, it's pointing downard. The problem with this is you leave a lot of people on the sidelines\wayside, and it takes years of working, of gaining experience, even doing something like janitorial work, to be considered competent. Walmart has a drug rehab program today they run at many of their stores; they drug test 100 applicants, 99 fail the drug test. They have no other way of finding people to staff basic positions. The entire concept and point of minimum wage was to ensure people wouldn't fall into this kind of disarray and businesses that complain about minimum wage hikes are parasites that have to literally eat people alive to survive, except today they hire PR Firms to cover it up. This is not the way to run a society. A lot of the reason our government allows this to go on has to do with controversial tech firms like Uber being funded by foreign entiteis with questionable morals such as the Saudi Oil fund, the US Government allowing china to buy 100bn+ in bonds every year, and other such "arrangements". We had 2 presidential candidates last election the Russians government admitted to compromising. Congress has sold certain segments of people up the river and genuinely doesn't know how to get them out. If you look at the growth rate in US Census data and private studies of men over 45 never married, no chilren, and look at the trend and how that has been correlated with a declining fertility rate that's starting to rival the USSR's collapse. We haven't even begun to recover from 2000, and there's one heck of a powder keg forming. And none of those people who make up that powder keg care about whether or not our health system is superior or inferior to canada's.
- throwawaw 7y ago
  > Walmart has a drug rehab program today they run at many of their stores; they drug test 100 applicants, 99 fail the drug test. They have no other way of finding people to staff basic positions. Sorry for being the "cite please" guy, but where on Earth did you find this? It's not in your link.
  - 7y ago
blihp 7y ago
Historically the unemployment rate has just been one indicator of how the economy is doing. All else being equal[1], economy A with 5% unemployment should be doing better than economy B with 10% unemployment, at least from a job seeker's standpoint. The danger of being purely quantitatively driven by these historically useful metrics is that there is an absolute focus on keeping the numbers at the right level or moving in the right direction while simultaneously doing things that undercut the value of those metrics. In the previous century, falling unemployment numbers used to indicate that factory workers were returning to work at their old wage and benefits or better that new jobs were being created. However, today it often means that the factory worker who lost their job is now an Uber driver for a fraction of the pay. You used to see stories like 'factory X is bringing back Y thousand good paying jobs as it (re)opens a production line' now the story is 'unemployment is below 4%... shut up and like it' [1] If all else isn't equal, whether comparing economy A to economy B or a previous version of itself, you are right it isn't a meaningful metric at all.
sneak 7y ago
The infected hangnail case is because it’s illegal for the corner store to sell you $4 in antibiotics without a $200 doctor’s note, fwiw. This is an issue with the government, not the economy or medical system. They literally make cheap treatment illegal. PS: For anyone in this situation, search online for FISH MOX or FISH PEN. Amoxicillin and Penicillin respectively. Aquarium stores usually carry them. Saved my life a few times! Sadly, no longer on Amazon.
kazinator 7y ago
I think you mean, "you need a well-paid job, with heaps of medical coverage".
grawprog 7y ago
As a Canadian, who's been unemployed in Canada...just what??? Being unemployed was one of the most stressful times of my life. I had to hustle for odd jobs to pay bills, and the ≈$700 every two weeks for about 4 months I got from ei wasn't even enough to cover rent. I barely made it through and kept my place. The only reason I didn't end up homeless was finding a job within the last few weeks of my ei. There were days I didn't eat though.
- fartcannon 7y ago
  Now what would you do if you had a sudden medical emergency during your time on EI? In Canada, you'd go to the doctor and then continue you on your way. In the USA, with the situation you described above, you would now be homeless. And in debt. So yes, they're both stressful. But one is worse.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    >Now what would you do if you had a sudden medical emergency during your time on EI? I'd be fucked. I have no msp coverage currently and haven't for a couple years. I can't actually go to a doctor right now unless I get hurt at work and wcb covers it. You guys believe a lot of bullshit fairy tales about things up here honestly.
    - fartcannon 7y ago
      MSP payments is eliminated. Fairy tales come true. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/health-drug-coverage/msp/bc-residents/msp-premium-elimination-jan-1-2020 https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/health-drug-covera...
refurb 7y ago
America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. As someone who lives in the US, I’ve never heard anyone even mention Canada’s unemployment rate. It’s just not on the radar.
bobbydroptables 7y ago
>America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. I've literally never heard anyone in America discuss Canada's unemployment numbers in any context whatsoever. I think your premise may be off. Canada is also pretty tiny (smaller than California; much smaller GDP than California) so I'm not sure why we would care.
- jkoudys 7y ago
  Usually it's in the political context, as a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't fund healthcare/social programs/etc.
  - bobbydroptables 7y ago
    I wouldn't describe politicians trying to score cheap political points as "America" having a weird complex. I can promise you the average American does not have any thoughts whatsoever regarding Canada. It's not even on our radar.
- sdinsn 7y ago
  He is saying that people in Canada are less concerned about Canada's unemployment numbers than people in America are concerned about America's unemployment numbers.
  - bobbydroptables 7y ago
    If that were the case then the word superiority does not belong in that sentence. No average American has enough thoughts about Canada to have feelings of superiority about our economic statistics.
dang 7y ago
> America has a weird sense of superiority Please keep nationalistic flamebait off this site. It leads to nationalistic flamewars, which we seriously don't want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

k33n 7y ago

I don't think it's terribly strange to view lower unemployment numbers as something to strive for. The idea that I might not need a job (when I haven't accumulated the resources to support myself without one) is totally foreign to me, and not attractive at all. I grew tremendously as a person working jobs I didn't enjoy. I only work on what I want to now, and I couldn't imagine I'd be very satisfied with my life I didn't navigate to this position through hard work.

burkaman 7y ago
Do you think it's possible to work hard at something you enjoy?
- mamon 7y ago
  It is possible, but it is also quite rare, and usually happens for higly paid, white collar jobs. I'm yet to meet, say, trash pickup guy that enjoys his job. EDIT: to clarify - it's not that I look down on any jobs. Trash pickup is very much needed profession. What I'm saying is: Let's say person wins a lottery and suddenly has all the money they need for the rest of their lives. I can imagine that many software developers will still continue to program, writers or musicians would continue writing novels or songs, but I'm pretty sure noone would voluntarily continue their trash pickup work.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    I know plenty of tradespeople who enjoy their work and find value and some fulfillment in what they do. Do they love it like I love programming? Maybe; maybe not, but it seems possible.
    - adamsea 7y ago
      True but tradespeople !== trash man or inkjet-printer factory worker (similar to example from an above post).
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        My primary point was that these were not highly-paid, white collar jobs.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    It's also possible that people with jobs you are judgy about won't tell you they actually like the work that you look down upon. This is one of the ways prejudice is self reinforcing. People tend to frame things selectively in response to the audience in question. People in vulnerable positions are usually aware of it and acting to protect themselves.
shkkmo 7y ago
There are jobs that you don't enjoy but that will help you achieve a better future. Then there are jobs that do nothing but provide a temporary stop gap from financial ruin. The idea isn't that you don't need a job, the idea is that you are less dependent on finding a job right away so that you can find a good fit between your skills and your goals and your job. This not only will lead to a better life for you, but more overall economic productivity.
- k33n 7y ago
  If working a job will prevent financial ruin, then it's a good job. No job has to be permanent.
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    There's no reason people should have to suffer "busy work" while they're looking for some place to be truly productive, just to assuage the grievances of Puritan work ethic folk. "Any job" doesn't help people find stable work as well as training and a safety net do. SOME jobs provide this, but forcing people into jobs that don't is counterproductive. This is a common misunderstanding people have.
  - adamsea 7y ago
    What if the job has terrible safety conditions and a high injury rate. Is it still good? I’m not arguing that it doesn’t provide some value if it staves off financial ruin, but, the world is composed of more than only “good” and “bad”. If it wasn’t things would be so simple that sites like HN would not exist.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > If working a job will prevent financial ruin, then it's a good job. No job has to be permanent. That seems to be the definition of an acceptable job. To me a good job is one which you wouldn't mind doing every day for the rest of your life. The occupation needs to actually be desirable in the long run, and a decent paycheck does not fit the bill.
    - 7y ago
alsoh 7y ago
Would you prefer a system which teaches you in let's say a high quality education system? If yes: imagine a world where more people are willing to do other jobs more social because money becomes less relevant.
zzzeek 7y ago
note: this is an "old man yelling at clouds" post. I hope readers can consume it in a way that they find valuable to their current perspectives. I have experiences with many jobs that were not enjoyable. By "not enjoyable", I don't only mean they were dull office jobs. I had a lot of jobs in my early twenties, often through temp agencies but not always: working in warehouses, working as a manual laborer in large institutional buildings (moving furniture etc), two different jobs working on factory assembly lines, working in old office buildings to pull network cable through ceilings and floors, working on receiving docks, etc. Well over ten or fifteen jobs, as they tended to last for a summer, or a few months or weeks. As someone with computer skills and ultimately a pretty promising career ahead of me, I always had the sense in these temp jobs that they were just that, "temporary". However, most everyone I worked with in these roles were not there as temps, they were the people for whom life had worked out such that these kinds of jobs were close to the best they were going to get. There is no amount of "hard work" that someone in these roles can apply to move to a new station in life, there are too many strikes against them: educational, cognitive/developmental, health-wise, criminal backgrounds, etc. that make it extremely unlikely they would ever have much better of a station in life. And like me, all of these people were entirely aware of this element of who they were; they were the "lifers". One of the worst jobs I had which I could only handle for about two weeks was working in a factory that manufactured rolls of ink ribbon for line printers and typewriters. My job was to be handed a large metal bar called the "spindle" onto which I would pull out 30 or so rolls, stick all the rolls onto the spindle with spacers in between them, then hand them off to this other woman who had whatever minor skill was required to put this spindle into the machine that would roll the ink ribbon onto them. You do this in a dark and smelly factory for 8 hours a day. This job was for me, a valuable experience, as I can look back on it with all the perspective offered by doing that kind of job. But for all the other folks working in that place including the woman who I handed the spindle off towards, that was it for them. They were all at most high school grad or less, they were people for whom there were no opportunities. The job paid minimum wage. They were "lifers". These people are counted as part of "the employed". But they live paycheck to paycheck with minimal benefits or health care, in a dangerous and unhealthy environment, low life expectancy, poor nutrition, all of it. I don't consider low employment numbers to be very interesting when one notes how miserable life is for so many of the "employed".

dcolkitt 7y ago

Your hypothesis does not hold up to the data. The unemployed in Canada experience the same penalty in life satisfaction as the unemployed in the United States: > On average, the unemployed experience lower life satisfaction than the employed by about 0.3 standard deviations in Canada and the United States, by 0.32 standard deviations in the United Kingdom and by 0.47 standard deviations in Germany.[1] Your claims relies on the assumption that unemployment in Canada is more tolerable than unemployment in the US. Yet large-scale surveys do not reflect that for the average jobseeker. Therefore we can conclude that higher unemployment in Canada vis-a-vis the US is almost certainly driven by a lower supply of jobs, rather than as you posit a lower demand for employment. The same also holds true for the major Western European economies surveyed. [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2018408-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2018408...

HenryKissinger 7y ago
Health care is not tied to employment in Canada, for one.
- CivBase 7y ago
  Heath insurance is a benefit offered by some US employers as an alternative form of compensation. Employers get discounted rates because of how many customers they bring to the insurer and they pocket some of those savings while passing the rest on to the employees. You can get health insurance without having a job. It's expensive, but it's not like it's cheap through employers. Just cheaper. Health care - at least, treatment for life-threatening emergencies - is a right protected by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in the US.
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    Try getting healthcare in the US without health insurance, and try affording health insurance when you don't have good enough work. Yeah... thought so. You edited your post to add a line about emergency healthcare being a legal obligation of hospitals - we both know that emergency healthcare (i.e. "I am literally dying right this second") is not the total of necessary healthcare for many people. I invite you to try surviving very long as a diabetic when the only treatment option is to go to A&E when you are literally dying.

koheripbal 7y ago

Unemployment is defined as the percentage of people employed of those who WANT to work. It does not count those taking time off. That would be the UNDERemployment rate.

extra88 7y ago
I thought “underemployment” referred to people working less than full-time (or less than they want) and/or working at a job far below their skill level, e.g. a skilled machinist or college graduate working as a cashier. But yes, the standard unemployment rate that’s talked about does not account for a lower participation rate, people who could be working or looking for a job but aren’t.
williamDafoe 7y ago
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 Clinton found a way to exclude all those pesky minorities. He renamed them from "minority" to "discouraged" workers and dropped them off the books! Pig ...

seanmccann 7y ago

As far as I understand — without private insurance in Canada, somebody with few resources in Canada is at risk of financial ruin from any of the health conditions you mentioned. For older Canadians, a pre-existing condition may not be covered, which means a serious condition could rack up significant medical bills. Edit: I should have specifically said that I'm talking about expensive prescription drugs and required ancillary care that is not paid for by the province. Also, each province is different. Ex: cancertaintyforall.ca

sanj 7y ago
This is flatly incorrect. The Canadian healthcare system doesn’t even have the concept of “pre-existing condition”. That term is deeply flawed and was constructed by the healthcare insurance system in the USA. The term used in Canada is “medical history”. I’m at an age where I’m watching my friends in Canada deal with family suffering from long term illnesses and ultimately, death. They all deal with anguish, grief, heartbreak, and in some cases depression. But none of them are dealing with medical bills.
- seanmccann 7y ago
  Perhaps my error was in saying that the specific conditions that the OP listed would result in financial ruin. My experience is anecdotal from close relatives in Alberta having severe diseases early in life. Their drugs and "required care" was expensive and not entirely covered by their private insurance. Their private insurance had caps (annual and/or lifetime), and after, their medical history made it difficult or impossible to get private insurance with adequate coverage. The bills were significant, but maybe each province has programs to cover the difference for those that cannot afford the bills?
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    In Quebec at least everything is free before 18, after 65, and for those whose financial situation is dire, including vision, drugs etc...
  - 7y ago

avsteele 7y ago

If your AGI is below ~$27K you have medicaid. As i understand it, CHIP covers kids higher the he income scale this too.

Ericson2314 7y ago
If you cross that barrier switching between unemployed and employed, there is mounds of paperwork. I wish I could cite a study, but I'm pretty sure people procrastinate / preventative health measures are less prevalent because of this red type.
jellicle 7y ago
For a single individual, if you make $18K gross you make too much for Medicaid. In 14 US states, if you make $0 you make too much for Medicaid.
- SaintGhurka 7y ago
  I don't understand this. Are there 14 states where nobody gets Medicaid?
  - sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
    Not exactly. The ACA included an expansion of the Medicaid program, almost entirely funded by the federal government, that provides coverage to anyone making below the amounts other posted quoted. However, the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of this "expansion" if they want, and several states did. In those states they still provide pre-ACA Medicaid services - children, pregnant women, and a couple other groups are covered - but don't have general coverage for low-income people.
cma 7y ago
Only in states that expanded Medicaid, and that number is too high.

zzzeek 7y ago

> America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada I don't think that's actually true, I think it's a political talking point that we are all hit over the head with repeatedly. A key progressive talking point is that the issue of so-called "prosperity" is not as simple as "everyone has a job". This is where the issue of people having multiple jobs, minimum wage, benefits, unions, etc. all come into play but that all requires more cognitive overhead, something that is in scarce supply with a nation steeped in distraction.

ykevinator 7y ago
So we agree that prosperity is not as simple as everyone has a job

Retric 7y ago

Yet the official unemployment rate is really closer to the job seeker rate and largely meaningless when compared between countries, what really matters economically is the employment rate where Canada has been 1+% ahead for most of 2019. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/employment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/employment-rate, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate

DoreenMichele 7y ago

To be fair, American smugness about this is likely driven by the fact that most Americans lack perspective concerning how other systems work. They just don't get it that a better medical system that doesn't tie medical access to having a job at all brings stress levels down enormously.

dfilppi 7y ago
You dont need a job to have access to health care in the US. All you need is the ability to pay for the services you use.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  For most people, no job means both no medical insurance and also no ability to pay out of pocket. So I'm baffled as to how this is supposed to be a rebuttal.
  - jkoudys 7y ago
    It's doubly confusing, as you'll find unhealthy people have a much harder time earning the money in order to get well so they can work.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      Yes, I live this first-hand. It's quite crazy making stuff.
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  This is extremely pedantic and misses the point entirely, and I'm sure you know it.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > You dont need a job to have access to health care in the US. All you need is the ability to pay for the services you use. About 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense, and most wouldn't even be able to borrow any money. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-...

cpitman 7y ago

I travel around the US constantly, and have never heard anything remotely close to comparing unemployment with Canada. Any talk of unemployment is always internally focused, comparing the rate to the past.

adventured 7y ago
Americans overwhelmingly have no idea what the unemployment rate is in Canada, in my opinion. They certainly don't spend much time boasting about the US rate vs the Canadian rate. It's a staged premise - which was entirely unsupported - to launch into the America Bad talking point. If you don't use a primer to launch into that, it looks particularly biased on a forum. So what you do instead, is you set up something ugly (those boasting Americans!) that can never be backed up, and that provides your on-ramp. This is a comedy routine here on HN at this point. Consider that the Americans boasting premise was the whole foundation to the parent comment and the parent made zero effort to back it up (it'd be impossible to support, the US is far too large, insular, and diverse for it to be likely true). The same country that, yes, largely doesn't know where Iran is at on a map, pays deep attention to Canadian economic statistics.

TheBobinator 7y ago

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/employment-population-ratio-59-point-7-percent-unemployment-rate-4-point-7-percent-in-may.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/employment-population-rati... Pre-2000, 65% of adults 18+ were in the workforce; Today that sits at shy of 60%. You'd expect the cycle of liquidity crisis driven by reserveless lending would result in a stable graph over long periods of time, instead over an elongated period of time, it's pointing downard. The problem with this is you leave a lot of people on the sidelines\wayside, and it takes years of working, of gaining experience, even doing something like janitorial work, to be considered competent. Walmart has a drug rehab program today they run at many of their stores; they drug test 100 applicants, 99 fail the drug test. They have no other way of finding people to staff basic positions. The entire concept and point of minimum wage was to ensure people wouldn't fall into this kind of disarray and businesses that complain about minimum wage hikes are parasites that have to literally eat people alive to survive, except today they hire PR Firms to cover it up. This is not the way to run a society. A lot of the reason our government allows this to go on has to do with controversial tech firms like Uber being funded by foreign entiteis with questionable morals such as the Saudi Oil fund, the US Government allowing china to buy 100bn+ in bonds every year, and other such "arrangements". We had 2 presidential candidates last election the Russians government admitted to compromising. Congress has sold certain segments of people up the river and genuinely doesn't know how to get them out. If you look at the growth rate in US Census data and private studies of men over 45 never married, no chilren, and look at the trend and how that has been correlated with a declining fertility rate that's starting to rival the USSR's collapse. We haven't even begun to recover from 2000, and there's one heck of a powder keg forming. And none of those people who make up that powder keg care about whether or not our health system is superior or inferior to canada's.

throwawaw 7y ago
> Walmart has a drug rehab program today they run at many of their stores; they drug test 100 applicants, 99 fail the drug test. They have no other way of finding people to staff basic positions. Sorry for being the "cite please" guy, but where on Earth did you find this? It's not in your link.
- 7y ago

blihp 7y ago

Historically the unemployment rate has just been one indicator of how the economy is doing. All else being equal[1], economy A with 5% unemployment should be doing better than economy B with 10% unemployment, at least from a job seeker's standpoint. The danger of being purely quantitatively driven by these historically useful metrics is that there is an absolute focus on keeping the numbers at the right level or moving in the right direction while simultaneously doing things that undercut the value of those metrics. In the previous century, falling unemployment numbers used to indicate that factory workers were returning to work at their old wage and benefits or better that new jobs were being created. However, today it often means that the factory worker who lost their job is now an Uber driver for a fraction of the pay. You used to see stories like 'factory X is bringing back Y thousand good paying jobs as it (re)opens a production line' now the story is 'unemployment is below 4%... shut up and like it' [1] If all else isn't equal, whether comparing economy A to economy B or a previous version of itself, you are right it isn't a meaningful metric at all.

sneak 7y ago

The infected hangnail case is because it’s illegal for the corner store to sell you $4 in antibiotics without a $200 doctor’s note, fwiw. This is an issue with the government, not the economy or medical system. They literally make cheap treatment illegal. PS: For anyone in this situation, search online for FISH MOX or FISH PEN. Amoxicillin and Penicillin respectively. Aquarium stores usually carry them. Saved my life a few times! Sadly, no longer on Amazon.

kazinator 7y ago

I think you mean, "you need a well-paid job, with heaps of medical coverage".

grawprog 7y ago

As a Canadian, who's been unemployed in Canada...just what??? Being unemployed was one of the most stressful times of my life. I had to hustle for odd jobs to pay bills, and the ≈$700 every two weeks for about 4 months I got from ei wasn't even enough to cover rent. I barely made it through and kept my place. The only reason I didn't end up homeless was finding a job within the last few weeks of my ei. There were days I didn't eat though.

fartcannon 7y ago
Now what would you do if you had a sudden medical emergency during your time on EI? In Canada, you'd go to the doctor and then continue you on your way. In the USA, with the situation you described above, you would now be homeless. And in debt. So yes, they're both stressful. But one is worse.
- grawprog 7y ago
  >Now what would you do if you had a sudden medical emergency during your time on EI? I'd be fucked. I have no msp coverage currently and haven't for a couple years. I can't actually go to a doctor right now unless I get hurt at work and wcb covers it. You guys believe a lot of bullshit fairy tales about things up here honestly.
  - fartcannon 7y ago
    MSP payments is eliminated. Fairy tales come true. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/health-drug-coverage/msp/bc-residents/msp-premium-elimination-jan-1-2020 https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/health-drug-covera...

refurb 7y ago

America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. As someone who lives in the US, I’ve never heard anyone even mention Canada’s unemployment rate. It’s just not on the radar.

bobbydroptables 7y ago

>America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. I've literally never heard anyone in America discuss Canada's unemployment numbers in any context whatsoever. I think your premise may be off. Canada is also pretty tiny (smaller than California; much smaller GDP than California) so I'm not sure why we would care.

jkoudys 7y ago
Usually it's in the political context, as a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't fund healthcare/social programs/etc.
- bobbydroptables 7y ago
  I wouldn't describe politicians trying to score cheap political points as "America" having a weird complex. I can promise you the average American does not have any thoughts whatsoever regarding Canada. It's not even on our radar.
sdinsn 7y ago
He is saying that people in Canada are less concerned about Canada's unemployment numbers than people in America are concerned about America's unemployment numbers.
- bobbydroptables 7y ago
  If that were the case then the word superiority does not belong in that sentence. No average American has enough thoughts about Canada to have feelings of superiority about our economic statistics.

dang 7y ago

> America has a weird sense of superiority Please keep nationalistic flamebait off this site. It leads to nationalistic flamewars, which we seriously don't want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html