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Canada will do much better joining US (and distancing itself from declining EU and its disastrous policies). The US is much better managed; the results speak fo

• wesselbindt 2y ago
  I truly cannot tell whether you're joking. If you're not, I'd love to pick your brain. I'm very interested in what standards you have and why you have them.
  • ripbozo 2y ago
    The user also calls unions a cancer on society, that tells you everything you need to know.
    • aborsy 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • messe 2y ago
      Not an uncommon opinion on this site, sadly. There are some viewpoints on here that seem utterly alien to me.
      • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        There has been a shift in outlook among many in our profession, and this place has definitely come to reflect that. Huge difference between Trump Round 1, 2016 and now, in terms of how this stuff is discussed.
  • echoangle 2y ago
    Poe's law in action.
• kspacewalk2 2y ago
  Long term, maybe. Short and medium term, let's see if you guys tear yourselves apart in a civil war or some other footgun. Nothing other than internal shenanigans can possibly threaten overwhelming US hegemony, after all.
• jasoneckert 2y ago
  The opposite would be better for the US. If the US joined Canada, they could benefit from universal healthcare, schooling, and responsible gun laws within a short period of time, given the available resources that would be added to the Canadian system.
  • raydev 2y ago
    > they could benefit from universal healthcare Having lived on both sides of the border for many years, Canada first needs to improve its version of "universal healthcare" before making a pitch like this.
    • jasoneckert 2y ago
      With US monetary resources, this would be near immediate (and welcome)
    • atmosx 2y ago
      Fair, but Europe has really good healthcare system even though we Europeans whine a lot about it getting worse and worse every year.
    • wvenable 2y ago
      The enshitification of health care has been happening whether your bill is paid by taxes or by insurance. Both systems were probably better a few decades ago.
  • aborsy 2y ago
    This is wishful thinking. The quality of public healthcare in Canada has been declining. In particular, the waiting times are long. Those who are well off go to US for important timely care. The gun violence in US is higher, but the chances of that impacting you are low, if you avoid problematic areas.
    • analog31 2y ago
      The waiting times for healthcare in my part of the US are extreme, and are complicated by things like prior approval. It varies a lot depending on where you live. For instance my parents were able to get same-year medical appoints in southeast Michigan. My mom recently moved to my state, and is appalled at having to make appointments a year or more in advance. She has talked about flying back to Michigan for her appointments. Your chances of gun violence are also greatly lowered by not having a gun.
• johnnyanmac 2y ago
  depends on how rich each individual is. US is great if you're rich enough to pay for any medical emergencies out of pocket and you want investor money for explosive growth.
  • huqedato 2y ago
    Right. In US how many are rich like this against how many aren't ? 1 in 100 ? Less? I would say US is not a country for working (normal) people like me. I prefer to live in EU, now and forever.
• epolanski 2y ago
  Gonna tell you a secret, the world isn't black and white, while there are areas such as the economy where we struggle to compete as an European I would never want to live in the US again (I studied in Columbus Ohio for 7 months as an exchange student at OSU and traveled US multiple times). The streets here are clean, spotting a homeless person is borderline impossible even if you try, in US I've seen tents, bidonvilles, homelessness everywhere, drugged zombies as soon as you entered the wrong streets in basically every city. There's much less anxiety around healthcare or education here, violence and crime are very different too. My 180k people city hasn't seen a murder (outside very few caused by family violence, which are virtually the only cause for murders in my country) in decades. Actually now that I think about it, I also found Canada (where my wife has family that emigrated there 80 years ago) to be better in all those regards. Have you ever crossed from Canada to US at Niagara falls? If you did and walked more than 500 meters you know what I'm talking about. Mind you, there's no doubt US does many things great, as an engineer and wannabe entrepeneur I know US would've given me more chances, but believe it or not, not everybody wants to live the american way and money isn't everything if you have to use it to feel safer and less anxious in guarded neighbourhoods like some of my best friends in US live in. There's countless things that US does great, and that does awfully, different people and cultures may weigh the pros/cons differently.
  • buzzert 2y ago
    With respect to your lived experiences, as a fan of the US I would just like to say that it is a country of 330m+ whose physical presence spans a majority of a major continent, so I would encourage you not to generalize us based on what you saw in Columbus. That would be like me visiting Paris (a city I particularly did not enjoy) and generalizing all of Europe!
    • lucb1e 2y ago
      What of this is not true for the rest of the country then? I haven't visited at all but what the comment above you mentioned (basically the woes of limited social mobility, bad employment terms including tying healthcare to it if you're not rich, insane incarceration, etc.) is the kind of stats and stories I'm familiar with. The country does some things well also, as the commenter above also said, but it's not a place either of us would recommend most people to live after having known EU life. If there is even 10% of the 'major continent' that is not as described (besides Canada), I'm genuinely curious to know of it
• atmosx 2y ago
  Interesting. How do you define "success"? Is the average American Joe really better off than the average European Joe? In the U.S., a cancer diagnosis can lead to bankruptcy, while treatment is free (or close to free) in most EU countries. Education is largely free as well, and you don't see people walking around armed like they’re in the Marine Corps. So, I'm not sure what benchmark we're using to measure this.
  • iknowstuff 2y ago
    Not to make a point in the overall healthcare funding discussion but cancer mortality is lower in the US. https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-comparison/ https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-compar...
  • bombcar 2y ago
    Which way are the immigrants flowing? If European Joe is better off than American Joe it should be a net flow to Europe, no? And I’ve seen way more people walking around with military weapons in Europe than I ever have in the USA - to be fair, they were the literal armed forces of the country, but still exceptionally weird to see as an American.
    • crote 2y ago
      Europe doesn't allow American Joe to migrate to it.
• valunord 2y ago
  Let’s set aside the jokes for a second... there’s a case to be made for Canada, Greenland, and the US forming a closer political and economic union. Not as some imperialistic land grab, but as a pragmatic response to shifting global power dynamics and shared interests. Just hang on - this isn't as crazy as it sounds! Think about it: - There would be a shared defense and infrastructure: NORAD already has the US and Canada tied at the hip for defense. Greenland, being strategically crucial to Arctic security, fits naturally into this alignment. Folding them into a single framework could simplify and strengthen North American defense. - Economic integration's already there: the US and Canada are each other's largest trading partners. NAFTA (and now USMCA) means much of the heavy economic lifting is already done. Greenland’s resources are becoming increasingly important as Arctic access opens up. - Population and resources balance out: Canada has land and resources but not enough people. The US has people and markets but strained resources. Greenland sits on untapped potential. There’s a complementary puzzle here that fits. Heck, I know a bunch of people that would move to Greenland in my circle of friends alone if it were a state of the Union. Think about the plausibility, even if you don' think it's likely. Sure, there's political gridlock in the US? Sure. But let’s not pretend Canadian politics are a beacon of stability. And Denmark’s hold on Greenland isn’t exactly ironclad. In unstable times, pragmatic unions can look attractive. And yeah, there are a lot of cultural differentials, but flipping flap jacks, look at the cultural divide between California vs Indiana or TX vs Vermont. Mergers like this happen incrementally - closer military cooperation, shared Arctic development, economic harmonization. Not saying this will/could happen tomorrow, but in a time of rethinking alliances, I think it’s less far-fetched than it sounds. If Europe can experiment with supranational governance, why can’t North America???? What are the realistic roadblocks here beyond just "politics?"
  • krapp 2y ago
    >there’s a case to be made for Canada, Greenland, and the US forming a closer political and economic union. Not as some imperialistic land grab, but as a pragmatic response to shifting global power dynamics and shared interests. Canada I understand. But why Greenland, other than the fact that Trump saw it in the window and decided he wanted it? The US already has a base there, it doesn't seem to be that vital to our strategic interests.
• gwbas1c 2y ago
  "The point" of Canada is that it's a separate country that doesn't have US politics. That being said, the general lockdown of the boarder after 9-11 has driven a lot of people who live close to the boarder nuts. Crossing the boarder used to be like crossing a state/province boarder. If you look at satellite photos of the boarder around Maine, NH, and VT, it's full of little country roads where you could cross unimpeded until 9-11, and private properties that go right up to the boarder. There's even a golf course that's in Canada, but the driveway is on a US street. You're allowed to enter from the US, but they follow Canadian laws (specifically, the Canadian drinking age.) Personally, I wish we could figure out how to resolve our (relatively minor) differences so we could keep an open boarder.
  • richiebful1 2y ago
    I'd love to see free movement of people and goods between US and Canada, EU-style. That's unlikely to happen anytime soon though
    • wvenable 2y ago
      At that point, Canada would just be a state. NAFTA went a long way to improving the movement and people between US and Canada.
  • iknowstuff 2y ago
    You spelled it this way so many times it reminded me of this scene https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6hrjWC3YLIA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6hrjWC3YLIA
  • bombcar 2y ago
    Maybe it’s only the online ones, but Canadians seem to have more fun discussing American politics than they do their own. Perhaps because it’s like the weather; something massive and powerful that could crush you at any time but you can’t change it.
    • gwbas1c 2y ago
      I'm American. It's harder to cross into the US, than Canada, for reasons I don't want to discuss here. I'll just leave it at this: It's really frustrating to have a long wait into your own country than any other country I've traveled to.
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• nitwit005 2y ago
  Reconciling the constitutions and laws would mean you'd basically be creating a new country. The Republican party seems to view any new possible states as free congressional seats for the Democrats, so I can't see enough votes for such a thing regardless.