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Comment by EternalData | Hacker News Reader

For those people who are talking about salaries in Canada versus salaries in the United States -- I don't have a dog to pick in the fight, but I think cost of living is a really important consideration when you're looking to evaluate compensation differences.

Some people have put together prices and it came out that Toronto is about 31% cheaper to live in than SF. (https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/san-fra...). That adds up.

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The salary differences are more than 31% though- you can see differences of 100% to 150% at the junior level (without adding in the exchange rate, which adds another 30% on top).

That seems to say beer & wine are cheaper in Canada, which is ludicrously wrong, to the point where I question the methodology.

The thing is you can't look at it in percentage. If I go from 12000/year in housing to 36000/year in housing, that's 24000/year of difference.

If a DINK couple of engineers (to exagerate the number for example purpose) move from Canada to the US, their combined salary could go from 150k/year to 300k/year. That's a 150k a year of difference. Minus the difference in housing cost, we end up with 126k more, let say 85k after tax.

That buys you a lot of (cheaper in the US!) cars over a few years.

Salary are usually 1.5 to 3 time higher. You can save much more money.

Until you have to put kids through school or have a big medial emergency that isn't covered by your insurance.

There are very good public colleges in the US. They don't need to go to Harvard. Plus, if your kid in Canada wants to do medical school or dental school, you'll still be shelling out tens of thousands of dollars per year.

As for medical care, most tech jobs have very good benefits. If you have a major medical problem, you might be out $5K before you hit your out of pocket max. The higher wages and lower taxes in the US mean you can easily handle it (but you do have to plan for it).

Exactly, living in California or Ontario, if you're kid wants to go to Stanford or Harvard, it'll cost.

And you can't count on your kid getting into Waterloo, the only university anyone in SV/SF have heard of, it's very competitive.

When talking about tech, unless you're starting a company and don't have any capital yet, you have insurance. Often it will even be copay-free, and unlike the free stuff up north, dentist is included.

As people mentioned, there are a lot of cheaper options for school in the states. Americans just looooooove the expensive prestigious options.

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