The inequality is what she’s reacting to. Most people in my extended family are professionals or business owners. That class has a lot more money in the US. Top 1% in Canada is $315,000 while in the U.S. that’s outside the top 3%.
Yes, it's absolutely the case that people in our profession and adjacent do a lot better in the US than here.
And the situation for working class Canadians isn't great either right now -- housing prices have skyrocketed. Tariffs from economic warfare are destroying the labour market. There are many aspects about our situation that are inferior.
But guess what -- that has fuck-all to do with how we perceive the relative value of our country or the pride or love we have for our homeland and love.
No, the majority of Canadians don't see the US as the world's best country because the wealthiest there make more money than the wealthiest here.
I worked at Google in Waterloo for 10 years. At any point I could have packed up and moved to the Valley and transferred to Mountain View. I had jobs before that that could have taken me to the US on transfer, as well. I chose not to. Why?
During part of that time, after Trump was first elected, I saw lots of expat Canadians who had been working for Google in the US return and transfer back to our office. They came back and earned less, and the choice of projects in our office was slimmer. But they chose to. Why?
Love of country, of culture, of family, of nature, of the land, nostalgia, familiarity. What came up often when I spoke to people coming back was a strong distaste for the idea of bringing their children up in the American education system with its extreme degrees of inequality, status seeking, elitism around "Ivy League" and ranking of schools right from kindergarten. Values on the whole unfamiliar to the same degree among Canadians.
Expats in particular, and immigrants who primarily migrated for economic reasons... yes, I'd naturally expect them not to understand this POV. I even meet plenty of new (often temporary) Canadians using Canada as a convenient springboard before their "final" migration choice which is the US. Not sure I like that, but that's their choice.
My father is also an immigrant, from Germany. He came here for the nature / wilderness. He's intensely critical of the politics and economics here and where he lives in Alberta, and there's many things in those respects he prefers about Germany. But he has love of land, and Canada is his homeland, because of the peace and love he finds in the rivers, the forests, the muskeg.
I love my people and country I imagine in the same way or similar way Greenlanders love theirs. The size of the McMansions has no bearing on it. Canadians by and large don't walk around proclaiming theirs the best country in the world. We are not interested in our superiority. But we will defend our home, same as any other.
The original point stands -- to talk about "greatest country on earth" and then act baffled or smug about why others wouldn't want to join it -- is nothing but schoolyard bully logic. Like picking on the weird or weak kid in the playground, and then proclaiming that as a moral virtue. This Greenland stuff, and the rhetoric heard about Canada this past year as well, has exposed the very darkest underbelly of the US. One we have seen here many times over 200 years, but many Americans seem blind to.
I know some that did move to the US for economic reasons only that have moved back to Canada because of the way the US has changed during their time there.
