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5:12 leave it to a bum to explain to you what’s wrong with the city

as someone who grew up in BC canada, I can give many more vital reasons its absolutely awful here. \n\n1) Poor health care: everyone thinks Canada is so great for free health care. Be ready to wait up to 12 hours in hospitals to be seen for 5 mins. Also, my aunt passed away from waiting on breast cancer surgery in BC.\n\n2) Poor infrastructure: Roads here have been the same since 1960s, but now we have millions more people. Rush hour traffic is insanity in vancouver and toronto.\n\n3) Inefficient roadwork: Road construction can take up to 10 years, they close the road and leave it, I rarely seen people work on it and it causes far more traffic\n\n4) government promotes laziness: My friend who is a doctor works 2 days a week, why? because why would he work more at far lower pay? it all goes to taxes anyways\n\nI can give many more reasons but this is getting too long

Perhaps I will not name the most popular destination for relocation, but I suggest coming to Russia, there are many positive reasons for this (I take Moscow as an example):\n1) Affordable housing with reasonable prices. The price for a one-room apartment in Moscow, for an apartment with a good renovation will cost you about $500 Plus utility bills with the Internet will be 50%. (The most surprising thing for foreigners is that in winter you can wear a T-shirt and shorts in apartments, and sometimes it will be hot), my cost of heating in a three-room apartment is $35 per month for 95 sq.m.\nDo you want a house? Please! House 435 sq.m. 3 floors for $100,000.\nAre you a young family? Get a preferential mortgage. Got a baby? Get money! A second one appeared. Get even more! Third child? Children's camps, travel card, free school meals, as well as a lot of benefits.\n2) Developed infrastructure, accessible public transport ($30 pass for all types of transport in Moscow and the nearest Moscow region), unlimited travel pass. 783 parks in Moscow, numerous shopping centers, countless child development centers; in winter you can ski and snowboard in these same parks. In general, you will definitely find something to keep yourself busy.\n3) Affordable medicine. Russian citizenship can be obtained after 5 years of permanent residence, BUT foreign citizens have the right to obtain a medical policy for themselves after obtaining a residence permit. The price comes out to be approximately 30-60%, depending on what risk group you are in. After obtaining citizenship, all medicine is free, seriously, a foreigner I know from Australia asked me about this: “What do you mean it’s free?” All this is included in taxes, and the cost is peanuts compared to yours. The level of medicine is high, this is a separate topic for discussion, I don’t know why, but our medical centers are compared with India, this is not so. The current clinics look like Cyberpunk 2077, seriously. In the regions, unfortunately, it is completely different. In December 2023, I was hospitalized with double pneumonia, and I didn’t pay a single ruble for treatment.\n4) Security. You can calmly walk around Moscow at night and not be afraid of anything. There are cameras everywhere in Moscow, on shops, on poles, and video recorders on cars. Everyone knows perfectly well that if you commit a crime in Moscow, you will be punished, and no one in their right mind needs this. Here I advise you to look at the channels of your fellow countrymen. Banditry is an echo of the past, in the 90s people survived as best they could, then the ruble depreciated and everyone fought for food as best they could, now the situation is different.\n5) Racism. I won’t rant, here you should also watch the video of your fellow countrymen who live in Russia, not those who accuse us of racism while living in their country and who have never visited us, but those who live. If you feel other people’s eyes on you because of your dark skin color, excuse me, it’s out of interest, well, there are few of us like that. On a personal note, no one cares what color you are, as long as you are a person who lives within the law as a peaceful citizen. If you act like an asshole, behave inappropriately, use insulting words towards other people, you will feel it quickly. In general, if you are a good person, you can forget about this word.\n6) If you receive a residence permit, education for your children is free. Our state generally cares excessively about children. And I still remembered! Summer holidays for children are 3 months, so where should they go? Summer camp, give mom and dad a break from your nasty whims))\nIf you want to send them to the Black Sea, if you want to send them to Altai to a health center, you can send them to a city camp (They brought the child in the morning and took them away in the evening). Previously, I was constantly sent to the black sea on a permit that was given to my father at work (Shipyard). Now this is only possible in special cases.\n\n7) Vacations. You are required to go on paid leave for 28 days a year. 12 public holidays.\n\n8) Sexual minorities. Having seen enough of cancel culture, where the minority opinion became higher than the majority opinion, these communities were cancelled. When people are openly threatened for their opinions on gender. Fire teachers for using the wrong pronoun. Where pedophiles try to legitimize themselves. We are not on the same path with this.\n\nNow there is an acute shortage of IT specialists, maybe this will be interesting for them.\nFarmers like to settle here; 100 hectares of land can be bought for $16,000. Compared to Europe at $5000-6000 per acre. A well-known foreign representative is Justus Walker if anyone is interested.\nIn general, Russia is open to new citizens of the country, the state gives everything to create a unit of society, on your part you just need to be a law-abiding citizen and live a quiet life. We have problems in the country, they are the same as in any other, but nowhere will there be freedom to implement your plans as in Russia.\n\nAll the best!

I stopped visiting Canada 40 years ago because of insane or corrupt border control policies. I traveled to Canada from California to record an album for a popular rock star. My crew number 4 people and we had reserves a month for basic tracking in a studio there. We bought our own reels of 3 inch wide recording tape because the studio wanted twice the rate as normal and since my studio was a distributor for the mastering tapes we brought from my own inventory. Each reel of tape was 3 lbs and brought 30 reels. We got to customs and they said we owed money for importing the tape. Normally a reel would have been $180, and customs wanted $38,000 x 20, and would not let us retrieve it to take it back to the US side of the border. How can a tape worth $180 suddenly have duty of $38,000?\nIt was explained to me as the Potential Value of the tape which meant AFTER a hit song was recording in it. Most recordings are total losses and the tape cant used on a new project even if properly bulk-erased. They expected me to pay on the spot $760,000 in duties. I gave up and left the tape with them. I called the artist and said we could not do the project in Canada and we went back to California. The artist came to us a few months later and the result was a minor hit, and probably barely made its production cost since the label only distributed it in Canada. I talked to an international trade lawyer about what happened and he said customs officials were wrong in Canada but they are given full latitude with no appeal so his advice was never take anything over the border that I did not mind being confiscated. Sometimes they would let it in because it was going back out in a month, but likely they sold it off and pocketed the money. The US is corrupt on a federal level but Canada is corrupt on the local level. I moved out of the US 24 years ago have a much higher quality of life than is even possible in the US, and live very cheaply. Total cost of living with a very active social and cultural life impossible to duplicate in the US which as some of the least options for culture. And my cost of living is $1500 a month, less than utilities alone for one house in California, and that is for 2 people. Last month for example I attended world class opera, ballet and symphonies 9 times, and went out to dinner, in jazz clubs or dance clubs, visited12 top museums, and it was still under $1500 for the month. A pair of tickets to the MET in NYC for lower grade performance, sets, orchestra ad theater, was $1800!! $600 for tickets to drama for 2. Here there 237 drama theaters within walking distance of my city center home, and can walk anywhere at any time of day and be safe due to VERY low crime rates. Free medical is good. I am not citizen but still I had an operation and 10 days in a vip single room for $5300 and despite my insurance I had been paying back in California $824.month, it was going to cost me out o pocket $500,000 and one day in a recovery 12 bed room, and require paid nursing attendant for 30 days. The results were great and was treated like king.\nCanadians have lost control of their government but Americas are screwed regardless, with lower than international standards for everything, with crime, corruption in Washington, extreme cost of living, no access to culture, few if any safe parks. My adopted city is not only far more beautiful than any US city, my GF can walk, alone, anywhere in a city of 7mil at any time of day through any of the 600 beautiful parks open 24/7..at 3am. There are no homeless, and 80% of those over 20yo own their home clear of debt. No college debt despite twice the % of people having degrees. The rest of the world caught up and has surpassed the US and Europe in quality of life. \n\nI have only been back to the US 5 times in 24 years and each time I am shocked by how much the entire society has declined while most of the world outside of Europe, Canada, US, UK or Australia have dramatically improved.\nEvery year since 2008 more Americans leave the US to live elsewhere than legal immigrants arrive.

Full time and part time employees are entitled to 4 weeks vacation here in Australia, I don’t know anyone who only gets 4 tho, most get 5 to 6. Also, theres Medicare for all permanent residents and citizens; 18 weeks maternity leave— 3 months paid. There are 12 public holidays and just Far Less Crime. When people ask me if I miss “home”… I share that I miss good and easy access to stuff… but friends can visit me here, and I’ll pay extra for the things I enjoy to be mailed. The only major thing is as a black girl getting my hair done… lordddd ?. \n\nI’ve lived in Cambodia, Thailand, Spain and Gibraltar traveling solo. The more I traveled safer I felt despite never feeling too unsafe in the states when I lived there, I did when I traveled across country at times. It took me some time to feel into this new level of “ahhhhh this is what safety feels like!! Mom, come feel this! U can go for a walk at 2am!”\n\nWould never move back, but I’m grateful my roots are from there.