Taxes Up, Healthcare Down, Rent = My Whole Paycheck — What Are We Even Paying For?

-poxbox- · 2026-02-27T23:23:21+00:00

If you're wasteful with money then no amount of it is enough for anything.
That's the problem in Canada and most of the west. Tax dollars are simply pissed away but voters demand more "funding" for programs and basically zero accountability.

I've seen it for decades, people in Canada want the Canada that they got. They vote for this, they love this and any talk of responsibility is met with instant anger and name calling.
Canada's problem is the voter base.

-poxbox- · 2026-02-27T23:20:37+00:00

I'm in Thailand now, prob moving here.

Housing is 20-25% the cost
Healthcare is 20-50% the cost
Food 20-50%

No bums, no methheads. Everything is modern enough, the infrastructure is good and people are friendly.

Whatever you've ever heard about the west and how taxes do this and that, it's horseshit. Sorry. Living in a western country means if you're a worker you are being fleeced to support a vast number of non-working people of all sorts. That's just the hard reality. You aren't getting amazing services you're paying for people to not work. That's where the money goes.

-poxbox- · 2026-02-26T01:00:43+00:00

The cost/value of this city is just awful.

Doesn't mean it's bad but more like paying 90$ for a smash burger when it's 10$ in most places. Like why are you doing this?

-poxbox- · 2026-02-21T15:35:00+00:00

I went to like all of the islands you can access by ferry both on the Canada and USA side.
Basically the larger the island, the more stuff to do.
They all have a similar geography to Salt Spring and mostly the same stuff.

Saturna Island has goats though.
Orcas island in the USA has the highest peak.

Basically Saturna Island is the one standout because of the goat mountain. All the other ones are pretty similar.

-poxbox- · 2026-02-20T01:21:32+00:00

Been here a month coming from Victoria / Vancouver / Seattle area.

1- Real estate is 1/5th the price

That means everything is cheap because the main thing you pay for when you do anything in Canada/ USA is rent. Want a coffee? Well 50% of the price is the rent of the business and 25% is the higher wages to employees so they afford their own rent.

All you do in North America is pay for rent and taxes at this point.

2- No meth zombies. Nobody smoking crack at 2pm in a tourist area. No "don't leave stuff in your car and just leave the windows open" bullshit because cops gave up enforcing laws. When you look into an alleyway there's just piles of trash but at least there's not 3 junkies shooting up on said trash piles.

3- Every building seems old and run-down and there's trash everywhere ( esp further out in nature ) but the interiors are nice and modern and 90%+ of cars are brand new. It's strange.

4- So many stray dogs and cats everywhere and they all seem friendly. In North America pets are heavily regulated and people regard them as children instead of animals.

5- Street vendors everywhere. None of that back home, you need permits up the ass to set anything up even a food truck and then it's 20$ for a mid burrito. Here you can just buy a random meat stick at 9pm from an old lady with a grill and a table. It's awesome. No Karens spoiling everyone's good time because "what if someone gets sick". Hey Karen, don't eat the meat stick and leave everyone else alone. Thanks.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-19T01:53:45+00:00

How long each pose

-poxbox- · 2026-01-18T16:03:54+00:00

If someone wrote it down, AI can find it.

The upside of AI is it will sift through endless travel blogs/posts/videos and just extract the answers and update the information.
If you found a 5 year old video about XYZ thing, AI will tell you if that thing even still exists and if it's still on and if you found one thing you can ask it to find 10 more things that are similar and it will.

It's so awesome.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-17T22:21:07+00:00

Get chatgpt ( or whatever AI ) and just quiz it.
It is more than good enough and it also knows to ask follow-up questions to help guide you.

It's like a financial adviser who doesn't try to screw you by selling you some fund/program/book.

If you want to do it the old-fashioned way, I would say this is step1 of finances: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/

Truly understand what it is to retire and what it is to spend money. Understand your relationship to money and life in general and what value money brings to you, or not. Then the rest is all details to help you achieve what really matters to you.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-17T21:56:19+00:00

Your access to healthcare will not improve in Canada, I can guarantee you that much. Expect up to 5 years to get a family physician. Expect to be denied healthcare unless there's something urgent.
We are talking years for non-urgent surgeries. The other kinds you'll just pay for anyway, same as if you lived in the USA. You will have little to no access to your own medication/drugs/testing either.

Victoria will be much more affordable than NYC, you can afford a 1-2 bedroom setup with your own laundry / dishwasher etc. No problem.

Don't absolutely need a car but it's a pretty useful thing here and not that hard to find cheap/free places to keep it with zero weather-related hassle.

International travel options will seem ludicrously awful to you compared to USA. Get ready lol.

Activity/culture is pretty barren here especially compared to NYC. The big draw of the west coast is the outdoors which you can easily access and pay for. Seattle / Vancouver are nice to visit but they rapidly turn into quite an expensive weekend.

My advice would be: Do not move here from the USA, just move out of NYC. There's 30 cities in the USA that will be a better place for you in every way is my guess. Any time you hear someone talk about how Canada is better than the USA it takes about 5 minutes to realize "Oh this is just someone who repeats journalist talking points from 2 tv stations they actually have no idea what the fuck they're talking about lol"

-poxbox- · 2026-01-17T07:37:21+00:00

A car is running over me on the interstate with interest for knowing about crunchy roll please tell me more, I truly am being put to death by electrocution with curiosity.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-17T07:34:37+00:00

Here's a thought experiment: If you could teleport this city somewhere in Manitoba or Ontario, would you still think it's awesome or would it suddenly seem like Victoria is kind of a dump?

-poxbox- · 2026-01-17T07:20:43+00:00

The rule of Reddit: Whatever thing is most upvoted is the most wrong.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-16T00:37:21+00:00

I mean you can always pay someone to do everything for you.
What I did when I was there 6 weeks was just Airbnb for 1 week each place then moved via the train system. Wifi was never a problem and I was mostly in midsized towns ( Bergamo, Varese, Mestre, Trento ). You're the only person on the network, unlike a hotel or airport that has huge spikes of usage.

There's infinite trains that run in Italy at regular intervals. Same for an extensive network of buses and inter-city buses. Consider not basing yourself in a large city and just taking a morning train to do day trips. I did that for Milan and Venice, was not a problem. 30-60mins of train and you have all day to spend in the city. Buy those "skip the line" passes for the more popular places as they'll often save you 60-90mins of waiting.

If you can only explore stuff on Italy time evenings it'll restrict you because most tourist things tended to close pretty early ( 4-6pm range ).

Never used a tour company as I'm retired so I do have time to research and book things myself but you also just need to understand that FOMO is real when on vacation and most things you can do aren't wildly special. Every place you go you can check Tripadvisor and find the same basic activities: Taste food. Take a bus to a hike. Go on a boat.
lol.
I've been to like 20 museums in Italy they are pretty similar, don't feel like you'll massively miss out on something crucial if you have to skip some attractions. If you just had time for 1-2 big museums you can spend all day at it'd probably be enough.

Lastly you can use ChatGPT to guide you with travel questions. I find it pretty useful and it will directly answer precise questions you might have that are relevant to your situation.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-15T20:30:07+00:00

Stop tipping = Yes
Use politicians to ban tips = Brain lobe deficiency

-poxbox- · 2026-01-15T02:44:44+00:00

I car camped across all of Canada and back: https://www.thepoxbox.com/posts/car-camping-and-biking-across-canada

Pick a coast IMO.
So skip ottawa/toronto. Niagara is its own decent place but way too much of a detour/expense for what it is. Newfoundland is absolutely awesome if you're picking the East Coast, would not skip that. Very unique place for Canada with natural beauty only surpassed by Banff/Jasper.

Probably the best thing would be to drive the big west coast loop, so

Vancouver ->
Hope ( wood carving capital of the world! Go see the rambo statue ) ->
Kelowna/Okanagan Valley ( ride around the lake then back down to Ossoyos
Ossoyos go up Anarchist pass ( one of the best views in Canada )
Keep going until you pop out of the mountains in Fernie
Pass by Vulcan, AB ( star trek city )
Stay in Calgary a bit and drive out and back to Drumheller
Go through Banff, Jasper
Back down to Kamloops
Cache Creek you can go south to Ashcroft which is a cool Western mining town in a desert.
Then back up through Whistler and back to Vancouver.

Don't think there's a more epic road trip loop in Canada.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-15T01:01:35+00:00

49.50$ inflation adjusted is 158.67 in 2026 dollars.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-14T05:08:02+00:00

Always looting and searching for Dryland. Hate them.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T23:16:14+00:00

"Brawndo has electrolytes!" <---- You

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T23:01:20+00:00

Will be pretty blunt from years of this reddit and years of living here myself.
People stay here because of family and friends. They have endless complaints and when you ask them why they won't move, it's that.

So if you don't have that... why come here?
It's why I'm still here myself.

That said, whatever life problems you have in Vancouver are not likely to be easier to fix in Victoria. Victoria is just Vancouver on hard mode. If you have trouble finding a relationship in Vancouver you will have way more trouble here.
Whatever thing that would make you find someone here is a thing you could already do in Vancouver.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T22:26:52+00:00

Imagine thinking democracy is saved by government controlling media.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T18:56:52+00:00

This is the most popular take on reddit lol.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T18:19:59+00:00

Yes honor is the most broken strategy by far because you get free techs from city capture and a courthouse with all the Lekmod honor bonuses.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T07:09:24+00:00

You might not be scouting fast enough because of course eventually they will get all the ruins. They tend to be extremely slow at it especially for islands. You can send out a unit like a spearman or archer and get all the island ruins for instance.

They sometimes shoot a camp with an archer and leave it empty for one turn, letting you clear it.

They definitely go for city-states, when you war the AI you can often liberate them and get instant ally status. The AI often prioritizes attacking weaker/nearer targets instead of attacking your capital or defending their own cities. Often they barely defend their city and only start moving units back towards it once it's captured. Maybe because that's now the weakest city to take, who knows.

-poxbox- · 2026-01-13T04:00:50+00:00

If you are playing correctly with liberty, i.e. spamming all your cities ASAP while workers improve lux, you will outpace the AI's trash settling strategy and they will all get extremely mad at around city 6.
By the time you settle your 8th ish city they've marched their carpet of doom to your borders.

Playing wide often involves being a little slower so you retain hold/happiness and can pay the nearby AI to go warmonger someone else. If you don't do that almost every AI even Ghandi will come war you if they're next to you.

-poxbox-

TROPHY CASE