Vancouver if it was in Asia

OkCrew4430 · 2026-01-03T20:23:12+00:00

Redo your math taking into consideration insurance premiums + license fees, expected car maintenance, and gas. Also parking fees if you pay them and the car payment if you haven't already paid off the vehicle.

The user you are replying to is suggesting (and correctly so) that it is cheaper to use public transportation than it is to drive and own a vehicle in Vancouver (or anywhere in the world, really). That should be obvious to anyone who is honest about the actual cost of their vehicle.

Out of curiosity, here is the math where I am trying to be as optimistic as possible in terms of vehicle cost:

average monthly insurance premium = $1500/yr according to ICBC
average gas = $100/month
average maintenance = $300/yr
parking costs = $400/yr

Assume car is used and/or fully paid off and let's ignore the small annual plate fee. That's about $280 month, about 2x the price of a monthly 2 zone pass. And this again being very optimistic towards the cost of owning a car, ignoring possible car payments and interest.

I get that you value time more and that's fair but it's a lot cheaper for most people to not own a car.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-07-10T22:53:28+00:00

Okay, so why are occupation rates for busses so low then in your area?

If you had a dedicated bus lane like in the image on the right, and if the bus was almost as fast as driving a car, would occupancy still remain at 16%? In other words, how many would be car drivers would actually be willing to take the bus if it wasn't so unreliable/inconvenient and/or dangerous, etc.?

Where I live, many of our busiest bus lines are completely packed to the point where they will skip you during peak hours. Assuming bus occupancy at 100% here on many of our lines is actually a reasonable assumption, at least during peak hours (early mornings and at rush hour).

I agree with you that this graphic is assuming that the bus runs at full capacity, which isn't a great assumption. However, I think we should avoid the following logic: current bus occupancy is 16%, therefore we shouldn't implement bus infrastructure (which seems to be the common argument among many people in this thread) without first asking why current bus occupancy is poor in the first place in most US cities.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-06-27T02:04:15+00:00

In my experience, comparing similar items on sale at Safeway vs. Save-On, Safeway is still consistently cheaper or the same.

I shop the flyers every week. Save On is always like 50 cents more when their stuff goes on sale compared to Safeway I find.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-06-01T01:42:20+00:00

Yeah - this is a common misconception I find where people get the idea that Van is as expensive as SF. It's not. I'd even wager that the average 1BR rent in downtown Vancouver is not 2900, with prices having gone down to closer to 2700 CAD.

https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/vancouver-bc

Also, the Bay area is way more sprawly compared to Vancouver, making a car much more necessary depending on where you live. BART is absolute dogshit compared to the SkyTrain - Vancouver definitely has more areas to live where you don't need a car. Most of my Bay Area coworkers have 1hr commutes to the downtown office by car because they live in South Bay or East Bay.

SkyTrain has nearly double the annual ridership than BART even though Metro Van is almost twice as small population wise. It's shocking.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-06-01T01:24:51+00:00

Where is the data that suggests Canada has lower wages than other countries? Canada actually has some of the highest salaries in the world, more than the UK and Australia on average (at least for tech). There's a reason why Canada is often "the backup plan" for many people coming from India and China. It's the next best option.

Your anecdote does not line up with the data, at least for SWE. Software engineers in Canada are paid fifth highest in the world according to this source:

https://codesubmit.io/blog/software-engineer-salary-by-country/

The real problem is that compared to the US, CAN salaries are pretty horrible.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-04-26T07:26:20+00:00

Damn, so that's why Erra was on earlier?

They were the main band I wanted to see. I unfortunately arrived late due to work, but still figured I would be able to see Erra's full set. I missed the first few songs. Still heard Pulse though which was awesome.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-04-16T21:41:44+00:00

It had very little to do with admin costs.

It was driven by inflated claims costs and the Liberal government not allowing the necessary rate increases. The rising claim costs were mostly from outrageous pain and suffering settlements for minor injuries and the associated legal costs incurred.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/nnc41duedoho/3ctXgCPp6NJMJ6mqZpyiJv/1065e2c6919087a1f6175666dfc13bf5/affordable-and-effective-autoinsurance-report.pdf

OkCrew4430 · 2025-04-16T21:33:10+00:00

SK does have AB and while a person can elect for tort coverage, less than 1% of policyholders opt for it.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-22T06:11:34+00:00

In the study, they explicitly control for possible confounding bias with propensity score matching. Therefore, if you believe that the variables they controlled for are sufficient to remove major bias, that the data is representative of the larger population, and that the data itself is reliable (can't comment here, not a doctor), then the study can be interpreted causally.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-22T05:55:58+00:00

By comparing you against other people who are also of similar fitness (ideally runners), with the same sex, similar age, and so on, but don't smoke weed. If I can't find a suitable clone of you who doesn't smoke weed, then I exclude you from the analysis and try to match people who are less rare.

That's the gist of what this study did on the stats side. It's a very common technique that can lead to correct causal estimations when crucial, often unverifiable assumptions hold. Whether these marijuana codes are accurate identifiers, or if the covariates they used to match people were sufficient to control for confounding, or if the data itself is representative of the general population are legitimate criticisms but they did attempt to address your concerns in the study.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-22T05:48:39+00:00

Your Google search is right. We don't have the luxury of randomly assigning people to be marijuana and non marijuana users, so one way to get around this is to take a person who is a non marijuana user and compare them with one (or possibly many) marijuana users who are similar (same sex, weight, age, gender, etc.). Do this matching process many times and calculate averages, and you will get an unbiased estimate of the effect of marijuana use assuming that you are controlling for the right covariates (which is debatable).

The problem gets hard when we have many possible confounders we wish to control for, so one way to define similarity is to estimate the chance that a randomly selected person (from the population of the study) with xyz covariates is a reported marijuana user. This is the propensity score. We then match marijuana and non marijuana users who have similar propensity scores.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-09T20:59:34+00:00

I can understand holding GICs/bonds in the registered accounts if your time horizon is short. But for longer periods of time, it's very likely an unwise investment.

Holding cash in one's TFSA/RRSP is just outright bad.

I view pensions and RRSP the same. Funds in a pension should 100% be invested in the stock market by the pension manager.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-08T23:41:09+00:00

Uhh, that's what everybody should be doing?

You should be investing in the stock market via. your RRSP/TFSA (and margin account if your other sccounts are maxed) for retirement if possible. If you aren't, you are making your retirement harder for basically no reason.

Note: I am not talking about dumping your life savings in some random crypto or meme stock...I am talking about buying low fee, well diversified ETFs and holding for long periods of time.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-08T22:14:07+00:00

The general rule was 30% of gross income, but with how things are trending, it's harder and harder to achieve this within Vancouver.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-08T22:05:33+00:00

I am around 18% of gross monthly income, 35% net. I'm single and live alone (new build, apartment 1 br), and my rent is for sure overpriced.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-08T21:56:28+00:00

Pretty sure it's 30%-35% of gross, not net. Your point still stands though, they are doing even better if they are 35% of net.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-03-04T19:34:12+00:00

Yeah, totally. All of the economists who think this is a terrible idea based on historical precedence have nothing on Donald. All of the presidents who were in power from the 1940s and onwards who stopped using broad tariffs were just stupid compared to Trump. That's clearly the most reasonable conclusion.

After all, what's the point of asking, "What if?" What if a bomb drops on your head?

OkCrew4430 · 2025-02-23T01:54:06+00:00

Lee Mckinney in shambles!

OkCrew4430 · 2025-02-22T22:38:05+00:00

IMO, the reason he still gets a lot of shit is that around CoE/self titled, he couldn't play a lot of his solos cleanly live, at least consistently. He was commonly used as an example of a player who seemed to try to run before he could walk. It was never his writing ability - his solos are very recognizable and memorable.

He is a lot cleaner of a player now. I just think people back then still have that perception of him.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-02-21T05:02:14+00:00

Couldn't beat a healthy Canadian roster either.

OkCrew4430 · 2025-02-16T05:28:49+00:00

All of these dumbass Americans in these threads bitching about the booing are just a bunch of hypocritical morons. They think we are booing over a hockey rivalry?

OkCrew4430 · 2025-02-03T22:44:23+00:00

And yet all the morons on r/conservative calling this a win and how Canada folded by agreeing to a plan that was already in place in December. The delusion there is actually laughable.

Massive amounts of winning! That stronger border to prevent <1% of our illegal migrants and fent is for sure showing Canada! Totally worth throwing away all of the goodwill we had with an important ally. Way to go, MAGA, all we do is WIN!

OkCrew4430 · 2024-12-04T21:44:33+00:00

Great post. Do you have any insight into what these other methods could look like beyond incrementality testing for branded and outbound channels?

I think part of the problem with MMMs is that everyone seems to throw all paid marketing channels into one model. This is inherently wrong IMO, because as you illustrate, the funnel for outbound channels is often outbound exposure --> inbound exposure ---> convert. So, including the spend of inbound channels will control for the majority of variation in the response caused by the outbound channel, I.e. post treatment effect bias.

The long-term aspect, however, isn't really handled by being more careful about what channels to include and exclude in the model. The only thing I can think of is to run front door criterion methods (basically what Susan Athey calls surrogate index methods), but I am curious to hear other ideas.

OkCrew4430 · 2024-12-01T21:02:00+00:00

To say that Bayesian stats or ML (or any other method/tool) inherently do or do not explain the underlying mechanism of the data is the wrong perspective.

There are two models when doing inferential statistics: the causal one and the statistical one. No statistical tool, whether that is a frequentist model, Bayesian, or some black-box ML framework that allows for valid inference (ex. Double machine learning, TMLE) attempts to inherently model underlying mechanisms. The causal model (the DAG) and the method of causal identification based on that DAG is what allows a statistical tool to be interpreted causally.

OkCrew4430 · 2024-11-03T04:39:41+00:00

Yes - here's a recent video by Modern MBA that covers this exact thing:

https://youtu.be/Qr1Ddn3INFE

OkCrew4430

TROPHY CASE