Canada , if civil war breaks out down here...

We have our #### hole areas as well but we also only have 1/10 th the population. How do you fix it?
I enjoyed running in USA way back, knew what to avoid as the bad areas are very localized. Running Midwest you never see the crime and crap that you come across in larger metropolitan areas. Back when the only difference running in USA was looking forward to fried catfish dinners and cheap liquor to bring home

 

Didn't count sales tax, fuel tax, car registration, or regulatory fees on utilities, so add another percentage point, maybe 2?

It doesn't really matter how you break down the cost - we pay for it either way. Y'all pay in taxes, we pay with reduced incomes. The big difference is in how much it costs us in the middle class to subsidize the health care of the working poor (looking at you Walmart and Amazon).

 

I think you guys make more than us. I was down in Grand Forks, ND last summer and most businesses were advertising wages at $15/hr. With exchange rate that's $20/hr up here. NOBODY makes that kind of money working at Wally World here. Heck a first year tradesperson makes about $17-20/hr Cdn.

 

Nobody's making $20 an hour at walmart down here either. That is unless cost of living is thru the roof.

In WI, basic manufacturing jobs (forklift, machine operator, etc) start at $16/hr and top out at $22-25/hr.

Sounds decent until you discover that a studio apartment rents out at $450. A one bedroom for $600, minimum. That's not for the nicer places. Its real easy to pay more than 30% of your gross for housing and work transportation.

A few weeks ago I was bsing with some drivers as we waited. One of them tried to recruit me saying I'd make at least $5,000 a year more. We didn't get into health insurance or 401k stuff because I pointed out that moving from Green Bay to Chicago would increase my cost of living by way more than $5,000. Overall taxes would be the same, as would food from the store. Eating out is about 20% higher, but the killer is housing. A comparable place would cost me double.

My mom's neighbor died two years ago. Valerie has lived in that house for at least 40 years, last major work was done 20 years ago. Its a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath with a partially finished basement on a little more than 1/3 acre. In Green Bay it would go for $150,000 - $200,000. It sold in under a month for $850,000.

It's the same thing as the oil field guys making $40 an hour but a gallon of milk costs $8.

 

The sign hanging from the door at the Grand Forks, ND Walmart said $15/hr starting wage.

Rent sounds pretty on board with what we're paying around here. I'm looking at acreages within 20 minutes of the city. To get a 2 or 3 bedroom house on 3 or 4 acres is around $500k Cdn. Head another 10 or 15 minutes further out prices drop to around $400k.

 

Even shopping in Grand Forks, everything was cheaper than here in Canada. Lunch for 2 with drinks was actually affordable. Here we'd have paid probably $100 for that meal. I think we paid like $40 US.

 

How does that compare to Ft Mac?
I know a heavy truck mechanic in Edmonton working on field machinery makin $50 an hr 4 years ago.

 

I have no idea what its like in Ft Mac these days. Be pretty rare to see $50/hr in Edmonton nowadays. Seems like high $30s to low $40s is the average mechanic wage around here.

Still better than the Vancouver area. Seems like a mechanic would be lucky to see much above low $30s from the job ads I've seen online.

 

https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/green-bay-wi/grand-forks-nd/32000

Grand forks costs about 7% more than green bay, roughly.

At a quick glance I think $15/hr qualifies for section 8 housing, medicaid and snap benifits in ND. Not sure, but it looks likely.