Where in the US are taxes as high as Canada's? My taxes in the US are significantly lower, and I live in the state with the highest state tax.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-... https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individ... https://www.retailcouncil.org/resources/quick-facts/sales-ta... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels_in_the_United...

Federally both rates are ~20% between 50-80k, NYC comes in at 15% state tax, a lot of the Canadian tax rates are up to 15% tax rate, as low as 10%.

It seems quite believable that the tax rates can be similar.

"Social Security will be the biggest expense, budgeted at $1.196 trillion. It's followed by Medicare at $766 billion and Medicaid at $571 billion." https://www.thebalancemoney.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown...

The US does sink a considerable amount into what I would call "discretionary social services".

In comparison Canada seems to only spend ~300 billion on healthcare, and ~300 billion on social security. Their economy is a 6x smaller in terms of population, 3x in terms of GDP, so proportionally, saying 4x (4x600 =2.4 trillion) they spend about the same as the US does (~2.5 trillion).

The purported difference in quality is probably mostly to do with drug cost, whereas US drug companies can and do charge premiums Canadian ones can often create or source relatively safe knock-offs, while they may not have the same (number of) sophisticated facilities that the US might have.