And I don't think you get the difference between anecdotes and general statistics.
It feels like a waste of time explaining any of this to you, because you're obviously disinterested in engaging with the actual discussion at-hand in any productive way, but for the practice:
> It is a simple, plain, incontrovertible fact that, with the same income when adjusted for currency exchange rate, I paid a higher total tax rate living in Manhattan than I do in downtown Toronto.
> That shouldn't be surprising to anyone actually interested in fact -- 0r, "general statistics" to use your term -- because I paid US federal, NY state, and NY municipal income tax whilst living in the US (each category of which was material), but pay only one of those living in Toronto (no municipal tax!).
> And, as another poster pointed out, that's not even taking into account the existence of the sales tax, road tolls, or any other number of added burdens one deals with living in NYC.
> In general, of course, cost of living in Manhattan is
much higher than it is in Toronto, and it's not even close.
> You asserted originally, for some reason and apropos of nothing, that another poster had ignored what you had claimed to be fact and what is, in reality, a gross generalization, and then accused some combination him or her and an amorphous collection of other individuals on this forum of insularity.
And, no, we really don't have to talk about purchasing power parity to make this discussion -- about the Gardiner Expressway, or at least as is the general intention -- relevant for the rest of the people on this thread.