You get grants from the government? They track all that money forever?
Grants - Yes, the Canadian government is trying to get people to invest long term for
- post-secondary education,
- disability costs, and
- retirement.
So, it gives these incentives. Some are for all income levels, some depending on income level (by gradation). Some are outright gifts (e.g., Canada Learning Bond, at up to $100/yr for low income families). Some are matching grants (20% in RESP, up to 300% in RDSP, etc), up to a maximum per year and per lifetime.
The RDSP (available to relatively few people with disabilities) is very new, so rules are constantly being tweaked to address new variables they think of.
Yes, government tracks its gifts and matching grants forever.
Most people -especially those with disabilities- don't have the cash to optimize these, though.
Institutions change insane fees to keep the money?
Yes. Canada is famous for this :)
We do have (very few) lower fee options, but then we're not necessarily allowed
by the banks to use those for the funds receiving government matches and gifts. So, the banks push people into higher fee options by tricking them with the (lower net) govt gifts. Most of us don't know to do the math on it.
And then, most of the programs conflict with one another, so if you access one option you make yourself ineligible for another, so you have to research ahead and make a massive spreadsheet that no one person can make heads or tails of because no one person knows more than 1-3 programs and how they potentially merge or conflict. In my case, I've been on top of a lot of that, but I needed to have researched the RESP 10 years ago, sigh.
Does the US system seem as bizarre to you?
US system seems infinitely more flexible and potentially lucrative to me. But our health care [insurance] is often cheaper, I think.
Socials programs are generous (health, school, pension) you cannot be fucked-up unless you smell gas vapor all day and spend everything penny over lottery tickets.
I agree that some social programs are generous, but the latter is unfortunately not the case. It's very, very, very easy for a person to slip right through the cracks because of any one -usually irrelevant- variable that makes them ineligible for a service, or to be rejected even though eligible. This might be because of getting a worker who was sleepy one day, or crabby, or for having had $102 in interest income 16 months ago, etc. The navigation involved to access some programs is absolutely insane, and very difficult for many people with illness or disability to pull off.