Hey NDP, enough with the incremental respectability politics. Give us what Mamdani is cooking.
Millionaires with a few million dollars aren’t the problem
The biggest problems are the handful of billionaires and the billionaires that are not Canadian but have a strangle hold on companies or corporations that affect Canada.
If the government could just tax the ever loving shit out of billionaires, they’d remove the single root cause of a lot of problems in the country and actually allow some sort of competition in all industries. This would allow the economy to spread the wealth to more Canadians than to a bunch of non-aligned billionaires who could care less what country they are attached to because their wealth is so great, they are basically their own country at this point.
Millionaires aren’t the problem … Billionaires are
Nobody should have a net worth over, say, 10 million.
20 is okay ish, I suppose, but beyond that it’s just not fair or normal
You have 100 million dollars?
You didn’t get it through hard work, or the McDonald’s burger flipper who also cleans houses on the side would have been a billionaire by now
You didn’t get it by being intelligent or smart or scientists would all be rich
You did it through playing the system as it currently exists, and you were lucky
Nobody should have the right to have that much money. Not even half of that.
They’re part of the problem, but you can become a millionaire ethically, not a billionaire.
I think that oversimplifies the issue.
I have no problem with a millionaire that has a net worth of, say 3 million
I have a problem with someone having a net worth of 30 million
I have a huge problem with someone being worth 300 million
All are millionaires
Being a millionaire these days is pretty normal. Need a lot more than that to retire if you don’t have a pension plan.
The person with 100 million is closer in wealth to the homeless person you pity than they are to a billionaire.
It’s an unimaginable amount of money
The quote I like is “The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.”
Now that’s putting it into perspective … holy shit
A million seconds is approximately 11.5 days.
A billion seconds is approximately 31.7 years.
That is another better perspective … and also why again do we have a civilization that allows someone to own so much wealth that it is not feasible or even possible for them to enjoy all the money in one lifetime?
Holy shit this perspective is enlightening … and also very depressing … thanks
That’s an excellent point.
We need to shift the conversation from government taxing its citizens to shielding them from international economic forces.
Anyone with either millions or billions is the problem because no single person needs either.
Uh… You do need millions to retire.
😮💨 doing the math to figure this out is depressing.
In the current situation yes. The point is we need to fix it so one doesn’t need excessive capital to simply retire, and the rich begging to be taxed more can do a lot on their own to help without the Government.
Not if you publicly fund health care.
Need millions to retire even in Canada.
We have healthcare figured out for the most part. The issue here is housing.
Well I’m boned
I mean that too, but also cost of living, rent if you don’t own a home, etc add up over the two or so decades you’d expect to live after retirement. And if you do own a home, congrats you’re a millionaire.
Almost like the col should be reigned in.
I feel like a lot of people retire with much much less than “millions”. Might not be a super comfortable retirement but, def doable.
My mom ‘retired’ with ‘much much less than “millions”’. She stopped working at 75.
She lives in a small $2/sqft/mo rental with dodgy power, asbestos in the walls, windows stuck shut, people staggering past the fuse box all night, miner bees in the walls, and shit Internet. It’s a coastal town with no access by roads - just ferries - and minimal services. It’s a half-day to get there, really, or an hour’s flight.
you may need to experience your version of ‘doable’ before you commit to it.
Being a homeowner gets you there in a lot of places, it doesn’t matter because you still need a home so you can’t live off it
I know plenty of millionaires … people who own property, vehicles and wealth that all amount to one or two million … and they are still just getting by. They aren’t that terribly wealthy - they don’t live with any more luxury than most people, they just have more things.
Billionaires on the other hand are something else … it’s like comparing someone with a weight problem and calling millionaires slightly pudgy and billionaires are grossly overweight behemoths that can affect the structure of your house.
Here’s a visual comparison using grains of rice of what a millionaire and billionaire and the wealth of someone like Jeff Bezos is
I understand the extreme difference between millions and billions. My point is neither a millionaire nor a billionaire needs it.
Sure, but we don’t “need” anything above our basic survival cost, let’s go live on the Savannah and hunt our food again.
For me the problem are those who hoard wealth, who don’t earn a salary but sit and live off their massive pile of accumulated wealth. We need a wealth tax now.
Sure, but we don’t “need” anything above our basic survival cost, let’s go live on the Savannah and hunt our food again.
Straw man detected.
You need to be a millionaire these days if you want to actually retire. If it only took a million, would have retired a while ago.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates did this joke already.
Write an Op-Ed about how they aren’t taxed heavily enough. Then spending millions to prop up conservative political campaigns dedicated to cutting taxes.
Quit buying this horseshit. You’ll know a millionaire is lying when their lips are moving.
Not only that but Buffet and Gates are likely itemizing and taking advantage of every tax credit and deduction.
No law requires that. They can file a normal tax return and take no deductions.
Instead of living off of capital gains, they can pay themselves a salary.
Fucking billionaires are killing us.
Wealth hoarders are the problem. Millionaires aren’t wealth hoarders, and any multi-income home that lives a frugal lifestyle can become millionaires before they retire (and they’ll need to, if they don’t plan on working into their 80s).
But there should be no such thing is a billionaire, let alone, a billionaire with HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of hoarded wealth.
Sure, we can tax them more (and should!), but we should also design a system where wealth hoarding isn’t incentivized. It should be actively discouraged, and punished at a certain point.
Design? Hmm. What system are you or we designing?
There is one that is available but you won’t look at it. Democracy in the workplace is what we should have but again no one wants it.
So again, what system?
What is your question?
Society should be structured so that billionaires cannot exist.
Wealth should be redistributed so that a hand full of people aren’t worth more than everyone else.
Profit sharing should be law in all businesses, so that trillion dollar companies are paying all their employees (and their supply chain) enough to make a very comfortable living.
No single individual should ever be allowed to have so much wealth that they can control governments. The fact that we do points to a massive problem in our society’s structure.
There are 101 ways that we can fix this problem, and it’s not going to happen until we actually get serious about fixing this problem.
And by we, I mean the 99.9% of us who are struggling to get by because a handful of people “need” to have every single dollar in existence.
I hear you, and i agree. I don’t understand how to achieve it though, a tax on net worth, with brackets starting at 100 million? Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
Moving the money shouldn’t make a difference, though. You pay taxes regardless of where you the money comes from or goes to.
Hiding income is illegal already. So more enforcement and steeper fines are about the only things left to do in that case.
I don’t understand how to achieve it though, a tax on net worth, with brackets starting at 100 million?
Implementation isn’t a consideration until society gets serious about doing it.
Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
Make that a crime. Tax evasion or worse. Jail wealth hoarders if they don’t comply, because they are destroying lives and don’t deserve to play games.
You dont live in reality.
Tax the rich, relentlessly push bikes and public transport, regulate big business, this is the only way we survive.
When McClean is running a piece to tax the rich you know that shit is near the fan
How about instead of begging to be taxed you invest that money into a project needed to help Canadians who aren’t well off.
Build housing with your money.
Build infrastructure with your money.
Help others fund Green alternatives with your money.
Donate to the thousands of charities who will do this all for you if you are lazy.
But stop bitching like you do not have the option to spend that money well on your own for the benefit of others. Especially when the rhetoric is “Government bad” at all times making it really hard to push for a tax increase on anyone.
The problem with this is creates a bunch of micro-musks, who can get high ideals for shifting society into their warped perceptions by sniffing their own virtuous farts.
The system we have certainly isn’t fair or efficient, but it’s better than feudalism dressed up as altruistic capitalism.
No it doesn’t. It creates caring people working to benefit their communities with the excess they have been blessed with. Do good for good sake.
The kind of person who is capable and willing to accumulate billions of dollars is generally not the kind of person who will do good for good’s sake.
Also good for good’s sake by just throwing money at whatever millionaires think might be needed is simply making the overall societal problem worse, because of the warped perspectives they have.
Thoughtful coordination, planning and disbursement of funds to create good public works requires careful government.
I don’t disagree, and the topic is “Millionaires who want to be taxed more”. My point on that topic: Do something good while you wait and push for more taxation.
The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes. 400 kids lost their school. Priscilla Chan’s decision to stop funding the school she opened to help struggling families shows the risks for communities reliant on wealthy private donors.
Using money for charity is great, but having the government tax and manage it all instead is much, much better. Because it won’t suddenly disappear. Unless your ruler’s name is Donal Trump.
The point is: Yes, more taxes, but if not then there is literally nothing stopping them from doing good with their money right now. This moment. Not next year when they file their taxes.
All throughout most modern history … if you set up an economic system where you allow humans to gain unbelievable amounts of wealth and ask them or wait for them to share it, they never do and instead use that wealth to gain even more sums of wealth in a never ending cycle. I know plenty of wealthy people and they do share their wealth, just not in the sums you want to imagine - they share a few hundreds or thousands here and there but never enough to create meaningful change and never in the amounts to affect the growth of their wealth.
This is about “millionaires begging to be taxed” instead of doing it themselves. I am not expecting them all to do it, just the ones who seem to not want to keep their money so others can benefit.
Uh… Given their values it is very likely they do donate to charities, but how far do you think a million can go in the modern day? You say “build housing,” but a million dollars are like, a house? Two houses? Until you reach the hundreds of millions level of obscene wealth, you need numbers before you can get anything done, so pushing for higher taxation is one of the most productive things this person can do with their time and money.
https://macleans.ca/society/tiny-homes-fredericton/
One example.
A lot of wealthy families believe philanthropy should fill these gaps, but that’s not going to cut it. Charity has its place. Private philanthropic initiatives can take risks and innovate in ways that the government’s financial controls and political concerns don’t allow. For example, I’m putting money into marine electrification—funding research, engineering and infrastructure to shift boats and ships away from fossil fuels. This is a new and niche part of the climate fight, where private efforts can actually move the needle. But, at the end of the day, only the Canadian government has the scale and breadth to lift all Canadians up to a better standard of living. Just as importantly, the Canadian government is accountable for its spending to all Canadians. A democratically elected government that demands the wealthy reinvest in this country—instead of waiting for them to pick and choose their own spending priorities—is the only solution to our biggest economic issues.
The person who wrote the article is using their wealth for good according to the article, but more importantly as he says only the government has the scale to use the 0.1%'s wealth for the benefit of all Canadians. This is about more than just wealth; we’re talking infrastructure, knowhow, flexibility, scalability, legitimacy and a whole host of other factors here. Philanthropy is a bandaid, but it’s not a sustainable solution because it’s ultimately predicated on the whims of an individual. And again, to repeat: “Never have to work again in my life” money and “literally change the world” money are completely different scale. The person who wrote the article seems to be the former, not the latter.
I am not going to argue with you about rich people arguing whether or not they should pay more taxes.
Fuck them for sitting on their money while people starve.
You’re pushing a few false dichotomies there.
If you aren’t going to elaborate at least do us both the favour of not wasting our time.
There is nothing stopping your millionaire ass from donating that money to the government. Always good to pretend you’re being prevented from doing that though.
Donations from one person aren’t going to do much good. At best, it’ll provide a bit of short term relief. The system that enables billionaires to exist is still in place, which means they’ll just suck up anything that this one person donates, leaving us with one less caring person capable of enacting further change and amoral corporations becoming more powerful.
We need to change the system so that everyone contributes. It makes little sense for any single person to contribute when no one else does because you gain much less than what you put in, but if everyone contributes, then you get the opposite scenario where everyone gains more than what they put in. That’s why taxes exist in the first place.
Way to miss the point.
Reread your post and I’m still not getting it. What was the point?
But Mark Clowney doesn’t want to.
For a “Progressive”, you sure do like to use Conservative talking points and nicknames a lot.
Carney is running to the Conservatives for support more than he is the NDP. There’s a lot to criticize him for from the left. Whereas the right has got three tax cuts and a promise to hugely increase the military budget in just a few months of this government.
We need to increase the military budget. That isn’t Conservative, it is a reality.
What tax cuts are you referring to? I have only heard of the tax cut for middle class, and that was supported by the NDP from what I know.
We don’t need to increase the military budget to 5% of GDP, a greater share than the US currently spends on it’s military by 1.6%. That’s insane and will certainly mean cuts to services like health care.
Taxes cut under this government:
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Consumer carbon tax
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Capital gains tax increase
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Digital Services Tax
Carney cuts taxes like he won as leader of the CPC.
Do you know how much of that military spending will go to fixing problems that are decades old?
That doesn’t justify spending more as a percentage of our GDP on the military than the USA who spends more than the next 10 or something states combined. I’m not giving up nationalized health care because Donald fucking Trump wants to shake down NATO and make Canada spend 30% of it’s national budget on American arms.
I’m not going to suggest numbers, but think you absolutely need to invest more in defense against states with far right leanings, like the USA. The good news is taxing the ultrawealthy into oblivion can provide all necessary services.
Cool.
With that rant you have shown tou don’t understand how badly our military has been neglected.
Your mindset only works if the US is actually friendly.
And, we have been shopping elsewhere for new military equipment.
Keep up.
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You can criticize one big group without being part of the other big group.
“Mark Clowney” is not criticism.
