Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
I'm sorry but my dad moved to this country with nothing, busted his ass to amass his fortune and he paid every penny of tax he owed to the government. He was also very frugal and didn't play the "keep up with the Joneses" game which his highly prevalent in this country. Why should his money be double taxed because he was better with his money than most people?
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That isn't the question. The question is how much
you should benefit from the hard work of your father once you're an adult. And how much the prospects of a child of a single mother who works at Winner's should be narrowed because of the circumstances of his birth. Should one have a big leg-up buying his own house, while the other can never scrape together a down-payment?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason14h
Because I don't have as much as you and want your stuff ? Isn't that what the argument basically boils down too?
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Nope. We're rapidly moving towards a society where around 20 per cent of people will live in households with high incomes and good jobs, 30-40 per cent will have precarious jobs, mostly in the service industry, and the rest won't have the skills to find regular work.
You can be in that top 20 per cent yourself and still believe the social cohesion and general security and prosperity of your fellow-citizens affects your own happiness. When doctors and bankers are all the children and grandchildren of doctors and bankers, and grocery store clerks and drywallers are all the children and grandchildren of grocery store clerks and drywallers, social cohesion breaks down. When people end up going to school, marrying, and having children only with people of similar backgrounds, we develop a very narrow sense of 'we'. Civility goes down. Crime, fraud, and and the destruction of public property goes up. The rich, afraid to leave their affluent bubbles, come to live in enclaves just as restrictive as the poor.
The story of Estrada's father becomes
less likely when only the children of the affluent are raised in the right neighbourhoods that have the good schools that secure the high-paying jobs that are the only way of getting ahead. And really, what's the difference between houses being priced out of the reach of average Canadians because of rich foreigners, and being priced out of the reach of average Canadians because of rich Canadians?
Edit: And just to be clear, I'm talking about using inheritance taxes to pay for our public health care, education, and pension systems, whose long-term viability is in doubt.