Quote:
Originally Posted by RichieRich
I think you called me old?  I'm not 50 yet but older than 40 but true enough I do have some older ideas, many of which were inherited from the parents. I was brought up without much (ie: yes I was that kid that had hand-me-down underwear), have travelled a lot and seen true true destitution where people might be "lucky" to live another day. So, to me, I see excess examples of consumerism, wastage, expectations and demands exceed potential to support them. I see far far too many failures where "the man" is to blame instead of personal accountability and self-awareness of immediate and long term decisions. For example, I have "poor" friends whose T4's are near $200k/annual who whine and moan about how they're only freedom-75 plan... yet they travel a lot, regular new cars, kids in many expensive sports that require travel, all kinds of toys, etc... and they actually feel they're hard done by. It's wrong, IMO, to expect the government to be your saviour. It's also wrong to expect any society to tax their way to prosperity, or to take from the richer and give to the poorer like we are headed towards. F that.
That said.. I support your concept of certain tax-exempt items, but lets also throw in consumption-based taxes. Even though I pay a fair bit of tax I do see some value in a graduated taxation too, however enough is enough at some point. Those that pay the least tax may be victims of their situation (earned or inherited or just crap luck) indeed, and that sucks, however it's not reasonable to expect those that scrimped and saved and worked their @$$e$ off to now be penalized. |
You've obviously worked hard to accomplish what you have.
Now imagine that, while you were working hard, the cost of everything just increased from 20-300%, depending on the good, in relation to your income. You'd be pissed.
The other question is did you really earn that capital? Your house went up in value several times. Is that money you've earned or was it merely accumulated via manipulation of financial systems. If while saving for that first home, it just tripled in price before you could buy it, would that be fair?
In my line of work, I see a lot of people's financials. I see how many people aged 50+ have accumulated vast amounts of wealth through real estate, yet remain in constant debt. HELOCs taken against homes to buy Range Rovers.