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Originally Posted by gasman
I guess I still don't see the connection between billionaires in the world and deficits in Canada
Canada can only influence Canadian tax policy, so I was pointing out that you could tax all the billionaires in Canada at 100% of their net worth and it still wouldn't touch our deficit let alone our expenses.
The amount of wealth out side of Canada is largely irrelevant to anything.
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If you don't understand what the phrase "giving you a sense of perspective" means, I can't help you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
What problem are you trying to solve?
It seems your are equating government budget deficits with wealth inequality. I don’t think that the math works in Canada even ignoring the wealth flight affect.
The top .1% have an income of 1.6-2million so that’s about 25000 people maybe 30,000. So that’s about 60 billion in income. And in terms of funding programs income rather than wealth is what we need to tax. That’s really not enough to do anything with. Even looking at their wealth and taxing a portion of the 4% SWR you still aren’t moving the needle. The answer to the problem you seem to have is to tax wage earning employees at historic rates in order to offer historic levels of service.
How do you propose to tax and is it sustainable even assuming there is no capital flight?
Now if we want to look at wealth inequality that’s a different discussion but it’s idenoendant of funding government.
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They are interconnected. When a government spends more than it takes in, there are only one of three ways to deal with it: 1) austerity, which means cutting services/lifelines from those who need them, 2) raising taxes, and figuring out who pays how much more and on what, or 3) leave things as is, and continue running the deficits at current levels.
The 3rd option creates inflation; I don't think anyone disagrees there. However, the question is are we ok with dealing with some increase in the level of inflation? If not, then we have to look at the other two options. #1 is, in my opinion, incredibly callous and barbaric, so that leaves #2. The question then is, who should be looked upon to pay more? The middle class who are already squeezed, or the wealthy who can afford to pay more?
That's what the crux of the disagreement here is. Whose "fault" is it that the government is running record deficits, and what if anything should be done about it? To me, the answer is clear.
And let's not forget, government deficits is not some new problem brought upon by the pandemic. They have been around for as long as society has. Generally speaking, the only times governments have balanced budgets in the past has been via austerity, and the reason is largely because of consistent shortfalls in the amount of revenue collected from those who can most easily afford to contribute to the well being of society.
So no, I'm not asking for "historic levels of service". I'm just asking that the millionaires & billionaires in this country (really, the world tbh) treat the rest of society with basic decency. That's all.
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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
When you read these posts, do you see an attempt at problem solving, or do you see someone who's ideologically motivated and angry at vaguely-defined a group of people?
This isn't an attempt to solve a problem. It's a holy war.
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This coming from the guy who thinks a blackface video from 20 years ago and the SNC Lavalin scandal are of more pressing concern to us than the future of the planet and the generations of people who (presumably) will live on it. The guy who thinks voting out Trudeau and replacing him with OToole will do anything to curb government corruption. Irony much?
Yup, holy war. You nailed it bud.