[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

If any of this was driven by jealousy, or all I cared about was my own financial well being and furthering my personal self interests, there's no way I'd ​be advocating a policy that would be of detriment to me personally. And I certainly wouldn't be spending my time posting on CP about things like inequality, climate change, etc. Nothing about this is "fun" for me, as you seem to suggest.

Your post, while containing lots of good information regarding tax policy, comes across as not seeing the forest for the trees. You're putting all the emphasis on the fine print/technical details of each policy, and not bothering to get at the heart of what truly matters here. Wealth inequality continues to get increasingly stark, more and more of the world's wealth (and the political power that comes with it) is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands, and the system that those people are using to grow their wealth at historic levels is the same system that's polluting our environment into oblivion. What's more, the big winners of a global pandemic that has caused incalculable human suffering have been the wealthiest members of society. You can probably guess who the big winners of climate change are going to be...

If it seems like I'm mixing up Canadian & US policies here, it's because wealth inequality is a global problem, and the only way to fundamentally solve it is to do so on a global scale. In that sense it's just like climate change; it's a problem that needs a collaborative effort by the global community to tackle. That said, it's still important to make changes here in Canada, as the issue of how much of the nation's tax burden should fall on whose shoulders, is an important topic to broach.

GST hurting middle class... fair point.

Tax avoidance vs tax minimizing... seems like an argument of semantics/technicalities. Ultimately they are getting at the same concept: ways to legally reduce one's taxes. The distinction there doesn't have much of a difference, IMO.

Your TV analogy doesn't make much sense to me. Of course there's nothing wrong with a person doing everything possible to buy a product at the lowest possible price that a business is willing to sell it for, just like there's nothing wrong with a person doing everything that's legally allowed within the tax code. My issue is with the tax code itself. It does seem like we could find ways to reduce the tax minimizing strategies that the wealthy have available to them. You contend that this would lead to a mass exodus of talent and innovation, I would contend that we're not near that threshold yet. I also think that governments place too much emphasis on attracting & retaining talent. Is it important? Of course it is. But not as important as a lot of people make it out to be. For all the talent the US has, they have a disturbingly high rate of poverty.

So do I have a perfect smoking gun plan with every single detailed ironed out? No. But that doesn't mean that wealth inequality isn't a major problem, nor does it mean there's nothing we can do about it.

No, it isn't semantics - tax avoidance is a crime.