Admittedly the wealthy generally don't utilize their capital in pro-social ways. Canada's wealthy prefers to prop up housing bubbles and invest in foreign assets rather than invest in Canadian entrepreneurship. Because generally speaking people prefer to invest in whatever gives them the highest return on investment. They don't invest in what produces the greater good. Even the TSX has a APY of like 1.05% in the past 12.5 years. So I can understand the resentment towards the wealthy. If they used their capital to create Canadian jobs, if they created affordable housing, Canada's poor would hate them less.
So naturally the left thinks that if the wealthy are not using their capital in a pro-social way, we might as well tax that capital to spend it on pro-social initiatives.
But what if I told you that when my dad came to Canada over 50+ years ago, taxes were even lower than they are today and housing was a lot more affordable back then? My dad was a poor European immigrant fresh off the boat. He said there was no minimum wage back then. At least that's what he thought anyways. He might have been getting taken advantage of by his employers working cash jobs. Who the fuck knows. He was basically the equivalent of a Pajeet (cheap foreign labour) in the 1960s. But he was able to scrimp and save along with my mom and buy a fucking house in the early 1970s for like fucking $20,000 in fucking downtown Toronto.
The Pajeet of today shares a room with fucking 6 other Pajeets in fucking Brampton. And taxes are higher than before. How does that make any sense? Where are our tax dollars going? And we are running up a huge deficit too. Even before COVID we had deficits.
If you're going to raise taxes on the wealthy, can you trust your government to spend that money wisely? How is it that we are taxed more yet the problems are worse, not better? And then the CRA turns a blind eye to the foreign holdings of friends, family and colleagues of politicians.
Yeah if I was Supreme Leader, you can call me a leftist sure. I'm totally fine with the likes of Bill Morneau having 9 yachts instead of 10. But would I trust NDP with the chequebook? Would I trust AOC with the chequebook? No.
Helping people used to be community based. You helped you family, your neighbours, people in your church that you knew personally. You knew there was a real need, and figured out how to support them best. Maybe you fed them. Maybe you gave them clothes. Maybe you helped build a house for them.
Now, we rely on the government to help people. And the help isn't what the individuals actually need. Or it doesn't arrive. Or people who don't need help leech off the system.
And people stop caring, because "the government is using my money to fix it."
It's impossible to go back to the way things used to be. People say it's "unfair" to reduce or privatize things, but the current system is so bad it's unfair to everyone. There's many possible ways to improve things, but I have no hope of ever seeing it in Canada.