On the face of it, I don't see anything wrong with taxing the wealthy to alleviate poverty, especially homelessness (which for sure is way under-reported. Do you buy that there are less than 10,000 homeless people in Toronto?) However the execution of wealth taxes does not go as planned as wealthy people are the most capital mobile in the world. And the government squanders way too much tax money. I used to work in government and government employees used to say like even 6 years ago, maybe even before that, that $100,000 is a very low threshold for the Sunshine List in le current year because of inflation.
We should use the tax dollars we collect already in a more efficient way to solve problems. We can provide relief to non-drug addicted homeless people relatively easily. A lot of people turn to drugs in the first place due to depression caused by poverty and homelessness. So helping vulnerable people before they turn to drugs is a very efficient way of dealing with the problem. The ones who are addicted to drugs, we need to find a way to wean them off the drugs efficiently (and no I don't mean letting them die or killing them). Is there a safe opiate that is inexpensive that can wean them off fentanyl, street heroin? There is this pilot opiate drug the government distributes to homeless opiate addicts that costs like $27,000 per person. This is crazy.
There is a glut of labour supply and a shortage of labour demand due to automation, outsourcing and mass immigration. There is a glut of housing demand and a shortage of housing supply. So our system is a game of musical chairs and inevitably there is a significant portion of the population that is left without a chair. And there isn't a political will on either side to resolve this problem.
A lot of people are poor through no fault of their own. Some people are low IQ, not everyone is neurotypical, free of mental illness, able-bodied, etc. Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager. If you have a glut of applications, you're going to choose the best applicants. There are people who are going to be losing out. People have this fantasy in their head that there is a job, a home for everyone. And then you have the people who lack empathy who just want the "excess" population to overdose on fentanyl-laced street heroin and die and get upvoted for saying that homeless people overdosing on heroin are doing society a favour.
We need to bridge the gap between fiscal realism and empathy. Politicians are failing to do this. Mainly because politicians go into politics for themselves and not to be public servants.
What right do they have to my already taxed income? I'd rather invest it into the economy than hand it over to a government slush fund.
Having a straight wealth tax on all wealth is something I would oppose 100%. I would only support a wealth tax on wealth above a certain threshold. At least a few mil.
There is no guarantee that wealthy Canadians are going to invest in the Canadian economy in lieu of a wealth tax. This is why strictly supply-side economics doesn't work. In fact we don't have an estate tax right now and a lot of Canadians are making foreign investments rather than domestic. And many are investing in real estate beyond their primary residence (contributing to the housing bubble crushing the poor) instead of investing in Canadian corporations or Canadian index funds like the TSX. Even if your Quest trade or TD trading account or mutual fund is based in Canada, if you invest in something foreign like say the S&P 500 (an American index fund), the bulk of that money goes to the United States while the Canadian financial enterprise mediating the transactions gets a percentage.
In order to ensure that the wealthy invest in Canadian jobs, the tax code would have to incentivize towards that direction.
My concern with wealth taxes is the capital flight risk. As wealthy people have the best accountants and are the most capital mobile.
They should tax the leftists that don’t actually ever solve any problems. Maybe then the leftists would be incentivised to come up with plans that actually work. They screw up everything then seek out additional tax revenue from upper middle class to fix the problems they created. Of course simply throwing money at dumb policies doesn’t ever work.
Aka let the poors kill themselves and overdose on heroin and die right? Less assistance to the poor = less poor because they overdose on heroin or kill themselves in absence of assistance because the system that we have right now is a zero-sum game of musical chairs where a percentage of population is guaranteed to be fucked. That is the unspoken truth of what a lot of conservatives want. I have seen posts celebrating homeless people overdosing on heroin and killing themselves get upvoted on conservative subs including this one. So don't give me this shit that there aren't empathy-deficits within conservatives (note: not all conservatives lack empathy). There isn't enough labour demand for the poor to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. There is a glut of labour supply and shrinking labour demand due to automation and outsourcing.
There needs to be intervention of some kind to help the poor. It's magical thinking that every poor person who wants a job can get one. A lot of people are not worth the legally mandated minimum wage. And the housing costs are too high to support a lowering of the minimum wage realistically. Yeah if you're a dependent, the minimum wage can be lower sure. But if you need to support yourself or worse a family, then no. And with the mass graveyard of small businesses from the lockdown, We have an unprecedented game of musical chairs in our society where a portion of society is gonna get fucked no matter what and then we wonder why people overdose, kill themselves, become criminals or go full Joker. And our system was already a game of musical chairs before COVID just on a smaller scale.
There are serious flaws on both sides of the aisle. The left lacks fiscal discipline. Free college and giving "public servants" all this fucking money should not be a fucking priority when so many people are homeless or on the brink of it. We are not hurting for college graduates. We have plenty. And these retarded lockdowns made the problem worse and are making the problems harder to solve. And many on the right lack empathy. And of those who do have empathy tend not to run for office as politicians mostly just care about enriching themselves, their family, their buddies.
If that's not your proposed solution to the problem of homelessness and poverty, then what is?
On the face of it, I don't see anything wrong with taxing the wealthy to alleviate poverty, especially homelessness (which for sure is way under-reported. Do you buy that there are less than 10,000 homeless people in Toronto?) However the execution of wealth taxes does not go as planned as wealthy people are the most capital mobile in the world. And the government squanders way too much tax money. I used to work in government and government employees used to say like even 6 years ago, maybe even before that, that $100,000 is a very low threshold for the Sunshine List in le current year because of inflation.
We should use the tax dollars we collect already in a more efficient way to solve problems. We can provide relief to non-drug addicted homeless people relatively easily. A lot of people turn to drugs in the first place due to depression caused by poverty and homelessness. So helping vulnerable people before they turn to drugs is a very efficient way of dealing with the problem. The ones who are addicted to drugs, we need to find a way to wean them off the drugs efficiently (and no I don't mean letting them die or killing them). Is there a safe opiate that is inexpensive that can wean them off fentanyl, street heroin? There is this pilot opiate drug the government distributes to homeless opiate addicts that costs like $27,000 per person. This is crazy.
There is a glut of labour supply and a shortage of labour demand due to automation, outsourcing and mass immigration. There is a glut of housing demand and a shortage of housing supply. So our system is a game of musical chairs and inevitably there is a significant portion of the population that is left without a chair. And there isn't a political will on either side to resolve this problem.
A lot of people are poor through no fault of their own. Some people are low IQ, not everyone is neurotypical, free of mental illness, able-bodied, etc. Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager. If you have a glut of applications, you're going to choose the best applicants. There are people who are going to be losing out. People have this fantasy in their head that there is a job, a home for everyone. And then you have the people who lack empathy who just want the "excess" population to overdose on fentanyl-laced street heroin and die and get upvoted for saying that homeless people overdosing on heroin are doing society a favour.
We need to bridge the gap between fiscal realism and empathy. Politicians are failing to do this. Mainly because politicians go into politics for themselves and not to be public servants.
Wealth taxes are regressive.
What right do they have to my already taxed income? I'd rather invest it into the economy than hand it over to a government slush fund.
Having a straight wealth tax on all wealth is something I would oppose 100%. I would only support a wealth tax on wealth above a certain threshold. At least a few mil.
There is no guarantee that wealthy Canadians are going to invest in the Canadian economy in lieu of a wealth tax. This is why strictly supply-side economics doesn't work. In fact we don't have an estate tax right now and a lot of Canadians are making foreign investments rather than domestic. And many are investing in real estate beyond their primary residence (contributing to the housing bubble crushing the poor) instead of investing in Canadian corporations or Canadian index funds like the TSX. Even if your Quest trade or TD trading account or mutual fund is based in Canada, if you invest in something foreign like say the S&P 500 (an American index fund), the bulk of that money goes to the United States while the Canadian financial enterprise mediating the transactions gets a percentage.
In order to ensure that the wealthy invest in Canadian jobs, the tax code would have to incentivize towards that direction.
My concern with wealth taxes is the capital flight risk. As wealthy people have the best accountants and are the most capital mobile.
They should tax the leftists that don’t actually ever solve any problems. Maybe then the leftists would be incentivised to come up with plans that actually work. They screw up everything then seek out additional tax revenue from upper middle class to fix the problems they created. Of course simply throwing money at dumb policies doesn’t ever work.
No such thing as a glut of demand, it only refers to supply.
Aka let the poors kill themselves and overdose on heroin and die right? Less assistance to the poor = less poor because they overdose on heroin or kill themselves in absence of assistance because the system that we have right now is a zero-sum game of musical chairs where a percentage of population is guaranteed to be fucked. That is the unspoken truth of what a lot of conservatives want. I have seen posts celebrating homeless people overdosing on heroin and killing themselves get upvoted on conservative subs including this one. So don't give me this shit that there aren't empathy-deficits within conservatives (note: not all conservatives lack empathy). There isn't enough labour demand for the poor to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. There is a glut of labour supply and shrinking labour demand due to automation and outsourcing.
There needs to be intervention of some kind to help the poor. It's magical thinking that every poor person who wants a job can get one. A lot of people are not worth the legally mandated minimum wage. And the housing costs are too high to support a lowering of the minimum wage realistically. Yeah if you're a dependent, the minimum wage can be lower sure. But if you need to support yourself or worse a family, then no. And with the mass graveyard of small businesses from the lockdown, We have an unprecedented game of musical chairs in our society where a portion of society is gonna get fucked no matter what and then we wonder why people overdose, kill themselves, become criminals or go full Joker. And our system was already a game of musical chairs before COVID just on a smaller scale.
There are serious flaws on both sides of the aisle. The left lacks fiscal discipline. Free college and giving "public servants" all this fucking money should not be a fucking priority when so many people are homeless or on the brink of it. We are not hurting for college graduates. We have plenty. And these retarded lockdowns made the problem worse and are making the problems harder to solve. And many on the right lack empathy. And of those who do have empathy tend not to run for office as politicians mostly just care about enriching themselves, their family, their buddies.
If that's not your proposed solution to the problem of homelessness and poverty, then what is?