Take My Money. Please!

With even Britain's Labour Party avowing no new taxes on the wealthy, it is refreshing when one reads about people of means asking to be taxed more. In the United States, it is the billionaire Warren Buffett who clamours for fair taxation. His Buffett Rule came to prominence when he

publicly stated in early 2011 that he believed it was wrong that rich people, like himself, could pay less in federal taxes, as a portion of income, than the middle class, and voiced support for increased income taxes on the wealthy.

Regrettably, there is little such appetite in Canada, where that kind of talk is met with dire warnings of doom, the myth being that we are overtaxed. No one wants to impose penury on the wealthy, since they already do so much for us, eh? However, one individual is piercing the 'party line'. Claire Trottier writes:

Despite being part of the 1 per cent myself, ... we’re not addressing the underpinning factors that are accelerating the concentration of wealth and power into an ever shrinking percentage of individuals.

The solution is right in front of us: we need to tax me and people like me more and that means taxing wealth. 

She points out that the gap between the very rich and the rest of us is widening.

Canada’s roughly 50 billionaires have seen a 51 per cent increase in their wealth since the beginning of COVID and have more assets than the bottom 40 per cent of Canadian households combined. And it’s getting worse, as hugely disproportionate sums of wealth created in the last 10 years have gone to the top 1 per cent while the bottom 50 per cent have gotten practically nothing.

Given the crises in housing, food prices, general affordability and the climate, Trottier wants to see some changes. 

 I am one of over 250 millionaires who signed an open letter presented at the World Economic Forum at Davos saying that we would be proud to pay more tax in the form of a wealth tax. 

Polls show that a majority of Canadians support the idea of a wealth tax. 

All of society would benefit from a wealth tax. I’m not interested in being a rich person in a poor country. I want to live in a society where everyone can live a dignified life today and where we can mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change in the future.

Unfortunately, as I tried to point out in my previous post, the biggest impediment to fair taxation seems to be our government and the titans it chooses to fawn over and listen to. Until that changes, expect the gap between the rich and the poor, and its attendant policy failures, to continue apace.

 

 

 

Is It Brinkmanship?

 

H/t Moudakis

One has to wonder, given the lack of any real movement on a national pharmacare program, whether Justin Trudeau is gambling on Jagmeet Singh's NDP being more afraid of an early election than are the Liberals. Given that the polls show an almost inexplicable lead by PP's Conservatives, that is quite the roll of the dice.

For whatever reason, the NDP has never, with one real exception, captured the hearts and minds of 'ordinary Canadians'. Perhaps they consider themselves temporarily embarrassed millionaires, or fear that wild-eyed socialists will run amok in their home and native land.

However, one thing that is certain, at least in my mind, is that the Liberals, especially under their current leadership, have never met a corporate entity they didn't like. To bring in a true pharmacare program would 'disenfranchise' health insurance companies and reduce big pharma's profits by bulk purchases of drugs at significantly lower prices. Despite their rhetoric, this is not something Justin and the gang want.

All of which is to say that the rich and their money enjoy special government protection. Consider, for example, Linda McQuaig's latest column about wealth taxes and what they could achieve for an increasingly impoverished citizenry:

Understandably, people feel enraged when they can’t afford food and shelter for themselves and their children -- especially when they’re working full-time, often at several jobs. They know they’re getting the short end of the stick.

But unless they read Statistics Canada releases, they’re probably unaware just how long the other end of the stick has suddenly become.

Of course, it’s conventional wisdom that the rich always get richer.

This has not always been the case, McQuaig points out that we used to have a progressive taxation system that redistributed wealth quite effectively, but that ended in the 1980s, and now the wealthy are profiting more than they ever have.

Just-released Statistics Canada data show that, in 2021, the top 1 per cent of Canadians saw their incomes grow by fully 20 per cent. Farther up, the incomes of the top .01 per cent grew by a stunning 30 per cent -- to an average yearly income of $12.5 million. This prompted Statistics Canada, not known for rabble-rousing, to note that (in inflation-adjusted dollars) this is “much higher” than at any point in the past 40 years.

Meanwhile, that same year, the bottom half of Canadians (some 14 million working people) saw their incomes actually drop.

McQuaig's solution, which will please many and appal some, is a wealth tax. 

A wealth tax would apply exclusively to those with net assets of more than $10 million – just 87,000 families. Under one model, they’d pay 1 percent a year on assets above $10 million, 2% above $50 million and 3% above $100 million. Yet, the tax could raise an estimated $32 billion – about 60 times more than the Liberal income tax charges.

Despite almost no public debate about it, a wealth tax has the support of close to 90 per cent of Canadians.

But the current crop of politicos, both Liberal and Conservative, and their enablers, will likely continue to protect the interests of the few, since

the wealthy have managed to keep it off the agenda. Their phalanx of lawyers, accountants and economists are quick to dismiss all attempts to raise taxes on the rich. And a wealth tax, given the way it can be so effectively targeted, is considered particularly odious.

Jesus is reported to have said that the poor will always be with us. Given the sad caliber of our political overlords, I see no reason to dispute that assertion.