Federal Government & Politics | Election 2021 FORUM POLL

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

One missing aspect here is that many of these rich people have a good track record of effectively running and investing in large businesses. The businesses are not chosen by some central authority, they compete. This process is not reducible to a government funding model.
.

About a third of the world tried that out at one point or another during the 20th century.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Acajack

About a third of the world tried that out at one point or another during the 20th century.

What people fail to recognize is a significant percentage of the equity in large corporations are held by pension funds and mutual funds. Basically average middle class folk are dependent on that to cover their retirement. Even the Canadian Pension Plan is a major inventor is large corporations.

What we should be worried about when it comes to taxing the "rich" is that we don't discourage those that invest in and start small and medium size business. The small and medium size business tend to be the ones rooted in Canada, with Canadian head offices and the contribute the most to long term success of Canada.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

...the vast ills of inequality due to a lack of economic democracy would be a huge price to pay for a few extra points of GDP growth.

This is a red herring, though. Never in history has the world ever been more economically equitable or had less poverty or starvation. The "vast ills of inequality" are gradually receding into the past. Capitalism with proper regulation has proven itself as the only real effective system for raising standards of living.

The current CEO vs worker wealth disparity in certain Western countries is a tweakable problem. It's hardly cause for reconsidering catastrophically murderous 20th century pilot testing. Wealthy people making dumb decisions with their wealth is a big "meh" in the larger scheme of things. In a democratic society they get reigned in when they run up against laws and regulations put in place to protect against robber barons anyway.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by rousseau

This is a red herring, though. Never in history has the world ever been more economically equitable or had less poverty or starvation. The "vast ills of inequality" are gradually receding into the past. Capitalism with proper regulation has proven itself as the only real effective system for raising standards of living.

The current CEO vs worker wealth disparity in certain Western countries is a tweakable problem. It's hardly cause for reconsidering catastrophically murderous 20th century pilot testing. Wealthy people making dumb decisions with their wealth is a big "meh" in the larger scheme of things. In a democratic society they get reigned in when they run up against laws and regulations put in place to protect against robber barons anyway.

Have you been in a coma since 2008? Did you miss the Panama papers? Is Jeff Bezos flying a 🞵🞵🞵🞵 shaped rocket to space while the world burns and his employees pee into bottles not problematic in your view?

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Have you been in a coma since 2008? Did you miss the Panama papers? Does Jeff Bezos flying a 🞵🞵🞵🞵 shaped rocket to space while the world burns and his employees pee into bottles not problematic in your view?

Yeah, having the ultra-rich at least play by the same rules as the rest of us would be a nice start.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Unfortunately you'll never know (unless he PMs you).

Maybe Acajack is a deeply closeted CPC supporter!!

For the record I did not vote in the poll.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Have you been in a coma since 2008? Did you miss the Panama papers? Does Jeff Bezos flying a 🞵🞵🞵🞵 shaped rocket to space while the world burns and his employees pee into bottles not problematic in your view?

No. No. Yes.

Hope that answers your irrelevant questions.

[JHikka]

CPC internals must be fantastic

BREAKING: O’Toole’s campaign chair says holding Trudeau to a minority would be a win for the Conservatives

https://twitter.com/alexboutilier/status/1440047306858921987?s=21

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by JHikka

CPC internals must be fantastic

BREAKING: O’Toole’s campaign chair says holding Trudeau to a minority would be a win for the Conservatives

https://twitter.com/alexboutilier/status/1440047306858921987?s=21

That has to be a cynical ploy to cause complacency in Liberal voters.

[SignalHillHiker]

Living downtown, my voting location was always directly across the street. I assumed with the pandemic and being out in Mount Pearl, it’d be harder this time around. Nope. 30-second walk away yet again. In and out in less than 10 minutes. Canada does federal elections really well.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

No. No. Yes.

Hope that answers your irrelevant questions.

I'd hate for this to be construed as my being a huge fan of capitalism or (even less) capitalists, but it's also humbling to realize just how much stuff we have our lives that is either essential or even life-changing, that only exists become some dude was obsessively chasing after his next big injection of cash.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by casper

What we should be worried about when it comes to taxing the "rich" is that we don't discourage those that invest in and start small and medium size business. The small and medium size business tend to be the ones rooted in Canada, with Canadian head offices and the contribute the most to long term success of Canada.

It's pretty telling that there's all this angst about big business when we mostly can't even grow them here in Canada, and the prime examples of rich people that come up in this thread live in the US and wouldn't be subject to the wealth taxes proposed by the NDP and Greens. I would like to see more Canadian big business, not less, but more of a shift to innovation and away from oligopolies. I would also like to see better services for many of the poorest in Canadian society but I don't believe it's all zero sum. The Liberals turned on a huge, poorly-aimed firehose of spending during the past year and they are not exactly the "eat the rich" party.

I don't believe that Canadian pension funds and the like can run vibrant and innovative small to medium business ecosystems that result in major companies in globally unique niches.

I think people often overestimate how high the ceiling is beyond which taxation produces somewhat self-defeating outcomes for revenues. For example the NDP proposal is 2% more federal tax for income earned over $216k or so. This is the kind of scenario that can make doctors retire a bit earlier, people who might work at a Canadian office for a company like Google, etc. We can say that those fat cats don't deserve to keep 47% of their pay and should keep 45% but the point is Canada will get less work out of them, and more may move away.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's pretty telling that there's all this angst about big business when we mostly can't even grow them here in Canada, and the prime examples of rich people that come up in this thread live in the US and wouldn't be subject to the wealth taxes proposed by the NDP and Greens. I would like to see more Canadian big business, not less, but more of a shift to innovation and away from oligopolies. I would also like to see better services for many of the poorest in Canadian society but I don't believe it's all zero sum. The Liberals turned on a huge, poorly-aimed firehose of spending during the past year and they are not exactly the "eat the rich" party.

I think people often overestimate how high the ceiling is beyond which taxation produces somewhat self-defeating outcomes for revenues. For example the NDP proposal is 2% more federal tax for income earned over $216k or so. This is the kind of scenario that can make doctors retire a bit earlier, people who might work at a Canadian office for a company like Google, etc. We can say that those fat cats don't deserve what they get but the point is Canada will get less work out of them, and more may even move away.

This might not be a popular view, but here we go anyway.

People making income working, even if its $300,000, $500,000 or even $1,000,000 annually are not a problem.

The issue is not income, its wealth.

Canada is already (arguably) suffering from Dutch Disease.

What we need is much more bright folks, taking much more risks, and breeding more and more homegrown business that reach global scale.
Were not good at this unless its resource extraction.

Taxing wealth, the folks that have yachts with boats in them - that's a bit more interesting of a proposition, but much, much more tricky to implement in any logical way that would actually lead to increased revenues and not capital flight.

Taxing the doctor, lawyer, or partner at accounting firm that makes $450,000 in Toronto/Vancouver, working 55 hours a week, where a 2 bed condo Downtown costs $1.2 million seems like a miss to me.

[thewave46]

I would argue that the declining rate of technological advance and the type of technological advances are more the obstacle to a wide-scale redistribution of wealth.

A lot of previous technological advances required a fair bit of human labour to accomplish. All those assembly lines and workers required to make everything. That provided a unique condition for big labour to challenge large corporations to take a larger portion of that wealth generated.

Now, automation is a dominant strain of technological advance. It requires fewer workers - what's the last time you talked to a bank teller? Large scale assembly operations have been relocated to more business-friendly jurisdictions and are more automated, thus minimizing the ability of big labour to challenge large companies.

Maybe somebody like Foxconn in China might be worried because that style of operation requires lots of labour, most of it not well paid. It's not the same story here in the West.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I'd hate for this to be construed as my being a huge fan of capitalism or (even less) capitalists, but it's also humbling to realize just how much stuff we have our lives that is either essential or even life-changing, that only exists become some dude was obsessively chasing after his next big injection of cash.

I'm all for ridiculing Jeff Bezos, but if we're talking about overhauling financial/governing systems here, I think 700 million Chinese being lifted out of poverty and "the proportion of people in Africa living in monetary poverty declining from 54% in 1990 to 41% in 2015" trumps the offense caused by "🞵🞵🞵🞵-shaped rockets."

(https://www.dw.com/en/africa-more-poverty-despite-economic-growth/a-52840817)

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I'd hate for this to be construed as my being a huge fan of capitalism or (even less) capitalists, but it's also humbling to realize just how much stuff we have our lives that is either essential or even life-changing, that only exists become some dude was obsessively chasing after his next big injection of cash.

And yet so many successes came not from big guys with big bucks but from garage startups.

And this is actually a major problem with capital being hoarded. Companies are innovating a lot less with all that cash.

Just ask any startup folks how difficult it is to raise investment in Canada. Way easier and safer to invest in real estate or resource stocks here.

[jigglysquishy]

What time do we expect results to start? 9:30 eastern?

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

What time do we expect results to start? 9:30 eastern?

Polls close in Atlantic Canada at 730EST and at 830 EST in ON & QC.

I think Newfoundland technically ends at 7EST.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Just ask any startup folks how difficult it is to raise investment in Canada. Way easier and safer to invest in real estate or resource stocks here.

The quality of the investor matters too. If you have a highly skilled investor they will understand the business better, giving better advice and knowing when the invest and when not to invest. I don't think this is abstract "investment" skill but rather particular to the domain (software, biomedical, and so on). Usually these investors invest in many companies (high risk, high reward) and need a lot of capital.

Some of this can probably come from governments and large institutions but I doubt all of it can, and I am skeptical of people, usually people who spend 90% of their time talking about fairness/redistribution and not production, who say that a vibrant ecosystem can be replicated with a line item in the federal government's budget.

I'm not sure any party covered this issue much.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

The quality of the investor matters too.

Maybe. But there's something to be said for policies that penalize cash holding, increase the velocity of money and encourage non-rent seeking investment.

To be clear, I think wealth taxes are a bad idea. And I think they are mostly a political distraction from the folks that don't want to actually talk about what is substantially contributing to wealth inequality in Canada: real estate.