Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I don't think it is viable for the government to provide affordable housing to half of the households, so this discussion is likely to be purely hypothetical, but at some point it just becomes a tax-and-spend policy where you take money from the middle class wage-earning workhorses of the economy, waste some of it, and then give them less than they would have been able to buy for themselves.
Our tax system puts a low tax burden on many wealthy people and a high tax burden on people earning what are now just middle class salaries that aren't enough to enable them to afford what would have been an average living space in 1980.
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You are (as often
) hitting the nail on the head with this post, but I would add that it's awfully delicate to try to tax wealth, given how mobile it is nowadays.
I'm one wealth tax introduction attempt away from decamping all my material wealth to greener pastures than Canada, and I'm sure nearly everyone else (including plenty of richer Canadians than me) is like me
(My exit strategy in case a wealth tax is ever on the horizon is to sell off everything I have in Canada that can be converted into condos as condos, which will all go to individuals anyway so unaffected by a wealth tax; the rest is either buildable land or SRO buildings, on the former I'd build buildings and sell them off as condos, the latter I'd convert into condo apartments or raze them to build much bigger buildings, again to be sold as condos.)
Probably not happening, because I think all politicians from all reasonable parties know wealth taxation is a bad idea.
Ironically, a wealth tax would (in my case) result in densification of my hometown's downtown, so that would be at least a positive effect of it. (Land Value Taxation would accomplish the same thing without the perverse effects, though.)