You’re looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are f’n taxed to death in Canada.

Who said anything about ‘fuck you I got mine?’

First of all Canada already has a TON of social supports for anyone who is in need. We have Employment Insurance if you lose your job. We have Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan for seniors. We have Child Tax Credits for parents and especially single parents. We have the GST credit to give back taxes to low income earners. We have the Canada Workers Benefit. We have the Canada Disability Benefit. We have the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped. We have disability pensions. We have Universal Pharmacare for prescription drugs. We have housing benefits/social housing programs. We have the Canadian Dental Benefit. We have student aid. There are free food banks in every city. And there are emergency funds available for things like rent/damage deposits on an emergency basis from every province through various community agencies, charities, and non-profit organizations.

So WHY do we need UBI on top of all that? If you need help in Canada, you CAN find it. Its already here.

Source: I founded a charity for street kids in one of our major cities thats been operating for 33 years. There is a TON of support out there. The fact is that a LOT of the people on the street know how to use and abuse the system and they dont WANT to get out of it because its what they grew up in and what they are accustomed to. I speak from years of experience.

You’re looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are f’n taxed to death in Canada.

To be fair, if 8% exits the labour market that would have a pretty severe economic effect, no?

You’re looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are f’n taxed to death in Canada.

Show your work, please. I’m pretty sure it’s closer to 25-30%.

Edit: confirmed. I did the math. It’s closer to 35% for most people. Including income tax, sales tax, and property tax.

These studies are annoying. “Study finds if you give people money they do better in life” Wow. Such rocket science.
But for all the radical socialists trying push UBI, you will note that NONE of them want to pay for it with their tax increases (do they even pay taxes?). Which is the entire problem. There may be some savings in the system but the COST will be borne up front by the taxpaayer. And since WHEN in the history of mankind, if a gov has saved some money in other areas, have they LOWERED taxes due to the savings? Never.

Therefore UBI is sever going to happen. Because the only people who support it are students and academics and think tanks. The rest of us live in reality and are sick of our very high tax burden in Canada. So enough with the studies, kill this idea once and for all.

You’re looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are f’n taxed to death in Canada.

Many middle class Canadian pay 25% or more just in income tax. Then you have to add sales taxes, property taxes, and the rest.

I would say he is about right.

The top income tax bracket is over 50%. If you are very high income, you can pay well over 30% just in income tax (overall).

For anybody that does not understand progressive income tax brackets, a top rate of 50% does not mean you pay 50% on all income. You pay nothing to a certain point, pay a lower percentage up to a certain level, and then it goes up on what you make beyond that level. On the 30,000th dollar you make, you might pay 25 cents tax. On the 200,000th dollar, you might pay 53 cents. On your first dollar, you pay nothing.

To be real about it. Who is going to say it was bad receiving extra money a month? I understand the health data portion. Question remains is it sustainable and how would it be paid for?

We’re not quite there yet. Even with offsets by eliminating virtually all other social programs, including socialized healthcare, and slashing the size of military expenditures to almost nothing, doing every single good idea there is to fund it and increasing taxation on the owner class, there simply isn’t enought GDP to support it without spending your way into inflation… not unless you’re a country with a very small population rich in natural resources.

It’s plausible if we can bring the price of energy down to the point that it’s negligible and multiplies productivity almost for free.

We need scalable commercial fusion power to make it work, basically.

I agree with the goal,l. I don’t think people will contribute less without the threat of being unable to meet basic costs of living. I think a lot of people’s contributions to society aren’t adequately captured and recorded by our economic system.

But I’m not naive enough to believe that it can meet all of a person’s cost of living with current tech.

I doubt this is correct. The argument against universal healthcare was similar and provably, historically wrong.

As UBI is not a lot per person and only goes to very low income people, the burden on the entire country is not great. And it turns out that impoverished people are a burden on the country. Alleviating that burden offsets the costs.

$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%

You are too kind.

Because wealth hoarders would still make HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, even if you taxed 80%.

The tax rate should be 100% past a certain amount of wealth. We should de-incentivize wealth hoarding, and encourage people to retire once they’ve made enough to sustain their family for a lifetime. If they choose to keep working, it should basically be volunteer work after a certain point, and wealth should be redistributed back to everyone else.

If we put a hard cap on wealth, everyone would be in a position to retire young and not struggle through their entire life. This is what we should be striving for.

This is an untrue statistic often trotted out by the Conservative Frasier Institute. Canadians think we’re taxed far more than we are, because public opinion has been manipulated to believe so. Average Canadian pays about one third of income to taxes - creeping up as you move up taxes brackets

Problem is the uber wealthy aren’t actually PAID that much. They’re given stock options or other, non-liquid cash, which isn’t taxed as income. It also doesn’t get taxed until you withdraw it (see the capital gains “scare” that the media hyped up over the recent changes to tax code). Had to dig a bit to find it, but Quebec provides their people with >1mil income per year, which is about 7,000, or 0.08%. Extrapolated to Canada-wide (which I’d argue is not accurate and way too high) gives us 27,000. That’s not a lot of people to try and draw any major funds from. Especially at a ramping rate of return like proposed.

Very rich (bezos, Westons, etc) then draw it out as needed, or use it as collateral against loans at lower interest rates than their return on investments, driving things like private equity, corporate landlords, etc. This then cycles, increasing their paper wealth while not actually having a lot of income to tax easily.

We should de-incentivize wealth hoarding

I agree. The problem is how to do that without penalizing the bottom end, overcomplicating tax laws further, and/or creating some other loophole for the rich to jump through. What counts into your wealth hording? Property? Investments? Are unrealized gains (ie stocks worth a ton but not yet sold to gain actual money) counted against them? What about property - if the market skyrockets, are people forced to sell their homes?

What about things like the wealthy transferring their extra wealth to children or spouses? How does that play into it? Its messy once you get into the details of it, and those are the key points that would actually make a difference.

Assuming this was supposed to reply to my response (you’re just responding directly to the main post FYI).

Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes

I haven’t ever heard a number this big. Where did you get this from, and how does it compare to other countries?

I don’t disagree - we’re taxed more than the US, but that comes with things like single-payer healthcare and higher regulatory enforcement. GST, for example, isn’t something collected in the US meaning they only have the effective PST component of our sales tax, which varies widely by municipality to municipality, but is quite a bit less.

Many middle class Canadian pay 25% or more just in income tax. Then you have to add sales taxes, property taxes, and the rest.

I would say he is about right.

The top income tax bracket is over 50%. If you are very high income, you can pay well over 30% just in income tax (overall).

For anybody that does not understand progressive income tax brackets, a top rate of 50% does not mean you pay 50% on all income. You pay nothing to a certain point, pay a lower percentage up to a certain level, and then it goes up on what you make beyond that level. On the 30,000th dollar you make, you might pay 25 cents tax. On the 200,000th dollar, you might pay 53 cents. On your first dollar, you pay nothing.

I imagine it would improve wages as employers would need to properly incentivise people to return to those jobs. Probably why UBI hasn’t made it past a trial yet.

Who said anything about ‘fuck you I got mine?’

First of all Canada already has a TON of social supports for anyone who is in need. We have Employment Insurance if you lose your job. We have Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan for seniors. We have Child Tax Credits for parents and especially single parents. We have the GST credit to give back taxes to low income earners. We have the Canada Workers Benefit. We have the Canada Disability Benefit. We have the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped. We have disability pensions. We have Universal Pharmacare for prescription drugs. We have housing benefits/social housing programs. We have the Canadian Dental Benefit. We have student aid. There are free food banks in every city. And there are emergency funds available for things like rent/damage deposits on an emergency basis from every province through various community agencies, charities, and non-profit organizations.

So WHY do we need UBI on top of all that? If you need help in Canada, you CAN find it. Its already here.

Source: I founded a charity for street kids in one of our major cities thats been operating for 33 years. There is a TON of support out there. The fact is that a LOT of the people on the street know how to use and abuse the system and they dont WANT to get out of it because its what they grew up in and what they are accustomed to. I speak from years of experience.

You’re looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are f’n taxed to death in Canada.