I am a Millionaire. Tax Me More, Please.
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Wealth hoarders are the problem. Millionaires aren’t wealth hoarders, and any multi-income home that lives a frugal lifestyle can become millionaires before they retire (and they’ll need to, if they don’t plan on working into their 80s).
But there should be no such thing is a billionaire, let alone, a billionaire with HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of hoarded wealth.
Sure, we can tax them more (and should!), but we should also design a system where wealth hoarding isn’t incentivized. It should be actively discouraged, and punished at a certain point.
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I feel like a lot of people retire with much much less than “millions”. Might not be a super comfortable retirement but, def doable.
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I feel like a lot of people retire with much much less than “millions”. Might not be a super comfortable retirement but, def doable.
My mom ‘retired’ with ‘much much less than “millions”’. She stopped working at 75.
She lives in a small $2/sqft/mo rental with dodgy power, asbestos in the walls, windows stuck shut, people staggering past the fuse box all night, miner bees in the walls, and shit Internet. It’s a coastal town with no access by roads - just ferries - and minimal services. It’s a half-day to get there, really, or an hour’s flight.
you may need to experience your version of ‘doable’ before you commit to it.
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Warren Buffet and Bill Gates did this joke already.
Write an Op-Ed about how they aren’t taxed heavily enough. Then spending millions to prop up conservative political campaigns dedicated to cutting taxes.
Quit buying this horseshit. You’ll know a millionaire is lying when their lips are moving.
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Being a millionaire these days is pretty normal. Need a lot more than that to retire if you don’t have a pension plan.
The person with 100 million is closer in wealth to the homeless person you pity than they are to a billionaire.
It’s an unimaginable amount of money
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I feel like a lot of people retire with much much less than “millions”. Might not be a super comfortable retirement but, def doable.
Being a homeowner gets you there in a lot of places, it doesn’t matter because you still need a home so you can’t live off it
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Millionaires with a few million dollars aren’t the problem
The biggest problems are the handful of billionaires and the billionaires that are not Canadian but have a strangle hold on companies or corporations that affect Canada.
If the government could just tax the ever loving shit out of billionaires, they’d remove the single root cause of a lot of problems in the country and actually allow some sort of competition in all industries. This would allow the economy to spread the wealth to more Canadians than to a bunch of non-aligned billionaires who could care less what country they are attached to because their wealth is so great, they are basically their own country at this point.
Millionaires aren’t the problem … Billionaires are
That’s an excellent point.
We need to shift the conversation from government taxing its citizens to shielding them from international economic forces.
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Not if you publicly fund health care.
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How about instead of begging to be taxed you invest that money into a project needed to help Canadians who aren’t well off.
Build housing with your money.
Build infrastructure with your money.
Help others fund Green alternatives with your money.
Donate to the thousands of charities who will do this all for you if you are lazy.
But stop bitching like you do not have the option to spend that money well on your own for the benefit of others. Especially when the rhetoric is “Government bad” at all times making it really hard to push for a tax increase on anyone.
You’re pushing a few false dichotomies there.
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You’re pushing a few false dichotomies there.
If you aren’t going to elaborate at least do us both the favour of not wasting our time.
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All throughout most modern history … if you set up an economic system where you allow humans to gain unbelievable amounts of wealth and ask them or wait for them to share it, they never do and instead use that wealth to gain even more sums of wealth in a never ending cycle. I know plenty of wealthy people and they do share their wealth, just not in the sums you want to imagine - they share a few hundreds or thousands here and there but never enough to create meaningful change and never in the amounts to affect the growth of their wealth.
This is about “millionaires begging to be taxed” instead of doing it themselves. I am not expecting them all to do it, just the ones who seem to not want to keep their money so others can benefit.
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I know plenty of millionaires … people who own property, vehicles and wealth that all amount to one or two million … and they are still just getting by. They aren’t that terribly wealthy - they don’t live with any more luxury than most people, they just have more things.
Billionaires on the other hand are something else … it’s like comparing someone with a weight problem and calling millionaires slightly pudgy and billionaires are grossly overweight behemoths that can affect the structure of your house.
Here’s a visual comparison using grains of rice of what a millionaire and billionaire and the wealth of someone like Jeff Bezos is
I understand the extreme difference between millions and billions. My point is neither a millionaire nor a billionaire needs it.
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Warren Buffet and Bill Gates did this joke already.
Write an Op-Ed about how they aren’t taxed heavily enough. Then spending millions to prop up conservative political campaigns dedicated to cutting taxes.
Quit buying this horseshit. You’ll know a millionaire is lying when their lips are moving.
Not only that but Buffet and Gates are likely itemizing and taking advantage of every tax credit and deduction.
No law requires that. They can file a normal tax return and take no deductions.
Instead of living off of capital gains, they can pay themselves a salary.
Fucking billionaires are killing us.
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Not if you publicly fund health care.
Need millions to retire even in Canada.
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The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes. 400 kids lost their school. Priscilla Chan’s decision to stop funding the school she opened to help struggling families shows the risks for communities reliant on wealthy private donors.
Using money for charity is great, but having the government tax and manage it all instead is much, much better. Because it won’t suddenly disappear. Unless your ruler’s name is Donal Trump.
The point is: Yes, more taxes, but if not then there is literally nothing stopping them from doing good with their money right now. This moment. Not next year when they file their taxes.
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You can criticize one big group without being part of the other big group.
“Mark Clowney” is not criticism.
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Uh… Given their values it is very likely they do donate to charities, but how far do you think a million can go in the modern day? You say “build housing,” but a million dollars are like, a house? Two houses? Until you reach the hundreds of millions level of obscene wealth, you need numbers before you can get anything done, so pushing for higher taxation is one of the most productive things this person can do with their time and money.
One example.
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The kind of person who is capable and willing to accumulate billions of dollars is generally not the kind of person who will do good for good’s sake.
I don’t disagree, and the topic is “Millionaires who want to be taxed more”. My point on that topic: Do something good while you wait and push for more taxation.
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In the current situation yes. The point is we need to fix it so one doesn’t need excessive capital to simply retire, and the rich begging to be taxed more can do a lot on their own to help without the Government.
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One example.
A lot of wealthy families believe philanthropy should fill these gaps, but that’s not going to cut it. Charity has its place. Private philanthropic initiatives can take risks and innovate in ways that the government’s financial controls and political concerns don’t allow. For example, I’m putting money into marine electrification—funding research, engineering and infrastructure to shift boats and ships away from fossil fuels. This is a new and niche part of the climate fight, where private efforts can actually move the needle. But, at the end of the day, only the Canadian government has the scale and breadth to lift all Canadians up to a better standard of living. Just as importantly, the Canadian government is accountable for its spending to all Canadians. A democratically elected government that demands the wealthy reinvest in this country—instead of waiting for them to pick and choose their own spending priorities—is the only solution to our biggest economic issues.
The person who wrote the article is using their wealth for good according to the article, but more importantly as he says only the government has the scale to use the 0.1%'s wealth for the benefit of all Canadians. This is about more than just wealth; we’re talking infrastructure, knowhow, flexibility, scalability, legitimacy and a whole host of other factors here. Philanthropy is a bandaid, but it’s not a sustainable solution because it’s ultimately predicated on the whims of an individual. And again, to repeat: “Never have to work again in my life” money and “literally change the world” money are completely different scale. The person who wrote the article seems to be the former, not the latter.
