I am a Millionaire. Tax Me More, Please.
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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.
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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.
I am not going to argue with you about rich people arguing whether or not they should pay more taxes.
Fuck them for sitting on their money while people starve.
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I understand the extreme difference between millions and billions. My point is neither a millionaire nor a billionaire needs it.
Sure, but we don’t “need” anything above our basic survival cost, let’s go live on the Savannah and hunt our food again.
For me the problem are those who hoard wealth, who don’t earn a salary but sit and live off their massive pile of accumulated wealth. We need a wealth tax now.
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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
Now that’s putting it into perspective … holy shit
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Sure, but we don’t “need” anything above our basic survival cost, let’s go live on the Savannah and hunt our food again.
For me the problem are those who hoard wealth, who don’t earn a salary but sit and live off their massive pile of accumulated wealth. We need a wealth tax now.
Sure, but we don’t “need” anything above our basic survival cost, let’s go live on the Savannah and hunt our food again.
Straw man detected.
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That doesn’t justify spending more as a percentage of our GDP on the military than the USA who spends more than the next 10 or something states combined. I’m not giving up nationalized health care because Donald fucking Trump wants to shake down NATO and make Canada spend 30% of it’s national budget on American arms.
I’m not going to suggest numbers, but think you absolutely need to invest more in defense against states with far right leanings, like the USA. The good news is taxing the ultrawealthy into oblivion can provide all necessary services.
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I’m not going to suggest numbers, but think you absolutely need to invest more in defense against states with far right leanings, like the USA. The good news is taxing the ultrawealthy into oblivion can provide all necessary services.
Okay, but Carney is not going to tax the ultra wealthy. His track record so far is cutting taxes, including one targeting the wealthy specifically. People talk about raising military spending without considering that that money is going to have to come at the expense of something else. We talk about the cost in terms of percentage of GDP because it makes a nice small non-scary percentage like 5%. But that represents just shy of a third of the national budget, over double what we just recently raised our spending to. That money is not going to come from new taxes on the wealthy, it’s going to come from cuts to services. Health care being the meatiest place to make those cuts.
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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.
I hear you, and i agree. I don’t understand how to achieve it though, a tax on net worth, with brackets starting at 100 million? Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
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I hear you, and i agree. I don’t understand how to achieve it though, a tax on net worth, with brackets starting at 100 million? Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
I don’t understand how to achieve it though, a tax on net worth, with brackets starting at 100 million?
Implementation isn’t a consideration until society gets serious about doing it.
Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
Make that a crime. Tax evasion or worse. Jail wealth hoarders if they don’t comply, because they are destroying lives and don’t deserve to play games.
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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
The quote I like is “The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.”
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Now that’s putting it into perspective … holy shit
A million seconds is approximately 11.5 days.
A billion seconds is approximately 31.7 years.
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Need millions to retire even in Canada.
We have healthcare figured out for the most part. The issue here is housing.
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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.
Design? Hmm. What system are you or we designing?
There is one that is available but you won’t look at it. Democracy in the workplace is what we should have but again no one wants it.
So again, what system?
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I don’t understand how to achieve it though, a tax on net worth, with brackets starting at 100 million?
Implementation isn’t a consideration until society gets serious about doing it.
Wouldn’t they just move their money over a place that would hide it?
Make that a crime. Tax evasion or worse. Jail wealth hoarders if they don’t comply, because they are destroying lives and don’t deserve to play games.
You dont live in reality.
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There is nothing stopping your millionaire ass from donating that money to the government. Always good to pretend you’re being prevented from doing that though.
Donations from one person aren’t going to do much good. At best, it’ll provide a bit of short term relief. The system that enables billionaires to exist is still in place, which means they’ll just suck up anything that this one person donates, leaving us with one less caring person capable of enacting further change and amoral corporations becoming more powerful.
We need to change the system so that everyone contributes. It makes little sense for any single person to contribute when no one else does because you gain much less than what you put in, but if everyone contributes, then you get the opposite scenario where everyone gains more than what they put in. That’s why taxes exist in the first place.
