New 2024 federal budget | Page 7 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Employment and investments are both overtaxed. On the other hand consumption is undertaxed, government employment went up by 40% since 2015 and handouts are propagating as well as debt. What’s not to like?

Alexandre said

Bill said
basically two sides with each taking a different approach, i.e. one group focusing on growth of the economy, encouraging investment, and one focusing on from where to grab more tax revenue

Modern Capital can't function without skilled Labour. Someone invests in their education, spends 5+ years and $$$$, gets MBA/PhD degree, finds job where they make $160,000 employment income. That someone will have $108,000 after tax.

Then, there is someone else who is barely literate, bought four Bitcoins at $24,000, sold them at $64,000 a piece and collected $160,000 in profits. What would be after tax income for that profit treated as capital gains?

The growth of economy is impossible without skilled labor. Yet, the tax incentives are for people to play on stock market, flip real estate, trade in crypto.

By that same logic which says if you tax Capital too much it'll move away,- if you tax Labour too much (as it is already) it'll move away and your country will end with crypto traders instead of skilled workforce.

Canada has shortage of skilled labor. 35% of businesses already experience it.  

While it’s easy to target gain from bitcoin, that person has the balls to risk $96k on something that appears worthless to some, The profit is well deserved in my books. That is the spirit of capitalism and risk taking after all.
All with support lowering employment tax, but they all expect welfare to stay at same level too. The math simply won’t work,
Seems like most of us do agree govt employment needs to be pruned, except the govt workers themselves,

Price increases (via taxation) causing price drops: Seriously, this is the entire basis of the supply-versus-demand function of a free market. (And I remind everyone that there are important conditions for a free market to function efficiently.)

Crime in any circumstance is not a part of social policy. In the case of tobacco taxes, the excise tax retreat was an "I give up" to the problem of tax-free tobacco being sold in a taxed market, in Canada's case diversion from the US and native reserves. In the US, something similar happens because of the vast range of state-specific tax rates (on tobacco and alcohol, for example).

Bill:

Reading this thread as a whole it seems to me the communication gap is that there are basically two sides with each taking a different approach, i.e. one group focusing on growth of the economy, encouraging investment, and one focusing on from where to grab more tax revenue (e.g. "the rich", large corporations, etc).

Well, the characterization of "where to grab more tax revenue" is more than a bit slanted. Both "sides" are trying to balance revenue and expenses.

This is not an objective fairness issue; it's a philosophical one. On the one side, there's what Barak Obama described in his "you didn't do that" speech which was so widely misrepresented. It's that, if an entity benefited from the social conditions under which is functions, it's not fully responsible for its success and should share the benefits.

The other is social Darwinism: why shouldn't those who win keep their winnings? They "worked hard" for their income and assets.

It's never as simple as that. According to US government, the biggest determiners of success are location, family wealth and family investment income. Nobody gets to pick their family, though some get to move to better places to live.

As I cited a ways back, high-income-earners get so much more per unit of work than their benighted counterparts that they can still live much higher off the hog even if they face very high taxation. Nobody can earn 100 times the typical wage rate simply by working; one has to be able to exploit natural resources, the work of others or financial advantage to get that high. (Superstars excepted, perhaps.) The risks involved in running a business are not the same as gambling on crypto, stock trading or real estate.

In any democracy, with most people doing so much worse than the top percentiles and that being necessary by definition (it's impossible for everyone to do way beyond average), it only makes sense that the population would support policies that discourage mass accumulation of wealth at the expense of the majority. That such policies persist in a testament to how populism, political money and advanced propaganda techniques have outstripped intelligent self-interest.

Tommy Douglas (winner of "The Greatest Canadian" poll some years back) bemoaned this as "Why do the mice keep voting for the cats?"

savemoresaveoften said
While it’s easy to target gain from bitcoin, that person has the balls to risk $96k on something ... The profit is well deserved in my books. That is the spirit of capitalism and risk taking after all.

Investment in advanced degree does come with financial risks, too: employment is not guaranteed, recovery of investment is not guaranteed.

I think you somewhat missed my point. I am not against profiting from legal activity, does not matter how useless it is. That is the spirit of capitalism.

What I am saying is Sally PhD degree holder, Director of Advanced Research Lab should be more valued by society than Sally the bitcoin trader.
Tax code in Canada does opposite.

That may be one of reasons Canada has shortage of educated and skilled labor.
Have you ever seen concerns that Canada has shortage of crypto traders?

Alexandre said

savemoresaveoften said
While it’s easy to target gain from bitcoin, that person has the balls to risk $96k on something ... The profit is well deserved in my books. That is the spirit of capitalism and risk taking after all.

Investment in advanced degree does come with financial risks, too: employment is not guaranteed, recovery of investment is not guaranteed.

I think you somewhat missed my point. I am not against profiting from legal activity, does not matter how useless it is. That is the spirit of capitalism.

What I am saying is Sally PhD degree holder, Director of Advanced Research Lab should be more valued by society than Sally the bitcoin trader.
Tax code in Canada does opposite.

That may be one of reasons Canada has shortage of educated and skilled labor.
Have you ever seen concerns that Canada has shortage of crypto traders?  

Which is why I think a fixed rate tax system for all income level regardless of source basically ‘value’ everyone equally, encourage capitalism, productivity. Add to that a basic minimum income guarantee for everyone which is taxable and all is good. The tax accountants, financial advisors who try to find loop holes or tax advantage investments will be out of a job tho.

Bill said
"more than a bit slanted"? Well you would know, RetireEd, bringing more of your usual slant quoting Obama, Douglas, CBC viewer contest results, referring to "populism", "political money", "advanced propaganda techniques", etc. Your whole post is one big political speech, we're well aware of your politics by now, is there any way you can spare us going forward?   

Uhh, in the interest of hearing from views from all sides, I disagree. Don't think censorship is required here.