FTA: The unaffordable cities:
1- Richmond Hill, ON
2- Oakville, ON
3- Markham, ON
4- Vaughan, ON
5- Richmond, BC
6- Vancouver, BC
7- Toronto, ON
8- Milton, ON
9- Whitby, ON
10- Coquitlam, BC
11- Burlington, ON
12- Brampton, ON
13- Mississauga, ON
14- Burnaby, BC
15- Ajax, ON
16- Surrey, BC
17- Langley, BC
18- Oshawa, ON
19- Saanich, BC
20- Kelowna, BC
21- Abbotsford, BC
22- Guelph, ON
23- Hamilton, ON
24- Waterloo, ON
25- Cambridge, ON
26- Barrie, ON
27- Kitchener, ON
28- Ottawa, ON
29- London, ON
30- St. Catharines, ON
31- Montreal, QC
32- Windsor, ON
33- Kingston, ON
34- Halifax, NS
35- Greater Sudbury, ON
36- Longueuil, QC
And the affordable cities:
1- Edmonton, AB
2- St. John’s, NL
3- Regina, SK
4- Saguenay, QC
5- Trois-Rivières, QC
6- Quebec City, QC
7- Lévis, QC
8- Winnipeg, MB
9- Saskatoon, SK
10- Gatineau, QC
11- Calgary, AB
12- Sherbrook, QC
13- Terrebonne, QC
14- Laval, QC
Capitalism is indeed somewhat broken in this sense – in its current form, wealth is a funnel, and it moves towards the more wealthy from the less wealthy. However, it’s still not feudalism and it could definitely get worse.
What would you propose as incremental changes towards a future you wish to see?
I think the most important change is to revert taxation to the way it was for thousands of years up until about 100 years ago.
It used to be that all taxes were wealth taxes. A guy would come around, eyeball all of your stuff, guess how much it was worth, and then demand a cut of it for the emperor/pharaoh/ceasar/etc. If you didn’t have anything valuable, the guy would more or less leave you alone.
That’s not how it works now. The main forms of taxation are on income and spending, with tax codes carefully written to avoid any “non-income” forms of revenue. There are very low capital gains taxes on stock dividends, zero on most home equity gains, and loads of ways to avoid those if you’re even remotely savvy. Basically, it’s specifically structured to extract wealth from the working and preserve the wealth of the rich. Personally, I paid nearly twenty thousand dollars in income tax alone while the richest guys in Canada paid practically nothing.
We need to go back to a wealth tax, which worked for 99% of human civilization. It’s easier than ever, considering that every financial institution and government knows your exact net worth down to a few %. The burden needs to be taken off of the working class, and this is the easiest way to do it. No revolution, no eating of the rich – just some rich guys kicking in their fair share.
Of course, we all know it’s not going to happen – the wealthy are far too powerful to threaten their own interests. Until then, we work the fields I guess.
While it’s an ideological answer, it’s relatively balanced compared to the extreme answers others would suggest. I think you’re right, to some extent. At a mimimum it would reduce the whole “generational wealth” bits somewhat, and return things back into the common purse over time.
Between my own taxes, and the corporate taxes I paid through my small business, I feel like I’ve contributed my share. I don’t mind paying taxes, provided the government spending isn’t wasteful. After all, we are a society and rely on public infrastructure, among other things. But I’ve only got a small business, and there’s no off-shore tax havens I’m storing cash reserves in or something ridiculous like the ultra rich. How would you deal with that? Or does your plan only work if implemented more or less universally?
To further add to what you’ve both said, Land Value Taxes (LVT) is probably where we should be heading. Jack those up really high, and lower or even remove income taxes on workers.
Taxing people based on the amount of land they use is a very efficient (from an economic perspective) way to balance wealth. You want a mansion in a desirable area? Go ahead, but you need to pay everyone else for taking up that much space. You want to avoid those taxes by using less space in a less desirable location and investing all your wealth in companies instead? Sounds like a win-win to me.
It’s not feudalism, in that we don’t have a monarchy, but we indeed have a ruling class, and we have a working class that is perennially 1 missed paycheque away from absolute destitution. We get taxed to oblivion, with no services to show for it. Our roads are crumbling, healthcare has almost been stripped from us, labour protections gutted, sick days confiscated, and everything gets more expensive while wages stagnate. Feudalism may be cynical, but this aint your grandpappies capitalism. Fuck neoliberalism. Fuck Nixon. Fuck Reagan. Fuck status quo politicians. Fuck politicians with income properites.