YEAAAAaaaahhh. No I ain't happy but it's to be expected, a massive plurality of people favour liberals in Canada, if the conservative and liberal candidates are equally good the Liberals will win. Liberals win so much that they've earned the title "the natural governing party." The Conservatives even gained 23 seats out of 338 though, so that's cool.
Trudeau is still Prime Minister of Canada
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https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2019/results/ this is the map of the election, Canada has 5 prominent parties but only 2 can really win federally.
MORE MASSIVE DEFECITS WOOHOO https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/federal-government-posts-third-straight-double-digit-deficit-with-14b-shortfall
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@Trent0405
his is the map of the election, Canada has 5 prominent parties but only 2 can really win federally.
Agreed. Canada badly needs the election reform Trudeau promised. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that is going to happen.
MORE MASSIVE DEFECITS WOOHOO
Have you seen what ontario's conservative government has been doing? They significantly increased the deficit. No matter who won, reducing the deficit was unlikely.
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@Trent0405
Lol, your petty $10 billion deficit.
Try our $1 trillion deficit on for size!
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@bmdrocks21
Lol, your petty $10 billion deficit.Try our $1 trillion deficit on for size!
Yeah, America's fiscal policy is a mess. They cut taxes while increasing spending. It makes no sense. America needs to cut it's military spending by a large amount. It needs to increase taxes on the uber rich, who are currently paying less taxes than the middle class. They also need to actually enforce taxes on massive companies who often pay little to no taxes at all.
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@HistoryBuff
Yah kill dem jobs. Can't cut dem government jobs though.
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@Greyparrot
Yah kill dem jobs. Can't cut dem government jobs though.
Companies like amazon currently don't pay any taxes at all. Millionaires pay lower taxes than you do. You cannot possibly think that it is necessary for billionaires to pay less taxes than you.
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@HistoryBuff
Amazon doesn't pay federal taxes because of deductions. They pay payroll, state, and local taxes.
The top 1% alone pays 37.32% of all income taxes. https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/ I am not sure about your claim about us paying more (percentage-wise). Is capital gains included in that calculation?
I agree our policy is shite. Republicans go half of the way. They cut taxes, but they typically don't have the balls to cut spending, which pisses me off.
Our biggest expenditures by far are on welfare programs, not the military. I would say that we need to end foreign involvement, which would save a little over $100 billion/year. Not nearly enough.
I don't see much value in taxing the uber rich. If we taxed the 1% at 100%, it wouldn't be enough to cover our spending, and I hear no calls by Democrats to reduce spending below where it currently is.
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@HistoryBuff
Anyone that creates jobs shouldn't have to pay a lot of taxes. Creating jobs benefits society at large at great risk to the employer.
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@bmdrocks21
@HistoryBuff
Have you seen what ontario's conservative government has been doing? They significantly increased the deficit. No matter who won, reducing the deficit was unlikely.
Doug Ford hasn't run high deficits, it's supposed to be 7.4 billion added to the debt this year and it was 6.6 billion last year for Ontario.
The former liberal government averaged much higher deficits, 13.08 billion, some years even upwards of 20 billion.
Also our former conservative PM in Canada had a few bad years but basically ran no deficit in his last years, maybe sheer wouldn't do as well as harper but still.
Lol, your petty $10 billion deficit.Try our $1 trillion deficit on for size
It's so crazy how unfrugal America is, Trump has been, and will be worse than Obama on that front even. You guys ought to cut your spending.
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@Trent0405
That's what I'm saying! We have some good house Republicans that are trying to cut spending, but it just isn't popular.
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@bmdrocks21
People need those government handouts. But really I highly doubt Americans will change their tune on how the government ought to spend it's money anytime soon, so I think your stuck with unfrugal teenage girl spending habits for now. Conservatives in Canada know how to balance a budget though.
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@Trent0405
- Well, our population is about 10x yours, and our GDP is over 8x larger. So, obviously this is a bit skewed. My state ran a large surplus last year.
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@bmdrocks21
Touché
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@bmdrocks21
Amazon doesn't pay federal taxes because of deductions. They pay payroll, state, and local taxes.
And that is a very serious problem. They are earning billions, killing off companies that do pay federal taxes, and are not paying a dime of that back. Those deductions need to be removed.
I am not sure about your claim about us paying more (percentage-wise). Is capital gains included in that calculation?
For the 1st time in US history the top 400 richest families in the US paid a lower effective tax rate than the bottom half of american households.
I don't see much value in taxing the uber rich. If we taxed the 1% at 100%, it wouldn't be enough to cover our spending
The top tax bracket in the US used to be 94%. During the 50's, 60's and 70's it was above 70%. Today it is 37%. The reason the US is running such massive deficits isn't because of social spending. It is because it stopped actually taxing the people who could afford to pay it and pushed more of the burden onto the middle on lower class. Decades of Republican pushes to protect the rich have massively defunded the government. The rich are paying about 1/3rd of what they did in the 40's (this was WW2 so it was high) but about half what they did for the decades that followed.
I hear no calls by Democrats to reduce spending below where it currently is.
Why would democrats call for such a terrible idea? there are lots of places where funding could be cut, the military or the war on drugs for example. But social spending needs to increase.
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@Trent0405
Doug Ford hasn't run high deficits, it's supposed to be 7.4 billion added to the debt this year and it was 6.6 billion last year for Ontario.
So he is cutting spending everywhere he can in a period of economic prosperity, and he is still increasing the deficit. That is not good.
The former liberal government averaged much higher deficits, 13.08 billion, some years even upwards of 20 billion.
True, but those years were during an economic crisis. Governments always run higher deficits in a recession, and the 2008 one was a big recession. The last 2 liberal budgets were 6.2 and 6.6 billion. The conservatives got elected and increased it by a billion while we are still in a period of prosperity. That is not the economic stewardship they promised.
Also our former conservative PM in Canada had a few bad years but basically ran no deficit in his last years, maybe sheer wouldn't do as well as harper but still.
Harper ran some record deficits. It is true he was down in his last 2. However, debt as a straight number is not usually the metric used by economists. It is debt to GDP ratio. Essentially how much money do you owe compared to the size of your economy. By that scale our debt is really low and getting lower. Our economy is growing much faster than our debt. It is the lowest of any of the G7. Debt is not a an issue that needs any attention in canada.
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@HistoryBuff
That record deficit Harper recorded was during an economic recession, he recovered incredibly quickly while the liberals running Ontario took several years to get the deficit below 11 digits.
Doug didn't cut spending, he slowed the growth of spending and cut taxes, a poor move on his part, he should have opted to cut spending and taxes.
Doug inherited a 15 billion dollar deficit BTW and got that down to 7.4 billion.
Conservatives net the lowest average deficits for the province as well.
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@HistoryBuff
Sure, I'm down with cutting deductions across the board. Most are unnecessary and are added to help the super rich avoid taxes.
Unfortunately I don't have a Washington Post subscription, so I will have to look around for that one.
We are collecting about the same percentage of GDP in taxes as we always have https://mises.org/library/good-ol-days-when-tax-rates-were-90-percent Social spending is the cause of the debt. Nearly nobody ever paid 90% of their taxes. Because of tax exemptions, the effective tax rate was about 30-40%.
I am telling you that no Democrat has any plan that will balance the budget, as far as I know. You say that you will gut the military, stop the war on drugs, and add single-payer(if that indeed will cut costs). All of these are offset by their spending increase plans. The debt is a huge problem, and most of our spending goes towards welfare programs. Do you not care about all of the debt we will incur?
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@Trent0405
That record deficit Harper recorded was during an economic recession, he recovered incredibly quickly while the liberals running Ontario took several years to get the deficit below 11 digits.
Canada is a country of regions. some of those regions recovered faster than others. Ontario took longer to recover. The federal government's revenues include the areas that improved faster. Ontario's revenues don't.
Doug inherited a 15 billion dollar deficit BTW and got that down to 7.4 billion.
Did you actually read that article you linked? It says doug ford claims he inherited a 15 billion dollar deficit but that everyone else agrees that number is wildly inflated. Basically, he lied so that he could make it look like he was cutting deficit spending when he was actually increasing it. That link also says he is on track for the next fiscal year to go up another 3 billion. so he increased deficit spending in his 1st year and is on track to increase it even more.
Conservatives net the lowest average deficits for the province as well.
You put up a chart that covers 15 years of liberal rule. 6 of those years were an economic disaster and the recovery from it. If you don't include the years of financial crisis (which you just said harper shouldn't be blamed for, so the liberals shouldn't either) then the liberals average out to 6.6 billion per year in deficit. The conservatives averaged out to 5.9 billion per year. That is a pretty small difference.
Additionally, that chart does not account for inflation. 11 billion in 1992 dollars is alot more than 11 billion in 2018 dollars. So since the liberal's numbers are all more recent, if you don't account for inflation it makes the conservatives look better than they really are. So if you counted in the inflation the conservatives would be even higher. That isn't a stellar record for a "fiscally responsible" party.
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@bmdrocks21
Sure, I'm down with cutting deductions across the board. Most are unnecessary and are added to help the super rich avoid taxes.
I'm glad we agree.
Unfortunately I don't have a Washington Post subscription, so I will have to look around for that one.
sorry, try this one. I didn't read it thoroughly but much of the same info seemed to be there.
Nearly nobody ever paid 90% of their taxes. Because of tax exemptions, the effective tax rate was about 30-40%.
Ok, but the link i just gave you shows that the effective tax rate on the richest people is now 23%. They are paying about half of what they used to in taxes.
You say that you will gut the military, stop the war on drugs
I didn't say they would do these things. I said I think they should.
The debt is a huge problem, and most of our spending goes towards welfare programs. Do you not care about all of the debt we will incur?
Of course I do, but you are talking about balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. You want to cut spending that helps poor people instead of actually trying to take in the revenue from people who can afford to pay it. Rich people are paying a fraction of the tax rate they did 20 or 30 years ago. The way to fix the debt issue is to actually collect those taxes on the people who can afford to pay them, not to try to cut off poor people who can barely afford to live.
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@HistoryBuff
Yeah, we will disagree a lot on what taxes should be. I believe in a flat tax. But we can agree in having very little deductions. I believe that the rich should pay their fair share, but that they have an equal right to their income as anyone else.
It was as I suspected. Rich people gain most of their money through investments, and since the capital gains tax is lower, they pay a "lower" percentage. I don't really have a problem with that. It is double taxation anyway.
Ok, if they aren't agreeing to cut military spending and end the war on drugs, that furthers my point that the debt will grow.
And if you actually taxed the rich at 90%, do you think they would stay? You are taxing the people with the ability to avoid taxes quite easily. They have the resources to either take advantage of deductions or leave. If you put in a wealth tax like Warren proposes, that is exactly what will happen. Poor people don't invest.
And cutting spending doesn't always have to include cutting welfare programs, but it typically would. For instance, we had shrimps running on mini treadmills for a study and it cost between $500,000-$3 million to taxpayers. $2.6 million dollars to teach Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly. $3.1 billion for federal employees on administrative leave. Getting rid of stupid spending like this would be a good start.
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@bmdrocks21
Yeah, we will disagree a lot on what taxes should be. I believe in a flat tax. But we can agree in having very little deductions. I believe that the rich should pay their fair share, but that they have an equal right to their income as anyone else.
So you believe that the bulk of tax revenue should be drawn from people who can't afford to pay it while the people who can afford to pay it don't have to? That is not a stable system. It is the kind of system that lead to the financial ruin of other nations. (rome, france etc)
It was as I suspected. Rich people gain most of their money through investments, and since the capital gains tax is lower, they pay a "lower" percentage. I don't really have a problem with that. It is double taxation anyway.
It is in no way double taxation. Income would be taxed. If they invest that money to make more money, the original income does not get taxed again. It is only the new income they earn that is taxed. That is not double taxation.
Ok, if they aren't agreeing to cut military spending and end the war on drugs, that furthers my point that the debt will grow.
Not once the tax system is reformed so that the rich are actually paying their share.
And if you actually taxed the rich at 90%, do you think they would stay? You are taxing the people with the ability to avoid taxes quite easily. They have the resources to either take advantage of deductions or leave. If you put in a wealth tax like Warren proposes, that is exactly what will happen.
The US is the biggest market in the world. Rich people need access to that market to make their money. Some of them might leave. Most can't without risking losing their money.
Poor people don't invest.
Your're right. And that is why the whole point is to have poor people move up into the middle class. Once they have some income, more people will invest. At the moment, only a very small chunk of the population has enough resources to invest. That is the problem.
And cutting spending doesn't always have to include cutting welfare programs, but it typically would.
I agree there is wasteful spending that could be cut. But that is usually a fairly small percentage. If you are talking about making cuts to bring down a 1 trillion dollar deficit, you are going to have to massively screw over poor people. Instead of kicking poor people while they are down, the better plan is to get rich people who can afford to pay to actually do so.
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@HistoryBuff
Hong Kong is super profitable and they have some kind of flat tax-esque system.
But the money they invest has been taxed. The investments grow from the after tax dollars, so they are getting taxed again.
How would they lose their money if they left? There are multiple stock exchanges, and since most of them make their money off of investments, it won't matter.
That is assuming that your spending programs will move them to the upper class and that they won't ruin the market with malinvestments. Our poverty rate has been rather stable since the War on Poverty began.
I would say that we need to extensively study the opportunity cost of taxing the hell out of rich people.
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@bmdrocks21
Hong Kong is super profitable and they have some kind of flat tax-esque system.
I'm not super familiar with their system. But a quick check tells me that they get a large percentage of their income in other ways. In their 2019-20 budget they are getting HK$143 billion of their total HK$626.1 billion revenue from the land premium. Basically, and I am not an expert, it looks like any time land gets rezoned the government charges the developer a large sum of money. This looks to me like they are just heavily taxing 1 particular industry and that is having a significant negative impact on their economy. There isn't enough housing being built because it is too expensive to build. And even when it is built, the cost is so high few can afford it. The middle and lower class can almost never own property in hong kong.
They also get HK$76 billion of their total HK$626.1 billion from something called a "stamp duty". Basically (and again, i'm not an expert) they charge people a large tax any time the ownership of property (land) changes. This means that over a 1/3rd of their budget comes from heavily taxing land and development. That doesn't seem like a good taxation method to me.
Here is the article I got the numbers from.
But the money they invest has been taxed. The investments grow from the after tax dollars, so they are getting taxed again.
No they are not. The income was taxed when they earned it (assuming they earned it at all). They then use that money to earn more money. Those new earning are now being taxed. So nothing is ever being taxed twice. The income is taxed once, and the capital gain is taxed once. But those are 2 separate incomes they are receiving, each being taxed once. Think of it like if you had 2 jobs. You would be expected to pay taxes on the income from both jobs. That isn't being taxed twice. That is being taxed once on 2 different sources of income.
Our poverty rate has been rather stable since the War on Poverty began.
I took a look at the statistics. It is unclear to me how valid their statistical method is. I'm having trouble finding a detailed account of how they decide what the threshold for poverty is but it seems to be so low that these people are not able to afford the basics to survive. I did see that they do not account for region in their method. So someone living in new york city where the cost of living is much higher is counted the same as someone living in a low cost of living area. This could potentially skew results to be lower than they are because they are counting people in New York as above the poverty line even if they were starving to death because their rent is triple what is elsewhere. However I can't be certain without looking more thoroughly.
Additionally, the US poverty rate seems to be 30-50% higher than Canada's (depending on which year you look at). So it is still considerable.
I would say that we need to extensively study the opportunity cost of taxing the hell out of rich people.
But taxing rich people was the norm for the majority of the 20th century. The idea that the rich shouldn't pay more taxes only started in the last 20-30 years. If America was growing from 1944-1980's (which it was) then obviously taxing the rich didn't prevent growth and prosperity. Why would you want to waste more time studying the thing america did for half a century?
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@HistoryBuff
Well, housing necessarily has to be expensive. They have a large population compared to how little usable land they have. They have a median income that rivals ours with nearly no natural resources. They have very free markets according to the economic freedom index. They are quite an impressive country. Didn't know about all of those land taxes, but again, it makes sense based on the size of their country.
Their income tax is capped at 15% gross income, so it is in operation, a flat tax. Income is a good thing, so you shouldn't excessively tax productivity. As of 2013, the homelessness ratio in Hong Kong was .02%. I have heard it is going up, but that seems like less of a problem than you say it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population
But the income tax taxes your gross income. Then you take home net(after tax) income is taxed. The government doesn't reimburse me if my investments fail, so what right do they have to take money made off of money they already taxed? Not quite like the two job analogy because those are both taxing your gross income.
Yeah, I could look into those rates further. I don't know if methodologies for defining "poverty" have changed over time or have been accounted for in the graphs I have seen.
And for a lot of our history we didn't even have income taxes. But like I said, the rich almost never paid those 80-90% rates because of all of the deductions they lobbied for. If you are proposing a tax plan that they cannot avoid and are planning on actually taxing 80%, things will go quite a bit differently. Also, is your plan to tax capital gains at higher rates as well? If so, around what rate.
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@bmdrocks21
Well, housing necessarily has to be expensive. They have a large population compared to how little usable land they have. They have a median income that rivals ours with nearly no natural resources. They have very free markets according to the economic freedom index. They are quite an impressive country. Didn't know about all of those land taxes, but again, it makes sense based on the size of their country.
High housing costs would make sense. The fact that 1/3rd of their budget is made up from taxing it is certainly making the problem alot worse.
Their income tax is capped at 15% gross income, so it is in operation, a flat tax. Income is a good thing, so you shouldn't excessively tax productivity.
You are assuming that income is a measure of productivity. This is often not the case for the rich. They are often paid large sums of money to just sit on a board and do very little. HK also has no capitol gains tax. So people can inherit a large sum of money from their parents, never earn any actual income but just earn more money (tax free) from investments. You are thereby letting a large percentage of the country's income go entirely un-taxed.
As of 2013, the homelessness ratio in Hong Kong was .02%. I have heard it is going up, but that seems like less of a problem than you say it
Not being homeless and owning property are not the same thing. The home ownership rate in HK is 10-20% lower than other developed countries. This disproportionately affects young people who have virtually no chance of being able to afford a home. Here is an article I looked at saying that over 50% of the people they polled aged 19-34 had no intention to buy property. And the ones that did intend to thought it would take 10-25 years of working before they could afford it.
The government doesn't reimburse me if my investments fail, so what right do they have to take money made off of money they already taxed?
1) there are tax writeoffs for investment costs/loses. I don't pretend to understand them all.
2) i don't see the comparison. If you lose your job and lose income, the government doesn't reimburse you for that either. The point of taxes is to tax profit/income. That doesn't mean they are required to reimburse you if you lose your money.
But that being said. I would be totally in favor of taxing the total net worth of an individual (with 10's of millions of dollars) instead of their capitol gains. Then if you lose all your money your taxes would go down.
Yeah, I could look into those rates further. I don't know if methodologies for defining "poverty" have changed over time or have been accounted for in the graphs I have seen.
My short amount of research says they do update them yearly to account for inflation and cost of living increases. But since they don't take region into account, it is unclear to me how they determine what the cost of living would be since it will be wildly different depending on the region.
the rich almost never paid those 80-90% rates because of all of the deductions they lobbied for. If you are proposing a tax plan that they cannot avoid and are planning on actually taxing 80%, things will go quite a bit differently. Also, is your plan to tax capital gains at higher rates as well? If so, around what rate.
True, they didn't actually pay the 90% rate. But they were still paying at least double what they are paying now. I don't think an effective tax rate (IE the amount they actually pay after deductions) of 90% would work. But an effective rate of 50-60% certainly would. The capitol gains tax rate would need to be included in that effective tax rate.
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@HistoryBuff
Yeah, I don't know if charging large taxes on real estate is the best route, but it seems to work out decently.
I think you are overgeneralizing. The range for board of directors' pay is $25,000 for small and the median for the largest couple hundred is $250,000.
But generally, they don't do nothing. They are in charge of finding auditors, voting on CEO changes, etc which are large financial decisions. Hunter Biden would be an exception, not the rule.
Sure some spoiled prick might get some investments from his or her parents. But investments are a huge financial force in our economy. They allow companies to undertake large products, hire more workers, and conduct R&D. Taxing them makes the potential rewards smaller and therefore exaggerates the the risks. If you tax the rich at 90%, investing will stagnate.
Sure, they may not be able to buy a home. But the vast majority of people can at least afford to rent. I think the priority should be giving shelter to people, which they do a decent job with. Also, just because they think it will take 10-25 years to afford a home doesn't mean that their guess is accurate.
Well, the government does reimburse you for losing your job through welfare.
I am very much against taxing wealth and net worth. That causes a variety of issues depending on the liquidity of assets. If you invest a ton of money in bonds, you aren't able to just get that money back to pay the government. If you have a lot of stocks but growth rates slow, you will have to sell most of them off to keep paying for your "wealth".
So to clarify, you would make the capital gains tax a progressive tax now or all 60%?