We almost had it. When CERB was introduced to help people at the start of the pandemic, some people who hadn't been to a dentist in decades finally got their teeth cleaned! People bought themselves boots without holes in them! People really needed money - straight up cash - and many spent it wisely.
I commented about a year ago,
"The biggest concern with Canada's experiment with giving people money to keep them going is that some people made more than they did from their actual income. That's not a problem with UBI, but a problem with the shocking number of working poor we have in our wealthy country. Some analysts calculate a net cost of about $43-48 billion to eradicate poverty in Canada (Scotti, Hemmadi, Lum), which could be paid for with a 3% increase in sales tax OR crack down on money hidden abroad, OR add another tax bracket of 65% on income over $300,000, OR just add an 8% increase on income tax on income over $20 million /year. One study found that providing money for the poor in a cash lump sum dramatically increased the chance people would move into stable housing and dramatically decreased spending on substances."
FYI: There's a discussion about basic income happening in KW on October 27 at 1:00, and you can join virtually here. I'll be giving a book report to my class at the time, so I hope they record it!
To add to that list of possibilities, journalist Althia Raj asked the CRA about how much wealth the richest Canadians have: "I was told that in 2021, 830 Canadians declared income of more than $10 million, 170 people declared more than $25 million, and 60 people declared income over $50 million/year," and she posted the NDP's proposed wealth tax:
Let's take a stab at the math: The 830 people making $10 million each year is superfluous information; we need to know how much they made in excess of $10 million. So, if 170 people have $15 million over the 10 million mark, at 1%, that's about $25 million/year in tax revenue. And then if 50 people have $35 million over the 25 million mark, at 2%, that's another $35 million/year in revenue. So a very conservative estimate has this tax adding at least $60 million to the coffers. Kiavash Najafi calculated it at closer to at least $10 billion/year (166 times more), so I might be doing something horribly wrong. And then, Luke LeBrun, editor at Press Progress, explained that the original figures were "conflating income with wealth. The PBO's High Net-Worth Family Database identified 16,000 Canadian families with over $29.3 million in wealth in 2019 (the top 0.1%)," which would give us almost $700 million/year. And then people tried to figure out if it's actually a tax on accumulated assets or a surtax on income that the NDP meant to impose. So it's not clear how much they expect to generate. And I can't find a news article to back this up or any proposed legislation that it came from. The closest I could find is the 2021 NDP policy, which calls for a 1% annual ultra-wealth tax to fortunes over $20 million, which would generate about $60 million/year. But maybe the document is brand now. Regardless, it would generate more than we have now, no matter how you slice it! (Please don't send me math!)
But then someone said,
"So spend hours of time and resources coming up with a policy that impacts 0.0029% of the Canadian population. Makes sense."
And THIS is the important misunderstanding to clear up. Targeting a very tiny number of people with a increase in taxation on the wealth they have that's clearly above what's necessary to lead a healthy, productive, and enjoyable life, doesn't just affect those people. If we can do more to help the unhoused and working poor and students and pensioners in the Canada, it can change the very face of our country.
In today's dollars from the chart below (and rounded), in the 40s, our top marginal income tax rate used to be 84% on anything over $5 million, and 79% on anything over $3 million!! People making over $90,000 paid about 26%, which isn't much different than today. In the 90s it went down to 26% on anything under $50,000, and 46% on anything over. Simple, but grossly inequitable. Today, we've divided it up more, so it's 20% on anything under $50,000, then nine more levels between, but only to a maximum of 53% for anything over $235,000.
We definitely need more brackets to account for obscene wealth at the top end, like we used to up to 1971. (That massive decrease at the top end came under Trudeau, the elder).
We don't have time to piddle about with an additional 1% over $10 million. Imagine a flippin' 30% tax increase on anything over $5 million!! That would get us well into the billions for sure! People would revolt, some of them. But others, famously like Warren Buffet and Nick Hanauer argue that they should be taxed more!
People are in really rough shape, and it's only getting worse as illnesses accumulate under a decimated healthcare system and fires and floods destroy people's homes. We desperately need another New Deal to kickstart wealth equity.
But I'm just talking to myself here.
If you want to teach about any of this, I talk about general taxation with my grade 10s. I think it's important that they understand what taxes are for and where they come from. Some of them, already at that age, think taxes are just the government stealing from us. Then, with my 12s, I get into Basic Income in an assignment on How to Analyze a New Article (sneaky, eh?). Kids work through the steps using any meaty article they're interested in; Basic Income was just my example. Then I discuss Income Inequality with a bit of a note and discussion, then an exercise: several videos on an editable doc; divide them into groups to discuss and summarize the videos, and then we look at the summaries as a class. This version has some student summaries filled in. FYI, students love Hasan Minhaj, but I added that last video as an afterthought, so they didn't summarize it.
Please don't comment on my socialism. I mean, you're welcome to, but I'll just ignore it. I know I'm a socialist. I overtly want to spread wealth around more evenly distribution (not perfectly evenly, though), enough to ensure that nobody's going hungry. Why is eliminating starvation a bad thing?? Geez!
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