The wailing of hedge fund managers and the minions of the super rich is what lets us know the government is doing the right thing.
Which economy? The lived economy of the general public or the artificial economy of finance?
Wouldn’t both see a beneficial uptick from capital injection?
Capital isn’t injected, it’s hoarded.
The rich are already doing fine. They’re doing better than they have since 1920. As a class, they have so much money that they’re able to do stock buybacks because investing it doesn’t give moneygasm-style returns. We’re nearing the point where they can Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pools full of cash.
The problem with the current economy is very much not that the wealthy don’t have enough free capital. Quite the opposite, really.
The problem is that they have so much free capital because they’re addicted to non-productive methods growing their wealth.
I have no idea, but I’d like the powers that be to recognize that there are two economies and to prioritize the lived economy.
I first became aware of the difference when “the economy” was starting to boom in the 1980s even as we were busy returning to breadlines under the name of food banks.
I’m not sure we even need the finance economy. A pure stock market is one thing, but by the time you get to rents over profit on actual production, the financialization of housing, derivatives of derivatives and all the other distancing from actual production, it’s just shell games with no benefit to society.
Precisely. What capitalism was supposed to do, it did long ago and now we’re mostly dealing with mentally insecure people at the top who think more about money than actual human relations.
Capitalism is supposed to ensure that the people that own the factories have all of the power. The current behaviour is core, fundamental capitalism.
It serves the ownership class. It always has. It’s its sole purpose. The rest of us have been supported by social programs that momentarily flared and, in the process, rescued the name of capitalism while workinf directly in opposition to it.
Sure, but which business injects capital in te first?
Your comment seems reasonable until you actually question the details:
How would forgoing a capital gains tax benefit the working public? Any answer you give will basically be “trickle down” economics, which has been proven to not work. Giant corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals hoard capital like a greedy dragon, they certainly don’t inject it!
EDIT: Of course they couldn’t answer that one simple question…
Rich people’s yacht money says what?
Such measures would deter investment at a time when we are striving to boost competitiveness and innovation within the industry and across the economy
competitiveness
Innovation like unnecessary return to office and less than inflation raises!
Don’t forgot about the pizza or one single box of slightly stale Tims donuts for an entire office. We’re a family here and our culture is important!!!
Innovation like a new coat of paint over chat-gpt and prompt “engineer”. Real value created here.
It’s an interesting thing that has happened to businesses lately, where making money isn’t good enough, they have to be making outrageous amounts or it’s not worth the effort. They’d rather close up shop than be forced to endure only modest profit
“Sure would be a shame if you taxed us and something happened to your economy…”
Ah, someone else who remembers the way the titans of industry and finance ratfucked the Rae government.
Oh, we need to boost competitiveness, do we?
How about we stop the rich from investing in non-productive asset classes like real estate, which seems to be the reason every economist says we’re stuck in a quagmire; because capital is being sucked up by real estate and financialization instead of investment into, well, anything else?
We could do that by…taxing the fuck out of capital gains?
No. Capital must go towards rent seeking. It’s only logical to invest in things that make money for free.
This is labour’s fault. If only we’d work harder and demand less pay (while not ever reducing spending), the economy would be great!
(/s, just in case)
How does principal residence work when you are moving and the related buying and selling?
No capital gains on principal residence. It would only come up on things like rental properties, cabins, or any other second property.
There’s also things like of a person has RRSP room and ends up in the edge case where this comes up just once or a few times in their life, they can use that to hold off the income tax until they can claim it at a lower tax bracket. If one isn’t put over by a single sale, (say selling multiple rental properties at retirement) they could spread those sales over multiple years to maximize that first $250k rate.
Do we even need these kind of posts in here…
What do you mean by “these kind of posts”?
[long awaited change that affects the richest 0.1%] ‘last thing the Canadian economy needs,’ say [representatives for the 0.1%]
This is the most important part to me. Aside from a handful of fringe cases, this targets exactly the group that many have asked to be taxed higher. Majority of people complaining seem to completely misunderstand how the tax system works and what exemptions apply. In most cases it seems like the changes don’t actually affect the things that people are worried about, or the actual difference is much lower. For example, many are worried about paying tax on the sale of their homes(primary residence exemption), their parents homes(only capital gains on period between transfer of ownership and sale, not all the way back to the parents’ original purchase price), they think the tax rate is 50/66%(that’s the amount of the gain that is considered income and taxes at the marginal rate) or they don’t understand that capital gains tax was already a thing and the actual difference is an additional 16% claimed for amounts over $250k, which means the actual difference in tax paid under the old and new systems is just a few percentage points unless the gains are significantly over $250k.
Funny how there is no alternative method of reducing or reversing the growing wealth disparity presented. The class of people who have done better than not only every other Canadian but virtually everyone else on Earth since the last world war that they ALSO profited from is telling us it is unfair to them while a growing number of people cannot eat and house themselves any longer. The very reason people cannot afford to survive is because the top is taking a larger portion of our productivity every single year.
