this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago

How about giving us income splitting so that I don't pay more in taxes than a two income family that makes more than I do?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 22 hours ago

So what are they defining as "middle class" for this round? gotta love the journalism of CTV that seemed OK leaving this as "will lower tax for some Canadians"... some precise reporting there

[–] [email protected] 10 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

It is time for a radical change in how we progress as a society. Money sure ain't working. "Let's keep turning these money knobs and see what happens" should not be the ultimate answer for forward progress towards something resembling a utopia, which should be the goal. I have no answers but it seems that fiddling around with economy and hoping for the best is nothing more than just killing time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

Absolutely. Money is a signifier that only has meaning when integrated in material exchanges. Radical, bold restructurations are needed in order to ameliorate our country's socioeconomic reality.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Instead of tax cuts to help the middle class, what they should really do is:

Reduce privatization.

So much of our country is owned privately for the sake of profit.

This is why everything is so expensive, it’s because we let rent seekers own our infrastructure.

I want my government to start making money without further relying on middle class income.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Yeah, private ownership concentration is a huge problem leading to monopolies, lack of innovation, and worsening treatment of both customers and employees in general. As I understand it, all funds have increasingly gone to parasitic shareholders more than ever since CEO pay has shifted more and more to pay in company stock.

I’d love more publicly-run utility and transportation networks as you said, but in other less critical areas we could probably benefit from a more competitive system of small-to-medium-sized cooperatives that could (ideally, in a perfect world) replace corporations entirely. I would love to see support for worker groups with solid business plans to receive government grants (or at least forgiving loans) to help them buy their private sector workplaces for conversion to a democratic business model where employee-owners don’t get treated like serfs and businesses have to win over customers to survive, rather than trapping them and getting complacent.

*edited to add that last bit in italics

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yea but that's the Liberal party you're talking about. If you want that, you should vote NDP.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Sweet now let's raise it on foreign billionaires who try to defraud our EV rebates

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

I'm kind of hoping they will. The government does not have too much money right now. I see no reason not to add a few percent to the top or second-to-top tax bracket.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

Let's also do domestic billionaires (yea we have some).

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago (28 children)

I'll repeat again, I don't need a fucking tax cut. I need the price of housing to start going down.

Increase taxes on property significantly, and use 100% of that money to give everyone a basic income.

This incentivizes both people and developers to be efficient with their housing choices. Using too much housing for the area you live in? You pay extra to help out everyone. Using the right amount? No harm to you. Using less than the average? Here's a payout, thank you.

Prices overall will drop, because it's no longer profitable to simply own a home due to the taxes, and especially not if there's no people in it because the taxes won't be offset by the basic income.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

He's also planning to start a big government-driven building program at some point.

I don't expect this guy is going to do a basic income. That's a radical policy that's not really on-brand for him, and we have some crises going on that need the political oxygen.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have a much more clear cut policy:

  1. You can live in one home
  2. You can't own a home you don't live in

Occasionally someone has a big place and someone has a small place, but this would solve way more issues.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It really wouldn't.

A) It prevents renting at all except for basement suites. So no more rental buildings, which make up the majority of rentals available. Renting is an important housing option, as not everyone wants to own, nor should they have to. Move to a city to go to university, and you have to buy a house just to live in for 2-4 years before you have to sell it to move elsewhere for a job? Have a job that requires you go somewhere else for a few months while you , too bad hotel for 6 months instead of being able to rent an apartment.

B) If you do the math and even take out dedicated rental buildings, there really aren't that many homes that are owned as a second place. It's about 15% of the total market, and a large chunk of that are cottages and lake houses away from the cities where people actually want to live.

The big place/small place issue is actually more of a problem than the the double ownership you're talking about. There are more total bedrooms in Canada than there are people, and once you account for couples usually sharing a bedroom, there's actually a ton of extra bedrooms across the country. The problem is that they're not distributed properly across the population, 4+ bedroom family homes that were bought to raise children are being kept for decades by empty-nest couples who don't want to downsize.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

But zero rentals is a feature, not a bug. Its the point. :)

Everyone gets a grace period, say 18 months, to sell their excess properties, and after that the state expropriates. Or landlord can opt in to expropriation during the grace period. The reimbursement they will get for the properties decreases during the grace period to incentivize people to do it earlier. Maybe almost nothing by the end. Then the state can run them directly or parcel to some structure to administer and fund for maintenance. Existing tenants get to stay where they are if they want.(

Presto chango we have massive public housing.

Idk about making old people move. Its really hard to do. Usually a terrible drama in their lives when forced. Where do you think they should all go?

I think if you were going to do it by bedroom, each person should get 1 room even in a couple because it isn't just about sleeping. A lot of people will appreciate an office or hobby room or something. It isn't healthy to be stuck in a room with another person all the time. I don't believe in penalizing people for being partnered. Welfare programs do it a lot and it really fucks with peoples lives. They have to chose between being "officially" partnered and getting full benefits as individuals, in which case their romantic relationship constitutes fraud. It also really enforces abusive situations because it enables control in bad situations. Imagine if your job could just cut your pay by 70% because they find out your in a LTR.

Canada is fucking huge we have enough space for each person to have 1 room.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

My suggestion to add significant property taxes essentially does the same thing, since you're "renting" from the government when you pay those. Then it applies properly to everyone, and it's not some half cooked system that people can exploit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That's true, rentals are important. So how about instead mom and pop landlords can rent a couple/small number of units, but anything above that you must register as a corporation and the tenants union gets to be on the board, and there are strong incentives to turn you into a housing cooperative. Let's throw in some more tenant protection legislation for good measure.

Basically, treat housing as a right, not as a financial asset, an investment, or a profit-driven enterprise.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I agree with you on the second part, but even allowing a single home still keeps housing as an investment/profit generator.

You have to actually do something to force every owner to lose(or at least never make) money. Hence my original suggestion to heavily tax homes and return that to citizens equally.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

All they need to do is make it so you can only own one residence, if you own a second as income property it should be taxed to the point that you want to sell it.

I was in the rental stream before and at least 1 landlord was foreign owners from mainland China--the property had sat empty for six months before us because owner was rich and didn't care about the 2k month they were losing. Another was an unlocatable landlord, the strara paperwork showed China owner, but correspondence was coming from Korean contact info. It started to look more like shell company ownership. Also have two friends who's Vancouver places are Asian owned. Owners moved back to China and main house was vacant for 2+ years, just single basement tennant paying utilities to make place "occupied".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

It would also be fun to have squatting laws like some other countries do. Vacant properties can be taken over (e.g. someone does a B&E then just starts living there) and if the "owner" doesn't notice soon enough they start losing their rights to the property. If you get mail at an address, if your stuff is there, if you are the one doing maintenance, all that counts in your favor as a resident. Even if your initial entry was aided by an angle grinder. In some cases actual ownership can end up transferred to the functional residence without any cost. The absentee owner loses their rights.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (10 children)

This is a red herring.

I ran the calculations a while back, that may free up 2-4% of all housing, that is not enough to fix the problem of expensive housing. That's only 1-2 years of new building stock.

It won't hurt to do it, but it's simply not the main reason real estate is expensive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

extremely curious what such a calculation entails?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I looked up the statscan data for home ownership and cross referenced it against other statscan data on rental buildings and locations of secondary homes(cottages and lake homes)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Disappointing to see adoption of CPC/PP platform cluelessness policy priority. Canada needs to spend on industrial policy to fight US, and prepare for hardships. His first BS of offering US empire more weapons purchases for more force multiplier warmongering was embarassing enough. Head in the sand "negotiations" is not going to go well.

Priority needs to be to destroy US economy, to save Canada's. If plan is to do nothing, we can do without an auto industry too, but waiting until the crisis evolves is just negligent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

The Liberals don't care about debt, that is for some future party to worry about, during a debt crisis.

The NDP want a lot of social programs with high taxes, the Cons want low taxes and fewer programs, the Liberals offer a lot of social spending and low taxes by shamelessly abusing government debt.

The debt can be abused because its backed by our ability to liquidate our public pension to pay creditors, as outlined in the last budget Freeland released.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I think that increasing the basic personal exemption would have helped a lot more lower income Canadians

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

Make it an official tax bracket too, instead just a refund everyone qualifies for. I don't know why TF it's set up that way.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Yes, but functionally no one voted NDP this year, and that was their pitch, IIRC.

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