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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • Assuming he pays 25% tax, which i’d be very suspicious about, he’s about 2 million short of his current “fair share”.

    26 000 000 * 0.25 = 6 500 000

    26 000 000 * 0.33 = 8 580 000

    If he’s deferring till retirement, then likely his tax rate is less, and the bank is lending him money which he can spend freely and call a capital loss lowering his effective tax rate when he does incur those taxes.

    The thing about being this wealthy is you can afford to pay people to find ways to lower this rate.

    I don’t think i’m “mad” about this, but concerned. This kind of inequality leads to violent upheaval, and is currently the cause of a whole pile of unnecessary suffering. If we didn’t have people that were this wealthy and some of that money was distributed to say education, healthcare, UBI, we could all have a much healthier pleasant life.



  • I was ready to get up in arms, but this is actually good news. It looks like at one point in tiny text under our national parks it would say “state park” – which doesn’t make sense in canada, they are fixing that.

    Although the locations were titled “provincial park” in large text, in small print, many across the country were labelled as “state parks” — a longstanding practice, according to the company.

    However, that language came under increased scrutiny in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threat that he wants to annex Canada against the wishes of Canada’s political leaders and widespread public opinion.






  • There are so many people in Canada that make way more than this who just aren’t paying their fair share. We should also be doing more to tax assets other than income.

    People who take a salary – even a high salary, are most paying their fair share. I think they could make a reasonable argument that they pay way more than most (above 246752, 33% which is more than most people in the country).

    Compare that with the wealthy:

    From here

    CEO Tobias Lütke (who was paid a $1 salary but received more than $26 million in option-based awards).

    1$, meaning he pays ZERO income tax (he likely pays some taxes on his options).

    This is somewhat common for wealthy people, adding more brackets on income isn’t going get them paying their fair share.

    What I believe we non wealthy people want to see is a wealth tax.







  • The government doesn’t guarantee the pension if the fund fails

    This is incorrect, emphasis mine:

    Funding shortfall The Government of Canada has a legal obligation to pay plan member pension benefits. If the plan becomes underfunded for any reason (for example, higher-than-expected costs, lower-than-expected investment results), the government is required to transfer additional funds into the public service pension plan. This has occurred before, including during the period from 2013 to 2018.

    I don’t dispute that they’ve renegotiated contribution rules, I don’t know the history of this pension fund that well. Typically these rules are renegotiated with union agreement.


  • I think this is more complex, then an employer vs worker issue:

    When the Govt originally made these pension investment “corporations”, the notion was: “go invest this money and build up enough that we can pay all the members out their defined benefit”, if something goes wrong the government will back the pension sort of “de-risking” the investment.

    With that de-risking comes the other side of the coin, excess surpluses go to the government, the original agreement stipulated that, this is not a “the government is unilaterally taking money”, this is something in the original contract. i.e it’s not a surprise to anyone.

    This gets to the heart of the matter. Though workers and employers both make contributions, employers ultimately hold all the decision-making power over workers’ pension plans.

    This is true, but this is also a defined benefit pension: members know exactly how much they are getting from the pension at all times (with some assumptions about what their work history will be). They shouldn’t be expecting more, and (for the positive side they know they won’t be getting less). These kinds of pensions are rare, and everyone should want one.

    As PSAC warns, “If the government can poach pension funds from its own employees, what’s to stop other employers from following suit and putting millions more at risk?”

    I don’t think this argument holds much weight, this isn’t a flippant decision but something that was decided ages ago.

    It also miss states that the money belonged to the employee’s or employer in the first place, it does not belong to either it’s more of a backup to gurantee future benefits


  • This all seems like it’s part of the plan, and the title is super biased?

    However, legislation governing pension funds restricts the size of accumulated surpluses to no more than 125 per cent of the plan’s liabilities.

    Just like the govt guarantees the pensions if the fund fails, it can also take excess surpluses. That seems totally reasonable?

    I don’t get why the union is acting like it’s their money when it isn’t – it’s a defined benefit?