As if we needed additional proof that trickle-down is a spectacularly dismal policy failure that merely fuels income inequality, a report has emerged that eight human beings own as much wealth as more than three billion people around the world.
In Canada, the two wealthiest individuals own as much as roughly one-third of the country's population. Meanwhile, top-paid CEOs in this country make in the first day of the new year what the average citizen spends all year working hard to earn.
Globally, tens of trillions of dollars are estimated to be safely stashed away in shady offshore tax havens. Canada's economy is estimated to lose billions every year through legal tax evasion. Even the robber barons of the late 19th century never had it so good.
That is the direct result of decades of flawed economic policy that all but gives the wealthiest 0.01 per cent a free walk in the park while increasingly shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of the struggling and shrinking middle class. In fact, in 2014 under the former Conservative government's leadership, Canada saw the tax burden shift away from corporations and onto consumers for the first time in our country's history.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments over the past few decades are responsible for this ó slashing taxes on the wealthy and major multinational corporations seems to be among their favourite pastimes, followed closely by convincing voters that such policy actually benefits the average person.
In the age of multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires, Canada's highest personal income tax bracket still only goes up to a mere $200,000. There are unfathomably no tax brackets for the uber-wealthy whose annual incomes eclipse that amount. If there were any fairness in taxation, people who make millions in one year would pay a higher tax rate than others who earn a puny fraction of their salary.
Even billionaire American investor Warren Buffett ó who effectively pays a lower tax rate on personal income than his secretary and other office staff ó has previously written about the need for governments to stop coddling the super wealthy.
"I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone ó not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 per cent in 1976-77 ó shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off," he wrote in a column that ran in the New York Times.
"For those making more than $1 million ó there were 236,883 such (U.S.) households in 2009 ó I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more ó there were 8,274 in 2009 ó I would suggest an additional increase in rate."
Unfortunately, on the left or right sides of the political spectrum, many Western governments still shamelessly cater to the billionaire class while continuing to pursue trickle-down economics despite demonstrable data that clearly indicates such policy only benefits the 0.01 per cent at the expense of everyone else.
The fact that working-class people have seen marginal to barely noticeable gains does not make up for the new records consistently set by the super wealthy.
However, until voters express dissatisfaction and tell politicians to make tax reform an election priority while demanding our government immediately closes loose legal loopholes that effectively allow unsupervised and unscrupulous tax evasion, expect the wealth gap to continue growing disproportionately out of control.
