Canada’s economy grew by a greater-than-expected 0.3% in May and looks set to turn in its best annualized quarterly performance for more than three years, official data indicated on Friday.
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[The growth] indicates annualized second-quarter growth of 3.4%, significantly higher than the Bank of Canada’s July 15 forecast of 2.5%, and the highest annualized quarterly increase since the 4.3% seen in the first three months of 2023.
The central bank left its benchmark overnight rate unchanged at 2.25% on July 15 and said growth would strengthen in the second half of the year as inflation pressures eased and firms continued to adapt to U.S. tariffs.
“The economy appears to have found ways to navigate the current cloud of uncertainty relating to trade with the United States,” said Royce Mendes, managing director and head of macro strategy at Desjardins.
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So, that puts the cutoff at 20 million. Most people don’t know anyone that rich, but if you ask someone with just a few million, they might, and they’ll probably be against it. And guess what, they’re going to know a lot of people with just hundreds of thousands, and those are the white picket fence people who vote and donate the most.
It’s slanted, not the original question, in that it passes the buck to some distant third party. Politicians don’t have the luxury of just ignoring that they have one big interconnected populace to satisfy, and none of them are an island. They raise taxes, and the big narrative is that they raised taxes for no reason, and that can cost an election.
It has nothing to do with it being a good idea or not. It’s just politically difficult, and not because of anything spooky. (And FWIW OP was about income taxes; wealth taxes have additional complications)
What argument are you making here? Government won’t do it because raising any taxes is bad? Maybe if a government is shit at messaging, they could lose political capital through a wealth tax but its clearly popular policy.
I brought up a wealth tax because the OP said thay services needed to be cut because we dont have enough money coming in. My point is that services don’t need to be cut if the country’s wealthy actually paid their fair share and I dont understand why everyone acts like financial troubles means that poor people have to suffer rather than rich people paying more.
Unpopular in practice is different from unpopular in concept (look at cutting emissions, for another great example), and both are different than bad. Other than that, pretty much: The government won’t raise taxes because it’s unpopular when they do. (Thank you for asking, by the way, It’s hard to just insert “this is my thesis”)
Sure, they might be forced to raise taxes eventually. Probably, even; it’s happened before. Or, maybe some socialist firebrand will come in and make extremely progressive taxes their signature policy (meaning they have to go with the flow elsewhere). But, this is descriptively, factually, why hikes don’t happen that much.
Now, normatively, you can make whatever you want of that.
It is a popular policy, and I wholeheartedly agree with wealth taxes as they’re the only way to get back income to get fully funded everything. If it were as popular as you claim, it’d be policy now. That’s how politics works. Maybe we’ll see the NDP rise to prominence once our economy is running better and we’ll transition as a society to funding all of the great social programs to the fullest extent possible. I hope that day happens, but that’s not out current Canadian priorities sadly.