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The root of the housing bubble lies in Canada's out of control immigration quotas. This creates an enormous downward pressure for wages which makes housing impo
by 908B64B197 6y ago
The root of the housing bubble lies in Canada's out of control immigration quotas. This creates an enormous downward pressure for wages which makes housing impossible to afford. The lax immigration system also allows for unparalleled amounts of capital to flow into the country and be parked into assets that are hard to seize (real estate being the prime example). Now, with rampant birth tourism and convenience passports, it's a little pointless to go after foreign ownership: The foreign buyer will simply transfer the properties to his kids who acquired convenience passport via birth tourism and live in the city. If forced to give up assets or freedom in their original country, the real buyer will simply be allowed to immigrate thanks to the family reunification loophole.
Of course, the current government has no interest in stopping it as it's making real estate developers extremely happy and more importantly, gives them a new pool of voters that are sure to keep on voting for ever increasing immigration quotas.
The situation is much better in the US where immigration quotas are kept under control.
- foolmeonce 6y agoSimply eradicate the silly income taxes and use traditional real estate tax, energy taxes, road tax, sales tax, and other waste taxes. The problem is that countries that messed up their tax system during a war aren't going to revert them so they are forever dealing with the market results of taxing income instead of taxing resource usage. Why shouldn't you buy and hold important resources if the society isn't making those resources fund the system? Having these free gifts for whoever had money seemed very clever back when the rich people from a system didn't have to let foreign rich people have the same access to their plunder.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoEradication of the income tax is highly regressive and creates outsized power and control for those who accumulate excessive amounts of capital.
- jkinudsjknds 6y agoI mean it depends on what you replace it with. Sales tax on basic necessities is regressive. Real estate tax, not so much. Capital gains tax definitely not.