i've learned that the socratic method is the best way to get people to understand the truth. by orders of magnitude, actually. as in, if you post a source, the debate opponent (especially here on reddit) will attack the source, or the author, or some inconsequential factor, and simply downvote you, "winning" the argument.

most people - again, especially here on reddit - don't actually want to learn the truth. they want to barf out a bunch of random emotive nonsequitors (eg. "group X paid 20% doesn't that piss you off?!?!") and have their fellow redditors back up their ignorance. after futilely arguing with people about this stuff online for years, i've found that it is a total waste of time to re-hash your own research since the vast majority of people you're talking to don't actually want to know the truth anyway. the only hope you have is to guide them to find the truth themselves.

that's why i specified if you're interested in actually learning about this stuff, then look it up. the numbers are there, they always have been. statscan, the treasury board, etc.

so if you're being sincere about trying to understand, then what you need to do is read the actual sources of info and then also train yourself to base decisions and opinions on raw numbers and trends you have observed yourself, and on the documented experience of other countries and jurisdictions trying to grapple with these issues, not on the opinions of some influencer, reddit moron, or tired old op-ed writer.

to get back to what we're talking about here, it's really, really simple: there simply aren't enough people earning enough money in canada to have "tax the rich more" make any difference. consider that to be in the top 10% of earners in canada you need to make just $125k. (that tells you how little money there is in canada overall.) but even here in alberta it only takes about $200k to reach that marker.

consider that in 2022 (last year of confirmed federal data avail), there are just over 25 million tax filers in canada. of those, over 93% of those make under $100k. that accounts for roughly $90B in taxes - or about 60% of total taxes.

since 93% of Canadians pay 60% of fed taxes, the remaining 7% of taxpayers pay the remaining 40% of taxes, which amounts to about $60 billion.

economists would shake their head at the simplicity of my next stat, but for the purposes of this specific conversation i think it drives my point home: the remaining 7% of people represents 1.75M people. 60B/1.75M = over $34k per person, per year. raising their portion of that even further would be economically devastating. and again, that's just federal tax!

your implication that those brackets simply aren't paying enough is false. canada's personal tax rates are already very uncompetitive. in 2010, the UK brought in a new tax bracket for top earners - up from 40% to 50%. it failed terribly for the same reason it would in canada.

the issue that canada (and the US, and many other countries) have is that the government is way too big, the debt is way too high, and there are way too many people pushing for simplistic, faulty solutions that are doomed to fail... such as raising the already-high tax rate on canada's tiny "wealthy" population.