The video embedded here is not the least bit critical of its subjects. There is no discussion of wealth building through tax benefits, strategies that eliminate competition, or the use of political influence to advance economic interests. The following families are mentioned:
- Thompson
- Weston
- Desmarais
- Bronfman
- Irving
- Morgan
- Richardson
- McCain
- Saputo
- Molson
.
I liked the explanation of Weston success: “Through clever marketing, innovative store brands…, and buying up competitors.” Ah yes, eliminating competition is certainly a way to succeed. Price fixing and control of quotas for regulated products are other ways.
The video is about old money. American magazine Forbes publishes a list of billionaires, which ranks these as the ten wealthiest Canadians. The total for these ten is almost C$300 billion.
- Changpeng Zhao, C$88 billion
- Sherry Brydson (Thomson family), C$23 billion
- David Cheriton, C$20 billion
- Joseph Tsai, C$17 billion
- Jim Pattison, C$16 billion
- David Thomson, C$14 billion
- Taylor Thomson, C$14 billion
- Peter Thomson, C$14 billion
- Tobi Lutke, C$12 billion
- Linda Campbell (Thomson family), C$11 billion.
I am unsure of Forbes accuracy. After all, my name is not on the list.
Categories: Economics
in-sights.ca 
One person on the Canadian list practiced using some questionable practices, I know this because I was one of the victims.
At one time in the early 80s I was asking the Federal Government for some commercial air transport licenses and that person did not want me to get them. To block my way he resorted to asking a fellow club member if some “dirt” could be found on me and he asked the Federal Transportation Authority to deny my applications, according to a friendly commissioner.
This is not what one learns in university but from behind closed doors. Erik
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Thanks for writing about this important issue Norm. Festering at the root of many of societies crises is wealth inequality. And the gap only seems to be accelerating. As you stated, the obscenely weathly have a long history of using their wealth to influence legislation and tax code in their favour. The most recent statistics reveal that the wealthiest 20% in Canada own 70% of the countries wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 40% own only 3% of the countries wealth.
How can you possibly build a robust and resilient economy with this kind of wealth inequality. The tax code is completely upside down and needs to be overhauled. We people that actually build our country have 100% of their income taxed while the assets, held mainly by the wealthy, are tax advantaged.
The 50% capital gains exemption is particularly galling. Why does a crypto trader receive a 50% break on his capital gains? It is also time for a wealth tax on assets over $10 million.
Check out Canadians for Tax Fairness and Patriotic Millionaires Canada for more information.
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I also invite your readers to visit Gary Stevenson’s YouTube channel where he brilliantly shreds the ultra – wealthy and builds strong arguments for a wealth tax. Tax Wealth Not Work.
https://youtube.com/@garyseconomics?feature=shared
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Plausible sounding stupidity employed to protect wealth is global.
Recently UK politics have been elevated to Twilight Zone heights.
“On England’s pleasant pastures seen” there’s a water problem. There’s not enough available that’s pure and what’s left flowing on land too often is polluted. Something should be done to improve the product.
But how? Does anyone anywhere have a surplus to sell?
https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/Your-Home/Your-Water/Managing-Water-Resources/Scotlands-Water-Resource-Levels
https://www.studycountry.com/wiki/does-scotland-have-more-fresh-water-than-england
“He told iNews: “Loch Ness has more water than all of England and Wales combined. And that’s just one loch – Scotland has more than 31,000 freshwater lochs, and most are unused. “Scotland has a small population and has about 100 times more water than it uses.“
“Does Scotland have more water than England?”
“Water is much the same in Scotland and England, unless polluted. There is less pollution in Scotland. However, what is more important is that Scotland has 90% of the UK fresh water supplies”
“Does Scotland have the freshest water in the world?”
“Scotland has the highest water quality, and it’s no coincidence that it’s the rainiest country in the UK with 3,000 mm of rain on average annually.”
When PM Boris Johnson offered Scotland a super duper sweetheart deal to build a huge pipeline to transfer Scotland’s excess water into England, the Scots, with profound regret, declined.
The root problem? Margaret Thatcher privatized water. Ever since private investors have amassed vast personal fortunes. But despite pleas from the planet’s most earnest politicians nothing much has improved except the profits. And now there’s this…
“A water firm has banned tanker companies from delivering its water to an American billionaire’s lake during the drought season nearby.”
“Despite a local domestic hosepipe ban in place in Hampshire, water from there was legally transported to fill the lake at Stephen Schwarzman’s property in neighbouring Wiltshire.”
“Local residents have spotted and filmed multiple water tankers filling up from standpipes in Hampshire, where a drought order is in place, the BBC reported.”
“Those tankers were then taken to Conholt Park, a 2,500-acre estate owned by Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of asset management company Blackstone.”
“Mr Schwarzman, who is thought to have a net worth of more than £30bn, is one of the world’s richest men and a financial backer of US president Donald Trump.”
“He has been renovating the 17th-century shooting estate, worth approximately £80m, ever since he bought it in 2022. This extensive project includes the redevelopment and construction of a new lake.”
For years PM Starmer has been asked to return British Water to public ownership. Polling indicates that 80% of the public want nationalization.
“Perhaps, after decades of catastrophic underinvestment, ecological ruin, and public outrage, Labour ministers had finally grasped the nettle. Instead, they ensured the Cunliffe Review explicitly restricted itself to “reforms within the privatised regulated model,” excluding any meaningful exploration of public ownership – despite overwhelming public support.”
“Yet, with its strong mandate for transformative change, this was avoidable. The public are hungry for change. On water, opinion has been clear: consistently over 80% of the English public support returning water to public ownership.“
What makes this interesting? The Middle East is one of the most arid and drought prone regions on earth. Yet Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel have no fear of going dry. Mr Schwarzman’s desire to create his own lake? Absolutely doable. Proof? Israel is busy topping up The Sea of Galilee.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/israel-refills-sea-galilee-supplying-jordan-way-2023-01-30/
How? By desalinating ocean water. But wait. Desalination requires huge amount of increasingly expensive power to force salt water through membranes. For impoverished England such cost is prohibitive. Or would be except that some physics geeks came up with a nifty work around.
They’ve managed to employ ocean pressure at depth to desalinate salt water and leave the salt at depth. This will cost far less. The UK is surrounded by ocean.
Who to consult?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep-sea-desalination-pulls-drinking-water-from-the-depths/
https://news.mit.edu/2023/desalination-system-could-produce-freshwater-cheaper-0927
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/16/2222
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Ideas concerning Economic and Political power?
As this article emphatically makes clear those elites who determine how well or poorly their management efforts advance their interests too often fail to pay sufficient attention to far better ideas.
Tourism? The old Grand Tour to broaden exuberant youth’s horizons? Travel may or may not expand our minds or result in a vastly improved survey of what works. But until the internet arrived what people could learn about better managed nations was reduced to trivia about ruins and menus.
Case in point? For decades curious political leaders have visited places like Singapore and the Scandinavian countries for insights on why countries in NE Europe and SE Asia are doing so much better than visitors thought possible here.
Example? Compared with North America why does tiny Singapore seem so very advanced? How are they different?
Recently BC Premier Eby visited Singapore. What changed for the better when he returned?
Again turning not to media pundits, policy spin doctors or academics but to the internet.
In his book “The Precipice”, Oxford scholar Toby Ord thinks we’re far too reliant with what doesn’t work to recognize let alone manage the worst of long term risks.
Quoting Edmond Wilson
1/ “The problem with humans is that we have Paleolithic emotions with medieval institutions and godlike technology.”
Professor Ord’s view?
2/ “The systems that govern us are built with a medieval mindset.”
3/ “The people within those societies have a stone age psychology.”
Ord’s point?
4/ “It is not that we are evil but that our tools have outrun our evolutionary biology.”
Interested? Reviews…
https://theprecipice.com/
https://www.supersummary.com/the-precipice/summary/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/the-precipice-the-magical-language-of-others-the-glass-hotel-and-then-the-fish-swallowed-him
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=toby+ord+the+precipice&mid=42FB85F04279566663DB42FB85F04279566663DB&FORM=VIRE
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More Singapore…
Imagine! Is Singapore far better managed than we are?
But why would anyone in Mr Trump’s America possibly object to imposing a $100,000 H-1B fee to keep pesky foreigners out of top paying American jobs?
For one an unusually excited physicist..
OK, but that’s only 1 person. Who else agrees? D.J. TRUMP.
Who disagrees? J.D. Vance.
https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-2674290521/
“Despite the Trump administration’s overwhelming hostility to immigrants, there is one particular immigration issue that is triggering a civil war in the White House between President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, wrote the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board.”
“The issue involves H-1B visas, the program that allows highly skilled workers to enter the country and is widely used by the tech industry. This issue already fractured the MAGA base when tech billionaire Elon Musk, then still at the White House, pushed it to the forefront. But it never really went away, the board wrote.”
“Mr. Trump made his views clear in an interview Tuesday with Laura Ingraham, a longtime opponent of immigration,” wrote the board. “Asking about curbs on H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, the Fox News host told the President that ‘if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.'” Trump, however, disagreed, saying, “you also do have to bring in talent,” and “You don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where you’re going to make missiles.’”
The controversy is spreading.
https://www.rawstory.com/bannon-trump-h-1b-visas-calm/
“MAGA influencer Steve Bannon sought to “calm” his followers after President Donald Trump defended the use of foreign workers by saying that there were not enough “talented” Americans.”
“In an interview on Fox News this week, host Laura Ingraham argued against the use of H-1B visas, telling Trump, “We have plenty of talented people here.””
“No, you don’t,” the president insisted. “No, you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn.”
“The remarks outraged MAGA supporters, with conservative pundits insisting Trump was “out of touch.””
“I am solidly against you being replaced by foreign labor, like with H1Bs,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) insisted.”
It would appear that first-rate social policies, high educational standards, low crime tolerance and domestic tranquility so important to Singapore haven’t registered due south. Or here.
Down South? Not difficult to understand.
But here?
Currently BC’s CBC is televising a conference where Surrey’s um…Extortion Problem (Duration? At least 11 years) is being “discussed.” Accompanied with lengthy assurances.
“Seven arrested! Three deported!”
Who knew that ignoring a rampant crime wave could spread and intensify the downsides?
So much to learn!
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Still another divergence from pure market capitalism in favour of strict control over housing?
Where else has this happened other than Finland?
Singapore.
Wall Street editor Mike Bird explains…
“Where the government owns most of the city lands”
“They divorce usage from speculation”
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This is environmental progress?
During Question Period even the federal Tories complained.
https://ccpi.org/country/can/
“Canada ranks 61st in this year’s COP and remains among the very low performers.”
“Canada continues to receive a very low rating in the GHG Emissions, Renewable Energy, and Energy Use categories, and a low in Climate Policy”
“Canada’s Emissions Reduction Plan, published in March 2022, targets a 40% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. However, Prime Minister Mark Carney, the former UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, have declined to commit to Canada’s climate goals under the Paris Agreement by 2030. This comes as the government faces criticism over its emissions reduction plans amid evolving global and economic circumstances under the Trump administration.”
The Climate Change Performance Index evaluates 67 countries.
Which countries rated worse than Canada? UAE, Korea, Russian Federation, USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia.
https://ccpi.org/countries/
https://ccpi.org/ranking/
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