Tax boomers to death, suggests controversial columnist

Greedy Boomers are not to blame for what has happened, Wall street, Banks and dumb governments all over the world are to blame , Start with taxing the very rich and tax MPs etc the same as everyone else no more tax free income for any of them.
Those who comment that Boomers are to blame need to wake up and smell the coffee!!!!

Thank you for finally writing an article that has needed to be written for so long. I find it to be so accurate with my own personal experiences. I was born in 69 and grew up watching with both fascination and horror as the boomers carried on the most materialisticly obsessed lifestyle imaginable. How important those BMWs, Volvos and Mercedes are to them. High-end neighbourhoods and nimby-ism, expensive watches, lattes, GQ, Vogue, Botox, plastic surgery, cocaine, the disco era and on and on and on. I have always wondered how one large group of people could be so self-absorbed, selfish and shallow. Yet how incredibly articulate they are in justifying their lifestyles, often more to themselves than their audience. At the end of the day though, that BMW was more important than the starving family in the third world. Think of the good they could have done. Finally the self-righteousness when they founf a politically correct topic! What a waste of oxygen this generation was.

If you want a service, you must pay for it. This includes medical care, infrastructure, EI, education, welfare, defence, pensions and even those idiots that we elect to oversee all this. Unfortunately the buzz word has been "cut taxes". Well daaaaa....... that sure makes sense if you don't want to cut services. Now we're suffering the consequences of our actions. To say that this approach to capitalizm works is rediculous because it obviously didn't. At the same time to say that communism and socialism don't work because of the high taxes is also rediculous. It is the people that run all of these systems that screw it up, not the systems. If we continue along the current road our capitalist system will fail just as surely as all others. Except maybe China's hybrid socialist/capitalist system.

When I die and leave one dollar behind means that I died one minute too soon.
I am giving it to my kids now when they need it most. When I die, it will be without an estate. I will just leave debts and no estate to pay for them.

Tax inheritances....WOW !!! I am 56 and have never had one yet...but gee I have worked all my life and like all of us...we work until the 1st or 2nd week of July now to pay our tax burden for the year. How much more am I expected to just hand over to whichever government is in office ??? Free money to them that came from my labour....I have 4 children that I would rather help along in life....not some fat cat...doing nothing for a whole lot and then a nice big early pension.

Why is it up to the babyboomers only to fix this finacial wreck of a country?
Tell me the babyboomers caused all of the national debt.
Tell me why we waste billions of dollars around the globe when we have lots need
in our own country?
Why do we spend billions of dollars on educating , housing and supplying finacial support
to immigrants.
When my parents came to Canada in 1929 they never recieved one red cent of assistance
So in my mind we better wake up before it is too late!

What are you talking about " we caused this mess" . I am 58 years, hardly ever used a credit card, paid my taxed and worked my ass off. I raised two daughters ``no babysitters like this young generation``, we also ate at home not out every night like the younger generation is doing .We tried to save for our retirement and for nothing of our doing, this economy has lost us 33% of our hard saved money. We did not have it good like GM workers, we never had a union to protect us and you to say we are the cause of this problem. Who are you trying to kid, as far as I`m concerned our geedy politicians, major business, hydro and city taxed are bleeding us poor.

Canadians are taxed at fifty-three to fifty-four percent thru municipal,provincial and federal taxes. Try to own a house at todays prices,own a car in todays market and raise two or more children with what is left.Good Luck! Payments to other countries need to be cut by seventy-five percent today and those people told to go to work and stop having children they cannot feed, and build their countries from nothing the way our forebearers did.Immigration needs to be cut by seventy-five percent and all unemployed Canadians need to go to work wherever the jobs are,travel/movingl costs etc. subsidized by their government.Let other countries fight their own civil wars,strifes etc. and determine their own moralities,that is not the job of a Canadian worker.Education of aboriginals in this country needs to start now and they need to be assimilated into everyday Canadian work environment and not sit back on the dole and bitch about how bad the white man is treating them and not contribute to our modern society,it been two hundred years for Christ's sake.We need a new Canadian party that is interested in Canadians, non of the current political parties need apply!!!!.

Whatever money a generation has managed to save has already been taxed. its what they have left after they paid the taxes due and what it cost them to get that far. Taxing whats left of that before passing it on would be taxing the remainder all over again, twice. It makes no sense.

But then again, I feel that anyone that says were undertaxed is a nut. Unless they are feeling guilty of being in a bracket that allows them to take advantage of all available writeoffs. Most earners below top class are taxed quite enough thankyou, with insufficient savings being accumulated. But if in the future I have anything left to pass on to my kids, because it will probably be even tougher for them, I'd be furious if our government felt they were entitled to another chunk of that. Tax net earnings only, reduce high earner writeoffs; and leave savings alone.

@Tax Guy
You really should have your head examined. Look up Pareto Principle (Wikipedia), aka 80-20 rule and you will find out 20% of the richest people have 80% of the world income. Pareto first noticed this when looking at Italy but applies to other countries. To a lesser affect with more developed nations. ie: In 1989, 20% of richest had 82.70% of world income. I read that in the UK, the top 20% earned 51% of national income while the bottom 20% accounted for 2.6%. How can the poorer individuals pay taxes when all the wealth is going to the rich? I guess the poor should just live off the street according to you?

Consumption based taxation is being used by Conservative style gov'ts to lower income taxes on the higher social classes. It is a shuffling of taxes from the rich (lowering their income taxes) and passing it to the middle and lower classes. The lower classes are now paying more in taxes to make up for tax breaks to the rich. A rich person saves lots more from income tax cuts than what they pay in consumption based tax. Also, it will affect overall consumption, reducing goods and services bought and affect the economy negatively - lowering GDP from potential limit. Consumption taxes increase overall cost and people will buy less over time because of them. They work great as a deterrent to buying stuff. Gov't has been lowering income taxes to the rich so much over the years (look at USA, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc.) and with huge spending that now they rely on massive amounts of debt to pay for their expenses. Both under-taxation and over-spending are to blame for running huge deficits and rapidly increasing national debt.

Charging people for the resources they utilize does not work unless everyone had equal (or similar) incomes to everyone else. I can see this argument being valid if everyone made say $100K but with the large inequality in income distribution; only a fair income tax system makes logical sense. Most poor and middle class use gov't services extensively so you would tax or have them pay fees for this so that they are left with nothing in the end!!!

It is strongly apparent what type of individual you are. Thanks for posting here so that people can see what GREED is all about and people wonder why so many countries' economies are now failing and close to collapse by SPENDING WAY MORE THAN THEY TAX.

This is the for author - come live in Toronto and see for yourself. We're taxed to death already, eco fee here, HST there, land transfer tax here, smart metering, car registration personal fee - what else is next?

I am a baby boomer and I worked dam hard for what i have .If I hadn,t i would not have the worth i have today.these bleading hearts don;t know what hard work is.they have the belief that we stole their money.iIf working hard and making the right choices in life is stealing than I guess I stole the money.The government stopped people from trying any more with high taxes. income taxes are not the answer.If aperson finds they have enough money why would we risk everything just so we could give the government fifty percent. A higher consumpson tax and no income tax would be better .but than what need would there be for all these tax auditors.

Ithink powers must work for the government. only they would come out with this line of bullshit

To The TAX GUY: I think taxing those who spend money will not only lead to people to buy on the cheap but are going take their money to shop outside of the country where goods and services are cheaper. So your theory of those who consume or spend more should be taxed more could be debunked. Also if all the people did not spend and kept their money in the banks (which was what happened after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center), then the economy would retract and we would again go into a recession. Think of it, if people did not travel anymore (which was what happened after Sept. 11), the Airline Industry almost went bankrupt.If people stayed home instead of vacationing and driving their cars to visit friends. People stopped buying cars because of the economy going down. This led to the Auto-Industry laying off people as well because no one can afford to buy cars anymore since Oil went up in price. Everything went spiraling downwards because a lot of industries were going bankrupt. The reason they went bankrupt is because people were not spending money enough. If people were not spending money enough then the industries that employed people would need to lay off employees in order for them to stay in business. Understand the concept of the economy? The money goes in circles, it's called Commerce. Businesses will not stay in business if no one if buying anything. People won't be able to pay their mortgages if they lose their jobs and have no income. The government will not be able to collect income taxes or property taxes if people have no income and if they lose their property. In turn, mortgage lenders and banks will fail because people will default on their mortgages. So your theory as to make people not spend money is not good for the economy. The very rich represents only maybe 5% to 10% of the country and yet they control every aspect of the economy. If the remaining 80% or 90% of the working people did not spend money, the economy will go down. Businesses only survive because of the majority of people which are the middle class. A strong middle class with enough economic strenght is what is needed and to entice them to spend money by lowering their taxes. The money that the middle class make only represents maybe 20% to 30% of what the wealthy rich class make in this country. If I make $60K per year, the rich will make a million or more per year. How much percentage of my $60K per year is compared to someone making a million dollars per year? Only 6%. See what I mean? You need to tax the rich wealthy people more not the middle class. Middle class spending power is what keeps corporations, major industries and businesses alive. Without the strong economic power of the Middle classes, all businesses will fail tremendously.

let the goverment people that are getting the brown envelops pay back as well

I can't believe I'm reading this sort of crap. My parents grew up during the war years, when there wasn't much of anything available. They made their own way, with much difficulty. My dad had a paper route when he was young, and his finances went into the household finances. From their experiences we were brought up very frugally, and taught to save $'s for what we wanted. I've been working since age 12, have paid for school books, clothes, entertainment, college tuition, cars, etc. HAVE NOT HAD ANY HELP - WAS EXPECTED TO DO THIS IF I WANTED TO GET AHEAD - BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE HAS RICH PARENTS. Now this generation walks in and thinks they're entitled to our expertise at savings (for our old age and finally enjoyment at the end). Maybe they should have had a better upbringing and have been made to work for what they wanted. Don't cry to me you "up and commers" - get off your ass and make your own dreams come true.

"Whatever money a generation has managed to save has already been taxed."
How is that so? If spending is greater than taxation in any given year and you must use debt to make up the difference then there was too little tax collected at that instance in time. Meaning there was less tax given and should be collected later on. Using (long term) debt to pay for short term spending is just insane but we still do it! Debt was really for long term projects like building bridges. You can really see this issue in USA economy where their national debt has doubled since 2000 and I'm talking in the trillions and running deficits for over 10 years. Canada will now have large deficits for the next several years.
You can't own a house today as easy because we have allowed banks to run free with deregulation. They brought in 30, 35 (and 40 year - short lived) mortgages to allow giving out higher mortgages to individuals and indebting us for much longer time. Giving loans left and right to anyone. Then you had the investors jumping in the real estate market and using it to quckly flip properties for profit. One person I was told bought 4 houses to flip for financial gain because the banks let him do it and others did the same with 2 or 3 houses at a time.
Aubrey, I lived in Ontario for 5 years. The problem is income tax cutting with the rich and super rich getting the biggest tax breaks. When you cut income tax and/or corporate tax you either have to make up the difference one way or another and happens with 1) fees + consumption taxes or 2) debt. Ontario has chosen to go with 1) which passes these costs onto the middle and poor classes (from the rich). It is a tax shift from the rich to the middle class using fees + consumer taxation which resulted from reducing income (and corporate) taxes.
Hey Dave, is that why when I looked up a house in Calgary it was bought for $65,000 in 1984 and sold for $475,000 in 2007. I guess that is working damn hard. Right? If only I was your age so that I could have purchased a house in 1984 for that price. Then maybe I could say that I worked damn hard for it too like you. Average salary was $30K in '84 compared to about $50K in 2007.
The smart boomers jumped in and bought houses when they were cheap (80s & 90s). They then pushed for higher salaries, lower income taxes (benefiting mostly the richer classes with tens of thousands of extra income per rich person) - using this additional money to invest in real estate and stock markets to push prices upwards, allowed banks to deregulate so banks would lend out lots and lots of money and showed the world what greed was all about. I recall the early 80s when people were about community and caring for one another but today society is about greed and selfishness. I noticed this attitude shift just before 1990 (with late 80s economic boom). Greed started with the baby boomer generation wanting bigger houses, more money and other material goods which spread and infected other generations now. So, I have to blame the boomers because they were the first generation to become easily corrupted and pass the message to their sons and daughters that greed is good and life is only about having lots of money. Today everyone wants money, money, money because they can't get enough of it. Financial responsibility (and morality) escaped the boomers first, who we (generation X) looked up to and taught us to be just as greedy. Greed was not an issue from mid 80s and earlier. Now we have countries with big economic messes that require higher taxation to fix but no one wants to pay for it since they prefer living off debt instead with higher incomes. Banks lending money like crazy (to everyone) + large, unbalanced income tax cuts + greed have done real wonders for our society! Wouldn't you agree?

Taxing the Boomers would be political suicide. For the simple reason they all vote, whereas younger generations do not.

That said here in Canada we are faced with different problem...healthcare costs. Boomers are going to be the inheriting the largest inheritance ever.As well, due major improvements in healthcare over the years the boomers will be receiving the most expensive heathcare ever..

Which for me leads to a logical conclusion. If you are over 60 and you need heathcare, and you have the money, then you pay for heathcare.

If not directly, at least as a lien against your home. That $100,000 quadruple bypass? No problem, we'll put a $100,000 lien against your home. Otherrwise the healthcare system *WILL* run out of money in the next few years.

u must be a goof if u think that the baby boomers are going 2 pay down the debt the debt will never be repaided so stop thinking it will , this system will go till it goes bust then they will say we have a new system that will start us all over again. we will just claim complete bank rupt for all counteries and states and then start with what they will call the new world order meaning new currencies for every body 2 start fresh but with that system u will not see cash any more period.

Tax the money that was previously taxed. Twice taxed Loonies... what next?