OMG some comments...
Time to dumb down how the economy works, to the benefit of everyone.
Basic principle of the economy
For the economy to work, people must spend money.
For people to spend money, they must have money.
For the economy to grow, people must increase their spending.
For people increasing their spending, they must make more money this year then they made last year.
Since increase spending can create inflation, people's wages (revenues) must grow faster than inflation.
If inflation grows at the same rate as people's revenues, then the economy flattens.
If the inflation grows faster than wages, then the economy contracts because people can afford less with the same amount of money.
However you look at it, to have a strong economy, you must make sure that people have money to spend and that their disposable income grows faster that the price increase (inflation).
If people can't get a job, you still need to make sure they have money to spend in order to support the economy to the benefit of everyone else.
Giving money to Canadians who have none will actually help you.
More people who have money will spend more and create more jobs which in turn create more people with money who spend more and who create even more jobs.
More people with more money means more contributors to the tax system, which means the possibility to lower taxes on everyone.
People who have money usually consume less social programs, reducing the need to spend taxpayers' money on social assistance programs.
Why rich people are bad for the economy
100 workers who make $50,000 each ($5 million total) may buy 100 $30,000 cars ($3 million total). One rich guy who makes $5 million probably won't buy one $3 million dollar car or probably won't buy 10 $300,000 cars and surely won't buy 100 $30,000 cars.
100 workers may buy 100 $400,000 houses ($40 million total), one rich guy will probably not buy a $40 million house or 4 $10 million houses or 40 $1 million houses , let alone 100 $400,000 houses.
100 workers may eat 300 $10 meals a day ($3000). One rich guy probably won't eat 3 $1000 meals a day.
The more money you allow a rich person to hoard, the less money is actually spent in the retail economy since the threshold to eat, house oneself and clothe oneself are the same, no matter how rich or poor you are.
What is the message here?
The rich people in Canada don't spend as much as the rest of us do on a daily basis. It is more profitable for the economy to have few rich people, few poor people and a LARGE, WEALTHY middle class.
To have a strong economy, the ordinary people must have money to spend other than for their basic needs (food, housing, clothing, medical care, education...). What we will call "disposable income".
If they don't have money, we must find them jobs that will pay them well enough so they have more money that what they need to cover their basic needs so they can be left with disposable income to support the growth of the economy.
If there are no jobs, we must give them money that exceeds the cost of their basic needs so they can have disposable income that will make them positive contributors to the economy.
Otherwise the economy will either collapses or stagnates. It's that simple.
Where do we get the money?
Sad thing to say but 86 Canadians own as much as one third of all the wealth in Canada. or if you prefer, 86 people own as much as 11 million Canadians.
If those 86 wealthy people only gave up 50% of their wealth, they would still be filthy rich but they would improve the wealth of 11 million Canadians by 50%.
Increasing the wealth of 11 million Canadians by 50% would create a never-seen-before economic boom where millions of jobs could be created by the increased spending of those 11 million, creating a need for more workers, more wages, filling up the government's coffers with taxes, enabling for more government infrastructure spending, which would create even more jobs and more spending...
The problem in the Canadian economy is that too much of the wealth is concentrated in the pockets of too few people who are not spending their money but instead hoarding it.