Avi Bryant grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood in Vancouver. By the time he was 30, he was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.
He calls his path “sheer luck” — but it’s more nuanced than that. Bryant got lucky, sure, meeting the right kinds of friends and acquaintances (executives at Twitter, for example) at the right times. He also made good business and financial choices, including taking stock options in lieu of some of his pay while at Stripe, that eventually propelled him into the so-called one per cent.
Now, instead of kicking back and sipping martinis with the economic elite, he’s joined a growing chorus of wealthy individuals calling for nations to stop catering to the ultra-rich. In fact, he says, Canada needs to tax the rich more — a lot more.
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It’s too easy to take money out of Canada for tax evasion, and our Prime Ministers all do it.
We never had debt issues before the 70s when we decided to stop taxing the rich, then brought in the GST to force the poor to fill in the gap.