[tomelders]

Imagine you and I share an apartment and we split the rent between us. It's not a great apartment. There's mould in the bathroom caused by a lack of ventilation. The carpet is a mess. The power keeps cutting out if we plug too many things in.

Now imagine I tell the landlord I'm going to move out unless he fixes these issues and he then offers me a 50% discount on the rent. Now imagine he recoups that discount by putting your rent up by the same amount. And now imagine that I use those savings to buy a nice big TV for the two of us. The bathroom is still covered in mould. The carpet is still a mess. The power still cuts out all the time. And you pay more rent than me.

But I bought an awesome TV for us. So I'm the good guy right?

[kortilla]

This analogy would work if you were already paying 10000x more than the roommate in the first place.

Remember, all of the talk of billionaires “paying less in taxes than their assistants” is not based on raw collected amounts, it’s based on percentages. A billionaire with an effective federal tax rate of 15% on 50 million income is paying 7.5 million in taxes, which is more than all of the federal tax collected from the bottom 10% of income combined.

[dylan604]

What an unrealistic comparison. No landlord would ever do that, nor would the roommate agree to the changes that the landlord would attempt to make even if that is something the landlord would do.

[ficklepickle]

Aren't you in Vancouver? I've had landlords here that would absolutely do something like that. Many slumlords would do anything they think they can get away with.

[dylan604]

Nope. I've never been to Canuckistan. If you're saying this is typical behaviour of landlords in Canadia, then it makes me have second thoughts if universal health care is worth it.