https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_returns_of_Donald_Trump
"Trump paid no net federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years of the past two decades. After the refund, Trump had an average tax bill of $1.4 million per year over the 18 years.[52][176] In 2016, Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax, and in 2017, he paid another $750 in federal income tax."
If there was an unequal vote, I am pretty sure rich people would want votes as heavy as possible.
If you read it again you will notice that technically he thinks that, to satisfy those who believe the wealthy don't pay tax, Canada could use a system to encourage the wealthy to claim income, where that is incentivized by being able to vote. Often the wealthy have no need for income as they already have so much wealth and can easily borrow against that wealth as cash needs present themselves. It is believed (at least as far as the thread went) that the wealthy currently don't pay tax, and thus would be unable to vote, or their vote would count for little, under the proposed since they don't have sufficient income to qualify.
That would be true if he advocated for votes according to effective taxation rate or something similar. He caps his example at 800k reported income, if I remember, which is a rounding error to his income class.
Instead, he makes sure to include the idea of stripping low-income people of all voting rights.
Not at all. The idea is that his class claim very little income, if any income. His income class is ~$0 (or believed to be, at least). You can certainly make an argument that the claim isn't true, that the ultra-wealthy are actually already paying huge sums in income tax, but then you cannot take the thread out of context. It was clearly directed at those who believe the wealthy pay no income tax. It literally says so. Did you skip step one and not go back to read it again?
> He caps his example at 800k reported income, if I remember
You are correct, approximately, but there would have been no need to remember given step one, so that was clearly ignored. Why? What is the purpose of replying without even reading the comment you are replying to?
Lutke's own post was about pension = no votes, which I identify as the thing he decided to actually spent time on. His other tweet is a Musk-like "Good idea" reply to someone else's proposal regarding tax brackets, no?
I don't think memory fails me on the main points. If you think ranking the same read facts differently from you means faulty reading, I don't really owe you the labor of explaining where that fails.
> His other tweet is a Musk-like "Good idea" reply to someone else's proposal regarding tax brackets, no?
Yes, that is the one we are talking about. The pension comment was posted earlier and isn't directly applicable to the discussion taking place.
The other comment did happen, to be sure. I guess we can change the subject if you want to. The comment that came prior to it asserted that the only way to solve the housing crisis is to take the power away from those who most participate in local government (i.e. retired people). To which Tobi suggested that one way to address that is to allow one to choose power or a pension, but not both, suggesting that pensioners have become dependents and thus no longer have any real stake in the future of a locality.
Which certainly isn't a novel idea. I've heard the same thing many times from people who are ostensibly poor. Many honestly believe that retirees (a.k.a. boomers) who "got theirs" are why housing is out of their reach. You could make a good case that Tobi was trying to play up "I'm just like the little guy" when he isn't actually, but if that is the case, what is our takeaway from that?
Why would they care? The ultra-wealthy impact election through donations, which is many order of magnitudes more impactful than their personal ballot, even if you were to give them 10x weight.
Elon Musk impact on the U.S. election wasn't because he drove to the booth.
Care about what? The thread was clearly making fun of those who think the wealthy don't pay any income tax. It literally states that the plan is proposed for those who complain the wealthy don't pay tax, not a plan to be set in motion. Tobi, who fits the wealthy profile of who supposedly doesn't pay tax better than almost anyone, will know well that he already does pay income tax, hence why he humorously threw salt in the wounds of those who don't have a solid grasp of reality.
Being wealthy doesn't mean you can't be a troll. You'd think after seeing Musk in action that would have already been obvious to all, but I guess not.
About what you yourself said? "Canada could use a system to encourage the wealthy to claim income, where that is incentivized by being able to vote".
The ultra-wealthy can already influence elections in very significant ways. Getting 5 votes instead of 1, which makes no actual difference to any election, is not something that will suddenly make the ultra wealthy wanting to pay more income tax.
What does make a difference though, is if you can prevent a lot of lower income voters from casting their ballots.
Also, no, I'm not buying your unfounded claim that Tobi is just joking bro. His doubling down on it in other comments + his past make it clear to me that is seriously thinks like this.
> I'm not buying your unfounded claim that Tobi is just joking bro.
Fair enough. Let me be a little more precise here: Eric Thor was clearly poking the bear of those who believe that the wealthy don't pay tax. I mean, his voting suggestion concludes with exactly that. Maybe Tobi is so far out to lunch that he didn't notice and took it as an actual plan, but, then again, if you are suggesting that he is that far out to lunch what are we to do with that?
> His doubling down on it in other comments
The fact that he was writing comments about it suggests that he doesn't take it too seriously. Nobody of sound mind wastes time writing stupid comments on the internet if they have an actual motive. They go out into the real world and make it happen.
If he is completely out to lunch like you suggest then anything is possible, but the more likely explanation still seems to be making fun of those who don't believe the wealthy pay tax. If people were making shit up about you, claiming that you didn't pay any tax, you'd likely end up making fun of them too.
> Nobody of sound mind wastes time writing stupid comments on the internet if they have an actual motive.
I mean Musk? You even used it as an example of "just trolling" in your previous message. He invested north of $300M+ in the last presidential election, also injected massive amounts in various local races, as well as foreign elections.
What more do you need to take them seriously? Even if somehow Musk was doing all of this to troll people because to him $500M is nothing, the impact on those elections is real, so it doesn't even matter what is internal reasons are.
One who is not normally considered to be of sound mind, but you do you.
> What more do you need to take them seriously?
A good idea? The voting thought, while possibly an interesting thought experiment, is not suitable for execution. Why would I take it seriously?
> the impact on those elections is real
Maybe you aren't asking why I would take them seriously, when there was nothing presented that is worth taking seriously, but why do others take their hobo shouting on the street ramblings seriously, presumably only because they have wealth? The other hobos on the street seem to be happily ignored.
Good question, but one I do not have the answer to. I'm still trying to figure out how these particular hobos shouting nonsense on the street corner became people I am aware of. They're just people, same as all the others that manage to remain anonymous. Definitely some kind of malfunction in my brain going on there.
> but why do others take their hobo shouting on the street ramblings seriously, presumably only because they have wealth? The other hobos on the street seem to be happily ignored.
The wealth is precisely what allows those hobos to act on their crazy ideas and and impact us all. The other hobos on the street without wealth have no actual impact thus we just ignore them. I don't think its that complicated.
The only act here is to convince others that the crazy shouting is something to seriously pay attention to. It is apparent that wealth enables that, but the exact mechanics remain unclear. Why does a hobo having wealth convince a bystander that the hobo should be listened to? What's the difference between a hobo that rolls up in a Rolls Royce and a hobo that rolls up in a shopping cart that changes how others behave?
It may not be complicated, but that doesn't mean I understand it without an explanation.
The founding fathers, the framers (a different and later group, though the two overlap and are often conflated) and original states had a variety of (and evolving in some cases between the Founding and the Constitution) opinions on the issue; some (Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, notably, the latter also the primary author of PA’s 1776 Constitution which also adopted this position at the state level) were in favor of universal male suffrage.
“Didn’t forbid”, if referring to the framers of the Constitution, is a bit of an understatement, given that they created multiple layers of protection to prevent dismantling slavery at the federal level into the future.
Franklin also supported universal male suffrage, wrote Pennsulvania’s 1776 constitution which adopted universal male suffrage, and condemned property requirements for the franchise, reportedly arguing:
“Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars, and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers — but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass.”
I found this just when I googled his name plus controversy
> Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke faced fierce online backlash in July 2026 after endorsing a social media proposal for a tax-tiered voting system that would strip voting rights from non-taxpayers and give multiple votes to high-income earners.
but if we go as far as to say
> If it’s touched by Tobias Lütke, I’m out.
does it mean control or sponsored, for example ladybird web browser...
That vague posting is a bit frustrating to be honest.
Are you talking about the fact they do not accept pull requests? If yes, they had good reasons for doing so, LLMs make it really time consuming and exhausting to manage an open source community, I completely understand why they decided to stop accepting PRs for now
Along with a myriad of different controversies. Just searching his name will bring up many articles about his chronically online Elon Musk wannabe takes.
Some people believe that anyone who does not maintain 100% ideological purity and goodness, which can be measured by if they align 100% with the persons own and therefore morally good political ideas, which also coincidentally matches the status quo of Brooklyn based journalists, that the heretic must be ostracized from all of society and it is impossible to work with them. Since Tobi Lutke made a mortal sin of disagreeing on suffrage requirements, they should be cast into fire and ostracized.
When people who are rich and/or influential loudly and publicly share their political stances, and especially when they put their money toward those ends, it is not unreasonable to expect that to influence the opinions others have of those people, even to the point of saying "I would like to not be associated with them."
I get the impression that you are among the "stop bringing politics into these non-political places" crowd who believe that this stance is (a) exclusively taken by the left and (b) something that's only happened in the last ten years; I assure you neither of those things are true.
I don't think "citizens have a right to vote" is anywhere near the realm of ideological purity or "Brooklyn based journalist" thinking. It's literally just democracy.
Freedom of speech seems like something Lutke would pretend to like, and him getting torched for his anti-human opinions is a great demonstration of that principle.
> Lutke made a mortal sin of disagreeing on suffrage requirements
I think this is a very tame and apologetic and dishonest way to put it. Suffrage and voting is how people have a voice in the future of their democracy. He advocates for a policy that materially removes that right, that say in the future, from those who already have little power. I don’t know how else to emphasize that it’s more than “they disagree a bit with him and now he’s an impure sinner”, it’s more akin to “this rich dude wants to rewrite the rules to give himself more power and us less”, which is a sober assessment of his policy. I think people actively trying to avoid giving him any more money or power is a very understandable reaction to that
I think ultimately some parts of ideology are bound to and by the reality we live in, and acknowledging that reality gives a good answer here for when _it seems like_ people freaking out at an “impure idea” - is there a documented harm that we can look at?
Many people boycott Elon and his products. Do you raise this same “moral purity” complaint about them? Does it ever go in the other direction?
I think technology and how we build it is deeply tied to us as social, communal beings. Tech can be a reflection of our capabilities, our values. Tech shapes our reality in turn. It’s worth thinking about, being critical of, and believing people when they say what they believe
He came to Canada as an immigrant, made some buck and now unashamedly calls 'idiots' the very people that built the communities where he lives. The guy is a complete POS.
He thinks ability to vote (and the number of votes you get) should be based on income.
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/business/article/shopify-...
Taxes paid was actually what was said.
I may be going astray, but I can see a way to degenerate "taxes paid" to "taxes before deductions" to "income since it relates to taxes anyways"
It doesn't have to be that complicated. Just absolute terms could have the desired effect.
- 1% tax of 10 million = 100k
- 20% tax of 100k = 20k
Hence, the rich pays more tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_returns_of_Donald_Trump "Trump paid no net federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years of the past two decades. After the refund, Trump had an average tax bill of $1.4 million per year over the 18 years.[52][176] In 2016, Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax, and in 2017, he paid another $750 in federal income tax."
If there was an unequal vote, I am pretty sure rich people would want votes as heavy as possible.
If you read it again you will notice that technically he thinks that, to satisfy those who believe the wealthy don't pay tax, Canada could use a system to encourage the wealthy to claim income, where that is incentivized by being able to vote. Often the wealthy have no need for income as they already have so much wealth and can easily borrow against that wealth as cash needs present themselves. It is believed (at least as far as the thread went) that the wealthy currently don't pay tax, and thus would be unable to vote, or their vote would count for little, under the proposed since they don't have sufficient income to qualify.
That would be true if he advocated for votes according to effective taxation rate or something similar. He caps his example at 800k reported income, if I remember, which is a rounding error to his income class.
Instead, he makes sure to include the idea of stripping low-income people of all voting rights.
> which is a rounding error to his income class.
Not at all. The idea is that his class claim very little income, if any income. His income class is ~$0 (or believed to be, at least). You can certainly make an argument that the claim isn't true, that the ultra-wealthy are actually already paying huge sums in income tax, but then you cannot take the thread out of context. It was clearly directed at those who believe the wealthy pay no income tax. It literally says so. Did you skip step one and not go back to read it again?
> He caps his example at 800k reported income, if I remember
You are correct, approximately, but there would have been no need to remember given step one, so that was clearly ignored. Why? What is the purpose of replying without even reading the comment you are replying to?
Lutke's own post was about pension = no votes, which I identify as the thing he decided to actually spent time on. His other tweet is a Musk-like "Good idea" reply to someone else's proposal regarding tax brackets, no?
I don't think memory fails me on the main points. If you think ranking the same read facts differently from you means faulty reading, I don't really owe you the labor of explaining where that fails.
> His other tweet is a Musk-like "Good idea" reply to someone else's proposal regarding tax brackets, no?
Yes, that is the one we are talking about. The pension comment was posted earlier and isn't directly applicable to the discussion taking place.
The other comment did happen, to be sure. I guess we can change the subject if you want to. The comment that came prior to it asserted that the only way to solve the housing crisis is to take the power away from those who most participate in local government (i.e. retired people). To which Tobi suggested that one way to address that is to allow one to choose power or a pension, but not both, suggesting that pensioners have become dependents and thus no longer have any real stake in the future of a locality.
Which certainly isn't a novel idea. I've heard the same thing many times from people who are ostensibly poor. Many honestly believe that retirees (a.k.a. boomers) who "got theirs" are why housing is out of their reach. You could make a good case that Tobi was trying to play up "I'm just like the little guy" when he isn't actually, but if that is the case, what is our takeaway from that?
Why would they care? The ultra-wealthy impact election through donations, which is many order of magnitudes more impactful than their personal ballot, even if you were to give them 10x weight. Elon Musk impact on the U.S. election wasn't because he drove to the booth.
Care about what? The thread was clearly making fun of those who think the wealthy don't pay any income tax. It literally states that the plan is proposed for those who complain the wealthy don't pay tax, not a plan to be set in motion. Tobi, who fits the wealthy profile of who supposedly doesn't pay tax better than almost anyone, will know well that he already does pay income tax, hence why he humorously threw salt in the wounds of those who don't have a solid grasp of reality.
Being wealthy doesn't mean you can't be a troll. You'd think after seeing Musk in action that would have already been obvious to all, but I guess not.
> Care about what?
About what you yourself said? "Canada could use a system to encourage the wealthy to claim income, where that is incentivized by being able to vote".
The ultra-wealthy can already influence elections in very significant ways. Getting 5 votes instead of 1, which makes no actual difference to any election, is not something that will suddenly make the ultra wealthy wanting to pay more income tax.
What does make a difference though, is if you can prevent a lot of lower income voters from casting their ballots.
Also, no, I'm not buying your unfounded claim that Tobi is just joking bro. His doubling down on it in other comments + his past make it clear to me that is seriously thinks like this.
> I'm not buying your unfounded claim that Tobi is just joking bro.
Fair enough. Let me be a little more precise here: Eric Thor was clearly poking the bear of those who believe that the wealthy don't pay tax. I mean, his voting suggestion concludes with exactly that. Maybe Tobi is so far out to lunch that he didn't notice and took it as an actual plan, but, then again, if you are suggesting that he is that far out to lunch what are we to do with that?
> His doubling down on it in other comments
The fact that he was writing comments about it suggests that he doesn't take it too seriously. Nobody of sound mind wastes time writing stupid comments on the internet if they have an actual motive. They go out into the real world and make it happen.
If he is completely out to lunch like you suggest then anything is possible, but the more likely explanation still seems to be making fun of those who don't believe the wealthy pay tax. If people were making shit up about you, claiming that you didn't pay any tax, you'd likely end up making fun of them too.
> Nobody of sound mind wastes time writing stupid comments on the internet if they have an actual motive.
I mean Musk? You even used it as an example of "just trolling" in your previous message. He invested north of $300M+ in the last presidential election, also injected massive amounts in various local races, as well as foreign elections.
What more do you need to take them seriously? Even if somehow Musk was doing all of this to troll people because to him $500M is nothing, the impact on those elections is real, so it doesn't even matter what is internal reasons are.
> I mean Musk?
One who is not normally considered to be of sound mind, but you do you.
> What more do you need to take them seriously?
A good idea? The voting thought, while possibly an interesting thought experiment, is not suitable for execution. Why would I take it seriously?
> the impact on those elections is real
Maybe you aren't asking why I would take them seriously, when there was nothing presented that is worth taking seriously, but why do others take their hobo shouting on the street ramblings seriously, presumably only because they have wealth? The other hobos on the street seem to be happily ignored.
Good question, but one I do not have the answer to. I'm still trying to figure out how these particular hobos shouting nonsense on the street corner became people I am aware of. They're just people, same as all the others that manage to remain anonymous. Definitely some kind of malfunction in my brain going on there.
> but why do others take their hobo shouting on the street ramblings seriously, presumably only because they have wealth? The other hobos on the street seem to be happily ignored.
The wealth is precisely what allows those hobos to act on their crazy ideas and and impact us all. The other hobos on the street without wealth have no actual impact thus we just ignore them. I don't think its that complicated.
The only act here is to convince others that the crazy shouting is something to seriously pay attention to. It is apparent that wealth enables that, but the exact mechanics remain unclear. Why does a hobo having wealth convince a bystander that the hobo should be listened to? What's the difference between a hobo that rolls up in a Rolls Royce and a hobo that rolls up in a shopping cart that changes how others behave?
It may not be complicated, but that doesn't mean I understand it without an explanation.
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Maybe worth mentioning that the founding fathers in the US believed only property owners should vote.
The founding fathers, the framers (a different and later group, though the two overlap and are often conflated) and original states had a variety of (and evolving in some cases between the Founding and the Constitution) opinions on the issue; some (Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, notably, the latter also the primary author of PA’s 1776 Constitution which also adopted this position at the state level) were in favor of universal male suffrage.
They also didn't forbid slavery. It doesn't mean they were right.
“Didn’t forbid”, if referring to the framers of the Constitution, is a bit of an understatement, given that they created multiple layers of protection to prevent dismantling slavery at the federal level into the future.
Franklin also practiced air bathing instead of hygiene.
Franklin also supported universal male suffrage, wrote Pennsulvania’s 1776 constitution which adopted universal male suffrage, and condemned property requirements for the franchise, reportedly arguing:
“Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars, and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers — but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass.”
Let's make everyone a property owner by default at birth
Not the most important(IMO) of our founding fathers, Thomas Paine.
I found this just when I googled his name plus controversy
> Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke faced fierce online backlash in July 2026 after endorsing a social media proposal for a tax-tiered voting system that would strip voting rights from non-taxpayers and give multiple votes to high-income earners.
but if we go as far as to say
> If it’s touched by Tobias Lütke, I’m out.
does it mean control or sponsored, for example ladybird web browser...
Ladybird contributors have their own controversies that make the project hard to stomach
It is a good thing you can use Google chrome instead which has zero contributors with stances you disagree with... I guess.
That vague posting is a bit frustrating to be honest.
Are you talking about the fact they do not accept pull requests? If yes, they had good reasons for doing so, LLMs make it really time consuming and exhausting to manage an open source community, I completely understand why they decided to stop accepting PRs for now
Ok, what is the new drama this time around?
https://fortune.com/2026/07/27/shopify-ceo-voting-rights-str...
Along with a myriad of different controversies. Just searching his name will bring up many articles about his chronically online Elon Musk wannabe takes.
Some people believe that anyone who does not maintain 100% ideological purity and goodness, which can be measured by if they align 100% with the persons own and therefore morally good political ideas, which also coincidentally matches the status quo of Brooklyn based journalists, that the heretic must be ostracized from all of society and it is impossible to work with them. Since Tobi Lutke made a mortal sin of disagreeing on suffrage requirements, they should be cast into fire and ostracized.
When people who are rich and/or influential loudly and publicly share their political stances, and especially when they put their money toward those ends, it is not unreasonable to expect that to influence the opinions others have of those people, even to the point of saying "I would like to not be associated with them."
I get the impression that you are among the "stop bringing politics into these non-political places" crowd who believe that this stance is (a) exclusively taken by the left and (b) something that's only happened in the last ten years; I assure you neither of those things are true.
I don't think "citizens have a right to vote" is anywhere near the realm of ideological purity or "Brooklyn based journalist" thinking. It's literally just democracy.
Freedom of speech seems like something Lutke would pretend to like, and him getting torched for his anti-human opinions is a great demonstration of that principle.
> Lutke made a mortal sin of disagreeing on suffrage requirements
I think this is a very tame and apologetic and dishonest way to put it. Suffrage and voting is how people have a voice in the future of their democracy. He advocates for a policy that materially removes that right, that say in the future, from those who already have little power. I don’t know how else to emphasize that it’s more than “they disagree a bit with him and now he’s an impure sinner”, it’s more akin to “this rich dude wants to rewrite the rules to give himself more power and us less”, which is a sober assessment of his policy. I think people actively trying to avoid giving him any more money or power is a very understandable reaction to that
I think ultimately some parts of ideology are bound to and by the reality we live in, and acknowledging that reality gives a good answer here for when _it seems like_ people freaking out at an “impure idea” - is there a documented harm that we can look at?
Many people boycott Elon and his products. Do you raise this same “moral purity” complaint about them? Does it ever go in the other direction?
I think technology and how we build it is deeply tied to us as social, communal beings. Tech can be a reflection of our capabilities, our values. Tech shapes our reality in turn. It’s worth thinking about, being critical of, and believing people when they say what they believe
This is literally what capitalism tells us to do though, isn't it? If you don't like it, don't buy it.
No, this is "omnicause" / "intersectionality" type thinking.
I think we might be talking about different things. My understanding is that voting with your wallet is orthogonal to why you want to do it.
He came to Canada as an immigrant, made some buck and now unashamedly calls 'idiots' the very people that built the communities where he lives. The guy is a complete POS.
https://xcancel.com/tobi/status/2081155797640171641