Tobi Lütke, CEO of online commerce giant Shopify, endorsed banker Eric Thor’s suggestion for a “weighted voting proportional to the amount of income tax you pay.” Moreover, he wrote, the poor and pensioners should have their right to vote stripped entirely: “Now you are a dependent and that means no voting, just like dependents under age. Enjoy the deal, let people with a stake in the future decide.”
CBC News reports general and visceral disgust at Lütke’s remarks.
Lütke, whose Ottawa-based e-commerce platform is worth more than $200 billion, is also involved with Build Canada, an advocacy group including some of Canada’s most high-profile tech leaders. In memos on its website, members advocate for cutting federal spending, prioritizing AI and implementing digital ID, among other topics….
John Beebe, director of the Democratic Engagement Exchange at Toronto Metropolitan University, which aims to boost voter participation, says the comments on voting rights speak to a bigger issue of “incredibly wealthy people feeling like they should be calling all the shots.”
“It really breeds a cynicism out there that is destructive to our democracy, to even suggest that people should not be able to vote based on their income or taxes that they paid,” Beebe told CBC News. “It really speaks to how out of touch folks who have that kind of wealth are with the experience of regular people.”
Fortune’s Nick Lichtenberg points out that those either paying no income tax or living on pensions is a lot of people. The Tax Policy Center estimates nearly half of U.S. households pay no income tax due to poverty, retirement, etc.
It would encompass all retirees living on Social Security and pension income, students, caregivers, disabled Americans, and millions of low-wage workers who owe no net federal income tax after deductions and credits. Meanwhile, a small population of high earners would receive up to five votes each—a fivefold multiplier on political power concentrated in the hands of people already holding disproportionate economic power.
This is not a new idea—it’s an old, discredited one
Consider the many homekeeping spouses such a proposal would instantly disenfranchise. Lütke seems an good example of a tech “liberal” whose contrarian impulses slowly curdled into “anti-woke” rantings and finally to bald plutocracy.
