Shopify is the Canadian company with the third highest stock market value. Its CEO Tobi Lutke is worth over $11 billion US. In a recent exchange on X.com, he expressed that he feels that billionaires should hold all of the political power in society.
The controversy stemmed from a response Lutke gave to a post by an account with the handle @EricSThor. Thor put forward a proposition where those who pay more income tax get more votes with those paying no income tax, getting no votes.
Under Thor’s proposal, those who pay the highest income tax would get five votes. Lutke’s response to this idea was: “Good system.”
Interesting… what about weighted voting proportional to the level of income tax you pay? (no income tax paid – 0 vote, $1-100k – 1 vote, $100-200k 2 votes and so on… cap it at 5 votes for $500k+. For those that constantly complain about the wealthy not paying tax/fair share…
— Eric Thor (@EricSThor) July 26, 2026
Thor’s undemocratic weighted voting scheme was actually a response to another post by Lutke where he proposed disenfranchising those living off of government pensions.
“New deal: when you get your pension deal it’s locked in and guaranteed. But 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,” Lutke wrote.
Union leaders express outrage
Lutke’s anti-democratic views generated a lot of response and reactions on X, including from prominent labour leaders.
Unifor is Canada’s largest private sector union and condemned Lutke for wanting to concentrate even more power into the hands of the wealthy.
What he means is that rich people should have their votes count more.
It’s not enough that they have more influence over all decisions in the world, they want to take away the one thing that should equalize all of us.
Our right to vote. Democracy.
— Lana Payne
(@Lanampayne) July 26, 2026
(@Lanampayne) July 26, 2026Likewise, Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan said that billionaires were the real problem facing society.
“The CEO of Shopify, one of Canada’s largest corporations, says the poor and the elderly should not be allowed to vote. It’s pretty clear that billionaires are the real problem, not ordinary citizens,” McGowan wrote on X.
Lutke went on to defend his statement saying that if someone paid even one dollar in income tax, they should be allowed one vote.
“You pay $1 in tax on the first meal you have on January 1, getting you back to the vote you have today. funny how this is reported,” he wrote.
His defence ignores the fact that the scheme would still see more power concentrated in the hands of the wealthy by giving them five votes.
This kind of concentration of political power in the hands of the few leads to the suppression of the interests and rights of the many.
In the US, where spending on election campaigns is largely unregulated, the candidate with more money wins the vast majority of the time.
The world’s richest man Elon Musk donated $288 billion to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, and the result led to policies that directly benefit the wealthy.
Trump’s signature piece of legislation, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” saw large tax cuts to the highest income earners, while the lowest marginal tax rate saw no cut at all.
Those Lutke seeks to disenfranchise, the elderly and those who don’t pay income tax, would be left without political power and open to exploitation in an formalized oligarchic system.
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