Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us - by Linda McQuaig & Neil Brooks (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A jarring portrait of a deeply unequal Canada and how a wealth tax could rein in the destructive power wielded by today's billionaires.

As the ultra-wealthy siphon off an ever-larger share of the world's wealth, they now dominate us to a degree unimaginable even a decade ago. With their voracious consumption, unbridled resource exploitation, and relentless obstruction of climate action, they are rapidly undermining democracy and destroying the very viability of the earth for human life.

Their staggering power and hoarding of wealth have prompted a number of G20 nations to consider imposing a wealth tax, aimed exclusively at the super-rich. In Canada, such a tax would apply only to those with wealth above $25 million. Yet it could collect $40 billion a year -- funding public programs that could immensely improve the lives of millions of Canadians while clipping the wings of the super-rich.

Billionaires would threaten to depart. But as they left the country that had nourished them and enabled them to grow so wildly rich, they'd face a hefty "exit tax" on the way out.

Yes, change is possible.

Review Quotes

A must read. This is a very important book explaining why it is so urgent to confront the extreme concentration of wealth and power -- and why global mobilization is building.-- "Thomas Piketty, bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

About the Author

Linda McQuaig is an award-winning investigative journalist, a Toronto Star columnist, and the author of eight non-fiction national bestsellers. She lives in Toronto.
Neil Brooks is a leading tax scholar and former director of the graduate program in taxation at Osgoode Hall Law School. He lives in Toronto.