Linda McQuaig – författare

A jarring portrait of a deeply unequal Canada and how a Wealth Tax could rein in the destructive power wielded by today’s billionaires.In recent years, a tiny wealthy elite has pulled far ahead of all other Canadians. Amassing wealth at a faster pace than ever before — even faster than their U.S. counterparts — Canada’s billionaires are siphoning off for themselves an ever-larger share of the nation’s wealth, at the expense of the rest of us.Furthermore, they are part of a new global elite that dominates the world to a degree unimaginable even a decade ago. The super-rich have always commanded the lion’s share of resources, but they are now also driving us towards climate catastrophe, with the power to determine whether the Earth will even remain habitable.The best hope for stopping this train wreck and distributing resources more widely is a Wealth Tax, aimed exclusively at the super-rich. Polls show it’s wildly popular with Canadians. Billionaires have managed to keep it off the political agenda so far, but the authors argue now is the time for change.

Why are we selling off the impressive public enterprises we often battled as a nation to create?In the early 1900s, thousands of Canadians battled wealthy interests, winning control of Niagara Falls and creating a public power company. Another popular movement succeeded in creating Canada’s public broadcasting system to counter American dominance of the airwaves. And a Canadian doctor established a publicly owned laboratory that saved countless lives by producing affordable medications, contributing to medical breakthroughs and helping to eradicate smallpox throughout the world.But in recent decades, we have allowed our inspiring public enterprises to be privatized and our vital public programs downsized, leaving us increasingly dominated by the forces of private greed that rule the marketplace.In The Sport and Prey of Capitalists, Linda McQuaig challenges the dogma of privatization, which has defined our political era. She argues that now more than ever, as we grapple with climate change and income inequality, we need to expand, not shrink, our public sphere.