JOURNALIST AND author Linda McQuaig has long been fascinated with economics and society’s financial elite, a topic she lays on the table in her new book, The Trouble with Billionaires.
Coauthored with Neil Brooks, professor of tax law at Osgoode Hall Law School, the book was released last month.
In the book, McQuaig sets out to discuss the rise of the billionaire glitterati and what the concentrated wealth means for society in North America.
“I think people are aware of it,” says McQuaig, about the ascent of the wealthy elite, “but I think it really hasn’t been appreciated.” She calls the rise “wildly out of control.”
McQuaig talks about the economic changes in the past 30 years, including the unequal distribution of income. The top 10 per cent of earners have enjoyed a large income growth, she says, the top one per cent, even more.
Meanwhile, for the majority of earners, there hasn’t been much income growth at all. She offers the example of American investor Warren Buffett who once admitted he was taxed at the same rate as his secretary.
“The middle class,” she says, “if they’ve kept up at all, it’s only because they have two income earners.”
The income increase among the wealthy, she says, is justified by excuses like the need to provide incentive, the need to increase performance.
“But in fact,” she says, “the performance isn’t better.”
McQuaig argues that this income dichotomy is directly tied to social breakdown, poor health care, even financial instability.
“We haven’t seen so much concentrated income since 1929, which, of course, was the year of the big crash,” she says.
The book attempts to explain the phenomenon and offer potential solutions for the gap in income, including a proposal that top earners’ taxes should go toward an education fund for children across the country.
McQuaig’s resumé includes journalistic stints at the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Maclean’s and the Toronto Star, where she is currently a columnist.
The Trouble with Billionaires is her ninth book, which follows in the wake of her other best-sellers, including It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet and Shooting the Hippo, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction.
