The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada

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There are more billionaires than ever in Canada – and they are capturing an ever-growing share of the country’s wealth. Meanwhile 90% of Canadians are steadily losing ground. Understanding how and why this is happening has been the focus of a lifetime of research by economist Lars Osberg. In this book, building on his earlier book The Age of Increasing Inequality, he describes how inequality has grown steadily over decades – but is now accelerating in the post-Covid world. The Trudeau government came to power promising action to make the rich pay a fairer share, and to reduce inequality. In office, they did virtually nothing and Canada’s rich are richer than ever. Other countries are finding effective ways to tackle inequality. International organizations are proposing innovative measures to prevent the wealthy from using tax havens, and to impose new taxes capturing wealth from billionaires and globe-spanning tax-avoiding multinationals like Apple and Microsoft. Lars Osberg identifies measures that Canada can take so that the country’s wealth is shared more fairly, and the wealth of billionaires can be used to improve the lives of Canada’s 99%.

Contributors

Lars Osberg

Lars Osberg is a Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University with research interests in labour economics and income and wealth distribution. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University and has published numerous articles in academic journals and seven books, including Unnecessary Debts, co-edited with Pierre Fortin. He is a past President of the Canadian Economics Association.

Chapter Contributors Pages Year Price
In the Introduction, the author explains the background for writing this book on the growth of inequality in Canada, and the effect of the Covid pandemic and the climate crisis in recent years on …
22 $2.20
In this chapter the author provides a general overview of the growth of inequality in Canada over the past few decades.
21 $2.10
In this chapter the author looks at the stagnation of middle class incomes in Canada over the past few decades.
31 $3.10
In this chapter, the author examines the implications of strong income growth at the very top of the income distribution scale in Canada.
34 $3.40
In this chapter, the author details how incomes at the bottom of the income distribution scale have dramatically eroded in Canada in recent years.
29 $2.90
In this chapter, the author analyzes the meaning of statistics about disparities in income and what they actually say about economic inequality and well-being in Canada. He points out that the …
22 $2.20
In this chapter, the author presents data on inequalities of wealth before the Covid-19 pandemic and outlines how the inequality of wealth and economic power increased in Canada throughout the …
30 $3.00
In this chapter, the author asks to what extent we as a society should be concerned about factors affecting inequality of opportunity (such as race, ethnicity, gender, class) or instead about …
26 $2.60
In this chapter, the author asks why economic inequality matters in early twenty-first-century Canada.
21 $2.10
In this chapter, the author examines various courses of action and policies that could be taken to address economic inequality in Canada.
35 $3.50