In the last few decades, the concentration of income in the United States, Britain and Canada has reached levels not seen since the late 1920s. As this provocative new book shows, such extreme income concentration created a dynamic that led to the disastrous Wall Street crash in 2008 – just as it did in 1929.

The financial collapse is simply the most striking example of the problems caused by the rise of a fabulously rich new elite. In The Trouble with Billionaires, Canadian best-selling author Linda McQuaig and tax professor Neil Brooks make a compelling case that the massive fortunes of the ultra-rich – widely considered benign or even beneficial to society -- are actually detrimental to everyone else.

The glittering lives of billionaires may seem like harmless sources of entertainment. But such concentrated economic power reverberates throughout society, threatening the quality of life and the very functioning of democracy. It’s no accident that the United States claims the most billionaires—but suffers from among the highest rates of infant mortality and crime, the shortest life expectancy, as well as the lowest rates of social mobility and electoral political participation in the developed world.

Our society tends to regard large fortunes as evidence of great talent or accomplishment. Yet the vast new wealth isn’t due to an increase in talent or effort at the top, but rather to changing social attitudes legitimizing greed and to government policy changes that favour the new elite. Authoritative and eye-opening, The Trouble with Billionaires will spark debate about the kind of society we want.