Designing a Wealth Tax for Today’s Robber Barons
A proposed wealth tax on Canada’s richest 0.6% could raise hundreds of billions of dollars — enough to tackle housing, transit, and care. The sheer scale of what a tiny slice of billionaire wealth could fund is staggering.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wears Orion augmented reality glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Wednesday, September 25, 2024. (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Under threat from a volatile United States, Canada needs to chart its own path to build a more self-reliant, just, and equitable economy.
A time like this calls for nation-building: the country can’t afford austerity or cutbacks, nor can it afford to let the superrich call the shots in its economy and public policy.
Canada urgently needs robust public investment in physical and social infrastructure: new homes, schools, hospitals, transit, and green energy. It also needs to reduce the extreme concentration of wealth at the top, which distorts democracy and frays the social fabric much.
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