The satirical Onion magazine put it best when it described the gap between rich and poor as “the Eighth Wonder of the World…the most colossal and enduring of mankind’s creations.” And that gap is about to get even more ridiculously colossal and enduring with Elon Musk closing in on becoming -- not just a mega-mega-billionaire -- but likely soon the world’s first trillionaire. The issue of extreme wealth inequality gets little attention in mainstream media or politics, even though the relentless rise of the super-rich is probably the most profound change in our society in recent decades. And it’s a change with dreadful consequences. We hear constantly about the “affordability crisis.” But that’s really just another way of saying people don’t have enough money to get by. It’s not that there’s a shortage of money. Our economy is generating enormous income and wealth these days, but it’s increasingly ending up in the hands of billionaires and multi-millionaires. Their share of our national wealth gets ever bigger, while the share going to the rest of us shrinks. This unprecedented wealth concentration also threatens the very ability of our planet to sustain human life. Although the ultra-wealthy are few in number, their carbon footprint is gigantic and growing. With their private jets, super yachts and multiple homes, they are the key drivers of climate change. Furthermore, while people around the world increasingly grasp the need to transition off fossil fuels, the billionaires behind Big Oil are effectively blocking that transition. The good news is that the problem of extreme wealth concentration is by no means unsolvable. Certainly, a wealth tax could be a key weapon against it – and a weapon we could brandish more easily than we realize. While international coordination between countries would be ideal, a wealth tax could be effective in Canada alone. Crucially, such a tax would be aimed exclusively at the super-rich – those with fortunes worth more than $25 million. Anyone with $25 million or more is not struggling; they have made it and are leading an exceptionally privileged life. Yet, there is so much wealth at the top that even a modest wealth tax could generate $40 billion a year, funding public programs benefiting millions of Canadians while also reining in the destructive power of the ultra-rich. Some dismiss a wealth tax as impossible. But polls show that almost 90 percent of Canadians support the idea, and there are signs of a rising backlash – in the U.S. and elsewhere – against the dominance of the billionaire class. Of course, billionaires would threaten to depart. Fine, but they’d face a hefty “exit tax” on the way out. Their threat of departure – the ace up their sleeve – turns out to be hollow. To paraphrase the slogan of a major bank: We’re more powerful than we think.