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In advance of an upcoming report, the Economic Policy Institute released its findings last week that CEO compensation increased over 725% between 1978 and 2011. Over the same period, the average worker’s compensation inched up by a relatively measly 5.6%. In their new book, Billionaires’ Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality, Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks turn the abstract numbers of income inequality into concrete examples of cause and consequence that the average person can comprehend, and then work to change. Billionaires’ Ball asks how the income inequality gap in the US became a chasm and details lesser known influences in US history. The authors introduce their readers to Lewis Powell, who in the 1971 wrote an 8-page manifesto calling on the rich to engage in national politics. What followed was the birth of conservative, anti-tax, small government think tanks and advocacy organizations, including the Coors family funded Heritage Foundation, that have changed the course of American discourse and politics.

Intense lobbying for deregulation and tax policies that favor the rich have led to the astonishing inequality we experience today. In 2010, henge fund manager John Paulson, who profited off the collapse of the housing bubble, made $4.9 billion dollars, or the same as the earnings of 100,000 nurses in the same year. Contrary to popular wisdom the authors of Billionaires’ Ball expose how we are all hurt by the incredible wealth of a few. The authors argue that billionaires are bad for our health, and that income inequality is as harmful as poverty to the individuals who have less. The people of nations with higher income inequality experience more social problems, worse health, and less social mobility. Billionaires’ Ball explains how the scales of fairness became tipped in favor of the 1 percent and how the rest of us might fight to win back our fair share.

GUEST: Linda McQuaig, author of seven Canadian best sellers, an award winning journalist who has written for the Toronto Globe and Mail, Mclean’s magazine, and the Toronto Star, and she is the co-author of Billionaire’s Ball, Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Inequality with Neil Brooks.