The super-rich are lying to us. Time we turned the tables

The Herald Scotland

20-05-2025

The Rich List, which has just made its annual appearance, is nothing but pornography: a slavering, debased and obsequious genuflection to Mammon.
In the list, we so often see riches in the possession of those already born into unimaginable wealth, not the self-made; or hoarded by those who simply watch their inherited assets accrue vast interest, not those who create jobs or work like the rest of us.
Read more by Neil Mackay
The mere "wealthy" – the comfortable – aren't in these categories. Anyone who makes a million from nothing but their own sweat deserves respect.
The mere wealthy – those on handsome six-figure salaries – pay their taxes, go to work, and often employ others. The super-rich – the billionaire class – are an entirely different matter altogether.
Even those of the billionaire class who run businesses, are most often job destroyers not creators. How many high street stores died so Jeff Bezos could shoot his phallic rockets into space? How many federal employees did Elon Musk make redundant while he shoots his own phallic rockets into space?
When hedge fund billionaires buy Scottish companies, the first act is often redundancies. It's stream-lining for efficiencies, we're told. Lies.
It's sackings to increase the money going into billionaires' pockets and the pockets of their shareholders.
How many companies have been strip-mined in Britain – often by foreign tycoons – so shareholders can buy flash new cars for their kids, fit outdoor swimming pools, or get the yacht which guarantees entry to the new aristocracy?
Those strip-mined companies were all making money – just not enough to satisfy the super-rich. There's always more sweat to ring from plebs.
Your labour goes in, their wealth comes out. That's the equation. In Scotland, Harbour Energy will eventually axe 600 jobs in total despite issuing nearly £1 billion in shareholder dividends. But, of course, taxation is blamed.
It's rampant greed. Over the last few decades, the number of billionaires has risen in direct proportion to the decline in income for the vast swathe of ordinary people.
Where did we hear that refrain before? In the anthem of the Great Depression: 'One thing's sure and nothing's surer, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.'
The glitter from the ever-growing mountains of billionaires' gold is blinding us. We seem unable to see the parents starving themselves so their kids can eat, while they work three part-time minimum wage jobs.
Perhaps the glow isn't glitter, though, perhaps its radiation burning a hole through our society. How can democracy be worth the word in an era of such income inequality?
The billionaire class buys democracy. We vote. That's all. Our say boils down to an X on a ballot every five years.
The billionaire-class can speak directly to power, indeed the billionaire-class tells power what to do. Political donations are price-attached.
Tom Hunter, described with a curtsey as "Scotland's first home-grown billionaire", is currently lecturing us on economics. Fundamentally, he wants lower taxes, and fantasises about some Caledonian Singapore.
'Nothing is free in Singapore, but here everything seems to be,' he claims. The poor and hungry, unable to buy clothes for their children, must hang on his every word. 'A different tack needs to be taken,' Hunter says.
The irony would choke you. Here's a man – a knight of the realm, no less – calling for our failed economic system to fail even more. Since the 1980s, the policies which made Hunter rich, made millions poor.
Of course he wants to not just keep the current economic model in place, but to entrench it even further. It worked for him. It's done nothing for the rest of us.
However, he's right on one matter: a different tack needs taken. The billionaire class must be dealt with, as they were dealt with before: first, through smashing monopolies – the same medicine robber barons tasted in the 19th century – and then through reimagined programmes like Roosevelt's New Deal and the creation of the Welfare State to rebalance the scales in the interests of the people.
To continue along the path we're on economically is to slit democracy's throat. Why wouldn't people vote for the far-right if democracy only makes them poorer?
The billionaire class is lying to you, wilfully deceiving you. They demand more of the same – in fact, an even more unequal system than exists now – because they benefit from the status quo. Evidently, billionaires will fight like hell to deepen the current system: it works for them.
Most of us are so drugged to the eyeballs on the baubles we purchase from the super-rich – their streaming TV, their social media– that we cannot see their fingers dipping into our pockets like thieves.
There's a saying now: your enemies do not arrive in small boats, they arrive in yachts and private jets. It's true.
How many high street stores died so Jeff Bezos could shoot his phallic rockets into space? (Image: Getty)
A media system owned by the billionaire class works tirelessly to blame anyone but themselves for the woes we endure. Migrants aren't hurting you, billionaires are.
When Britain's Government says it cannot invest in better services for the people, that's lies. We're the sixth-largest economy on Earth.
What the Government is actually saying is that it will not invest in better services because it won't tax the rich to the same extent that it taxes the rest of us.
Equalising dividend and capital gains tax with income tax – in other words, taxing those who loaf around doing nothing but watch their money grow, to the same extent as those of us who work – would raise £21 billion. That's just for starters.
A storm is coming. You can smell it. This system won't endure much longer. In America, the storm has already broken, dragging the nation into the maelstrom of MAGA.
It's time to turn the tables. We either deal with the billionaire class in order to protect the people or we face America's terrifying storm clouds.
Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.