There’s a popular saying that captures the differing perspectives on wealth between Americans and Brits. When an American sees someone in a limousine, they might think, “That’ll be me this time next year.” Meanwhile, a Brit might quip, “Next year, we’ll have him riding public transport.”

If this sentiment rings true across the UK, it’s even more pronounced in Scotland. This week, the budget announcement at Holyrood reinforced the perception that Scottish political leaders harbor a deep-seated suspicion towards successful business figures, who already contribute significantly through taxes.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison introduced what many consider an unreasonable new tax on private jet owners visiting Scotland. The revenue from this tax is expected to be minimal, prompting questions about its necessity.

The underlying message was clear: wealth is viewed negatively, and millionaires who choose to indulge in Scotland—whether through its golf courses, restaurants, or shopping—may face the ire of the austere political elite.

Robison further drove this point home in her speech at Holyrood by introducing a “mansion tax.” Starting in 2028, properties valued over £1 million will be subject to this levy.

This was a message that was emphasised during her address to Holyrood. A new ‘mansion tax’ on properties worth more than £1million will be levied from 2028.

Again, the sums raised will be paltry in the grand scheme of things – an estimated £15million, and a third of that will be spent on a revaluation of council tax that will be needed before the bills can go out.

But Ms Robison’s targets aren’t limited to the super-rich: the common or garden better-off Scot will also be encouraged to regret the day Holyrood was handed tax-raising powers.

The Finance Secretary has announced a ‘ludicrous’ new tax on owners of private jets 

The Finance Secretary promised to freeze the higher, advanced and top income tax thresholds until April 2029. This week’s Budget has already ensured that another 100,000 Scots will be dragged into higher tax brackets in this financial year alone.

Meanwhile, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that local government funding will drop by around 2.1 per cent a year, meaning that everyone’s council tax bills will have to rise by an inflation-busting 8 per cent just to allow council budgets to stand still.

Ms Robison announced that the Scottish child payment will rise to £40 a week for toddlers aged under one, and in line with inflation for other youngsters. Every primary school will get a breakfast club.

The key to understanding all of this is in the timing. This was no ordinary Budget announcement; it was a pre-election Budget announcement and was therefore aimed at pleasing as many people as possible for the next four months.

Beyond that? Well let’s get polling day in the Holyrood elections over with first, shall we?

The fact is that promising more giveaways at the expense of our wealthier citizens is a political strategy that finds favour with almost all our political parties, a significant section of ‘civic’ (publicly funded) Scotland and a substantial proportion of voters who are used to governments offering them ‘free’ stuff paid for by others.

Such an approach cannot succeed in the long term. Eventually, if people are being forced to spend more on housing and in tax as punishment for being successful, they will succumb to the temptation to be successful elsewhere.

But politics is no longer about the long term; it is about winning re-election, it’s about kicking our more serious structural problems into the long grass until the election victory party is over and the empty champagne bottles have been dumped in the recycling bin.

But what impact does this ‘soak the rich’ strategy have on ordinary Scots?

The maximum benefit for the increases to tax thresholds at the lower end will be £32 a year – or just 61p per week. Fill your boots!

Amidst all this redistribution of wealth, some of the Finance Secretary’s announcements caused genuine despair, especially among Scotland’s hard-pressed and vital hospitality industry.

Leon Thompson, executive director of UK Hospitality Scotland, said the Budget ‘missed the mark spectacularly on business support. Rather than assisting hospitality to navigate through the ruinous revaluations announced last month [by UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves] our businesses have been left without anything approaching real support.’

The ‘skills drift’ that Scottish business leaders have warned of in the past is set to become more acute as the gap between rates of tax for high earners in England and Scotland become entrenched and employers find it increasingly difficult to attract highly-skilled recruits.

Police Scotland are warning of the dire consequences of the Finance Secretary’s refusal to fund a £130million uplift that the chief constable insists is necessary to protect current staffing levels.

Meanwhile business leaders are sceptical about the Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes’s recent claim that ‘soaring’ Scottish Government spending is about more than buying short-term support in the run-up to May’s elections.

Under Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP was regularly criticised for its corporate, anti-business approach to the economy, a position that was underlined by the agreement the party had with the anti-economic growth Scottish Greens.

There had been hopes John Swinney would bring a much-needed fresh approach, a new dynamism to the crucial relationship between business and government.

But Ms Robison’s last Budget of this parliament has quashed such hopes.

It is more of what we got repeatedly under Ms Sturgeon’s administrations: virtue- signalling messaging about the villainy of the wealthy and a thinly-veiled ambition to create a client state in which more and more workers and families will see the government, rather than employers, as the source of their own incomes.

Eventually, sooner or later (and the SNP government will hope it is later) the chickens will come home to roost and the dire consequences of our politicians’ short-termism will become clear.

A population already too reliant on the state and already too sceptical about those who attain success and wealth is not a population that can prosper in a modern market economy.

When modern Scotland is defined by a private jet tax that impacts no one and a tax windfall of 61p for the nation’s poorest, it is safe to say that the political vision we as a nation desperately need is nowhere in sight.

It is long past time to reassert some economic and financial realities.

But that would be unpopular. And who on earth would want to talk about serious political issues when there’s an election coming up?

Certainly not Scotland’s political parties.