The super-rich are getting richer and it is revolting

The Sunday Times rich list shows that the fortunes of Ireland’s 250 wealthiest people have risen by 12%, to €57bn, over the past year. Their combined wealth is equivalent to 35% of the country’s GDP. This is a sickening statistic.

The great majority of Irish people have seen their income and resources decimated, while services have been pared to the bone or dismantled. The super-rich sail on unaffected by the crisis. Rocketing levels of homelessness and staggering levels of unemployment and emigration all make a lie of the argument that a rising tide lifts all boats. The gap between the super-wealthy and everyone else is widening. Why is it tolerated that a tiny number of people own one third of the wealth of the land? Poverty is inevitable when rampant greed is allowed to accumulate senseless and unusable levels of wealth. It’s time we saw an alternative list — of how much tax this Irish super-elite pays.

How many of them are tax exiles, making no contribution to this State? Why do we tolerate this? ! Should school children be taught to excoriate tax exiles the way we were taught to despise the Anglo-Irish absentee landlords of our history? If the super-rich paid their fair share, there would be no call for unfortunates to sleep on the street, nor children to go to school hungry, nor people with critical illnesses to be denied life-saving medical treatment. Moreover, we would have no difficulty funding aid to the developing world, as advised by some on the list. Finally, given Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s embarrassing dance of attendance on US entrepreneur Donald Trump, his opposition to the financial transaction tax and to increasing USC for high earners, we cannot expect politicians of most hues to do much to address rapidly accelerating inequality.