Today's budget was a missed opportunity. Every budget is a collection of political choices; the Chancellor could have chosen in this budget, and in every budget, to confront the reality that inequality is out of control and it’s doing real harm to our democracy, society, and planet.

Instead, the Chancellor chose to design this budget to work on paper, not reality. Determination to not introduce real taxes on wealth or income from wealth led to a council tax surcharge on the most expensive properties (raising £430m) that will have less than a quarter of the impact of changing alcohol consumption levels amongst young people (costing £1.7bn). The desperation to avoid saying that Labour had broken their manifesto pledge to not raise income taxes, National Insurance, or VAT led to £15 billion of tax hikes through threshold freezes. 

Now, in reality, people will be paying more in tax and will notice this. Billionaire wealth will continue to explode without limitation. As a result, people will continue to lose faith in the political system – if you're keenly aware that you're paying more in tax while MPs and journalists continue to insist that you're not, how can you trust anything they say? 

Because the reality is that we need deep, structural change. Billionaire wealth rose from £58.8bn in 1990 to £619.5bn this year. Our economy and political system is deeply reliant on financial markets. The super-rich are exerting huge power over our political system.

There were so many missed opportunities today to engage with that reality. For years, we've talked about the proposals made by Tax Justice UK and others to raise up to £60bn each year by taxing wealth more and starting to correct our enormous inequality of wealth, but this budget left all those measures on the table. The organisation Possible points out that simply making taxes on private jets fair by equalising them with what standard airline passengers pay could raise £2.7bn.  Taxes on the obscene profits made by banks off our higher mortgages and rents could have raised £11.3bn this year. Knowing these options were ignored makes it hard to understand why Reeves is trying to scrape money together by cutting the Motability scheme that adapts vehicles for people with disabilities or making students pay more interest on their loans. 

There were some progressive steps announced today, chiefly the end of the two-child limit, which charities have long warned is the single biggest contributor to increasing child poverty. Removing the cap is huge, wonderful news for the 500,000 children who will be lifted out of poverty. The problem is the other 4.1 million children in poverty in the world's six largest economy. 

Similarly, there were some timid moves to reduce wealth and power of the super rich. The tax rate on remote gambling will rise from 21% to 40%, taxing an industry that is frankly predatory more fairly. A new council tax surcharge on properties worth over £2m will raise about £430m a year in a fairly complex and unpopular way. It's a start! It's the smallest of starts! But can you really call it a serious effort to raise money from the wealthiest if the tax impact of young people drinking less alcohol each year is £1.7bn? 

It's just not enough for the crises we're in. The result will be continued stagnation for the vast majority of us whilst accelerating wealth concentration at the top – the opposite of what our country needs.