Who's really crashing the economy? Ha-Joon Chang

34:05But yes, cooking. You said it's better now, though. Much better. partly because my theory is that well I came to Britain first in the mid 1980s when food was still awful although it was beginning to change my theory is that somewhere in the mid to late 1990s British people realized that their food sucks but this was a great thing You actually said it was like a turning point, like one day we decided our food sucks, bringing everyone else's food back into our country. This made you very open-minded in terms of food. So once you kind of admit that your own food is not that good, you know, why should you prefer, you know, I don't know, Mexican over Korean or Indian over Persian, you know.

35:02Anything tasty is fine. So this country has become a great place to eat. And partly because of that competition, British food itself has shaped up. I mean, now the British food itself is much better. British classics are good. Yeah, you could get a good shepherd's pie. It's not like... No, no, no. More than that. More than that. So now the British food itself has become much better. So I don't have any complaints about food anymore. So why should I live here? Just the economics. Yeah. So can we extend that kind of metaphor, if you will, that there was a point where the UK realized that the food was bad and it looked out to the world and bought in influence food-wise.

35:48The UK economy feels bad now. How should the UK look out to the world and draw inspiration from other countries? Yeah, actually, this is a country that has become a victim of this neoliberal idea, because people have stuck to it doggedly despite it essentially not working. And it really needs fresh thinking. You know, I mean, even Rachel Reeves, the Labour Chancellor, using this metaphor of the country's credit card maxing out, I think it's really a sign how deeply ingrained this neoliberal ideology has become in this country. Because, you know, already 100 years ago, John Maynard Keynes was writing all kinds of academic pieces, but also the newspaper articles and the policy pamphlets arguing that you cannot run a national economy in the way you run a household.

36:59Because in a household, yes, you have the hard budget constraint. I mean, if you keep spending more than you earn, then you go bankrupt and, you know, that there's no way out. However, in a national economy, it's a lot more complicated. I'm not saying that you can indefinitely spend more than you earn, but it becomes quite complicated because my spending is your income. So if I lose my job as a, I don't know, a worker in a factory, I begin to buy fewer things because I'm on the door and I can't afford to buy things that I used to. So instead of, I don't know, two loaves of bread that I used to buy per week, now I buy only one.

37:52And you, baker, finds that your income is reduced. And if there are many of your customers who have lost the job because the local factories are shut down, then you have to reduce your own spending. So you begin to buy less from wheat flour mills, you buy fewer eggs, you buy less milk, and then it affects the farmers and the flour milling factory, and then everyone's income is in a downward spiral. And Keynes said that at that point, actually, that can make sense if the government borrows beyond this means to generate demand, which will then lift the economy out of the hole, after which it can repay the debt.

38:50So, you know, the way to manage the national economy is a lot more complicated than managing a household. But the people keep using this metaphor because that's what the neoliberals want. They want the government to be very passive in terms of its spending. We have this country which has become a victim of this economic theory that it has invented. And yes, indeed, look to the rest of the world in the same way that you have to look to the rest of the world in terms of food. But you have to know what exactly other countries have been doing. You cannot filter the experience with your own ideology.

39:39Best example, when the Brexit debate was going, A lot of Brexiteers said that we want to make Britain, Singapore on the Thames. Do they really know what they were talking about? Because if you want to do that, you have to nationalize 90 % of your land, provide 85 % of housing through government-owned housing corporation, and more than 20 % of your GDP should be produced by state-owned enterprises. This is Singapore. We're pretty far from that. How do they get away with it then? Like making these kind of, well, let's be like that and not grounded in fact at all. Who are the economists that are advising them?

40:23And you must sit watching your TV just thinking, what the hell is going on? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, yeah, by all means that imitate Singapore, but you have to really know what you are imitating. You can't just say, oh, they have free trade, they welcome foreign investors, which they do. I'm not saying that all of it is untrue, but they don't realize that in doing that, they have used tools that do not fit with this free market story. I mean, it's a bit too complicated to explain exactly how it was done. But just to give you one example, because the Singapore government owns 90 % of the land, when it courts foreign investors, it can offer low-rent ground for factories, which other governments cannot do.

41:19So they have this high public land ownership for a number of complicated economic and political reasons, but they have used this actually to… That's not a card we can play here. Yeah, exactly. We don't have that ability. That's right. Yeah. So if you don't have that, then how should you become like Singapore if you want to become like Singapore? I mean, there are countries like, you know, Korea, Taiwan, China, which has been very good at industrial policy, you know, government intervening with subsidies and regulations and trade protection and many other measures. It's not all about protection and subsidies to create new industries.

42:04I mean, for example, when Hyundai, the South Korean car company, which is now the third largest car company in the world by volume, when it first started the production of its own design car, this small hatchback called Pony, as you can guess from the name, In 1976, it produced 10 ,000 cars a year. In the same year, Ford produced 1.9 million cars. General Motors produced 4.8 million cars. So if I took a time machine, went back to 1976 and told people, look, there's this new car company in South Korea, which currently produces 0.2 % of what General Motors produces, 0.5 % of what Ford produces, but give it just over 30 years, it will become bigger than Ford.

43:11In less than 40 years, it will become bigger than General Motors. Would people have accepted my investment proposition? No. They would probably have put me in a... I was that big now. Yeah, it is. Yeah, they would have probably put me in a mental institution. So, you know, but how was that possible? Only because, I mean, later is a different story, but for the first 12 years, the Korean government banned the import of all cars from abroad. For another 10 years, it banned import from cars from Japan. It gave huge loans through state-owned banks that are highly subsidized. Of course, this company also invested hugely in building R &D capabilities, design capabilities.

44:12So I'm not saying that it was just done by the government, but, you know, this cooperation between government and the private sector created these companies. So why can't Britain, if it wishes to, I don't know, promote artificial intelligence industry or the nanomaterial industries, why can't it do something like that? I mean, there are reasons why it may not be able to do it, but that's another story. So look at all these other countries and try to learn lessons. But if you said to the UK population, you can't drive a Mercedes anymore because we want to promote Rovers or Aston Martin. I don't know.

44:51They're not even produced in the UK anymore, are they? But there's a lack of freedom there that comes from what you've described. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's not a very nice thing. But you have to make people realize that. I mean, yeah, probably things like cars. Not today cars, but it could be something that's less. But it's interesting that you say the success is born out of state intervention, essentially, and quite a big level. Land ownership or... Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, I've written books like Kicking Away the Ladder, which is a kind of semi-academic book, and Bad Samaritans, which show that, you know, Even Britain in the 18th century, U.S.

45:35in the 19th century, Germany in the late 19th century, they were all protectionists. They intervened a lot in the economy to develop their economies. Of course, now that they are rich, they don't have other countries to use the same method to follow. So they tell developing countries to free trade, you know, do not regulate and so on. So, I mean, there's that historical hypocrisy. But, you know, I think I would elevate it to a higher level because, you know, it's not entirely about the state. It's about the society's ability to make an arrangement to sacrifice the present for a better future. So one, well, not one, but the biggest problem with the UK economy, which very few people have spotted, is that it has not invested for the last 30 years.

46:35So if you look at the last 30 years of the UK economic statistics, it has invested only 16, 17 % of the GDP. In the UK. Yeah. So the rest is consumed. Only 16-70%. The OECD average is like 21%. Americans and Germans invest 22%. The French and the Swiss invest 23%. The Swiss invest 26 % of GDP. You know, not to speak of Korea investing 29%, China investing 39%. So my question to British policymakers and businessmen is how do you think you can get away with this? You are investing in proportional terms only two-thirds of other comparable countries. and you think that you can beat the others in the high-tech sectors.

47:43So these countries need to create a mechanism to invest more. But we have so many good economists in like Oxford and Cambridge. So why are these people not talking to the government and saying, look at what South Korea did, look at what this country is doing. Or just invest. Why are you not investing? Yeah, well, unfortunately, many economists are not really interested in the real world. So like theories more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But even those who are interested in the real world, these days tend to be all kind of ideologically biased towards this free market neoliberal ideas. So they want that, sorry, they do not recommend these policies that involve heavy hand of government.

48:40And then, yeah, when people try to talk about Korea or Taiwan, they say, oh, yeah, but, you know, those countries are different. They have different culture, different politics. You can't do those things in the UK. But, you know, I mean, there are ways to do these things in a democratic way, not against the grain of British culture. So, for example, one great strength of this country is that it has so many creative people, creative arts but also all these scientists and engineers which are at the top of the world on a world scale but these people may have great ideas but there are no investors who want to sink money in these potential projects for 5 years 10 years, 15 years until they produce results So all these ideas that are either not used or they are snapped up by American, Chinese, Korean companies.

49:56So can you think of a way to use those ideas through some kind of policy that encourages investment in those companies by British investors? I'm not saying that you have to copy Korea or Germany, but there has to be a way. I mean, it's only because you don't want to do it that you are not thinking about ways to do it. Yeah. And then, you know, more broadly, I think of, you know, you talk about investment. I go on about it all the time, but the state of the internet in this country, like for me, living up north, my internet is shocking. I have to drive to my local Tesco's car park to upload videos because I get a 5G signal there.

50:43And this house here that we're in is in London, and the internet's even slow here. And what does that do to productivity at a mass scale? Exactly, yeah. That's the result of this underinvestment, yeah. I mean, the rail breaks down all the time, yeah. Internet sucks, yeah. I mean, the movement of people and information and ideas is just, we've got the brakes on in this country all the time, haven't we? Yeah, and, you know, from the infrastructure to actually production facilities, yeah, and, you know, amenities for the general public, you know. I mean, yeah, I mean, in absolute terms, you know, things are probably better than when I first came to this country.

51:29But in relative terms, we have fallen far behind other countries.

51:37It's all because of, well, not all, but it's mainly because you haven't invested. I mean, it's not complicated. That's the point. It's not complicated. So why, I mean, the government are elected to do these things and make changes and invest in the UK, ideally. So why is it so difficult? Because it's not working currently. No, no, but the trouble is that one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the main reasons why you are investing so little is that you have this financial sector that is overly strong and very short-term oriented. You know, I'm not against finance, you know, I truly believe that without modern finance, you know, the stock market, government bond market, and investment banking, we will still live in the world of kind of small workshops with 150 workers, you know, because that's how it was, because you couldn't borrow for major investment.

52:49You borrowed from your friends and you formed a partnership. And you couldn't mobilize large-scale money because investment is by definition risky. And without the limited liability, which made modern corporations possible, you could not ask people to give up their life savings only for them to find that the company has gone bankrupt and the creditors are taking their pots and pans. So I'm a believer in modern finance. But the trouble is that this sector has become too powerful and too short-term oriented. I mean, just one example, the average period of shareholding in the 1960s in Britain used to be five years.

53:39So you buy a stock in whatever company, you know, at the time, I guess, Austin or, you know, Aston Martin or whatever, you keep it on average five years. This had fallen to eight months on the eve of the financial crisis. I mean, now it's gone up a bit. But, yeah, so how do you make an investment when shareholders want the result in less than a year? So this makes companies very short-term oriented. Because they have to deliver this return to the shareholders. And the best way to do it is, first of all, to stop investing. and then sack everyone you can think of. And distribute profits through dividends.

54:34Exactly, yeah. Just to cut to the bone and go, there's the cash. In the US and in the UK, it's actually a bit higher in the US, but in the US and the UK in the last 25 years, something like 90 % of the profit went to the shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. You said General Motors would have survived if they hadn't distributed all of the cash's dividends. Yeah, General Motors, General Electric, all of this. Was it General Electric, sorry? Yeah, no, no. The monumental debt piles they have could have been paid off through not doing buybacks, but they do aggressive buybacks to satisfy shareholder demand.

55:12So if you have only like 5 % to 10 % of your profit to play with in terms of investment, what are you going to do? I mean, I don't have the numbers for the UK, But in the US, until the 70s, corporations redistributed the profit only to the tune of 45 to 55%. And that was considered high by international standards. Today, it's like 95. In Britain, it's 90. So you make all this profit and you use 5%, 10 % of it to invest, to do R &D. You know, no wonder that there's no investment. So, you know, unfortunately, you are in this situation. And somehow a way has to be found to change this. I mean, unless you do a kind of new deal with the financial sector to, you know, at least lower the pressure on the companies to seek short-term profit and distribute most of whatever profit that you make to the shareholders.

56:39and actually keep some of the profits and invest, it's not going to happen. I mean, this would require some degree of regulation, for example, restricting the scale of share buybacks. I mean, at least put some restrictions on how much of your profit you can buy to share buybacks. Because I think that it is illegal in this country, but in the US, actually, a lot of companies have done share buybacks more than their profit. They borrow money to do share buybacks. Because the incentives for the board are to push the share price up, because that's how they measure success. So you argue as one of your 23 things that companies shouldn't exist for the benefit of the owners or the shareholders because of this incentive to just drive the stock price up short term.

57:46Because if you're a CEO... Now you cannot really call them owners. Ownership is important in that the owner has a long-term stake in the property. So, you know, I mean, most obvious example is that, you know, tenants would take care of the property a bit less, better than the owner because the tenant could move out next year, two years later, whereas the owner is stuck with the property. So that's the one main justification of ownership. The owner pays more attention to the upkeep of the thing. But nowadays, the shareholders, they have the ownership for six months, one year. I mean, why should they care?

58:35We have examples. I mean, look at Boeing. Once a totally unchallenged supreme company in the aircraft industry until the Airbus came along. And even then, until the late 90s, I mean, Airbus was no competition. Now the company is falling apart. Why? Because it has done so much share buybacks. I mean, we have seen that, you know, Apple's beginning to lose its edge because, you know, what's his name? Steve Jobs refused to do share buybacks. Now that his successor, Tim Cook, has done a huge amount of share buybacks, and with that sagging investment, it's beginning to lose edge. Yeah. You have a lot of banks do them.

59:26Google, big share buybacks. And even, like you say, these services that once felt untouchable, they start to lose their shine, don't they? That's right. Yeah. So I don't know which... I mean, I'm not a financial economist, but I haven't really done empirical work on this. But I think there are these two separate things going on. So there must be some sectors where competition is really fierce and it's very difficult to stay in the same place for long. That's a positive influence. But there could be the negative side of the story, which is that as soon as companies become fat, when short-term shareholders descend and suck money out.

1:00:09It's almost the same as what you were saying about the UK. like we became fat, we stopped investing, and now we're on a decline. Unfortunately. It's as simple as just turning on investment and going, let's go from 18 % to 26 % and all our problems are fixed. No, no, no, it can't be that because, yeah, I mean, quantity matters, but, you know, quality also matters. If you invest for the sake of investing, then you might be investing in a lot of stupid projects. There's a lot of obvious places they could. I mean, the benefit of not investing for years is it becomes pretty apparent where you can put some good money, right?

1:00:48Yeah, exactly. You know, like the infrastructure is... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Infrastructure is, as the Americans say, no-brainer. But yeah, when it comes to, I don't know, the really cutting edge sectors like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, you know, nanomaterials, You know, you need a kind of process of exploration and deliberation and conversation between the government, the financial sector and potential entrepreneurs and sort of scientists and engineers who know the field, you know, to really decide where to invest. I mean, having said that, yeah, I mean, don't think that investment will always pay off.

1:01:36By definition, if it is always paying off, then you are actually not pushing the boundary. So you have to accept that there will be some failures. The challenge is to kind of manage the batting average, like in cricket. Yeah. Yeah, so what I want to talk about a bit is funding this investment. So you have views on taxation. I think one of the things that you say is, you know, it's not how much it's how well it achieves its goals. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Whenever people talk about tax cutscenes, I give them the example of Paraguay. You know, if low tax itself was a good thing, you know, every rich person, every corporation should move to Paraguay.

1:02:24because they have a top income tax rate of 10 % and flat corporation tax rate of 10%. But very few people are moving there because you would rather invest in a company in Germany and pay 30 % corporation income tax than setting up the factory in Paraguay because Paraguay has poorly educated workforce, poor infrastructure, legal system that is not working very well. So a lot of companies would rather pay 30 % and do business in Germany. Or you rather pay 50 % income tax in Denmark and live there rather than moving to Paraguay because Paraguay social services suck, you know.

1:03:29It's much more kind of dangerous than Denmark, yeah. And, yeah, so a lot of people would just stay there. So this example shows what is important is how you spend your tax, yeah, rather than how much you tax, yeah. How do you see the UK's handling of tax? And do you think we get value for money here? Oh, I think that...

1:04:02Yeah, I mean, it depends on who you compare it with. I mean, if you compare it with developing countries, even South Korea, I mean, I think that you are spending tax relatively well. but compare yourself to countries like Finland and Denmark and so on, you're not. But I think what I want to raise at this point is that you have to see tax in a bigger context. You may say that we are spending too much on NHS, but maybe it's because you cut the social services too much. So if you are saying that we need to raise X more pounds for better health care, don't just look at health care, but look at the whole thing.

1:05:07look at the social services and the other aspects of your government spending and then maybe you don't have to raise that much money because that social services might be a lot cheaper because taxation the burden is is one of the highest i think it's ever been in the uk and i know obviously like there's other comparable countries where we say their burden is much higher but it does it does feel like we don't get value for money um you know no i think that debt has become very high for a couple of reasons that are not directly related to what the government is doing. in the sense that one big chunk of debt was run in order to save the banks and the financial system in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

1:06:11So, yeah, you could say that it's indirectly governments are doing because it deregulated the financial sector, had deregulated the financial sector too much, but directly it's not like government decided to just splash out money to the bankers so that's one burden and the other is COVID you have to run a lot of data in order to keep people alive so I think those are kind of one of things that need to be taken into account in thinking about public debt and tax burden and so on. But yeah, I mean, that doesn't mean that you can just ignore them because like it or not, these things have happened and you have to live with the consequences.

1:07:09But when it comes to things like the financial crisis, you should at least learn lessons from the last round and try to kind of do things that will prevent the rerun of that kind of crisis in the future. Because, you know, my worry is that, you know, now that Trump has come into office, he will, you know, well, already the U.S. government had much more than the U.K. government that got rid of the extra regulations that were put in place after the global financial crisis. But now it's going to basically, well, at least try to get rid of all of them. Yeah. Is it almost like a big bang moment with that?

1:07:59Exactly. And when that happens, the UK banks and financial institutions will come to the UK government saying, we got to deregulate because we can't compete. But - So instead of regulating to make the change, we're going to deregulate to follow America to start competitive. Yeah, well, the bankers will want that. But you have to resist it, because otherwise you might have another financial crisis and then another jump in the public debt. Or is that the moment you say, OK, well, you need to provide support to ideas in Cambridge and we will deregulate? Do you know what I mean? Is that the deal? Do you say is that the kind of deal that they could strike?

1:08:37It's part of the package, but, you know, when a country has level of income of Britain, you know, I think growth is less important. When you're poor, like, say, South Korea was in the 60s and 70s in my childhood, you know, economic growth is literally a matter of life and death. because if your economy grows faster, more people eat one more bowl of rice. They can afford to go to, well, maybe not the doctors because in those days the health was private, not anymore, but at least they could go to the pharmacy and get some medicine. It means that they don't have to see their child die before they reach the age of five.

1:09:34So in those days, growth is absolutely important. But when you're at this level of income, you have to think about people's quality of life. And you also have to think about distributing income more fairly. I mean, I keep telling you, I mean, Britain used to be one of the most equal countries in the world. I mean, I'm not saying that you should go back to that, but at least try not to be the second most unequal country in the OECD. So growth is one thing, but you also need to think about sharing. also need to think about you know there are a lot of things that you can do without spending too much money to improve the quality of people's lives I mean libraries I mean because all these libraries shutting down now people have to go to these local cafes and pay community centres for kids they all have to hang out in McDonald's and they eat crap.

1:10:44Whereas before they would go to a community center and hang out with each other. Yeah, so these things will have actually more than earned their existence. Because then you have happier people, you have healthier people, you have fewer... More productive people. That's right. Fewer crimes, more productive people. So you need to, at this stage of development, You need to think in a more kind of multidimensional way rather than just saying, well, we need to somehow connect these Cambridge professors with finances to generate more growth. I mean, that's very important. I'm not an anti-growth person, but you need to do something bigger, something more sophisticated.

1:11:33So, yeah, you have to kind of chart your own way, but I think it's clear that somehow you have lost the consensus on what is a decent society. And now, I mean, people are all over the place. Can we talk about that briefly? So I see two kind of political messages emerging. One is, say, anti-immigration. The other is tax the rich. I would like to know how you think that the public should think about those two things from an economist perspective. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, as an immigrant, I can't be anti-immigration. You're pretty pro-immigration. Yeah, but I totally understand that it cannot be infinite.

1:12:18So you need to kind of set the number at the reasonable level and then also provide support for integration. The other tool then, the tax the rich that you alluded to, can we talk about that? Is that something that would work? Is it feasible? Is that an answer to, say, raising tax revenue to fund investment? Yeah, well, I think the biggest problem is not taxing rich people who normally reside in Britain, normally work here and then pay their taxes. So, you know, putting another 2 % points or whatever on the income tax. We should probably define rich. Maybe not workers, like billionaires or people with large assets that grows in their estate.

1:13:20The problem is much higher than that in the sense that one is these corporations who use these tax haven arrangements and not paying taxes. I mean, you keep seeing this news, you know, Google paid only 435 million pounds to the HMRC when it has made 3 billion pound profit. Oh, Starbucks. Exactly, yeah. Starbucks has this subsidy in the Netherlands, which has a tax haven arrangement, and then this company charges the shops in Britain for the intellectual property in shop design, you know, and suck profit out of Britain, and then pay little or no tax in the Netherlands. So this corporate tax evasion through tax havens has to be acted upon.

1:14:22I mean, unfortunately, it's not something that Britain can do alone. But at least if the 10 most important economists get together and say, we are not going to protect any transactions conducted with these companies registered in these designated tax havens in our core system, then these tax havens will disappear overnight. But will the Americans, you know, we talk about the protection of profits, the Americans are going to go, hold on, these are our companies and they're making loads of money. And we, you know, is Trump going to come in and go, I'll sanction your ass if you try and tax them all?

1:15:07Yeah, no, no, exactly. So the point I'm trying to make is that these tax havens exist only because people with power and money want them to exist. They are not like, I don't know, the Himalaya Mountains or the Pacific Ocean. I mean, they are not natural phenomena. Unfortunately, now these tax havens are protected, if not actively promoted, by the rich and the powerful. So that has to be confronted. The other is that a lot of rich individuals will use these tax havens to siphon their money out and not pay the taxes. Issue of property tax. This country has quite high income tax, but unlike many other countries, property tax is very, very low.

1:16:03Yeah. Well, obviously, the problem there is that a lot of rich people in these countries, in this country, are landlords, including your beloved king. So how are you going to... A little bit less beloved nowadays. How are you going to tax properties is another challenge in this country. Yeah, property including land. Well, especially land, I would say. But now there are all these financial properties, which also needs to be taxed. So yes, I think rather than just looking at adding 2 % points, 5 % points on the income tax, you should look at the corporation tax, tax evasion, property tax. Council tax.

1:17:00and yeah yeah council tax is a form of property tax form of wealth tax in a way yeah but uh you know as far as i know the last time properties were valued was uh like what i mean 1992 or yeah something like that yeah so you get like a a place in kensington that pays the same as a place in like wakefield exactly yeah you know you have a hundred million pound house with a 300 pound council tax bill a month exactly yeah are you optimistic about um say like short term this current Labour government? Are you optimistic about them and the changes that they can make? And then long term as, you know, for the UK, for the West, for the globe?

1:17:38Well, I'm quite pessimistic in the short term because, you know, this government has come into power, OK, that maybe not, you know, with the kind of enthusiasm that greeted, Tony Blair or some of the other governments, but came into power with a huge majority. And why are they kind of sabotaging their own possibility for the bolder, more long-term oriented action by immediately declaring that, oh, we have a huge hole in our budget. We've got no money. We can't spend, we won't borrow. Okay, I mean, they may think they are managing expectation, but if they do not fundamentally change things, you know, five years later, they'll be voted out.

1:18:38Yeah, because everyone voted for them for change, not to say, oh, we can't do anything. No, you need to see some change, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, obviously, you can't kind of rebuild the economy that has been subject to underinvestment for three decades overnight. But, you know, at least start somewhere. Do something. Yeah. And then more importantly, if you want to change the world, change the system, you need to change the narrative. I mean, stop using, you know, oh, we maxed out on the national credit card rhetoric. start telling people, look, the NHS is in bigger trouble than it needs to be because we have underspend on social services.

1:19:30I mean, we need to do these new things which provide public spaces and collective services to raise our quality of life without necessarily increasing growth. But then we are also trying to find a way to use the impressive creativity that our nation has to generate more growth. I mean, do something to change this narrative. Like, yeah, kick out the immigrants, keep the rich people rich. And then you just hunker down and do whatever you are told to. At least they need to change that. I mean, at some point, even that is going to be in danger, but at least until now, I mean, you know, this country has quite impressive kind of reserve of creativity.

1:20:31So if they can be channeled in the right way with different policies, different political narratives, I think that there's a big potential in the future. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, talking from my own perspective, modern media and the opportunity for scale there for someone like, say, me, because we speak an English language which can be consumed all over the world. Absolutely. And like, you know, people, you just grab a camera now and you can talk to the whole planet. And I think there's a lot of opportunity within those kind of industries as well, social media and things. But, you know, give people good internet speed so that they can upload the videos or, you know, give them the investment in the ideas for the researchers at Cambridge and stuff.

1:21:16In many, many things. You know, I mean, look at the American movies, American dramas, half the actors are Brits. Yeah. They love us as a bad guy, right? Well, yeah, yeah. Increasingly, even some good guys, yeah? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, acting, art, you know, the drama. And these are the important industries going forward because with AI, it's like they're the human things, right? Exactly, yeah. The experiences, the sport, you know, people like sport, people like film, yeah. Exactly, yeah. No one will want to watch that kind of robot actors and, you know, robot footballers. I mean, you get that with Keanu Reeves, right?

1:21:56Yeah. Yeah. Even if they are so good, you know, why do you care, you know? But when you say you're like looking at optimism for the future, do you think that like a lot of blue-collar jobs will be taken by like machines and then a lot of jobs, like accounting firms, for example, might be taken over by AI? So where does that leave us as a nation with the future of jobs? No, actually, in that kind of world, Britain has an edge. Because you have this pool of creative people. Maybe five centuries later, they'll be overtaken by machines. But not in the foreseeable future, they'll be replaceable. Whereas if you're an accountant, if you're a low-level lawyer, you know, if you're that kind of guy reading MRI scans in hospitals, the machines are coming for you.

1:22:58What about the economists? Yeah, economists too. Yeah, they're coming for the economists. Maybe they can advise the government to do some things that will make some things. Maybe they can replace the politicians. There you go. That might be an idea. If they're going to repeat the same things that other people have said, you know, what's the point of having humans? Oh, God, yeah, they just, neoliberalism, let's go. Have no AI like this too many immigrants. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, AI politicians, would people vote for that? I might. If they're going to do some changes, then at least they'll be more reliable.

1:23:29Not in the sense of being good, but they'll be more predictable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, more personality as well.

1:23:40Please remember, this is not financial advice. Like we say a lot on the podcast, investments can fall and rise. in fact it's pretty much a guarantee. Past performance is no guarantee of future results so your money is at risk with investing and other fees may apply. As with everything financial, please do your own research. We really encourage that because no one cares more about your money than you. I'm Damo. Banti. This was an episode of Making Money from Our Company Most. It was filmed and edited by the team at Flowspire, Jack and Ben. It was produced by Ruth Edwards and brought together by Will Stallerman.

1:24:10What about Ruth and Toothless a Dog? Yeah, shout out them too. Yeah.