Gary Stevenson is lobbying Andy Burnham

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0:30The New Statesman.

0:34Hey, Gary, it's Oli Dugmore from The New Statesman. Really looking forward to interviewing you later. I mean, obviously, we're going to talk about wealth taxes. We're going to talk about inequality. But obviously, this conversation is happening at a really quite unique moment, which is that the government might be about to embark on a different economic direction. So I want to talk to you about that as well. Yeah, see you later. Yeah, boss, that all sounds good to me. does that mean we're not going to have any time to talk about the football? Good luck.

1:05Gary Stevenson wants to tax wealth, not work. Over recent years, he's become one of the most prominent advocates for implementing wealth taxes in Britain. Watched by millions on YouTube, a Sunday Times best-selling author, having written an account of his time as a trader in the City of London, and now presenter of a Channel 4 documentary about wealth inequality. And with greater reach comes greater criticism. If you've been on Twitter over the last week or so, you will have seen a lot of pushback against Gary and his ideas. Well, you're about to hear his ideas in his own words. And a word of warning here, there is a lot of swearing in this episode.

1:41So if you have any macroeconomically inclined children, it might be best to cover their ears for this one. I'm Oli Dugmore. This is The Exchange from the New Statesman. Enjoy the interview. Gary, in a sentence, why wealth tax? if you don't do wealth taxes, living standards will continue to collapse very quickly. Let's dial into that and that causation, correlation between those two things, right? Because I think, you know, what you're saying is widening wealth inequality leads to a decrease in living standards. I mean, talk to me about the relationship between those two things. You know, so I came to this idea in 2011, aftermath of the 2008 crisis, in a period where there'd been about three years of everybody thinking the economy was going to get better because people are going to have so much money, they're going to spend so much money.

2:34Quite reminiscent to the post-COVID period. It wasn't happening. And I wanted to understand why people aren't spending money. And I think all you need to do is look at the wealth positions of ordinary people. So my parents' generation, my dad worked for the post office for 35 years, regular person, regular job, buy a house, retirement, family, holidays. is my sister's got two degrees and she's got a Western musical playing at the moment and she can barely pay the rent. So what you're seeing is loss of wealth. What I want you to understand is wealth inequality is not just about Elon Musk. It's also about where's your wealth?

3:09Where's your sister's wealth? Where are your kids' wealth? Where's your dad's wealth? My dad had a regular job and owned a home and had a pension. And now people can't do that. And the other big, I think, elephant in the room is government wealth. Government wealth has collapsed. So what I need to recognise is these guys are amassing wealth that does not come separate from us they are taking the wealth of the rest of society and um because of basically compound interest if you don't do anything about that that will accelerate very quickly and you know you know you know we've spoken a couple of times over the years you know has anything that i've said is going to happen not happened you know this wealth it's not it's not those guys over there accumulate wealth in the last five years fastest ever increasing wealth of the super rich at the same time collapsing government wealth collapse in living stands for ordinary people.

3:53These are two sides of the same coin. If you don't fix this, it's going to get worse very quickly. Can you just give us a sense of the scale? I mean, how unequal is it? Because I guess people listening, they will have that experience that you're talking about where, I don't know, maybe half their paycheck goes on their rent every single month. You know, their take-home pay, they can do less and less with it. But obviously, they're probably not that directly related or connected to, like, people who are right at the top, top 1%, 0.1%. I mean, what is the scale of the problem we're talking about?

4:22So the truth is, statistically, we don't know. Because at the moment, we don't know who owns what. We're not measuring it. We're not recording it. You know, I always remember when Rishi Sunak became prime minister and suddenly appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List. It's like, well, was he born like in January? You know what I mean? He was around. You know, the fact is, we're not measuring it. These guys, the very rich, are very effectively, successfully hiding their wealth. But obviously, you'll have seen in the last couple of weeks, we had Elon Musk, world's first trillionaire. Just happened that week.

4:49somebody sent me a clip from my first ever video june uh 2020 on my youtube and i was talking about how the government's giving out 300 billion pounds and that amount of money is so big you can't understand it and i tried to explain it by saying it's three times the wealth of the world's richest man so six years ago the world's richest man was worth 100 billion pounds and now elon musk is worth 1.2 trillion dollars right this is in western economies that are growing one or two percent a year you know this is you don't have to be a genius here you know if you have a small group of society with an enormous chunk of wealth that's ballooning at 20 in the documentary we had them basim haydar says he doesn't take less than 15 a year you know so if these guys are going 15 20 a year in economies are going one percent a year that's cancer that is cancer that is exactly cancer that is you have a small part of your body that is growing at an incredibly rapid exponential pace you know and it doesn't feel so bad at first but it takes over everything you were asking him in the documentary as well to sort of explain his assets and define his wealth.

5:51And actually, you know, he wasn't keen to tell you that information. And obviously that is, he's not unique amongst that class of people for not wanting to reveal that information in terms of specifics. But obviously if we're going to talk about, okay, well, we want to tax that wealth specifically, obviously we have to figure out how much people are worth, where their assets are and how and when you tax them. And have you thought about that as a potential stumbling block? you know let's say the policy position is yeah right a floor two percent of wealth above 10 million pounds 100 million well yeah set it wherever you like but obviously every single year then we have to appraise people's wealth don't we have to figure out how much they're worth in order to tax it i mean how do you think about that problem it's tricky but it's doable and it's essential you know when you say that to me the obvious thing that comes to mind is jfg quote you know we send men to the moon and do the other things not because they're easy but because they are hard.

6:44Taxing the very rich is very difficult. And that is why the vast majority of human history is 10 guys owning everything while the rest of us like fuck off in a field somewhere. Right? That's, you know, it's not easy. It's not easy. But if you don't do it, then society will collapse. You know, it's not easy. It wasn't easy to stop the fucking Nazis, was it? You know what I mean? You know, it's not easy. It was not easy to do a lot of things, but you do them. You know what I mean? It wasn't easy to fucking, you know, invent the fucking polio vaccine. You fucking did it. Yeah, it wasn't easy to move from the kind of world my grandparents lived in, where regular people lived in desperate poverty to the kind of world my dad lived in where you can work for the post office and have a fucking house.

7:17You know, it is hard. But you know what? Countries that do not do difficult things that are essential, they get what they deserve. You know, and we're getting that. This is a question for the British public. Do you want things to be fucking shit or not? If you don't, then get your head down and do the hard work. That's a tough political sell, isn't it? Life's going to be worse, vote for me. No, the reason I ask is not to, you know, undermine the credibility of the argument, because it's what I'm sympathetic to, right? But when I think about how to implement it and mechanisms of doing it, I wonder how you draw a distinction between something like an inheritance tax, for example.

7:53Which, you know, obviously, we already do it. It gives you this defined moment in time to appraise the assets that somebody has. And, of course, it has the benefit of all the legal apparatus, accounting apparatus that exists already in terms of allocating people's inheritance. So at that point in time, you could say, okay, we know the wealth now and we're going to tax it at this point rather than, let's say, an annual wealth tax. I mean, how do you think about the tension? Listen, it doesn't have to be annual. You can do it every 10 years. You can do it every 20 years. You know what I mean? Inheritance tax on the very rich is 50 % every 30 years.

8:23And a wealth tax, we're talking about 2 % every year. It's very similar. But listen, we do it when you get divorced. When Jeff Bezos gets divorced, suddenly we know everything he fucking owns. You know what I mean? We do it when you die. We do it when you get divorced. say you want to do it every year and we're all sorry that's impossible mate it doesn't need to be every year and I never said listen we're in this kind of stupid space in the argument now where I come up legitimately and say society and living standards is going to collapse poverty is going to explode if you don't deal with wealth inequality let's do wealth tax and a bunch of fucking rich people and people paid by rich people say oh well that's impossible it's not it's impossible because it's every year I never said it has to be every year why is it impossible when I say it but it's not impossible when Jeff Bezos gets divorced he's the only person in the world who can do a wealth tax Jeff Bezos' ex-wife.

9:06Is that what you're telling me? She's like, well, do we need her? Get her on it. Yeah, listen, of course, it's doable. We do it all the time. Are there any arguments that you do find convincing, though? Maybe not convincing, but if you were to steal man your argument and think about what are the counterpoints to what you're advocating, that you actually go, yeah, do you know what? You've got a point there. Does that exist? No, there are. Listen, I would love to have a really serious conversation. You saw this in a documentary at the end of my discussion, if you can call it that, with Dan Needle.

9:36Well, you know, he was saying he never even thought of the political consequences. I've been doing this for 15 years, by the way. He never even thought of the economic consequences. And I said to him, listen, so in my opinion, when you have very high inequality, it pushes wages down. And lower levels of inequality push wages up. And I think this creates a problem because if you have a part of the world, and I think this basically, this is the story of like sort of the last four years. If you have part of the world which is low inequality, which was you know europe and the us and japan or whatever um and then part of which is very high inequality which is you know the rest of asia largely um the unequal places have low wages and the equal places have high wages and that creates an economic drive for immigration from the unequal place to the equal place and for capital flight from the equal place the unequal place and this is basically why europe has de-industrialized because rich people they don't want to pay fucking european wages they want to go to the really really unequal parts of the world and pay really, really low wages.

10:33But we can deal with that. We can deal with that. You know, I think you have to be talking about things like tariffs. I think you have to be. You know, really, all I want is for there to be a sensible conversation which understands flows of wealth. And as it is, wealth is flowing away from this, you know, briefly very enriched Western middle class towards billionaires, domestic and foreign. And we need to talk about how can we stop the flow of our wealth away from like the Western governments. So I talk a lot in my YouTube about the amount of wealth owned by governments and Zuckman, who is like the big design guy, if you really want to get into details on design, you get this French economist Zuckman on, I'll give you his number.

11:11If you really want to get involved in design on this, you can talk to people like that. But I think there's this sort of, this absurd sort of assumption that it's not possible, but it has to be done. if you don't do it then it's not going to work but I wish we could I feel like it's deja vu all over again because I go on show after show after show and I say alright my part of the economy the part that I'm an expert on is on fire guys and can we put the fire out or else everything's on fire and people say oh but the tax you've suggested is not workable I think we'll just let it burn you know can we just listen we do need to talk about flows of wealth so if government wealth has gone from plus 100 % of GDP to negative 100 % of GDP that's a disaster that's a disaster and then that necessitates the closing down of the welfare state do you want to close the welfare state down and I just it's kind of crazy the world it's mad the world that I live in where like everything that I said was going to happen has happened again and again and again and there's a reason why I made millions of pounds trading for Citibank and I make it again trading for myself on fucking IG index you know what I mean because I'm fucking good at this go and watch my fucking YouTube video from 2020 I predict cost of living crisis inflation crisis house price crisis gold price rise stock price rise austerity all of these things right because it's happening and people turn around to me and say oh but your specific proposed solution doesn't work and then they want the conversation to end there you know if you you know if you are on the Titanic and you're up guys there's a hole at the bottom let's get on the lifeboats and they said well that specific lifeboat is fucked you fucking do something but what it shows is these people they don't care about fixing the problem you know you know I speak to Dan Needle for like three hours Dan Needle for those who don't know he's on a documentary he's a tax expert your specific solution doesn't work your specific solution doesn't work okay I'm not a tax planning expert I'm an economics inequality economics expert Dan Needle's not an economic expert he's a tax planning expert so I say to him the economy's on fire it's going to be destroyed we need to do this wealth tax and he says that doesn't work do these guys not realize nobody has more to lose by not fixing this broken system than them because they live lives of extreme luxury and they are allowing the system to move very very quickly towards extreme instability extreme extreme instability you know you said i don't worry about nigel farage and i don't worry about donald trump i worry about what comes after nigel farage and what comes after donald trump because they both of them will fail on the economy they will cut taxes on the rich and living standards will fall and then they will have to reinvent themselves further to the right and it's very hard for me to look at what's happening now and not be reminded of what happened in the 20th century.

13:49So look, you know, there's so many interesting discussions we can have. What drives me mad is where is the fucking place to have these discussions? You know, where is the government and department that says we're worried about inequality growth? And obviously you probably know I'm trying to love you, Burnham. Everybody knows, right? And I don't say to them wealth tax now. What I say is give me four or five fucking smart guys that I can work with. You know, I don't have to be the fucking boss. Just let me have some communication with them to really work out how we stop this inequality from growing.

14:20You know, can we just stop this like stupid Marvel hero interpretation of the economy, which is like, oh, you said you said the economy is going to break and you're right. Well, you fucking fix it, you fucking dick. This isn't this is not Gary Stevenson saves the world here. I'm telling you what's going to happen. Be all right, though, wouldn't it if you did save the world? I don't think anyone would complain. Yeah, but I'm busy. I'm tired. I'm making content. You mentioned. OK, there's a lot in your answer I want to talk about. We will come back to the politics of this and burn them a little bit.

14:47But I just want to dial into capital flight because I'd like you to talk more about it, not least because when I have been having conversations like that, and it very often gets thrown back in my face if I will say, we could consider wealth taxes. And immediately, I've had it, high-profile conservative party politicians will say, well, they're all just going to up and leave. And obviously, I think there's already a degree of pushback there, which is that some of these assets, bricks and mortar, you cannot just pick them up and relocate them to Dubai. Obviously, you can arrange your tax affairs in such a way and you can domicile yourself in these other places.

15:20But America, which quite often these people sort of point to as this shining example of capitalism, taxes their citizens wherever they are in the world. And it is the price you pay. If you wish to be an American citizen, this is the price we ask of you. And people pay it, right? And so I do feel like there's this kind of blinkering blinkering or like deliberate ignorance that kind of gets inculcated, which is basically like, no, no, the status quo is the only thing of like we can conceive. We can't we can't imagine or create like an alternate way of addressing this problem. But in actual fact, there are actually some real world examples that already exist, right?

15:56That you can that you can point to as a way of trying to stop that from happening. Yeah, I think deliberate ignorance is the perfect phrase, really, for what's happening here. You know, I did I did a video on The Economist, the magazine out the other day, and they said, oh, well, they fucking hate world taxes. They're like, what you want is an inheritance tax. But, okay, ordinary people, they spend their money when they're alive. Rich people, every single pound a rich person has now will be inherited by their kids. So wealth tax, inheritance tax for the rich, same thing. Same tax for the rich.

16:21And then they say, we hate wealth taxes, but we love inheritance taxes. Same fucking tax.

16:28If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny. What you were just seeing, it's just absolute, absolute like, they believe what they want to believe. you know it's it's it's a simple it's motivated reasoning like they they come into the question with the answer that and they just find a way to get the answer they're just like no what you want to do won't work what you want to do won't work um listen we can tax them listen wealth is real assets i think this let's yeah tell me more about that gone wealth is real assets is it wealth is real assets i think people think that like wealth is just like money on a screen and they think that elon musk has got like a trillion dollars in a fucking massive bag you know what i mean like no they own assets all wealth wealthy people are wealthy because they own assets and those assets are real you know and the vast majority of those assets exist in the western nations you know i mean or at least the customers are in western nations you know i mean so we can tax them on listen if i owned like 50 billion dollars of chinese assets right and then when china comes to me and says can we have your tax please and i thought i live in uk do you think they're going to take that as an answer no because the assets are in fucking china these guys own your fucking mortgage I own your mortgage right and then you say to me oh you've got to pay the tax you know because you own fucking Ollie's mortgage I say I live in fucking Dubai well you don't live in Dubai do you my money comes from you through you every day so tax it at source you know but the problem is what drives me mad is

17:50to be honest what I see when I look at this is really if I'm totally honest a crisis of western intellectualism honestly that is what I see because if you think a wealth tax is not going to work because you think we can't tax like assets you think it's impossible fine but where is that conversation being seriously had nowhere nowhere it's it's ridiculous it's just it's a bunch of idiots just saying it's impossible you know i mean and it's there's no there's just there's no seriousness in this debate and of course there's not because what you need to understand is the crisis of inequality is fucking good for the top five percent right and how many people are that are in this debate who are not in the top five percent what drives me mad is the stupidity of it honestly like being being famous it just appears appears to be mainly being called a liar by liars and an idiot by idiots that just seems to be my fucking life nowadays and you know i just wish i just wish i would rather listen i would rather get shot in the head by smart people than just have to have conversations again and again with fucking idiots who are not interested in even understanding what's happening you know i don't mind people being evil but at least they should be a bit funny about it.

18:56You know, like, it's just the banality of it drives me mad. I mean, maybe we should just take a brief pause to talk about your wealth, because you made your money, you've referenced already, in the wake of the recession, right, betting that inequality would get worse. For people listening that don't understand financial markets, that don't understand trade, can you just explain what was that bet, how did it work? Yeah, so I was a financial trade, the interest rate trader for Citibank from 2008 until 2014. Interest rates, our older listeners will know they went to zero in 2008 because the economy was really weak and then my job is like betting when will they go back up which is kind of like when will the economy recover it's quite interesting actually from 2008 all the way up to like middle of COVID financial until what to the beginning of COVID traders and economists constantly thought the economy is going to get better next year interest rates will go back up next year and obviously we now know that rates stayed zero all the way up to COVID and it's quite funny because during COVID they were like you know what rates will stay zero forever and then they obviously went up to 5 % So I was sitting on the trading floor trying to understand, you know, why are we like wrong on this?

19:57I studied maths and economics at the London School of Economics, no matter what Roy Stewart tells you. So I studied economics and I was really interested to see like, why is it that all of our predictions are like wrong all the time? And yeah, I just wanted to understand like why the economy stayed weak. And I came to this conclusion that basically what you have is like a, is a fundamental problem of wealth transfer, of wealth inequality. It's not really understood by economists because that is not taught in modern economics. And I thought that the economy would stay weak for a long time. So I just bet that interest rates would stay zero for a long time.

20:32And because economists consistently thought that interest rates were going to re-normalise because the economy was going to re-normalise, I made a lot of money on that in the sort of early 2010s. And I think you said earlier as well, you still invest now, you still trade a bit now. So I didn't trade for a long time, not much. I did little bits and bobs. So I went to Oxford to do two-year master's, 17 to 19. But then at the beginning of COVID, so really, to be honest, I think people need to understand economics. There's lots of different bits and bobs within economics. People need to stop thinking of it as like, you know everything or you know nothing.

21:05And what I'm really good at is understanding the relationship between the distribution of wealth and the macro economy, living standards, inflation. That's what I'm really obsessed with, asset prices. And not a lot of economists think about things like that. so when COVID happened whenever anything happens to be honest I want to know immediately how's this going to affect inequality wealth distribution and from the beginning of COVID and I spoke about this a lot so people can go and watch my early videos I wrote my articles for the Guardian or whatever the beginning of COVID if anyone like did the analysis you would realise oh my god this is going to be like a like a like the biggest increase in inequality in history because basically what covid was economically was the banning of the spending of money of rich people because all of all essentials were still you still have to pay for them the only thing you couldn't do was anything luxury you couldn't go to the theater you couldn't go on holiday you couldn't go to a restaurant so basically rich people couldn't spend their fucking money so rich people stopped spending money and that was replaced by the government printing money so the government print money give it to you you pay your mortgage goes to the owner of your mortgage a rich guy can't spend it so massive it's like the biggest ever money laundering in history and it's a trillion pounds by the way That's the amount of money given out by the UK government since the beginning of COVID.

22:13£20 ,000 per adult, huge. So then I was just like, immediately I knew we were going to have a base, we were going to see the biggest falling living standards ever in the history of my lifetime. It was clear. You know, if you pause the economy and in the course of a few years, like cataclysmically increase inequality and then unpause the economy, of course you will see an enormous collapse of living standards.

22:38but nobody was looking at inequality nobody ever does the other obvious thing you're going to see is a trillion pounds it's going from the government to the richest people in the world and not just the UK the US government gave out like 13 trillion dollars okay bang world's biggest increase in asset prices easy easy bet and I was sitting there at the beginning and I remember I was holding government bonds and they went up and the gold price went up initially and I was like I need to buy gold and then the gold price dived and i was like this is the stupidest move i've ever seen it was so obvious that we're going to see the massive increase in asset prices so i put a bet million pound of gold on a betting platform basically um our gold price trebled ever trebled since then so i made a lot of money on that bet like it was easy really to be honest and i think but it's funny that that is the same time that i like became public about what i'm doing and it's weird to me because I don't think I could or should give economic advice unless I'm betting on it there was a guy who used to work with in the book he's called Billy best trader I ever worked with working class guy from Liverpool and he said to me don't tell me your opinion tell me your position I want to know what you're betting on and I'll tell you this right now if you had the rule nobody could chat shit on TV about the economy unless they're betting their own fucking money on it there'd be a lot less fucking bullshit on the TV I'll tell you that right now people talk about that they don't they're just like skin in the game listen i'll tell you this listen time in the market it drives me mad like until you've experienced i remember my first ever big trade i had done right i mean i put it was i remember it this is not going to mean anything to you but it was a three-month dollar swedish foreign exchange swap and i put 300 million dollars a lot of it that's sounds bigger than it is but that's what i put on and i was like 21 maybe was i 22 two and I went home and I was still living with my parents in a little terraced house and we're having dinner in this little fucking tiny kitchen with a fucking black and white tv with a fucking dial true story and I remember sitting there thinking I've never even been to fucking Sweden in my life what the fuck am I doing and then all of a sudden you start thinking about I don't know nothing about Sweden I went into work at 4am the next day and you want to know everything about Sweden and what I realised is betting my money on my opinions fundamentally changed the way I think about opinions and the truth is most people are just fucking chatting shit i'm sorry i'm sorry but until you if you can say what you like right but if you realize that if it's wrong it's going to cost you 200 grand you're going to think a lot fucking more before you say it you know i'm saying this is what drives me mad about having to meet the people like dan needle and that they can say what they like well you know go on you go on the rest of the party they can say what they fucking like you know when i was in the city everybody thought i was an idiot and at the end of the year everybody emptied their pockets out and gave it to me and then nobody thought I was an idiot.

25:26You know what I'm saying? Like it's so frustrating for me like you predict it right again and again and again and again and again and you have people like Rory Stewart saying do you think you're motivated by class anger? Well if it's class anger it's making a lot of good fucking predictions isn't it? Honestly this is what I mean when I say the death of Western intellectualism. Honestly seriously like it's the death of science. Listen if somebody like me who consistently makes correct predictions in the face of a bunch of posh idiots that are wrong every year is not listened to, science is dead in the West.

25:54I'm telling you, this is what it is. This is what it is. We're going to take a short break now. We'll be back after this.

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27:08Let's talk about the moment then, because I alluded to it earlier, right? There's this change happening at the top of the Labour Party. I think you've actually said, you know, this is kind of a window of opportunity for a wealth tax or indeed another mechanism possibly to address inequality regardless. I mean, when I've interviewed you in the past, we've spoken about, you know, the extent to which or not you're being taken seriously by people in power or people who are about to get in power. You mentioned Burnham earlier. I mean, have you managed to speak to him about your ideas? Have you managed to speak to people at the top of the labour party?

27:44I've not managed to speak to Burnham himself. I'm sure he's a very busy man I would love to if he wants to speak to me like of course we would make time for him everybody knows he's going to be the next Prime Minister so I'm not a professional lobbyist I'm trying it feels like I am I don't have any history in lobbying I'm like obviously look I don't do what I do to be big on YouTube I do what I do because I want to change policy and you know we are at a point now where I feel we have an offer you know we can say look if you talk to us we can support you on social media we can support you online you know what I mean we can and we can help you with economic policy, you know, and they're going to need it.

28:20They're going to need it. I'm trying to lobby. I'm trying to lobby. But like, you know, I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, I was in Parliament a couple of weeks ago. I think this is why like there was all these rumours, oh, Gary's going to be like advisor. What were you doing there? Lobbying MPs, just talking to Labour MPs. And that happened to be the Monday when some were residing. But that was just pure coincidence. Yeah. You walked into his office and said, Keir, mate, it's time to do it. Yeah, no, the game's up mate I'm trying to lobby but you know it's a game of like Burnham whispering out there like everyone is like you're trying to work out who actually has access to Andy Burnham who he's actually listening to who he's not listening to listen I'm here I would love to speak to him look like I don't do this for fun you know it is it is it's really serious it's really really really serious even if you forget the fact that if Burnham fails it's going to be Farage even if you forget that these falls in living standards are going to increase rapidly and something needs to be done.

29:21So, you know, I'll be here. If I see any opportunity that I think we can get this, then I'll be in there. You know, if I thought Faraj was serious about giving us wealth taxes, I'd be in office with Faraj. I don't think he ever will be. But, you know, to be honest, I'm incredibly proud because I did a video when Starmer came in. You know, when Starmer came in, we weren't in the game. And listen, I'm not saying I'm the fucking burning whisperer because I'm not, you know. but like I think we have a pitch here if I'm in my heart of hearts I'm totally honest I don't think we're going to get it but we're in the game and I'll tell you this now if they don't give us it they're going to be in a lot of trouble so there's one part of running a tax like this right which is the the the taking that that wealth that cash from the people that have it and then obviously the next part of that equation is okay well what do you do with the money that you generate right and story in Westminster this week is about defence spending bigger issue to my mind I knew it would probably be the housing crisis and the lack of house building that's happening in this country.

30:17I mean, how do you think about the money this would generate? And I've seen different people estimate that, you know, it could be 20, 30 billion quid a year, possibly, depending on what it, you know, the level you apply at. But that's a not insignificant sum of money for the government to choose to spend. I mean, how do you think about that next part of the equation and where the money gets spent? Yeah, so we obviously use this slogan, tax wealth, not work. And the reason I chose that slogan is, to be honest, it's quite strategic because I know what happens. I say like tax the super rich and like Rupert Murdoch convinces you I want to tax like your dad who's a doctor you know I mean or your son who might become a lawyer one day um and I try to make it really really clear the truth is the game we're in now now the government can't really borrow any more money we're in a situation where you have three options which is increased taxation of the very rich increased taxation of workers or further reductions in the in the welfare state so really taxation of the middle and taxation of the top are competing options at this point so I say tax wealth not work and that's really mainly to try to make it clear to people that I'm not trying to tax the middle the reality of the situation is I'm an inequality economist if you don't stop inequality increasing you'll have a disaster I'm like relatively agnostic about how you spend the money I think it's important that people stay in their lane a little bit more what do I know about the fucking defence budget you know what I mean of course I don't want us to get invaded by fucking Vladimir Putin but do I know how realistic that is no you know what I mean if they tell me we need more defence budget then that's great but obviously you know there are other things we need as well but I guess the answer goes you know that is what politics is for right like it is whoever's elected the priorities they put forward people vote on it and decide you know this is what we're going I don't know it might be schools could be food and farming like whatever it is that that political party says I guess you know at that point it's like well we've raised the money it's up to the elected government to decide how it gets spent what I will say is if you don't deal with this growing inequality issue you won't be able to afford anything this is why i was able to correctly predict the the rapid collapse of starma before he came in i was able to rapidly predict the rapid collapse of sunak before he came in because we are not in a situation where the situation is just bad we are in a situation where the situation is bad and aggressively worsening in a rapid and accelerating fashion that is the current state of play in the wealth distribution so if you don't this is like if you come to me and you've got cancer and that cancer is rapidly growing and you say to me you know Gary I can't decide next year whether I should like run a marathon or go on holiday to Japan and I say to you well maybe we should fix your cancer first and you say oh fuck that's impossible you know I mean like I know you know people criticize me for like banging the same drum again and again you don't fix this you're fucked there's not there will be no money for anything you know okay all right okay so we're not going to tax the rich okay What we're going to do is going to tax working people more.

33:08And there's a good chance that's what's going to happen. Tax working people more in order that we can keep things going. The economy will get weakened because these guys have got less money. That money ends up going in interest to the super rich. And then working people are poorer and the rich are richer. And asset prices are higher. And these guys are consuming more. So everything is more expensive. And I want you to realise, right, these guys can make food more expensive. Listen, in the colonial times in India, people fucking starved while the fields were growing cotton to ship to fucking Europe.

33:38These guys, listen, look at the usage of water in their data centres. Listen, these guys will take the fields that you need to feed your fucking kids and use it to make fucking biofuel to put in their fucking data centres so that you can't fucking play the guitar anymore. You know, they will take everything. Listen, it's not a joke. No. It's not a joke. So look, I don't come in, I don't pretend to be I'm going to fix all your problems and I'm not. I'm not. all I would tell you again and again is if you do not fix this it will be a disaster I am the guy that has seen the fucking iceberg I'm telling you the iceberg is there and you know what I mean do what the fuck you like with your school budget we can decide that when we're past the fucking iceberg and then I'll go on holiday and I'll fucking turn my YouTube channel into a fucking Japanese learning YouTube channel I'm just sick of doing this we need to get Gary to Japan we need to make that happen pronto yeah I there's so many things I want to ask you about okay so maybe if we could just talk about YouTube specifically for a second, right?

34:34Because you mentioned you've written for newspapers like The Guardian. You know, you've just made a documentary. It's the reason we're talking to each other. And obviously you've been interviewed a lot by people like me, by plenty of others you've heard in the media. What is it about YouTube that you like or indeed that you've figured out about it as like a medium for communicating ideas and sharing insight and knowledge? Yeah, so in 2020, 2020 is when I started like writing publicly. and um i think i started writing for my first cycle was published for uh open democracy then i wrote for the guardian i wrote for the express i wrote for loads of papers in 2020 um and i was making all of these like really pessimistic economic predictions that i'm sort of known for and then my mates were freaking out and they were coming up to me and they were like oh my god what can i do and then they wanted to know more about it they were going straight to youtube you know I mean um back then I was in my early 30s and um yeah the shit that was coming out there for me a lot of like conspiracy stuff anti-semitic stuff the kind of like and then I realized like and I knew we were about to go into a massive economic crisis I knew with like near certainty we're about to go and then and then it was like these guys have got nowhere to go these guys have got nowhere to go and I think it was almost like this commercial brain of mine was like let's fucking can take that space.

35:51That is where like, there's gonna be so much demand for somebody who can communicate economics clearly and simply. And what I knew, the trade with me was like, these predictions are gonna be right. And I was betting massively on it. And I was like, cause this is, at the end of the day, that's what I'm good at. It's like making good predictions. And I was like, if I get a video done on YouTube now saying there's gonna be a house price crisis and an inequality crisis and austerity and inflation crisis, the cost of living crisis, stocks are gonna go to the moon, gold is gonna go to the moon. like who can make these eight predictions when nobody was saying it years in advance like and you know you know people are you know Dan Needle and Roy Stewart can say what they like anyone can go and watch that video from six years ago and I fucking had it all nailed from the start and it was like it was just like bam I'm gonna drop this video and then I can fucking go on holiday for two years because I'll come back two years later and I'll be the guy that was fucking right and everyone would have seen it on YouTube you know and I just saw the gap I just saw the gap man it was just like glaring.

36:45And I'll be totally honest with you, I don't think there is a single other person in the country explaining economics to the public in a way they understand. Yeah. You know, and then that's like... I think that's really, really, really true. And I do... Well, yeah. Do you think like financial literacy, you know, whether it's people in their own personal finance, you know, investing in, you know, stocks and shares, ISAs, whatever it is. Do you think we do have like a gap more broadly as a population about, not just about macroeconomics, right, but about our own personal finances as well? I mean, yes.

37:22But the truth of the matter is you're not going to fucking trade your way out of this. You know what I mean? We are going back to the kind of economy that my grandma grew up in, you know, where, you know, her parents worked regular jobs and three of her siblings died of tuberculosis. You know what I mean? if we was in Nigeria now and some kid came up you know on the streets of Lagos and said oh yeah give me some money would you turn around to him and say have you thought about fucking buying Bitcoin you know what I mean you're not going to trade your way out of this you're not I think it's such an important point I've heard people describe this as like financial nihilism that the the outlook of younger generations who have had you know I think average earnings average house prices now I think to get your average deposit you're looking at saving for about 13 years and that's, you know, in London it's then 30.

38:07Yeah. And I think it's actually a kind of natural reaction for younger people to see those figures and go, well, I might as well speculate. I might as well consume because, you know, even with the power of compound interest, am I really going to spend the next 30 years of my life saving so that I can buy a house when I'm 50? And the house price will be doubled by then anyway. Yeah, and you probably won't be able to get a mortgage, right? Because you'll be in your 40s and 50s, you won't be able to get the mortgage term. Yeah, but I think we need to... Because you can see why people check out in response to that, can't you?

38:33Oh, look, I get it. I get it. I get it 100%. And this is kind of what keeps me up at night. How do we... What story do we tell to these people? People who have this kind of mindset, it's largely unmeant. You know, they want to find their own way out of it. And they... Obviously, you've watched the documentary, so you've seen... There's a guy in the documentary who's kind of said, I'll teach you to get rich. I'll teach you to get rich. And I didn't love his energy. If I'm having spent a bit of time here, probably the less I say about him, the better. But you can see it in the documentary. these these young men it's not just young men they become very vulnerable they become very vulnerable if you are in a situation where you desperately desperately want to get rich and the truth is there's no good avenues there for you you are like you know there's a saying markets if you don't know who the the fool is at the poker table it's you you know i mean you're anybody's if you're desperate um and i wonder how can we what i want is for these people to fucking strap up and get along with me you know i mean like let's fucking fight let's fight you know i mean let's push back let's make something listen i've got to be honest if you're in your like 20s early 30s today your parents fucked it for you but you can save it for your kids that's what you can do and the way you save it for your kids is you fucking do what your grandkids did and you fight collectively you fight collectively for a fair share of the pie for you and your family and your community and for people like you um yeah listen i know it's not i know it's not fashionable to be into politics but listen if you don't do politics politics gonna fucking do you and it's happening right in front of your face um so listen that's you know that's why i do what i do and i've encouraged there's lots of other people out there on social media burry's economics he's great louise munch there's you know great people out there doing great work um jimmy the giant you know obviously yourself um get on board you know build something and it's it's you know this is if i'm totally honest i think like the most the most powerful thing the rich ever did really was to make the poor as selfish as them because if the poor are selfish who the fuck protects the poor because you can't protect yourself one-on-one from fucking the world's first fucking trillionaire.

40:53He's going to beat you. The only power you ever had was strength in numbers. That's the only way the poor ever defended themselves from the rich. And if you don't use that, you're going to be fucked. But, you know, if there's anyone out there today, what we need is, there's a good quote, Napoleon. A man does not have himself killed for a half pence a day or a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him. And if there's any young people out there today, I don't care, artists, musicians or whatever, storytellers, I want you to find stories that we can tell to our young men and women today that get them to fucking put down their fucking stupid fucking selfishness, selfishness, which allows them to be taken the right job by the rich and work together like their fucking grandparents did.

41:35That's the only way you're going to survive this. Gary Stevenson, How to Get Filthy Rich airs Wednesday, the 8th of July at 9pm on Channel 4 and streaming thereafter. Gary, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That was Gary Stevenson. I'm Oli Dougmore. This is The Exchange from The New Statesman. We'll see you next week.

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