WE NEED TO TAX THE SUPER RICH

We Need Much Less Income Inequality

Transcript Below — Tax Wealth, Not Work!

CONTENTS

SPEAKING OUT — BASIC ILLUSTRATION OF WEALTH TRANSFER TO THE RICH — 2008 & 2020+ — WORKERS ARE WIPED OUT — HIGH TAXES ON THE SUPER RICH IS THE SOLUTION — WHAT CHANGES ARE NEEDED & HOW? — HOW IS MOST IMPORTANT — 20TH CENTURY HAD LESS WEALTH INEQUALITY — 11 YEARS FIGURING OUT A PLAN — NO HELP FROM PROGRESSIVE ECONOMICS — NO HELP FROM UNIVERSITY — MOVED TO MEDIA — MAINSTREAM MEDIA NO HELP — POLITICS NO HELP — NEW RIGHT IS NO HELP — SCAPEGOAT FOREIGNERS — IMPOVERISHING THEIR OWN SUPPORTERS — POLITICAL PREDICTIONS — WE CAN WIN — OVERTON WINDOW — MESSAGE PUSH BACK — THEY MIGHT REMOVE GARY — GET THE MESSAGE OUT — SUCCESS IS SCARY — CONVERT BOTH PARTIES — DIVIDING US — NOT A QUICK FIX

AI ON 20TH CENTURY U.S. WEALTH TAX HISTORY

20TH CENTURY U.K. WEALTH TAX HISTORY

DID 20TH CENTURY WEALTH TAXES IMPROVE LOWER CLASSES?

GARY’S ERROR IMO

VIEWER COMMENTS

(TRANSCRIPT)

Okay. Welcome back to Gary's Economics. Today we are finally going to explain how we can stop the economy from collapsing.

SPEAKING OUT

Okay, so in the last couple of months, I've been on tour. I've been up and down the country {the U.K.} a couple of times, we've had a massive press campaign, so I've been all over the TV, radio, the internet, basically explaining that the economy is collapsing, that it will continue to collapse, and that ordinary families will be driven into poverty, that our kids and our grandkids won't be able to afford homes and financial security. And, we've been getting a lot of press, and that has obviously been basically worrying a lot of people. People should be worried because this is happening. And people are asking me, okay, Gary, what can we do? How can we stop that? And, I’ve spent quite a lot of time explaining the problem, but perhaps not so much explaining what we can do to stop the problem. So today, what I'm going to try my best to do is explain really clearly, as much as possible from the ground up, how I think we can stop this economic collapse from happening.

BASIC ILLUSTRATION OF WEALTH TRANSFER TO THE RICH

All right. So the very first thing we need to do is just recap very quickly what the economic problem actually is in its most basic terms. And I'm going to try to explain that in a simple diagram, which I'm going to draw here. The problem: Okay. So we've got these four groups in society. We've got the working class, we've got the middle class, you've got the government and we've got the rich. Now for most of history and in most of the world today, pretty much all of the wealth in society, the land, the property, the natural resources, the businesses are owned by the rich. But for a period of time after the Second World War, we had a situation where basically all of these groups held a decent amount of wealth. So in my parents' generation, it was normal for even working-class families to have a pension and own their own property, for example. So we had a period where all of these groups had a decent amount of wealth, but the rich had more, and especially after their taxes were cut in the 80s, they started to accumulate more and more.

2008 & 2020+

And that meant that when other groups in society wanted to access this wealth, wanted to use this wealth, wanted to use housing, property, natural resources, buildings, they had to pay rents, profits, dividends to the rich, and wealth started to flow away from these other groups and towards the rich. And these flows really started to increase, especially during the 2008 crisis and during the Covid crisis. And it led to a situation where really there was very large-scale transfer of wealth, and that is still ongoing. And the end result was that the working class lost pretty much all their wealth and got into a bit of debt as well. The government is now massively in negative wealth, so they've only got debt. And the middle class, they kept some of their wealth, but not so much. The wealth of the rich just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, especially during Covid.

WORKERS ARE WIPED OUT

What this meant was because these groups of society, who traditionally are the big spenders in terms of proportion of their wealth, were losing their wealth. Spending fell, wages fell and, because these guys have much more wealth now, and these guys have less, these transfer payments, which you have to make to use wealth, access resources, went up, because you've got less resources, now they've got more. So you need to pay to use a greater amount of resources. So these flows increased. And now we're in a situation where basically these groups are basically wiped out. The working class has basically nothing left. These guys already live in increasingly desperate poverty. The government is, like, totally bankrupted, they're out. And the middle class has just this little bit left, which they're hanging on to, but it's gradually being sucked out. And, before long, they will be gone too.

HIGH TAXES ON THE SUPER RICH IS THE SOLUTION

And then you end up in this situation where basically the rich own everything. You have no middle class, nobody else owns anything. And an economy like that looks like, looks like Nigeria, looks like India, looks like Brazil. And basically you have very broad poverty. If you want to fix this, you need to get wealth flowing back in the other direction. And, there are different ways to do this. In theory, you can do it without taxes. And if you are interested in non-tax solutions for getting ordinary families their wealth back, we have a video called The Wealth Time Limit, which I did years ago. But realistically, I think your only realistic hope of getting the wealth back in the working class, back in the middle class, getting wealth to flow away from the rich is, to quote the Dutch historian Bregman, “Taxes, taxes, taxes”. I do really think this is the only way. I know it's difficult because the rich will oppose it, but I think unless we can get much higher levels of tax on the rich, I don't think there is any way we can get that wealth back to working-class and middle-class families. So if we're talking about tax, Tax the rich? I always think, when we are discussing the question of how can we tax the rich more, tax working families less, get wealth flowing back to working-class families, I always think it's really, really helpful to break that question of tax down into two completely separate questions.

WHAT CHANGES ARE NEEDED & HOW?

Question one, what specific changes do we want in the tax system? And question two, how do we make those changes happen. And the reason why I think it's really important to separate them is because these are really just two completely separate questions. This number one is a question of, really it's a technical question. It's a kind of a, it's a tax adviser's, a tax planner's question. It's a technical economics question. And number two is a question of power. It's a question of how do we force these things. And the reason why I think it's really, really important to separate them is, because we tend to focus very, very much on this question one, especially when we are talking to people like me who are economists.

We want to say, okay, well, what are the changes in the tax system? What are the change in the tax system? And I think this is perhaps a little bit naive to the fact that basically at the moment we are losing this debate for question two, which is at the moment we're not getting any taxes at all. We are increasingly seeing changes in the tax system, which tax rich people less, which tax working people more. That is true even in countries that have centre-left governments, who you might think would be more supportive of poor people. It's true here in the UK, we have a Labour government. It was true under Joe Biden. We are seeing even under governments that are supposed to be left-wing, the inability to raise taxes at all.

HOW IS MOST IMPORTANT

So I think it's really important to recognise that these two things are separate, because we can often end up in a situation where somebody like me is trying to make a very strong case for the fact that if we don't change the tax system, we will see basically a collapse of society and somebody who perhaps is rich or is funded by the rich will come in and say, “Aha! But what specific changes do you want to make?” And they would ask you to sort of sit down and carefully plan a brand new tax system right there in front of them, and then they will say, “Oh, well, this specific problem is wrong and this is not going to work.” Listen, I am not particularly passionate about the specific form of tax that we take. I am aware that it is really, really important that this is carefully designed to hit the richest rather than the middle class. I'm totally aware of this problem, and I'm aware that different forms of taxes will have different problems. And I'm aware that we need to be really, really careful about how we plan it, how we design it. But the truth is, the most important thing is that we get a change and there are a number of forms that change can take.

I campaign for wealth taxes. Some people campaign for equalising capital gains with income tax. Some people talk about closing down the loopholes that very rich families use to pay zero taxes. These are all good plans, but I don't think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The truth is, we are losing this battle for question two. And if we lose this battle for question two, then your family will be bankrupted. So I came into this game, you know, as an economist, who thought a lot about question one. And I kind of became a campaigner. A YouTuber. I literally taught myself how to write a book, because I could see we were going to lose question two.

20TH CENTURY HAD LESS WEALTH INEQUALITY

So I am going to focus for the rest of this video on question two. The only thing I will say about question one is I think we need to deal with the fact that some people say there's no point trying to tax the rich because reducing inequality is impossible. And the answer to that it is 100% possible, because we did it in the 20th century. In the beginning of the 20th century inequality in this country, across Europe, across the United States, was extremely high. And ordinary families like yours and mine lived in desperate poverty. Over the course of the 20th century, we reduced wealth inequality really significantly. That got wealth into the hands of ordinary families, and it led to really significant increases in living standards, which meant that our parents and grandparents lived much, much better lives than people in the early 20th century did. So for now, we need to focus on getting some form of change, because if we spend all of our time arguing about the specific form of the change, we won’t get anything at all. There's no point arguing about battle tactics until you have an army. So let's talk about how we can force these politicians to give us the things that we need. All right, so.

11 YEARS FIGURING OUT A PLAN

Why economists won't save us. As most of you will know, if you've been watching this channel, I was an economist, mathematician, and a trader. I worked as a trader from 2008 to 2014. I made a lot of money by recognizing, basically, exactly the diagram I showed you at the beginning of the video, which was that wealth has, was, and still is being drained out of the middle class, out of the working class, accumulated by the very rich. That was going to suck spending power out of the economy, and that was going to impoverish most ordinary families. I bet on that. And I was very successful betting that the economy would collapse. I made a lot of money on that. I quit trading in 2014. I was living in Tokyo at the time, and I came back to London, basically with this conviction that I was right in this relatively simple economic understanding that we would see continued further and further and further worsening of living standards. And I didn't want that to happen. I don't want that to happen. I assume you don't want that to happen because it will mean poverty for you and your kids. My plan was basically, simply to come back to London and show people this truth. I've been spending basically those nearly 11 years now since I came back, trying to figure out how we can actually stop this crisis from happening. My plan has always been relatively simple. This crisis will impoverish 70%, 80%, 90% of the population here in the UK, in the US, in Australia, in Europe, wherever you're watching. You're seeing that happening. You are seeing larger and larger percentages of the population being impoverished. It doesn't make sense for the public to accept that. So all we need to do is show them what's happening, make it clear to them what's happening, and they will reject it, basically. But it's been 11 years now, and we haven't achieved it yet. I would like to explain how my thinking has developed and refined into trying to figure out a way that we can really effectively stop it.

NO HELP FROM PROGRESSIVE ECONOMICS

When I first came back, the first place I went to was I worked for an economics think tank in London called the New Economics Foundation. I volunteered there for about six months. This is a progressive economics think tank in London. I kind of figured that these would be the guys who would help you sort of introduce new economics ideas into society. Their name was literally the New Economics Foundation. I volunteered there for six months. I met a lot of nice people. Some of them I'm still friends with now. But I basically became convinced that they didn't really have the capacity to really push this new idea out. There was very, very little appetite for ideas and inequality. They needed to get funding for all of their individual projects. They could get a lot of funding for global warming stuff and kind of identity politics stuff. But there was basically nobody funding wealth inequality stuff. The space was quite middle class. So in many cases, there weren’t people who were not themselves being directly hurt. I make the point a lot on this channel, and I think this is important to recognize, crises of inequality, they impoverish 90% of the population, but they make like 1% or 2% of the population absolutely, really bloody rich. These guys, they benefit from it. There's another sort of 3%, 4% below that that are pretty well protected. I sort of found in that think tank space, a lot of these protected people basically, and unfortunately whilst they are in many cases very well-meaning, I didn't see any chance of getting change essentially from that think tank space.

NO HELP FROM UNIVERSITY

So I went then to university. I did a two-year economics master's at Oxford. You could probably imagine if the think tank space was quite rich and quite upper middle class, Oxford University was unbelievably rich and middle class. Good luck to anyone who's trying to make change in academia, and we do need people in those spaces. I became pretty convinced that academia was almost completely a dead end at the moment. We've made videos on this. I think the situation of university, especially elite university academic economics, is just if the situation wasn't so serious, it would be quite funny, really. You've got a lot of very smart kids that are locked in tiny, windowless rooms, doing unbelievably complicated mathematics, with absolutely no idea what's happening in the world. I don't think that we're going to make change from those spaces.

MOVED TO MEDIA

I eventually decided to try and move into the media space. I made that space in early 2020. The idea was basically, I've spent 5, 6 years now trying to convince rich people to deal with inequality. I don't think they're going to do it. The people who are affected by and hurt by this economic crisis of inequality are ordinary families, ordinary families like you, ordinary families like your kids. I was hoping that in the media space, I might be able to speak to the people who are being hurt. Speak to people who are being affected. Instead of speaking to the rich guys who are benefiting. That is really when I started to develop the plan that I've been doing the last four years, especially the last 2 or 3 years.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA NO HELP

I genuinely think that the vast majority of people in this country, and I think this is true if you're here or in the States or in Europe or in Australia, do not have a single person in the mainstream media who is communicating effectively, clearly, understandably, what is happening in this economic crisis that is increasingly devastating living conditions for millions of ordinary families across the world. I started to feel that there was a massive gap, basically a huge gap, a huge gap to fill, basically telling people what is happening. I started to feel that really strongly during Covid, that basically the quality of our economics media was extremely low. The quality of our politics from an economics perspective was extremely low. Because of those failures, we were going to see a continuation of fall in living standards. But we were going to see this enormous unmet demand for somebody who was simply talking about and explaining what is actually happening in the economy.

POLITICS NO HELP

Okay. So let's talk about what is happening in economics and politics. Politics is broken. I think you basically have two strands of economic thought and two strands of political thought, which is you have this kind of old school, the kind of dominant economic ideology of the last 30, 40 years, which is really, I think, personified by the current Labour government, which is if we just do everything a little bit more efficiently, things will get better. There's no explicit focus on inequality at all. They often tend to focus on trying to change the system in such a way that it benefits the rich, which means inequality tends to get worse over time, and living standards fall for the majority. While this kind of semi-elite group of politicians and economists themselves are protected. This is really clearly dying. You can see it in the complete collapse in support for almost all of the traditional centre-left and centre-right parties across Europe. Those parties are only really hanging on in the UK and the US under systems which basically make it almost impossible to replace them. You're seeing them. You're seeing even in those countries, those parties become extremely unpopular and die. That creates this massive, massive gap for new ideas.

NEW RIGHT IS NO HELP

So I think we are here in this space now. There is a massive, massive popular demand for new ideas. And really, the political left has almost completely failed to put any new ideas on the table. And that gap is being filled by a new political right, which I think has been very effective in doing things like utilising social media, utilising influencers, especially on the right to basically sell a new political story. And they are, in a sense, taking advantage of the exact same thing which I've just described to you, which is that politics has failed, media has failed. There is massive demand for something which is new because people know that the status quo is failing, and these guys are filling that gap with ‘The problem is foreigners. The problem is immigrants,’ and they will be very successful. You know, they clearly have taken power of the US government. They will increasingly take control of European governments. And they have taken control of many European governments. They are successful, I think, not necessarily because they are good. I think simply because no one else has really tried to occupy that gap.

SCAPEGOAT FOREIGNERS

I think there is massive demand for a massive potential for a simple message delivered to working people. The reason you are getting poor is because your wealth is being squeezed out by the rich and the super rich. They are taking their wealth from you. You are unable to compete with them. The working class is being bankrupted. The middle class is disappearing. Tax wealth not work. I honestly think we have a chance of winning power on that. And I think in this country in the short term, because we have this centrist party in power, our problem is how do we squeeze the centre on that? And I think the power we have is that the centre is number one, phenomenally unpopular, and number two will fail on the economy. So I think we really have power there. The longer term risk is not the centre, because I think the centre will progressively lose popularity, but these new right ideas. The problem we have is that they will always be much, much, much better funded than us. Quite simply because once billionaires realise that the long-term battle is a battle between tax the rich and blame the foreigners, the billionaires will increasingly aggressively fund blame the foreigners as an idea.

IMPOVERISHING THEIR OWN SUPPORTERS

But we do also have a kind of trump card against this new right, which is when it comes to economic policy, almost all of these new right parties want to slash taxes on rich people. And I think that's partly ideological. And I think it's partly because they're funded by billionaires. And, you know, that's what the billionaires want, which means that even in the cases where these guys do take power, and we've seen it in some European countries, but, you know, most obviously we've seen it recently in the US. These guys will also preside over an increase in wealth inequality, which will mean, again, a squeeze of assets away from the middle class, away from the working class, and further falls in ordinary families' living conditions. So these guys, whilst they will be very well-funded and they are very clearly in the ascendancy, they have a really, really serious weakness, which is they are literally impoverishing their own supporters. But this is not just the weakness of the political right. This is also the weakness of the political centre. You know, I put a video out a few weeks ago saying, Trump and Labour will both fail because they will both allow wealth inequality to increase, which means the squeezing out of wealth from ordinary families to the rich. And as much as this movement is small and it's almost completely unfunded, the power that we have is both of our competitors are actively impoverishing their voter base, aggressively impoverishing their voter base. So I think we really, really have a chance by pushing a single message again and again and again, wealth inequality is what is making you poor. The only way to protect your families from poverty is to get the wealth back from the very rich. That means fixing a broken tax system which taxes you at higher rates than them. It means changing the tax system to tax them more, to tax you less. The problem isn't foreigners. Tax wealth, not work.

POLITICAL PREDICTIONS

Now, I want to make it clear, because I'm in the business of predictions, what will happen if we don't get this onto the table. If we don't get this idea onto the table, then we will be left with, essentially the two voices on the table that are already there, which is one this kind of tired old centrism where we just say business, business, business, growth, growth, growth, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship to ourselves again and again a million times, whilst we impoverish the working class. And this new right idea of the problem is immigrants, the problem is foreigners. And because you have only two basic ideas on the table, what you will have is you will get one party in power. So for example, in this country we currently have the boring centrists in power. They will oversee a growth in inequality and they will become very unpopular and they will be replaced by a ‘The problem is foreigners’ party and ‘the problem is foreigners’ party will also watch inequality grow and they will eventually become unpopular and people will vote the boring centrists in again.

And what you will see here is the right wing party ‘the problem is foreigners’ party has space to move into, which is they can say, okay, the reason we failed was because we weren't hard enough on foreigners. They can rebrand and they can come in further to the right. And this is basically exactly what we saw in this country. You know, we had David Cameron, who was this kind of essentially a boring centrist, and he was replaced briefly by Theresa May, but eventually by Boris Johnson, who was essentially, a reflanking to the right of the political right. He really was replacing a boring centrist with ‘the problem is foreigners.’ And when he lost he was replaced by, very briefly Liz Truss, who again was flanked further to the right. And when she immediately crashed the economy, we again got boring centrist Rishi Sunak. And he was replaced by boring centrist Keir Starmer. And what you are seeing now in this country is the growth of Nigel Farage, who is again the political right moving to the right.

And you see the same thing in the US. So in the US you have Donald Trump. He is a ‘the problem is foreigners’ politician. He will fail. He could be followed by another boring centrist, or he could be followed by another new sort of rebranding of the political right, which is "what we need to do is be more extreme on the right. And, billionaires will probably be funding these new right wing parties, because they see them as protecting them from taxing the rich. And what you’ll see is eventually these right wing parties will become more and more extreme, because it's the only way you can keep winning elections, when you keep failing on the economy. What you are being popular for is blaming foreigners and immigrants, and if you're not succeeding on the economy, you can just keep doubling down on that. You have space to the right to go into, whereas the centre kind of have nowhere to go. They'll become increasingly unpopular. So, I think we have to be realistic about this.

That leads you over a period of time from what might may initially have been sensible seeming, ‘the problem is foreigners’ politics closer and closer and closer to real fascism. I mean, that is where it goes. And I'm not saying Farage is a fascist, I'm not saying Trump is a fascist. That is where it will go over time. This is exactly what happened in the early 20th century. That is what will happen if we do not get a new voice on the table. And I think it's worth seeing and thinking about that for a minute, (because I know we live in countries, like here in the UK, but I know we've got a growing US viewership), we live in countries where politics is increasingly factional and people who view themselves as on the left hate people who view themselves as on the right. People who view themselves as on the right, hate people who view themselves as on the left. The way this will go will be a, I was going to say slow, but it could become increasingly quick, slide into fascism, whilst both of you, those of you who view yourselves as on the left and those of you who view yourselves as on the right, will slide further and further and further into poverty. So I think it's really, really important that you recognise neither of these groups are going to give you what you need, which is your houses back and your ability to be able to have a family.

WE CAN WIN

Okay. So this is a fight which I genuinely believe we can win. Not because we are strong and not because we are well-funded, but quite simply because we are competing with two political ideologies which are both bankrupting the public, bankrupting 80%, 90% of the public. And that makes them very weak to a campaign which basically simply reveals the truth of what is happening, which is: the reason you are getting poor is because the rich are eating your cake. They are squeezing you out. They are taking your assets. They're driving a family into poverty. The power that we have is, really we've got two powers. One, we are the only voice which will protect ordinary people from poverty. And two, we have strength in numbers. This is genuinely in the financial interests of the vast majority of people, both on the political left and on the political right. This works for them financially. So I genuinely believe this is a fight we can win. The problem is, we're not fighting it. There's just not enough people getting this idea into the public domain. And I want to talk a little bit about two ideas.

OVERTON WINDOW

How the right wins: One is the Overton window and the other is message discipline. So the Overton window is an idea in, I guess, politics that there's a kind of window of ideas which are considered acceptable, sensible, normal, non-extreme at a given point in time. We've got some videos on this channel. Maybe I'll link one in the description talking about why economists don't talk about wealth inequality. The vast majority of economists are rich people who are not being hurt by this. They are benefiting from it, and they do not think inequality is the problem. That means that at the moment, focusing on and centralising inequality, wealth inequality as the core problem, is not popular with economists, and it's outside the Overton window. This really is the key challenge that we have. And people sometimes ask me, why don't Labour talk to you? Why don't Labour get this idea in their manifesto? Really, it comes down to very simply that answer. This is outside the Overton window. The group of people in this country and in most countries across the world who decide what is acceptable, what is sensible, what is wise, is a very small group of rich and posh people. And they've decided that this idea is simply unacceptable.

MESSAGE PUSH BACK

We need to push back on that. But in order to do that, we need message discipline. So this is the second concept I want to introduce. Message discipline is again another political idea. This is the reason why, when politicians go on TV, they're always unbelievably, painfully boring, which is that they get told by their political party, if this subject comes up, you have to say this. And when they go on the TV, they're not really thinking, what's my opinion on that? What do I think about that? They're thinking, what has my political party told me to say about this issue? And for that reason, when politicians go on TV, they all say the exact same thing again and again and again and again and again and the reason they do this is, this is how you get an idea into the Overton window. If you say an idea again and again and again and again, and it's important that a variety of people say it. And then you guys out there hear 25 different posh looking, smart sounding people saying the same idea ‘the problem is immigrants, the problem is immigrants, the problem is immigrants’ on the TV, then you start to believe that idea. This is how an idea goes from being crazy, wacky, unbelievable, no, no way true, to being common sense. An idea travels from being absolutely outrageous to being commonly accepted as common sense simply by lots of people saying it again and again and again and again and again.

THEY MIGHT REMOVE GARY

Now, I'm not a political party. We don't have a political party. We will and are trying to influence the political parties. What I have is this YouTube channel, and you. And we need to start using this message discipline now. I need to keep saying, and you need to keep saying, and you need to get your friends and your family to keep saying, obviously, the reason why you guys are getting poor is because of growing wealth inequality. And you can choose when you push that message, either to use my name and my videos or not. So you can go to your friends and family and say, hey, look, there's this guy, Garys Economics, I think he's explained it really, really well. I think if you watch his videos, it's really compelling that actually the reason for growing poverty is inequality. I think it's important that you, to stress this, you increasingly say it's obviously true, because it is obviously true. Obviously, you cannot squeeze all of the wealth out of the middle class and not expect poverty. You cannot concentrate the wealth into an unbelievably small group of people and not expect poverty. These things are obviously true, and we need to make it understood that they're obviously true by saying them again and again and again and again. And when I say you can use this channel or not use this channel, what I mean is, if you think it's the best way to convince someone to send that podcast or to send them to our Understanding the Economy series, do that. But I think one weakness that we have, one weakness that I have is that this channel is called Garys Economics. The logo is like my face and it's become very attached to my personal brand. It's very, very important that these ideas are not 100% attached to ‘these are Gary Stephenson's ideas’, because it's easy to take out one guy, basically, I know how this is going to work. If this keeps growing at the way... at the rate that it’s growing, I will get attacked more and more and more and more and more by the press, by the media. And eventually these guys will land the punch that's going to land, and I will probably be gone, and I understand that's how it works. It's important that rather than just saying “Go watch Garys Economics”, that you start understanding these ideas yourself and talking about them as your ideas, as ideas that are obviously true, that you understand it's really, really important that we have a diversity of voices saying this and that it's not just me, it's not just me.

GET THE MESSAGE OUT

And that brings me to another weakness that we have, which is, we need broader buy in from powerful spaces. So what I mean when I say that is, I decided very consciously to move to a YouTube channel as opposed to writing for The Guardian, for example, because I felt that it would be meaningful to working class people to see and hear somebody from a working class background speaking about the economy. And I think that is one of the reasons why this channel has been popular. I think that's one of the reasons why the book is popular, because working class people really want to see somebody from the same place as them, speaking about the economy. That makes me a powerful communicator to ordinary people, to the working class. But it really, really hurts me when I'm trying to communicate to people in positions of power. So when I say that, I mean high level politicians or really any politicians, people in the media, high level economists, central bankers, people in think tanks, people in the civil service. There's a relatively small group of people who control the levers of power. And almost all of them are rich, posh people that come from rich, posh schools. And they don't like me. They don't like the way that I look. They don't like the way that I sound. They don't like the way that I come out of nowhere having made a ton of money and say, you guys are all idiots, you guys are all wrong. And that's very understandable. That's very, very understandable. So we need, and what I need you to do, if you can, is to act as a go-between. Basically, you act on two levels. Which is number one, you really make this common sense wisdom on the streets amongst ordinary British men and women or American men and women, if that's where you are. Get everybody to understand it. But if you are able to get into positions of power or influence people in positions of power, politicians, media, influencers, celebrities, (love to get Carol Vorderman on the channel if you're interested), civil service, academics, if you can get into these spaces, or influence these spaces, especially if you sound less working class than me, I need people like you to act as go-betweens and don't go in there and say, “Oh, Garys Economics is really smart and you guys are idiots.” Go in there and speak in your posh voice and say, hey, I think poverty could be caused by inequality. We need academics saying it. We need people on the political left saying it. We need people like these think tanks saying it. We really, really, really need more diversity of voice.

SUCCESS IS SCARY

We are all part of this conversation. So I need you to boost the ideas, boost the videos, boost the channels, but also start trying to spread them, trying to understand myself. I want to see academics at Oxford or at Harvard or at Cambridge or LSE writing papers saying we think the reason for growing poverty is growing inequality. I need other people saying it, other people saying it, with voices like that, it can't just be me. And if we do that, I think we can win. I think we can win. I've been doing this for a long time, and I never expected it to kind of grow at this unbelievable pace that it is growing. It's scary, quite scary for me, to be honest, to see the growth on the channel and the book's been number one for six weeks now and I get recognised all the time. It's scary and it's weird. But basically I was always convinced that a simple true message, which could continually be reproving by predicting better than the mainstream media, predicting better than the mainstream politicians, would be believed by the public, and I think it's starting to be proven to be true.

CONVERT BOTH PARTIES

So my message to you guys is get on board, start singing from the same hymn sheet. Get some message discipline. If you're out there in the political left, ask your political party you’re associated with or your think tank you're in, or the groups you're associated in, why are we not talking about inequality as the cause for poverty? Why are we not saying that? If you're on the political right, if you’re a member of the Conservative Party, if you're a Reform voter, ask them, why are they not saying that? You know, this is not a left or right issue. This is a poverty issue. This is going to happen in every country. And it doesn't matter who's in charge. Both Donald Trump and Labour are presiding over increasing inequality. You know, call in to LBC, ask them, you know why you're not talking about inequality. Inequality is blowing up. Stock markets are all-time highs. The rich are richer than they've ever been. And yet ordinary families can't turn the heating on. make it common sense. Of course it's inequality. Of course it's inequality. Say it again and again. Share it. Share it with your friends. Share it with your family. Share it with anyone who has any position of power. You know, call into the call-in shows. Make this the new common sense.

What you can do: And I guess this brings me to the final point, which is a lot of people want concrete actions. They say to me, “What can I do, Gary? What can I do? You freaked me out. You scared me. What can I do?” And I want to finish this video by trying my best to give, like a really clear answer to that question of what can you do? The first thing I want you to do, is take a big breath in, and a big breath out and recognise this economic situation is going to get worse. It is an economic situation that is going to get worse. This situation of dislike of immigrants, dislike of foreigners is also a situation that is going to get worse. Both of those things are going to affect different people differently. if you are not the poorest, think about how that's going to affect people poorer than you. If you are not on the sharp end of the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner hatred, think about how it's going to affect people who are. The reason I say those things is twofold. The first one is, I need you to be ready emotionally for the difficult and divisive times that are coming, because if you are angry, if you are frightened, if you are scared, I can't do nothing with you. I can't do nothing with you.

DIVIDING US

I want to tell another quick story from when I went on Piers Morgan a few weeks ago. So when I went on, Piers was running like quite late. Like an hour, maybe like an hour, 20 minutes late, which meant I had to sit in the green room with Dave Rubin and his entourage for an hour and 20 minutes. They're very nice. And while we were in the green room, we could see on a big TV the interviews that Piers Morgan was doing. And, I don't watch Piers Morgan's channel normally, but I watched these about an hour of interviews. I think it was two interviews before I went on, and I could see what they were doing, right? They have their left-wing head and they have their right-wing head. And both the interviews before mine, they had the left-wing heads were all black and the right-wing heads were all white. And they tried to say things to make that left-wing head angry, to make them, to make them lose their temper. When I was on, I think there was a transsexual, who they were trying to get her angry about the Olympics or something, just trying to get her to say something outrageous, tried to get her to lose her temper. Then they looked at the audience. They looked at the audience and say, look, this is what those people are like. And what they're trying to do is cause division. They're trying to cause division. They're trying to make you hate each other. They're trying to make you angry. They're trying to make you think those guys out there are your enemy. And when I say that, I'm not just talking to the political right, I'm talking to the political left as well. They want you to hate each other. They want you to be angry. Listen, here in the UK, in the US, all over the world, the working class is multiracial, it's multi-ethnic, it includes men and women includes people who own house, people who don't own houses. If you hate each other, if the men hate the women and the women hate the men, and the white people hate the non-white people and the not-white people hate the white people, I can't do nothing with you. We will never be able to stand together. We will never be able to fight. We'll never be able to win. The power that we have is that there's more of us. That is a power we only use if we fight together. We cannot afford to allow ourselves to be frightened, to be scared, or to hate each other.

NOT A QUICK FIX

The second thing is, I need you guys to be prepared for a long fight. We don't win this tomorrow, we don't win it the next day, we don't win this next week, we don't win this next year. Okay? Your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents fought for generations for the kind of ability you have to own assets and that your parents had to own assets. This is not a fight we win quickly. The reason that I say that is that I know people want me to arrange some kind of march on Parliament. We talk about this a lot. I don't want to get you guys to go crazy, email your MP every day, march on Parliament, use all your energy, and then be a situation where we're not in a position to get anything. I don't want you guys to be disappointed. This is a long fight. You need to conserve your energy for a marathon, not a sprint. Okay? We build, we build, we build, we build, we build, we build, and then we go together and we win.

When we have enough power, we can win the argument. We are fighting against two political ideologies, which will definitely drive your family and your kids' families into poverty. They've got nothing to offer you. The argument is there, the argument is simple. We need to get wealth back into the hands of ordinary families. That means taxing working people less and rich people more. Tax wealth, not work, protect ordinary families, make it common sense. Tell your friends. Tell your families. Build the movement. Support other people who are saying the same things. Be that person yourself. We need more voices singing off the same hymn sheet. We can win this argument. Win the argument, you get the power, you change the tax system and then you get your assets back. And that is how we stop the economy from collapsing. Good luck. Thank you. Send it to your mum. Send to your friends, to your family.

AI ON 20TH CENTURY U.S. WEALTH TAX HISTORY

For the history of high tax rates on the wealthy in the U.S., here's a breakdown:

1. First High Tax Rate: The federal income tax was introduced in 1913, with a top marginal rate of 7% on incomes over $500,000 (equivalent to about $14 million today). However, during World War I, the top rate skyrocketed to 77% in 1918 for incomes above $1 million (around $20 million today).

2. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), tax rates on the wealthy increased significantly as part of his New Deal policies to address the Great Depression and fund government programs:

   1. Revenue Act of 1932: Before FDR took office, the top marginal tax rate was raised from 25% to 63% under President Hoover. FDR inherited this rate when he became president in 1933.

   2. Revenue Act of 1935 ("Wealth Tax"): This act introduced a top marginal tax rate of 75% on incomes over $1 million (equivalent to about $20 million today). It was designed to target the wealthiest Americans and redistribute wealth during the economic crisis.

   3. Revenue Act of 1940 and 1942: During World War II, tax rates were further increased to fund the war effort. By 1944, the top marginal tax rate reached 94% on incomes over $200,000 (around $3 million today).

   These high tax rates on the wealthy persisted through the 1940s and 1950s, with the top rate remaining above 90% until the early 1960s.

3. High Income Levels Taxed in the 1960s: By the 1960s, the top marginal tax rate was 91%, applying to incomes over $200,000 for single filers and $400,000 for married couples (equivalent to approximately $1.5 million and $3 million today, respectively).

4. Progression Through the 1960s: The 91% top rate persisted through the early 1960s. However, under President John F. Kennedy, significant tax reforms were proposed, and by 1964, the top rate was reduced to 70% as part of the Revenue Act of 1964 and remained at that level throughout the 1970s. This rate applied to incomes over $200,000, which is roughly $1 million in today's dollars.

5. When the High Rate Went Down: The dramatic reduction in top tax rates occurred during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 lowered the top rate to 50%. By 1981, the top rate was reduced to 50%, applying to incomes over $215,400 (around $700,000 today). By 1986, the Tax Reform Act further reduced the top rate to 28%, applying to incomes over $29,750 (approximately $80,000 today).

1 https://taxfoundation.org/blog/some-historical-tax-stats/
2 https://gilbertwealth.com/historic-tax-rates/
3 https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/gop-tax-rate-cut-wealthy/

20TH CENTURY U.K. WEALTH TAX HISTORY

In the UK during the 20th century, the minimum incomes subject to the highest tax rates varied over time. Before World War II, the tax rates and thresholds for the wealthy in the UK were significantly different:

1. Early 20th Century: Income tax was relatively low. For example, in 1914, the top income tax rate was 6%, applied to incomes over £3,000 annually (equivalent to £350,000 today = $430,000).

2. World War I: Tax rates increased dramatically to fund the war effort. By 1918, the top income tax rate had risen to 30%, applying to incomes over £2,500 annually (worth £150,000 today = $185,000).

3. Interwar Period: During the 1920s and 1930s, the top income tax rate fluctuated but remained relatively high compared to pre-war levels. For instance, in 1939, the top rate was 37.5%, applied to incomes over £5,000 annually (worth £350,000 today = $430,000).

4. World War II Era: By the 1940s, the top tax rate of 97.5% applied to incomes over £20,000 annually, which was an exceptionally high threshold at the time. Adjusted for inflation, this would be equivalent to £1.2 million today = $1.5 million.

5. 1950s and 1960s: The top marginal tax rate of 90% or more was levied on incomes exceeding £15,000 to £20,000 annually (worth £500,000–£700,000 today = $615,000–$860,000).

6. 1970s: The marginal tax rate of 83% on earned income and 98% on unearned income applied to incomes above £20,000 annually (worth £250,000–£300,000 today = $310,000–$370,000.)

These thresholds and rates reflect the economic and political priorities of the time, including funding wars and addressing income inequality. These thresholds were set to target the wealthiest individuals, reflecting the progressive tax policies of the time.

DID 20TH CENTURY WEALTH TAXES IMPROVE LOWER CLASSES?

During peacetime, high wealth taxes were often used to fund government programs that indirectly benefited lower-income groups, though the direct redistribution of wealth was less common. For example:

1. Social Programs: In many cases, revenue from wealth taxes supported social welfare programs, public education, healthcare, and infrastructure development. These programs aimed to improve living standards for the broader population, including the lower classes.

2. Progressive Taxation Goals: The intent behind high wealth taxes was often to reduce income inequality by redistributing resources through public services rather than direct cash transfers.

3. Challenges in Redistribution: While the wealthy were taxed heavily, the effectiveness of redistribution depended on how governments allocated the revenue. In some cases, administrative inefficiencies or political priorities limited the impact on lower-income groups.

GARY’S ERROR

Gary says governments have negative wealth, meaning debts. But the U.S. and U.K. have monetary sovereignty, so they can always print any money they need. And, contrary to the hype, printing money has little effect on inflation, as shown on Rodger Mitchell’s website, https://MythFighter.com. So any country with monetary sovereignty, esp. the U.S. since the dollar is a global currency, can give stimulus checks to the lower & middle classes in order to reduce wealth inequality quicker. Also, every country has the right to declare itself monetarily sovereign. Debt is a problem for those without monetary sovereignty, but not us.

1. Countries with Full Monetary Sovereignty:

   • Nations like the United States, Japan, and United Kingdom have full control over their currencies (e.g., the US Dollar, Japanese Yen, and British Pound) and monetary policies through their central banks.

2. Countries with Limited Monetary Sovereignty:

   • Members of the Eurozone (e.g., Germany, France, Italy) have ceded much of their monetary sovereignty to the European Central Bank, which manages the Euro.

3. Countries Using Foreign Currencies:

   • Some nations, like Ecuador and El Salvador, use the US Dollar as their official currency, which limits their monetary sovereignty.

4. Countries in Currency Unions:

   Nations in currency unions, such as those using the West African CFA Franc, share monetary policy control with a central authority, reducing individual sovereignty.

5. China: Maintains strong monetary sovereignty by controlling the Renminbi through the People's Bank of China, despite external pressures from global trade.

6. Russia: Exercises monetary sovereignty with the Ruble and pursues "dedollarization" to reduce reliance on the US Dollar.

7. India: Possesses significant monetary sovereignty with the Rupee, though it faces some constraints due to reliance on foreign capital.

VIEWER COMMENTS

5,247 Comments

@FarmerGwyn

When we talk about taxing the wealthy, a lot of middle income people think it's them, they don't realise how wealthy the people above them are.

@ChingaLaMigra-StayMad

I heard someone yell "tax wealth not work" at a town hall with Tim Walz recently and everyone went wild. These ideas are spreading, and I'm so glad.

@andicurran4299

"Tax Wealth, Not Work" is a great slogan to share, this was really encouraging, thanks Gary

@LauraCasey-t9v

I am an American listening to many of your videos. “Tax wealth, not work” will be my sign next time I march! Thank you!

@michaelcoyle9262

When I first subscribed you were on about 20k subscribers now it’s closing in on a million. People are listening Gary thanks for the hard work!

@pippo1999

Here from Spain! We really need to be able to frame this as a universal message - “Tax wealth, not work”. We are together into this, lots of courage to you all!

@optiontrader4512

“Inequality Kills”

“Tax Wealth not Work”

“ 10% controls 90% Wealth and pays 5% Taxes. “

@darkhorsedan

"Tax wealth not work" is a slogan that you should be using as often as possible.

I think branding is important when it comes to spreading awareness. Get it on t-shirts, social media posts etc

@charlesedward9357

From a member of the middle class here. UK Private school, Oxford, Medicine...I do NOT find you offensive in anyway. Inequality is omnipresent throughout human history. You speak sense and it is very disappointing that those humans who have so much are so mean and divisive.

@adamfeinberg7971

Gary I'm a rich guy in the USA

But enough is enough and your right and you are inspiring

@GCaldwell-g6d

You've got my vote, and it's NOT because I'm poor; I'm comfortably wealthy.

Sharing is caring, full stop.

@duncanp3442

45min episode with detailed steps of how to combat the wealth inequality? You’re spoiling us Gary top tier content

@VelcroPoodle

"Eventually they'll throw a punch that lands, and I'm gone." Wow. I don't think I've ever heard someone speak with such realism and clarity. Well done!

@HydrogenAlpha

I'm an NHS {UK's National Health Service} consultant and I can definitely get on board with this. Tax wealth, not work.

@Sythemn

Dude, I hope you go down in history for your work here. Thank you for caring enough about others to spread this message.

@greenfordbrian9761

I was brought up in the fifties, born in 1941, and studied economics in the sixtuies and seventies. We need to look at what keynes was teaching eather than the failed methods of friedman and Hayek. I was in academia for thirty years teaching risk management. The economics dept was really close minded. I am now 84 but i preach yours and keynes ideas. I lived through the success of the fifties and sixties and seventies and the failures after thatcher. With regard to writing papers the difficulty is acceptance by the vetters of all papers. Of course inequality is an issue and the tax system needs reviewing. Well done for what you are doing as a fellow person from Milford.

@danielcpt3819

This channel ia still criminally under subscribed. It should have 20 million plus subs.

@aledclifford1618

Absolutely brilliant. Sensible and non divisive. Not being smug just being calm and direct. Love it

@andrewjones7979

Man is destroying, gained 200k subs since a few weeks back 💪keep up the good work, we need you!

@Hookeslaw

Loved the book. Thanks for not sitting on a beach being bored.

@NicolaDietrich

By the way I'm a teacher and when I was teaching A Christmas Carol I talked about the lack of economic equality and how economic inequality caused misery in Victorian times. I got that phrase from you. The majority of students repeated it in their essays.

@crb757

1. The reason for growing poverty is growing inequality

2. Tax wealth, not work

Thank you.

@hilltribelife3843

Faiza Shaheen spoke about poverty and wealth inequality and wealth tax on Question Time recently . The other panelists weren’t particularly bothered and poo pooed the idea of taxing wealth with the old line of studies show that it’s impossible to tax the wealthy.

I would get Faiza Shaheen on Gary!! She seems to genuinely care and ran as an independent candidate so she’s not in the pockets of the wealthy. Starmer kicked her out of the labour party for not towing the party line. A good person to speak to.

Thanks for your work. You give me some hope.

@Klerks47

Gary I have been watching your blogs for some time. This is in my opinion your most inspiring one. I am a 77 year old middle class retiree and have been directing every one I know to your videos. You are right about the dangers of this by associating you as the message rather spreading the concept that wealth inequality is the root cause of what is happening in society. I admire your honesty, passion and commitment and will try in the years that I have left to become a foot soldier in this struggle. Keep the faith, you are succeeding and I hope that my text will give you a little more confidence that you’re on the right path.

Ron Klerks - King’s Lynn - Norfolk

@joemoore5177

"Tax wealth not work" is a great slogan. I admire your work and analysis of the problem. face-turquoise-covering-eyes

@morenotheartist

Gary is a economist for the 99 percent all other economists are fighting for the billionaires

@stevep4131

16 hours ago

I wrote to my local MP asking for the tax system to be changed to reduce inequality. He replied that

"The UK system is designed to ensure, among other things, that the richest in our society pay their fair share on their wealth and assets...."

I responded saying that it obviously is not enough to reduce inequality since inequality has been growing rapidly in recent years. No further replies from (Conservative) MP (in very safe seat).

Democracy in action?

@glennewton7034

I honestly hate the argument that “we can't TAX the rich, they will all leave.” forget the fact that they need to sell their assets to leave, but the UK has a population of over 67,500,000 people, there will always be rich people making their money from the people of this country.

@vlads.

The best way I've found to conceptualise how much billionaires have is - If you spent £1 every second: £1 million runs out in 12 days, £1 billion runs out in 32 years.

@luciantesla6224

Gary, the look in your face when you said "it takes us closer and closer to fascism", was both upsetting and reassuring to me. I recognise that face, and i recognise the signs. Let that frustration fuel you, and know that because of you many lonely people feel emboldened. Hearing your voice, explaining so eloquently what we have all been feeling, does not exacerbate my dread. It strengthens my convictions. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King Jr. You are a good man.

@mancavefire

Gary, the fact you've not already been contacted by the Labour government to be a strategic advisor to the Chancellor is an example of how far the government needs to move to be considered "forward thinking". Perhaps you already have, the velocity you've approached 1m subscribers since you returned from abroad should tell them everything they need to know.