Wealth Inequality

[Neapolitanicecream]

Gary Stevenson (added byMNHQ) - just been reading his book and Wow. He’s explained what I’ve experienced and seen happening before our eyes and I think I’ve just woken up to a clearer understanding of how the rich are getting richer in every way. What is the future? For all our children?

Or he’s someone who has experience of both poverty and being inside the city trading arena and speaks the basic truth, which is, and always has been, the greedy heartless bastards take, take, take and do anything to keep that status quo.

@CroftonWillow So, if he seems very reasonable to most of us, what do you think is the truth about the finance sector and the motives of its participants that you know and we don't?

We are also sold the ‘trickle down economics’ rubbish too. The more money the wealthy make, the better off we will be. It’s been shown not to work like that. Love him or loathe him, Jeremy Corbyn’s policy of companies only allowed to pay their highest earners a certain multiple of their bottom earners is such a good one. Admiral have a policy like that. It’s a no brainer. Everyone from the bottom up is then completely invested in making the company more profitable as everyone benefits.

His youtube channel is 'Gary's Economics' and his book, 'The trading game' is all about how he got into and (eventually) got out of trading.

The book was a surprise - it's very much a personal story that is quite eye opening as to the lifestyle and 'hard work' of trading

I think he explains concepts clearly so that a wide range of people can understand what's going on.

I don't care how much Rishi Sunak has.. I want a pm up to the job. Whoever his successor is won't necessarily have the required skills to run the country just because he/she is not wealthy.

He doesn’t have the necessary skills either. And I don’t care if he’s wealthy or not as long as he pays his fair share of tax and works VERY hard to truly understand his privilege and the lived experience of most people and the struggles they face.

No it really wouldn’t matter if the extremely rich left.
They do not contribute enough to be of detriment.
I heard the CEO of one of the energy companies asked what would happen if the company had to pay more tax.
His response: nothing. Makes complete sense. If you earn say 1 billion pounds profit a year, you are not going to cease trading if you pay a bit more tax are you?
If the wealth was shared more, those who are poorer have a higher propensity to spend. This benefits the economy.
The very rich do not spend their money in the same way.
Put very simply: there is only so much food you can buy for example. The rich might buy up more housing. This is bad for the general population. It increases the cost of housing to untenable levels like we are seeing now.

Agree with @coupdetonnerre that our politicians are career politicians and don't represent us. The explanation Gary gave of how very rich Sunak was was eye opening to me, it's worth a listen as it highlights that very point, but the argument is that Sunak goes beyond career politician motivation. The thesis is that because he is in the super rich camp he will act in the interests of that group.

We deserve better.

"The Rich" are people who have an amount of money beyond a level of your personal choosing. That's the problem with all these arguments.

Also, you need to read the books that put the opposing points of view. It's easy to be misled by people when you don't know anything about the underlying subject.

@CranfordScones happy to read around, do you have some suggestions?

A lot of people have known this for a very long time. Private schools and institutions like Oxbridge are said to be the cause for perpetuating reinforcing the reproduction of the ruling class, more specifically its how rich your parents are. The people in power know this.

I'm explaining it in a very simplified way but he basically says you can only get very rich if you have rich parents, because house prices keep rising, and its hard to make tonnes of money on the stock market speculatively unless you are a genius basically, you needed to have started from wealth. I don't know if he teaches it elsewhere but ordinary people have made money from stocks and shares but its not been a quick thing. It was through investing over time in global index tracker funds which have an average 10ish% increase in last 30 years. Once you hit 100k the compound interest would be exponential, plus by cutting expenditure, more would be invested. It's not get rich quick though.

He also says assets (investments in stocks and shares) outstrip property ownership as the route to wealth. I don't quite understand the interaction but he seems to explain that its because an asset economy (which we are moving to because of wealth inequality) drives house prices up so they keep becoming harder to reach. He says tax the rich and change the system.

I've only watched a couple of his videos , so I don't know if he talks about this, but I think we need to change the aspiration (glamorising on Instagram doesn't help) of being super rich.

In reality you don't need that much money to have a great life, you need enough money that you don't have to work and can spend your time freely on what you want.

If you are my generation (I am in my 40s) and not super rich then you can still improve your finances and be able to retire comfortably. And if you are young now, you can retire comfortably and have enough wealth to pass down so your kids are comfortable if you adopt a savings habit and invest and don't worry about the biggest house or ostentatious wealth.

I'm doing a really good free course by Rebel Finance School which teaches some of this.

I agree tax the rich, but also think ultimately we need to be working towards being able to guarantee everyone in the world a basic decent living standard.

I don’t disagree, but it’s very easy to imagine an abundance for all based on taxing the rich more but in reality, there is not that much money to be had every extra billion you raise is basically £14 each per capita. So let’s say you were able to raise £10 billion from wealth taxes (which would be a hard slog tbh - there are not that many super rich) it would be £140 per person as a one off spend!

@BitsNBibs40s signed up for that course thank you !
definitely feel that it’s harder to make wealth now I’m late 50s and did well with BTL but now impossible for young people to do that and I’m selling up but not knowing what to do with cash. I love what I do work wise I’m a clearance dealer - can’t see me stopping that anytime

I was listening to the podcast ' when it hits the fan' and they were talking about Keir Starmer. They were talking about people laughing when he says his dad was a tool maker, and how he got upset by it. One of them ( I think David Yelland) pointed out that it's probably because they just don't believe it's possible that someone from a working class background can become Prime Minister, because social mobility has become absolutely stagnant over the last few years, with wealth being concentrated on a few people who do not want to invest in staff training or young people before shareholders. Its quite sad children now in this country that children from humble backgrounds will probably not have the chances they had 50 years ago.

They do not contribute enough to be of detriment
Of course they do.

I've just watched open-minded one video of Gary and I'm not impressed at all. He speaks well in a way that reaches the average person, but in a 10 minutes video, he just repeats the same thing over and over for at least 7 minutes of it.

Then, his solution: make the super reach sell their assets. Great.....but who can buy these assets but....the super rich!

No offense to him but does he really believe that he is the first to come up with his very simple solutions?

Here is the link for anyone interested:

https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/

Really? I've just tried to survive one of his YouTube videos called The Changing Shape of Great Britain and it was dreadful.

he said in 11 mins what he could have said in 1 minute, just rambled on and repeated the same point 4 times, and he wouldn't stop wiping his nose and fiddling with his face. Urgh!

not my cup of tea at all. I think he's trying to be Martin Lewis but fails miserably.