To recommend Gary Stevenson's youtube channel?

[Justputtingthisoutthere]

Hope this is OK?

Reading discussions about how much tax we pay versus the poor value for money in services they buy has prompted me to post.

I stumbled across GS, on Facebook I think, a couple of weeks ago and in my opinion he deserves a wide platform.

I admit to being very ignorant about economics, and have learned a lot from him. He's from a working-class background, studied at LSE, became a v.successful trader, is now a multi-millionaire, and is advocating for higher taxes for the super-rich, with the aim being to inform the public and push for policy change.

I won't post a link in case it's not allowed, but do Google him if you're interested.

[title edited at OP's request]

I’m a massive fan of his! He talks so much sense and is trying hard to build a movement. Tax wealth not work message is compelling.

I love his podcast - highly recommend

Yes, he needs to inspire hope not despair.

But equally I think change comes when people feel angry. Not so angry that they want to smash things up, but angry enough to want to push, and keep pushing.

He has given a solution, as have the Equality Trust, as have other groups.

Tax the rich. Reduce the emphasis on capital that anyone who has followed history and economics for the last 20 years knows has been going on. Anyone remember that seminal work ‘Capital’ by Piketty? These things are known. It’s a wonder I have any teeth left the way I grind them in frustration. People with knowledge have been putting this knowledge out there for years. But in an age of computers knowledge does not have a premium and can be safely ignored, and the people who own it can be forced out in favour of social politics. Just as it was in Jane Austen’s day.

The one thing I wonder about with Gary Stephenson is his apparent innocence of power struggles and history - I can perhaps forgive him that last. Perhaps he merely had to wait until he had enough money to not easily be shut up. God knows it’s something I sometimes wish I’d pursued, but he knows nothing - and no doubt cares less - about how to navigate this world as someone from a poor background and who is female.

You want hope? It’s all happened before. There is nothing new under the sun. The rich were taxed and the public sector was built after world war 1 in our own age, in this geographically continuous country, on British soil. Trump actually gives us an opportunity to reconsider directions. But there have been many such opportunities over the last 20 years, after 2008, after the Brexit vote, after Covid - all times that saw powerful calls for change. If you want another sort of motivation, call for change looking at the lawlessness and increase in misogyny and violence, or looking at AI. But it’ll be forgotten tomorrow as soon as someone waves a new toy under the noses of the only people who have real power for change - the inheriting middle classes.

I am quite ashamed to admit that I am very ignorant about a lot of things. I seem to only just be emerging from the last 20 years of heads-down, holding it all together, keeping the cups spinning of raising children while working where I was often just too tired to think about much.

So this has piqued my curiosity: the only people who have real power for change - the inheriting middle classes.

Is this true?

the only people who have real power for change - the inheriting middle classes.

Why would that be true?

That's what I'm curious to find out...

I’ve seen brief snippets from him a couple of times and thought I quite liked him. But then I watched the whole podcast of him with Steven Bartlett and Daniel Priestley and when someone knowledgeable on the same subject matter (Daniel Priestley) really dug into the detail with him, he didn’t manage to hold his own at all. Quite a lot of the subject matter overlapped with my areas of professional expertise and he was making some pretty fundamental errors that showed a complete lack of real understanding.

And the number of times he felt the need to repeat that he was a multi-millionaire (sat with 2 guys who were clearly in a completely different league of wealth to him) became really cringey after a while.

His claims to have been the most successful trader at Citibank have I think been widely discredited by his peers at the time. And in one of the interviews I saw recently he was very coy when asked directly to confirm his level of earnings/wealth so when he claims to be a multi-millionaire, I suspect his net worth is closer to £2m than £10m. Still pretty successful but that would only put him in the 96th percentile so not quite as exceptional as he wokld lead us to believe.

So all in all I think he’s a bit of a Walter Mitty.

The guy is a complete fantasist. He was no where near the ‘top trader globally’ in 2011. He wasn’t even the top trader on his own desk at Citi (and he had a very easy book in short term EUR with huge flow). He was no where near the top trader at Citi across all desks - the credit traders were making c.$100m a year in income (for the bank) at the time and FX traders at other banks were definitely making more than $35m income a year. I know this because I worked in FX sales at a well known global bank in 2011 and married to one of the FX traders.

He’s a failed trader who only lasted 7 years before burning out, now making a career as a you tuber. His idea to ‘tax the rich’ is popular, but no wealth tax has ever worked. He sat there on QT and announced ‘we’ve had one before, we can do it again’ is simply untrue. We’ve never had a wealth tax in the UK. If you actually dig down into what he’s saying, there is no substance at all. Fair play to him getting people interested in economics and engaging in debate - but he’s absolutely not a serious economist.

Honestly who cares if he wasn't the top trader? He was obviously successful and saying he was the "best" maybe makes more people listen and that's good enough for me.
And taxing wealth IS the only way to make to stop society ending up with a few ridiculously wealthy people owning everything and the rest of us loving as peasants and servants eventually.

The inheriting middle classes have economic power and agency. Simple as that. No one cares what a working class kid growing up to be forced into private rentals thinks. The well off have choices and options. There are very few paths by which poor people can have any real impact for change, fewer now than there have been for a while. It’s why they are so easily pushed out and why their well-being is not factored into the grand economic plans of our time. To paraphrase innumerable national trust posters in Victorian properties, the well off are quite happy to see those with no choices pushed into destitution and fewer and fewer life choices. I mention those posters because, again, this is known. The class system and few practical choices for poorer people is the basis of British economic life. It’s only when a poor person starts to tell a well off person that they have always benefitted from the system that there is a pushback, and bloody hell isn’t there a pushback. No doubt Gary knows of that too.

“, but no wealth tax has ever worked. ”

Yes it did. After world war 1, when the stately homes were taxed, largely out of existence, and the public sector was built. What you mean is that it didn’t work well for the rich elite who never seem to feel secure without 20 superyachts and 5 stately homes paid for by an army of riff raff they can shove into tunnels and ‘servants corridors’. Or into distant slums. This is what I was talking about when asking whether Gary was really as innocent of power plays and groups as he appeared. That is what economics is about primarily - power.

Do you not think it undermines his credibility somewhat if he can’t even tell the truth about his own achievements?

He is anti crypto though but otherwise quite interesting.

I honestly believe that anyone with a work ethic is capable of making something of themselves, irrespective of their background.

What controls the U.K. is the media.
Aided by an uneducated electorate who fall for the bs.

The Govs have always pandered to shock headlines and sob stories hence we are subsidising private landlords , ‘refugees’ are arriving daily until NOW …. when Labour have not folded on the elderly freezing in their homes and they have made a tiny start on our welfare benefits.I suppose there is hope.

I don’t think the other two came up with any solutions did they? I might have missed some bits. At least he was demanding change.

i don’t disagree. I don’t particularly recollect them making viable alternative suggestions either. But that wasn’t really my point. My point was that when Gary debated with someone who knew their stuff, he crumbled.

How are we subsidising private landlords?

Housing benefit

Yes. Gary is a grifter who is promoting an agenda he is paid to promote after failing in banking. He doesn’t have any special insight. He’s just being paid to tell some people what they want to hear and dressing it up as some sort of “truth” or easy solution.

The uneducated fall for “Gary the economist”s nonsense. It’s not something anyone who knows what they’re talking about takes seriously

That’s a payment for a service. It’s usually less to pay private landlords than to pay social housing once you take into account block grants and employee costs, etc

That’s what he does. Same nonsense