Long Term Strategy for Economic Change

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So trick sound check. One two one two one two Sounds good. Whatever you ready? Alright, we're gonna do a video about the election. To be honest, I didn't really want to do a video about the election because the election is very often so much bullshit we get everybody very very excited and then uh nothing changes and people get quite depressed um as you know this channel is an economics channel and we have a very clear message and a very clear idea on this channel, which is that inequality, specifically inequality of wealth, is growing and growing, that is causing falls in living standards for ordinary families, which you can see and it's gonna get worse and worse and we need to change that . Uh people often ask me why don't you get into politics? And uh when people say that to me, I always say the same thing which is which is I'm in politics. I'm in politics. Um I often ask them, you know, you know, Rupert Murdoch, you know, is he in politics? So Rupert Murdoch for people who you don't know, he owns, he's a very, very, very wealthy Australian who owns a lot of newspapers and a lot of TV channels here in the UK, also in Australia, I think in the US as well, all across the world. And he basically tries to convince people to hate foreigners and not tax rich people and it's something he's been very successful at. And um he controls a lot of politicians, and politicians do what he he says because he controls what people think and who people vote for . So the first thing to say is we're gonna get a new prime minister early next month. Uh Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, has called an election. He will lose that election, and Keir Starmer, the head of the Labour Party, will become Prime Minister on July 4th. A lot of people will be very excited about that. That's understandable. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years now. I was a very young man when they took power. They've overseen an enormous increase in inequality, they've overseen an enormous increase in poverty, they've overseen an enormous fall in living standards. In many cases, most of the senior politicians, conservative politicians are very, very wealthy people from very very wealthy backgrounds. In particular, Rishi Sunak is an extremely wealthy man from an extremely wealthy family. I've been criticizing him ever since he became chan cellor because he has consistently brought in policies which have enriched the richest, that have increased inequality and in my opinion have been the source of falling living standards in this country . So you might think I would be absolutely delighted at the fact that the Conservatives are going to be voted out. There's a good chance they will not only be voted out but that they will lose very badly, that they will lose a lot of seats, that a lot of famous MPs will lose their seats and a lot of people on the left are understandably very excited about that and you know I would like to be excited about it as well you know don't get me wrong I I will probably enjoy watching Rishi Sunak lose and it would be nice if if some big conservative MPs who have consistently opposed tax es on the rich lose their seats. But it's very hard for me to be excited because I don't think we will see any improvements in living standards. And I think that there's there's a tendency, an understandable tendency to see politics as a bit like football. You know, I support this political team, you support that political team, I want your political team to lose I want my political team to win but my background is not politics my background is economics and my background is a trader and what I am worried about is the continual collapse in living standards. I don't think we will change that unless we do something about inequality. Um we need to stop it from rising. It is rising very quickly. If we don't take action on that, living standards will continue to fall and my honest opinion unfortunately is that the new government, the new Labour government, will not take action on that. They will not stop inequality from rising. They will not stop living standards from falling. So it's really difficult for me to be excited about the election . So the first message I want to put across is don't get too excit ed. There's gonna be a lot. I say that I think a lot of people won't be that excited anyway because I think people won't have high expectations. There'll be a lot of political coverage on the news. Um the Conservatives will lose, they'll probably lose by quite a lot. We'll get a Labour government . Don't raise your hopes too much. Because I worry when we see things like this , everybody gets very excited, everybody hopes for more, everybody expects change, and then when change doesn't come, people become this people become disappointed, people become despondent, people become depressed, and people start to completely lose faith in the status quo and what's happening. This election, in my opinion, is not the big fight. So let's let's talk about why. But before I do that, I want to say as well, please avoid the excessive football evocation of politics . I view politics through the lens of the econom y . My view on the economy at the moment is that it is collapsing From the perspective of living standards of ordinary people that's not gonna stop . The only way to stop that in my opinion is for ordinary people to unite and agree that we need to take action stopping the increasing exploding wealth of the very rich and the transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the very rich . When we divide ordinary working people into red and blue and yellow it often makes like makes it harder to to achieve that unity so don't allow this election to create more division between ordinary people. That being said, we need to do some analysis of the election itself. So let's get started. So the first thing is the calling of the election itself, and this is this is quite quite funny anyway. We put a video out a few weeks ago predicting that inflation would fall in this country for really obvious reasons. You know, it's a good video, go back and watch it. I think it's called predicting inflation or why inflation will fall this week. We'll put a link in the description. And in that video, we said that almost certainly the official inflation statistic for the country would fall significantly this month. It was extremely predictable, it was for historical reasons, but we knew that the government would try to take credit for it. And um I I honestly think that is the reason that they've called this election. If you go back and look at that video, we explain that inflation was bountiful this month, it will probably fall again slightly next month and then it will start to rise after that. So if we have an election on July the 4th, which we will, we will have just seen a couple of inflation statistic prints which look really good for the government, and we won't yet have had the inflation starting to rise again. The conservatives and Rishi Sunak are currently very unpopular, but here is this one statistic which they have tried to claim aggressive credit for inflation is coming down, it will probably come down again in the print this month. They want to claim credit for that and I think they've decided that this is kind of the only good news story that they've got. So let's run with it. Let's call an election while inflation is low and let's hope people vote for us . But not a lot of people are gonna vote for them, which is largely because living standards have have really significantly collapsed under under their government . So you know I follow the betting odds quite closely. It's almost certain the Conservatives will lose and Labour will win. Labour win an overall majority. It could be a pretty significant overall majority. And different people have different opinions on why that is, but I think that is almost exclusively because living standards have fallen so much and, uh it's been 14 years of Conservative government. People can see that life is getting harder, people want change. Um, I don't think there's a lot of particular enthusiasm for the Labour Party, but here in the United Kingdom, we we have a first past the post political system which I can discuss a little bit more perhaps in other video. It basically means that similarly to the US we have a two-party system where it's almost impossible for any party other than the two major parties to take power . So if you don't like the conservatives, if you're not happy with the foreign living standards, you basically have no choice other than Labour. The Conservatives and Rishi Sonek are extremely unpopular. So we're going to get uh probably a significantly large Labour majority in this government. What does that mean? You know, I've got here on my list to go through the policies of the parties, but you know, you're gonna get the policies of the parties and the manifestos of the parties rammed down your neck on BBC News and Sky News as if they're important, as if they matter. To be honest, they don't really matter. They're gonna make a lot of promises, they're gonna promise to cut your taxes, they're gonna promise to do loads of amazing things which they basically can't pay for because they're they I don't think you can you can fund these things if you're not willing to raise taxes on the rich. So it's a lot of buy-in-the-sky policy . Really, you've got two parties that are promising to continue pretty much the economic status quo. You'll probably get a little bit more austerity under the Conservatives, which will probably be worse, but I think Labour have not really offered us anything significant. Um, you know, you know, behind the scenes, I talk to Labour politicians and I try to lobby Labour politicians to do more on inequality, but basically, we have not done enough and we're not going to get enough. When I ask Labour politicians why you're not taking action on equality, why you're not taxing very rich people, some of them say we would like to do it, but we don't think it's a vote winner. For me, that's quite depressing because this is what I try to do on this channel. The whole point of this channel is for me to convince you that the only way to stop your falling living standards is to stop the increase in inequality. The only way to stop the increase in inequality is to significantly increase taxes on the rich so that we can cut tax on ordinary people. And unfortunately, both the major political parties at this point in time don't think that's a vote w inner. So that's a failure for me and that's a failure for us. But the truth of the matter is I never thought that we would win anything in this election. Um I was expecting the election to be the end of the year, October, November. Um I've been trying to really aggressively grow this channel, but it was never really to target this year's election because I never thought we would get much from this year's election. But there is one small shrapnel of hope, something that that we can be proud of, that I can be proud of, that you can be proud of, which is that the Green Party has adopted our call. The Green Party has adopted basically exactly what I've been campaigning for, which is a 1% tax on wealth, on wealth of above 10 million. That's something that I'm proud of. It's something that you you can be proud of. Anyone who watches this channel, who supports this channel, who helps to grow this channel. Um, it is of course not just because of me, you know, there's a lot of groups that I work with that have been campaigning for this as well. Um, there's the Patriotic Millionaires who have done amazing work. Rebecca Garland, who runs that organization, has done an amazing work, and all of the millionaires who are part of that group have done amazing work campaigning for it. Tax Justice UK have been campaigning for the same thing. Economists like Aaron Advarney at Warwick have been campaigning for the same thing and we've got it into the Green Manifesto, into the Green Policy, which is it's something we should be proud of and you know I'm really grateful for everyone who's pushed for it and I'm grateful for the Greens putting in their manifesto. The reality is the Greens are of course not going to get into power in this election. The nature of our political system basically is it's a it's a two-party job and um it's very, very difficult to shift that. But if the Greens do well, if the Greens get more votes, um in the best case scenario they could win a couple of more seats. It is a message that people are willing to accept these kinds of policies. So um I'll be voting for the Greens and um I'm not gonna tell you guys who to vote for but um these guys have adopted what we've been campaigning for. The reality is they're not gonna win but if they get a big vote, if they get a big if they get a couple more seats, which in the best case they could , it's a good sign. It is a good sign. So that's who I'll be voting for. So what could happen? Because you know the truth is, I don't think this is gonna be even though we might see like a big political landslide, a big collapse of the Conservatives and a massive majority for Labour , I don't think it really changes our game much because Labour are not really gonna give us the policies that we want . The truth is we might get a few more opportunities. I put a video out when Rishi Sunnah became conservative leader. It's easy to forget this now, but when Rishi Sunnah became conservative leader, he had a really good brand he was considered to be really smart really competent really good with money and a lot of people really happy to see him be Prime Minister and um I put a video out saying Rishi Sunak will be phenomenally unpopular in a year's time just basically specifically for the exact same reasons that I'm telling you now that Keir Starmer will be very unpopular in a year, a year and a half's time because Rishi Sunak did not take action on inequality, which meant living standards continue to f all. Keir Starmer looks like he's not gonna take action inequality, which means living standards will continue to fall. So Rishi Shane's popularity collapsed, but that really never gave us any opportunities because I've never once been contacted by a Conservative MP on the work that I do. If a Labour win a year, two year, three years into a Labour government, if living standards have have not recovered, which they won't. Keir Slam will be very unpopular. There might be demand for for change and for new policies. If we can keep growing what we're doing, we can try and get ourselves to be the big voice in the room when that happens . There's a quote by the famous very right-wing American economist Milton Friedman, which is at times of crisis, the new solution will be chosen from the ideas lying around at the time. What you can see from the way the two main parties have gone into this election is that we , me, this idea that the problem is inequality is not the loudest idea lying around at the time . Um to be honest, if you look at the the policies of the two main parties, it seems like there is no idea lying around because they they don't basically don't seem to be offering anything, anything new on the economy. The biggest new idea which is starting to get popular about the economy, you can see the conservatives edging that way, you can see it becoming popular across Europe and also in the US. Is that the problem is immigrants? Is that the problem is foreigners? You know, this is a really popular economic idea, especially at times of crisis. It was really popular in the early 20 th century. It was a big part of the reason of why we ended up getting the second world war, why we ended up getting the Holocaust, things like this. We need to make our idea big enough such that when the next election comes around the two main parties can't ignore it. That's that's what I that's what I think basically and I think this election, as much it's fantastic that the Greens have taken up our ideas, the Greens are not gonna get into power . We need to win that argument for ideas. We need to win that argument for ideas for the next election. I think that's all we can do. That's all we can do. I think I love football and I love politics for a similar reason. I love football because I just am a kind of a geeky guy that likes these kinds of things. And um A couple of years ago I had a two-year plan for this channel, which was to grow it massively um and the book was part of that and um it's been massively successful yeah the growth in this channel has been enormous um the growth in these ideas have been enormous. The fact that we're getting these ideas more understood, more recognised by politicians, by ordinary people is is partly thanks to the work that I've done and the work that you've done sharing this. I was kind of working towards the end of the year as my time horizon, and even though I knew we weren't going to win anything from the election, you're kind of thinking maybe we can get ourselves a voice, maybe we can get ourselves a voice. Um the election got called earlier and we we're not in a position to influence the main political parties. 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And before I started this YouTube channel, I existed in the world of like think tanks and newspapers, and I spoke to politicians, and I spoke to people who speak to politicians. And I still speak to people who speak to politicians now and I made the intentional choice to stop speaking to politicians and start speaking to you because I don't think that the politicians are gonna save us. Um I think that we have to save us. And uh I think if enough of you realise that what we need is action on inequality, what we need is a fairer tax system that taxes the rich more and taxes working people less. I honestly believe we can get ourselves into a situation where, when we go into an election, the political parties have to do something . And you know, this might sound an absurd comparison, but in a weird way I sometimes take hope from Brexit because in 2015 none of the major political parties supported Brexit. They were all quite passionately against it and people consistently voted for parties that were pro-Brexit to the point where now the main political parties they don't want to support Brexit but they have to support Brexit and you know I don't necessarily think Brexit is is gonna save us and I don't think Brexit necessarily is gonna get us out of this problem. But what it shows is if enough ordinary people demand something, we do still live in a democracy and and the politicians will eventually have to give us that. But um we're not loud enough. My voice is not loud enough. Your voice is not loud enough. But it was always gonna be a marathon, not a sprint. Um I'll be voting for the one party that has supported my ideas. Um I think the first past the post-political system is stupid. I'll be swapping my vote if it helps on vote swapping websites. Um listen, there'll be people that will say don't vote for the Greens because you need to vote for whoever get whoever will get the Tories out. And that's a legitimate opinion. And if that's what you want to do, you can do that. I will swap my vote so that I can try and do both. I would encourage you to do what you think is best, but also to realize don't get caught up in the hype of this election . The real battle for living standards is a battle for distribution , it's a battle for inequality, it's a battle which unfortunately at the moment none of the politicians are fighting for us. I'm gonna keep fighting, um well I'm gonna take a holiday actually because I need one. But when I come back, I'll be fighting and I hope you guys will fight with me. So don't worry too much about Rishi Sunakinki Stama . It's a marathon, not a sprint, I'll keep going and I hope you guys come with me. So thanks for your support and and we'll keep going. Thank you . Happy with that? Yeah great man. That's great. Emotional. Yeah it is frustrating isn't it? You know it just yeah it's hard when you realize like fucking how hard how much you have to work and how much harder how much more you have to come still you know you know what what I will do and you know you can stick this in on the end if you want like I'm in a safe labour seat I will try and swap a green vote into a seat that the Greens are challenging for. Probably they won't want to swap with me because people all over the country we try to swap into about four green seats, right? Um so what I'll probably do is I'll vote green here and I'll swap a Labour vote into a marginal, or I might even swap a lib demo into a marginal to try and like you know you I don't I don't want to see listen there there's people that will say how can you support the greens you've got to fight the Tor ies and that's I I don't disrespect that view. And there are people who will say how can you support Labour when they do this, they do that. And obviously I haven't mentioned things they do outside of economics, but I think you can get the sense I'm disappointed in Labour . And I appreciate that point of view as well. But I'll swap so I can try and fight both fights and also like