The Path to Political Victory

Okay, welcome back to Gary's Economics. Today we are going to talk about why the economist hates woralth taxes Okay, so wealth taxes are kind of indirectly on the cover of the economist this week. Don't buy it. It's rubbish. watch this instead I don'tormally read the economist, but I have recently been interested in sort of what the intelligentia are thinking about wealth taxes because they are currently the primary blocker of wealth taxes. So I really wanted to know what the economist were saying I knew there were going to be anti wealth taxes But I wanted to know you can see there' Zak Polansky and Zo and Mandani on the front I wanted to know what the arguments they were giving were. and I had to read, there's two articles in there about wealth taxes I found the arguments given like incredibly Incredibly interesting. All right, so yeah, there's two articles in there. They don't really give much argument against we taxes, but I want to go through everything they say specifically about we taxes. So the first thing they have It is a very short sentence which says wealth taxes would become confiscatory and deter innovation And then they referred to like a larger article at the back of the magazine. And if you go to that larger article to be honest, there's almost nothing in it. It just says the exact same thing. The costs of deterring innovation are vast Seizing the assets of society's most productive people is a road to economic ruin But the most interesting thing that they said, I will get into those specific arguments later, but I really want to focus on the one specific thing they said next I found to be really, really interesting, which is this little bit at the end of the article. where it says The tax system must ensure that meritocracy prevails over inhereritocracy. broader based inheritance taxes And when I heard this, I found this incredibly interesting. I'll explain why So in the last like one year, I've been doing a lot of basically lobbying of kind of fancy people, politicians, economists, academics, tax lawyers trying to convince them to do wealth taxes. And this exact argument which the economist makes here in this week's edition no we definitely shouldn't do wealth taxes. and it's very, very clear in this article and in previous articles they' published that they're very anti wealth taxes. This idea that we shouldn't do wealth taxes, but we should do more inheritance taxes is an idea that I find so interesting and has come up a couple of times in the conversations that I've had with sort of powerful sort influencers in the political world here in the UK And every time I've heard somebody say to me, we definitely shouldn't do wealth taxes, but what I really want us to do is more inheritance taxes. I find it like an incredibly interesting line of argument to take. In order to understand why it's so interesting, you basically need to understand what wealth taxes are and why wealth taxes are so important in our current economy. So the difference between a wealth tax and an income tax is Income taxes tax you on the money you make every year Whereas wealth taxes tax you on the stock of wealth that you have. And the reason that they're so important in the current tax system is our current tax system as it is, is very effective at taxing primarily high earning workers. So if you are making your money from your work and you're earning a lot of money, you're probably paying fifty or even even sixty percent. At the moment, the highest marginal rate of tax in the UK, if you include everything, including student loans is more than seventy percent. So we're aggressively taxing high earners But we are really not effectively taxing the very rich, people have enormous amounts of assets at all. So wealth taxes really are the only tax that has the power to really rebalance the current very unfair tax system. I think if you look at Zuckman's work, he talks about ordinary workers are paying fifty percent, B is paying twenty percent. Wealth taxes, because they tax your stock of wealth rather than just your income every year, they effectively Get around this problem that we have, which is very rich people don't get their money from working. And because we have a tax system that is largely based around taxing work based income, very rich people are generally effectively able to almost completely avoid tax And this is very important within the context of what is currently happening to the wealth distribution in our economies in our societies, which is most groups of society, poorer people, average people, and even Higher earning individuals are getting poorer Governments are getting poorer, ordinary people are holding less wealth, governments are holding less wealth, and all of that wealth is being accumulated amongst the richest people in our society. Now when we can see that this is the way that wealth is being moved throughout society, it's really really important that we introduce attaxs into the system which can effectively target not just high earning workers, but the very, very rich. And if we don't do that, wealth will continue to be squeezed out of ordinary families and will continue to accumulate and the very rich It's this shift in wealth, which is basasically driving living standards down. If we want to drive living standards back up again, and if we want ordinary people to again be able to own assets, own housing, we need something in a tax system which is able to squeeze wealth back out from the very rich It's very, very difficult to do this with taxes on income alone becausecause very rich people, if you start to tax their income at very high rates, you know, you know, Even if you were to tax their income at one hundred percent, numberumber one, they could simply stop receiving their income, it has very bad negative economic consequences And two, it's not going to squeeze wealth back out of that group. The only real way you can get wealth out of this basically billionaire class who is accumulating the wealth is to tax the stock of the wealth itself. So if you are an ordinary family and you are worried about the ability of yourself or your kids to own assets in the future, you really do need to be supporting a wealth tax or some sort of tax on the stock of wealth. This is the only way that we can get wealth back into the hands of ordinary families. And the economist essentially recognize this in what it says. It says that the tax system must ensure that meritocracy prevails over inhereritocracy. So this is the system that we're in We We're moving increasingly into an economy where the only thing that really matters is what your parents own and the work that you do is less and less important. The only way that I can see you really to fix that is through bringing in a wealth tax But the economists have said specifically, we don't want wealth taxes, we want inheritance taxes. And the reason this is interesting is because an inheritance tax is the only tax that is currently in the books that has the power to tax the stock of wealth of the rich people. It is the only tax that we have in the current system, which is essentially a form of a wealth tax rather than an income tax And so when I hear this argument in the economist, which is like, look, inequality is terrible, it's growing. you know and this is all here in the article. you know, inequality matters, growth is better and broad based When I hear these arguments made, Inequality is terrible, it's growing, it's destroying the economy But we can't do wealth taxes. It has to be inheritance taxes It sets off these kinds of varos in my head which makes me sort of To be honest, until Ive read it in the economist, when it's come up a couple of times in the meetings with quite influential people in the UK Both times when that comes up It immediately makes me think, oh my go, like this person has no idea what they are talking about. And I just assume that the people that I spoke to were just not very knowledgeable, I guess on tax. But to see it in the economist it makes me sort of Really amazed really. And I want to explain why this stance that we shouldn't do wealth taxes, but we should do inheritance taxes is so stupid Okay, so from the perspective of an ordinary person, the wealth that you own and the wealth that you leave to your kids, your inheritance are very different things. So what ordinary people do is they do what economists call lifecyycle savings So when you're very young, you don't have any money, you're poor, you work really hard when you're young and you slowly slowly, slowly accumulate assets and you need those assets to get through your retirement and to get through your end of life care. And this is the typical like wealth trajectory of an ordinary person in Western society. So if I look at my grandparents They worked when they were of working age. they accumulated money, they bought a house. and then they need that accumulated wealth to get through their retirement. They do things like they buy Equity relief schemes for their houses and all of that money gets them through their retirement through their end of life care. and even though all of my grandparents owned the property when they were alive, none of them left any significant inheritance. And this is the normal wealth path for an ordinary person. So I think from an ordinary person, you think, o, well The wealth I own and the inheritance I leave are two completely different things. But let's consider the financial situation of an incredibly wealthy person. So the wealth tax which we are proposing here in the UK at the moment is two percent on wealth above ten million So to be paying even one percent, you would need to be worth a wealth of twenty million pounds. So let's assume somebody who's worth twenty million pounds. If you were twenty million pounds And you're making five percent a year on your wealth, which is pretty conservative. People at that level of wealth usually make decently more than that. You will be making one million pounds passive income a year. So that's not the money you make from your work. that's just the money that you get passively every year So imagine that's you, you're worth twenty million pounds, you're making one million pounds a year passive income. And this is not connected to your work. So this passive income is going to continue u until you die and in fact, even after you die. So you're going to be making a million pounds, a million pounds everyvery single year, what is going to be your like lifetime wealth trajectory compared to a more ordinary person? So an ordinary person they only make income when they're working, they accumulate money when they work, then they dissave that money when they're old A very wealthy person, that money is not related to their work, so they continue to make a million pounds a year every year till you die. Almost everyone who has that level of wealth will simply grow their wealth year after year after year. If you have a passive income of a million pounds You know, you're going to spend probably Maybe three hundred, four hundred, maybe even five hundred thousand pounds a year, which is an enormous amount to spend. you're going to live an incredibly comfortable life. And you will still have half a million pounds or more to buy new assets every year and your wealth is going to go up and up and up and and and up and up. So what this means is for an ordinary person The wealth that they hold at any point in time, is not going to go to their kids because their wealth is going to go up and by the time they die, it's going reach down towards close to zero again. But for very wealthy people who are the only kinds of people that we're trying to tax with the wealth tax, every single penny they own today, they will leave to their kids because they will be richer next year than this year, they'll be richer the year after that. then next year, their wealth only ever goes up. So everything they have now will definitely go to their kids. So what this means is fromrom the perspective of very wealthy people, who are the only people we are trying to target with the wealth tax The wealth tax and the inheritance tax are the same thing So this is why I simply cannot understand and I was really quite amazed to see The economists go with this, right? They're saying we want to tax the very rich more But we absolutely don't want it to be a wealth tax We want it to be and inherance tax Now every single penny of power that the very rich own now will be inherited. That is what the vast majority of very rich people do with all of their money. Their wealth never goes down, all of it goes to their kids. So if you as the economist are saying Listen, wealth tax is terrible, you know, they're gonna what is it they say? They're going to deter innovation. They're gonna to take money from the seizing the assets of economy's most productive people. How can you in one breath say that taxing the rich two percent every year is going to destroy the economy But taxing the rich at fifty percent every thirty years is good Like it's it's It's honestly just quite mind blowingly stupid. and there's absolutely no logical consistency here. And I was fascinated because when this came up in the two meetings that I had, think I think they were both the back end of last year. I remember thinking, you know maybe these this is such a Such a phenomenally stupid argument. I assume that these two people must have like got it from each other And now to see like the economists Magazines say it. It it's honestly this is one of the most interesting things I've seen because I think it really reveals What is going on in the heads of I guess sort of polite society in when they oppose wealth taxes because if you oppose wealth taxes and you support inheritance taxes, every single argument that you make against wealth taxes also applies to inherance taxes and also in many cases, income taxes. So again, there's not a lot of real clear arguments in this week's economist against wealth taxes. But the one which they really go with, the only one which they really develop, even though it's two full pages on this is that it deters innovation. So let's dig into this idea, right? which is that A well, facts of two percent on wealth above ten million pounds is going to deter innovation. Imagine you're in this situation, okay? They're saying that if we tax Very wealthy people at just two percent on their wealth of above ten million pounds. So you don't pay anything unless you are worth more than ten million pounds Some you know, young bright spark is going to be like You know, they just come out of university and they're thinking, you know what? I've got this amazing idea And I think if I put this into a business plan, then I might become worth more than ten million pounds. And you won't be paying even one percent unless you're worth more than twenty million pounds. So maybe you're thinking, oh my god like I've got this great idea And it's going to make me worth twenty million pounds, you know, one of the you know in the richest, you know zero point one percent more than that of society, I'm going to live a life incredible luxury. If it works I might have to pay one percent a year to the government. G, I'm not gonna do it. Like I just But just like this is Okay, so assume anyone watching this, if you had the business idea that you thought would make you twenty million pounds But In the future, you might have to pay one percent to the government. Would you then say, you know what? I don't want to be worth twenty million pounds And this is in the context of an existing tax system which taxes graduates at a top rate, top marginal tax rate in the UK of seventy one percent, seventy eight and a half percent in Scotland, right? And puts anyone who wants to do like a degree in like offtten hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of debt. And you think the thing that is going to deter innovation is people thinking, oh my Godd, if I become a multi multi millionaire, heaven forbid even a billionaire, I might have to pay three percent. L this is tootally insane, right? And it is it just completely it's the flip of exactly what is really happening, right? Which of these two things is going to make you less likely to really try to become like a business superstar? The fact that If it works, you'll have to pay one or two percent to the government or the fact that on the way to get there first, you have to take hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of debt and then you have to pay seventy percent of your income to the government on the way there. this is the exact reason why It's tax wealth, not work. The beauty of the wealth tax is it does not tax doing the thing It doesn't tax getting rich, It doesn't tax making money, it doesn't tax creating a business. All it taxes is the hoolding of enormous amounts of assets. It's as simple as that. So how can you possibly say that moving a tax system away from one which aggressively taxes further study, aggressively taxes innovation towards one which taxes that less and taxes hoarding more It's preventing innovation. It's like it's absolute madness, right? But even if you believe that, even if you think, okay, the reason people are not innovating is because they're worried at some future point, I'm going to get tax two percent. Even if you believe that, the same would be true of inherurance taxes So I just I think it's so interesting and so revealing that like In a system where we have aggressive taxes on profits, on work, on profitable investments, and we have no taxes on the hoarding of enormous amounts of wealth where if you are going to make money, you're going to pay fifty percent of that on the way up that it The economist thinks that that is going to be less disincentivizing to you then the idea that if you become a fuc billionaire, you might have to pay two percent. Like it is honestly It's kindind of beautiful. It's so absurd There's two o pages of this. The only other argument that is really made against world taxes, there's just a lot of them like trying to shit on Gabriele Zigman, really. The only other argument is that one, it's confiscatory, right? confonfiscatory. I just whatever that means If wealth taxes are confiscatory, our income taxes not confiscatory. If wealth taxes are confiscatory, our inheritance taxes not confiscatory. Once again, like there's no like like that is the nature of tax. Tax is money that you make that you have to give to the government. That's what tax is It's confiscatory. That's the nature of tax. you know, it's a nonsense argument. And other one, the other argument they make, which is probably my favourite one, is seizing the assets of society's most productive people is a road to economic ruin We are building an economy here where the only way to have a fucking house is to have a rich dad. And where ordinary people are going into hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt to get degrees that get them the best jobs in the country and can't afford to buy a in house. Who's seizing, who' assets here We used to be a country where ordinary working people could buy property. Now we're a country where you can only inherit property. You know, who this is are the most productive people in the country holding the assets here? If the way to get assets, this screen reminds me. I remember this early on in my career, I went on TV to argue against the B three hundred and sixty five CEO had paid herself something like three hundred sixty million quid. And I went on to debate someone against from the IEA, which is a right wing think that here in the UK And the argument she made was, well, you know, this is the cost you pay for talent, you know this is the reason why I think her name was Denise Coates got paid something like three hundred sixty million pounds is because she's the most talented person in the country to run that job. And Unfortunately for her, the woman I was debating, I had looked up How Denise Coach got that job, from which she got paid three hundred sixty million pounds, She got it because her dad owned the company. Like this is You know If you want A country that gives assets to productive people, stop charging ordinary working people, university graduates seventy percent when you're noting when you're not charging billionaires anything. So I just want to say and you know I would love for the economists to answer this, you know When you are opposing wealth taxes and you are supporting inheritance taxes Where is your intellectual integrity How How can you be riscerally opposed to taxing the richest people in the world one percent on their stock of wealth every year when you are simultaneously, allegedly supportive of taxing them fifty percent every thirty years Is it the time horizon? like are you aware that for the super rich inheritance taxes and wealth taxes are effectively the same?ike I just do not understand where this has come from. So then this asks the question basically, how? and I think this is probably the most interesting thing, how and why have like the Western intellectual classes, you know, as typified by the economist here manage to get themsel to such a like you know picturesquely stupid situation as simultaneously opposing and supporting the same tax based on whether it is every one year or every thirty years. So I think if you want to understand, what is like going on? in the heads of these people who hate wealth taxes, but apparently love inheritance taxes. I think probably the best answer I've got was given to me in one of these meetings. So last year I had these two separate meetings where you know, influential figures in British economics and politics said to me, oh wealth taxes is never going to work. What we need is inheritance taxes And the first time it happened to me, I was honestly immediately quite shocked. I was just like, how? how can you Supp Wealth taxes and be against inherrance taxes. And this lady said to me, listen, wealth tax is never going to work. What I need you to do is get the public to want to support inherrance taxes. And I had my head in my hands and I said, Trading as Swab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos and more all curated just for traders. Plus, guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests No sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more at Swab d. com slash trading. So good good so good New markdowns up to seventy percent off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and save big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must haveves for summer. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack Do you not understand like if what you want, is for somebody to build public support for a tax which taxes the richest people in the country based on their stock of wealth so that we can actually get some tax out of these guys I have literally delivered that to you on a plate And you are now turning around to me and saying, o, we don't want that. We want it to be specifically called an inheritance tax And I remember she looked at me Honestly, I God, it reminds me being at a church as a kid when these guys looked at me, like what the' saying like this is This is just I cannot accept this. I cannot believe it. like brain does not compute. It came up again and in another meeting with somebody a few days later and I don't know, it's probably a few weeks later. And I tried again to explain to this gentleman You know, if you want the public to accept a tax on the very rich. I have built that public support for you, so come and help me do it. And this guy turned around to me and said, Oh but your tax The specifics of your tax don't work And this guy was you know allegedly one of the tax experts of the country. and I said to him, Work with me to help me make it better so it works set. Help me do it, help me build it, make it work. And this guy just flatly laughed in my face And I think what this shows you is the reason these guys support inheritance taxes whilst opposing wealth taxes is because they don't want to pay income tax. It's as simple as that and they know that wealth taxes are becoming a political possibility. And I think in the medium term, they're even a political probability. L wealth taxes are probably going to come into place. You know the new Hungarian government is going to do them, you know this wee These are going to happen. and these people who in many cases are themselves rich They look at that and they say I don't want to pay in tax on my wealth. So what they want is to throw this destruction away and say, listen make inherance tax because quite simply they know inherereance tax is hated, inherereance tax is demonized, if it's called inherance tax, it won't happen. The reason they are opposing wealth taxes by supporting inherance taxes is because they want to appear like they are supporting Greater taxation of the rich whilst actively doing everything they can to stop greater taxation of the rich from happening You know, there's a great term which you know you should be aware of, which is motivated reasoning. And I think this is really exactly what we see. and we see I see it a lot and it frustrates me a lot in the sort of world of like political economics that I'm in now. So motivated reasoning is when your approach to a problem is not to try to figure out the truth of the problem, but to create an argument that rationalizes the answer you want to give. So you have a motivation which is basically, I don't want to pay any income tax. So I want to reach an answer which is going to say, don't charge me any income tax. And that is If the public desperately want wealth taxes, I'm going to say, o no, no, no wealth taxes and it is never going to work. What you want is, and then I'm going to throw out another tax which I know is completely politically unachievable. And you know what? it really reminds me of this kind of Oxford debating style vibe, which is they have this, you know big debating community and they produce a lot of lawyers. And the vibe is you walk in, they give you an argument on a piece of paper and you have to make an argument supporting that regardless of whether you believe it or not. And I think this is essentially what is going on in the heads of these people, which is I am going to make any argument I can to say that we don't need to do wealth taxes. And for them, it's quite a smart argument know, becausecause wealth tax are popular and if you can say, o, you know, wealth tax is never going to work, what you need is inherereance taxes. Well inherance taxes are unpopular and then the public's going to say actually I thought wanted a wealth thataxs buy for inherentax, I definitely don't want it. And ultimately it's just distraction. it's the same as my Jeff Bezels video from two weeks ago where he says, Oh no, no, no don't tax me. How about I give you a thousand pounds a month instead? And if I'm totally honest It also reminds me of a lot of the immigration narrative. You know So I've been travelling around the world in the last few well, a few months, six, seven, maybe a year or so. So in this country, our far right partarty reform has been from the beginning funded by Richard Tice I think there's a very clear reason why billionaires would fund far right parties because they know that the future is going to be either me and M Lotwin, tax the rich or some new political narrative, which they need so they fund this anti immigration narrative. And every single country that I went to I would ask who funds your far right partarty? and every single time the answer would be, our local billionaire. So you know I think what you are seeing and it has to be mentioned, the economist is also owned by very wealthy people. reallyally what you are seeing is people simply trying to throw distractions away, saying no, no, no,'ax don't tax us, Do an inheritance tax. Don't tax us, I'll give you a thousand pounds a month Don't tax us, kick out the immigrants. All of these things are just basically distractions to stop you from pushing for the only thing you need, which is your assets back. And the only way you will ever get that is by taxing the very rich But the next thing which I find really interesting about this is You know, we talk about how, you know the far right is owned is funded by incredibly wealthy people and the newspapers are owned by incredibly wealthy people. And of course they you know they don't want you to tax them. So they're going to keep making arguments to reduce the likelihood of a wealth tax But what's quite interesting is you know these people that I met two people I met at meetings last year. and these are not the only people who believe these ideas. And you know, possibly the person who wrote this article in the economist, they themselves are not billionaires So I'm really interested in like the psychology of why people who are themselves not billionaires are really willing to like go out and bat for and fight for whatever you do, don't tax the billionaires. And you know one simple argument for this is like, well, you know, they're bought and sold. the economist is quite an interesting magazine because The individual articles, we don't know like who writes them. they don't have the author's name next to article. Every is just published officially by the economist. So we don't know specifically who writes it Obviously theconomists will have an editorial line and they will probably tell person who's writing it you know, you have to be anti wealth taxes. So I suppose you could just argue, well, they're just delivering the line that they're given You know, in many cases, the people who You know, I'm going out and I'm talking to politicians and I'm talking to civil servants and I'm talking to know senior members of important groups, you know and think tanks. and in many cases, these people, there's no way that they're worth more than ten million pounds. A ten million pounds is an enormous amount of money So what is it that is actually motivating these people to really go out to backat for the super rich? And I've been you, before I made this video in the last couple of days, I've been messaging a lot of people and trying to understand like what actually is The psychology. So you know If you're not from this world, which I increasingly am in, you may not be aware that. once you go into sort of politics, think tanks, economics, academia, a lot of the more powerful voices do come from richer families and they are quite rich. But you know, ten mion pounds is an awful lot and most of these people are not worth that kind of money Sometimes I think they are influenced by like supporting their funders. I think there's maybe like a little bit of sort of low key subc just bootlicking going on. like, you know, they've been they know that they don't want to piss off the rich. they don't want to piss off the powerful, you know, maybe they're customers or maybe their funders are rich or powerful But I do think That there is something sort of subconscious going on. where these people who in many cases have worked hard to make a bit of money and they might be worth two or three or four million quid, they've worked so hard to get that money that theyve just become incredibly protective of this idea, which is we can never tax wealth is even though even though I'm talking about taxing over ten, there just's very sort of a little bit like Gllm from Lord of the Rings, like my precious kind of thing. Don't you do you know how hard I worked to get this wealth, don't you whenever they hear mention of a wealth acts, they're like, no, no, it can never happen. And what I want to do here is to make it clear to people like that who you know maybe are even worth only, say half a million quid, which is, you know less than the cost of a house in London nowadays, who are incredibly anti wealth taxes because they're incredibly protective of their wealth. I want to speak to you now someomebody who is not incredibly rich but has a bit of money and is opposed to wealth taxation of the very rich. And I want to explain to you what is going to happen from here OkayK, we have, increasingly, in this country, in America, in the world, a untaxed, super rich class These people have enormous amounts of passive income The poorest billionaire in the world with a wealth of just one billion dollars will generate more than a million dollars a week in passive income and that is currently almost untaxed. These people have no choice but to buy up all of the assets very quickly and that is squeezing asset ownership out of every other group in society As that continues to happen, more and more people in our societies will own no assets and will be in debt. This will mean we will have no strong consumer and we will have a weak economy. That will lead to an increasingly angry public that push their governments into taking action to support the growing poverty Governments will be politically forced to step in to try to deal with the growing poverty, but because they do not have the capacity to tax the richest people in society, they are going to tax you And you know this is a prediction, but it's also exactly what is happening now You know, governments are trying to support the poverty that is being caused by the growing inequality by borrowing money, going into debt and further taxing the very rich In the UK now, we are at the point where the government basically has two options here Either Tax you, tax hiring workers, or dismantle the welfare state. In the absence of taxing the very rich, one of these two things is going to happen. So when you argue for not taxing the very rich, what you are arguing for is the taxation of yourself. And I know that they tell you when I say tax the rich that I am trying to tax you The reason I make these T shirts with tax Wth not work is to make it clear I am the one who is on your side and trying to keep your taxes low Listen, you hate tax. I hate tax, but if you oppose the taxation of the people who are going to take all of your assets, it would destroy your welfare state and it would drive your taxes up. Listen, look at what's happening now. We have the highest taxes ever at the same time as a disappearing welfare state That is what happens when your government goes massively in debt to the super rich. The only way to protect The welfare state that your grandparents indied for is to tax the rich So no, you know, I think what's happening here is You know me and obviously you know, the cover of the economist is like Zach Polansky and Zo and Manddani who are kind of like the big faces of the English and American like left. This idea of like taxing the very rich has has come to be like branded by a lot of the media as like this like far left idea. but like it's not a far left idea. you know If you want ordinary people to own property, you have to be supportive of taxation of the very rich You know, under the current system where you have a billionaire class paying almost no taxes, it is just mathematically obvious that in a very short period of time, because of the power of compounding interest, they will own everything. and that means you owning nothing. So you know this doesn't have to be and I don't think it should be about left versus right. This is about do you want your kids to own houses? Do you want your kids to have financial security? So I really think, you know, when And I'm really interested in the guy who wrote this article at the economist.s like, how rich are you? How rich is your dad? You know If you're not worth ten million quid, what the are you doing? And you know not just the guys who write these articles for the economist, but the guys who are in the political parties, you know working for the think tanks who are opposing wealth taxes What are you doing? What are you doing? And I think you know we have this kind of sometimes instinctive conservatism from people who are, you know towards the top end of the social hierarchy that just don't want to shake up society. The news I have for you here is That society's shake upp is happening. If we don't do anything from the current position, then wealth inequality will increase and the middle class will disappear. And that is you, that is you. You are part of the middle class. So if you want to be socially conservative, if you want to protect your position in the top ten percent If you want to protect an economy which has a welfareestate and has the ability for working people to own assets, you need to be supportive of wealth taxes. All right so that's what I think. I was so interested this week seeing these arguments. and I think It' it's kind of beautiful, I think to have sort of pushed the economist into a situation where it has to like openly simultaneously oppose and support wealth taxes because it is the only way that they think they can stop wealth taxes from happening. that they can say, listen, we're adamantly opposed to taxing the rich every one year What we want is to tax them every thirty years in a way that we know we'll never politically get. Like I think it's kind of beautiful the way that we've like kind of run rings around intellectual class and forced them to like basically expose and I hope expose to themselves, like the lack of intellectual integrity behind their arguments. know And if you're out there, you know, working for the economist, please explain to me why you think an inherereance tax is better than a wealth tax Why whyn't wealth taxes only work if it happens specifically the day your dad dies? please explain to me. But at the same time, I probably shouldn't take such glee because the fact is, you know we do need These people, you we need the intellectual classes to some degree support this. At the moment here in the UK and across the world really in France and America, wealth taxes are overwhelmingly supported by the public and now being blocked by the intellectual class. You know this is why I was so key to get Gabriel Zookman over here If you ha't watched the Gabriel Zkman interview from a couple of weeks ago, you definitely watch it. We really do need to find ways and to find communicators who can communicate to this kind of what here in the UK would call the middle class, but is really that sort of top ten percent, that top five percent, that the status quo is not working for them But ultimately, again, ending on my message of hope. I think the fact that we're getting on know the front cover of things like the economist and we're getting spoken about by top level politicians all over the world,' just another's just another message of just like what an amazing job or you' got me patting myself enormously on the back. Yeah, And you know, even in the economists article, you know, the reason they're doing this and they make it clear is because they are worried that what used to be, you know fringe ideas are going to influence governing parties. They're talking about the concern of the influence on the Labour Party. The reason that the economist is coming out against this It's because this kid we're going to win, you know, and it's that a old quote that I was attributed probably incorrectly to was inatt MGandy firstirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you. then you win. And you know, that has been like exactly the experience of me on this channel. You know, I was ignored for years and then you know for most of the last year they spent the time just laughing at me Zak Polansky and taking the piss out of us and saying we were idiots and not academics. And then Gabriel Zuckman writes an article signed by seven noel laureates, you know, and now they realise, you know they can't just pretend these ideas are nonsense anymore. They have to fight it and they're coming out fighting it by just tying themselves up in knots. And it it is a good laugh really to get these guys to expose really how mad they are. you know, there's just no logical argument. who support inherance taxes, which are widely hated and oppose wealth taxes, which are widely supported. But we back them into a corner. We back them into a corner on this. And it makes me again say the same thing I've been saying for the last few weeks. And I wouldn't say this if I didn't believe it because if you watch any of my older videos, you'll see I'm incredibly pessimistic. We're going to get this. You know, you know