Global Power of Digital Tech Giants

Donald Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center. So it's the Kennedy Trump put and Kennedy Center or vice versa. and a court just ruled that he had to take his name down. So they took it down, as far as we can see, but they put a big tarpaulon over it. so you can't see that it's been taken down. Historically in the US, there have been some big confrontations over power. The system had become too slanted in favor of oligarchs, people who got their money from business and put that into politics and made themselves into leading political figures. So I would worry globally, Robert, about These US giants becoming so powerful and outrunning everyone except maybe the Chinese, have we ever seen anything quite so powerful, quite so global and so adept at taking value from other places? I don't think we have. I think we're in a new era now. Do you think then wealth taxes, for example, are a good idea? Like how do we redistribute wealth more fairly? So I think wealth taxes will be part of its steuff. So the fact of the matter is that if you're sufficiently rich, you don't pay much tax Support for this episode comes from Octopus Energy and the founder and CEO Greg Jackson is with us now. So Greg, talk to me about Kraken. What is it and why is it spinning off from octopus energy? When we built octopus, we also built a software platform, like an operating system like iOS or Android on your phone to enable energy companies utilities. Let's starting with octopus, but frankly anyone in the world be much more efficient to use vast amounts of data to be able to become more and innovative and to serve their customers better. piece of software cracking used it not only for octopus, compompanies in the UK like EDF and Eon have used it to improve their business too But you know what? it turns out over time, companies realized that they were licensing from a competitor. And so we've had to spin it off so it can reach its full potential. Yeah, makes sense, correct. thank you. Right, we're gonna go to the episode. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responssees set upp required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus Your summer weekends fill up fast, but Crocx has your back. Road trips, beach days, last minute getaways, whatever's on the agenda, swing by your local store and find your new goat too Try it, style it, make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. Wock out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest crox store today Hello and welcome to Rest Money with me Robert Paston. And me, Steph McGoverinn. Now what we want to talk about today is why when ideas and money and people can flow freely around the world, are we not all rich Well with us today, we've got the guy who got a Nobel Prize in economics for answering that question. And when it comes to economists, CV's don't get much better than Simon Johnson's. He's a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT. He's a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He's currently advising the UK Government on AI And on top of all of that, he is from Sheffield. He's a northerner. And so Simon is someone who you and I, Robert, have followed his work for many years. so we were kind of desperate to get him on to chat about it all. Yeah. well, obviously I love it when you make common calls with another northerner, even though traditionally there's not been that much love lost between Middlesbor and Sheffield. But anyway I guess any alliance against a terrible Londonlike me is to be welcome for you. Listen, he is going to answer, we hope, one of the big questions we constantly talk about, why some countries perform better than others. And this is this is one of Tw gripping conversations that we're having. So here's our interview with Simon Johnson Simon, it's an absolute treat to have you on the podcast. We've got loords to ask you about. The thing I'd like to start with is your fascinating research, which led to you being a recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics in twenty twenty four. and this work around looking at how the formation of institutions in history impacted the prosperity of the countries all depending on whether these institutions were essentially any good or not. and then kind of what that means about where we are now. I mean, it's totally fascinating. So can you just first of all give us that give us a flavour of the research you did and what you found from it? First of all, Steph, that's a great summary of the research right there. Yes. so a lot of people had become interested in institutions in the nineteen nineties, including because of what had happened in the former communist world, for example issues of corruption, issues of governance and so on were Absolutely the forefront. And we thought it wouldd be good to look into history. and go back and see where did these institutions come from? And we spotted something very interesting in colonial history. So obviously Europeans didn't take over all of the world, but they almost did. And they did quite different things in different places. In fact, the British, not to pick on anyone, but the British generate a lot of the data here, they did remarkably different things in terms of the rules of the game they set up For example, in North America versus West Africa. And the main reason, Steh was in North America, the Europeans, after some difficult early years, figured, oh, this would be a good place to bring more Europeans. But we can only get Europeans to come here if we offer them rules of the game, that are at least as fair as in the UK and other parts of Europe, maybe a bit better actually for ordinary people. West Africa, they did actually try to bring Europeans early on, It was complete disaster because the disease environment in West Africa was and actually is highly unfavorable to people who were born in Europe, a lot of malaria, a lot of yellow fever. So the Europeans gave up on trying to settle there themselves and unfortunately obviously built a pretty substantial empire at the heart of which was extraction of gold, extraction of other minerals, and of course, the slave trade. Now, when you're running the slave trade, you want to have dec enough protection for your own merchants, and you can do that with some guns and a fort. And you don't really care about local institutions. In fact, you may favor the local institutions that are you know what we call extractive of local people. So there we have within the British Empire And the same Almost essentially the same people making these decisions, very different outcomes for initial institutions based on what the preferences and the strategy was for colonization. And we then argued and established hopefully beyond a reasonable doubt, that are a lot of those early institutions set up two hundred, hundred years ago have persisted the modern time. They're not exactly the same. obviously things change over over centuries But there's a lot of the way these countries are run today that you can trace back to those early colonial arrangements. and that has a huge impact, a first order impact on productivity, on income per capita, and on everything else you care about and how economies operate today. so If you are West African This is an appallingly difficult question to answer because it requires all sorts of counterfactuals U But is it just straightforwardly the case that our kind of colonialism was just catastrophically bad for them Yes, I think that's probably fair way to put it Robert. I don't think it's actually that complicated. There is at least one place Botswana that we've studied where the Europeans had qu very little impact because well, they couldn't be bothers to go there. they didn't think there was anything valuable. And Botswana is better off Botswan is obvious in Southern Africa or West Africa. But Botswana is better off than other countries around them and countries that have similar endowments of minerals and diamonds in the case of Botswana and so on. So yes, I think there is a bit of an edge or a presumption, a reasonable view that Africa would have done better Much of Africa would have done better if the Europeans had never got their hands on it. Or actually, of course they didn't initially own and control Africa, but they influenced it through the slave trade, which was even more pernicious. So just to understand this then, Simon, so what you're saying is there's an element of chance to this in that in North America when the Europeans turned up there The climate, the environment was rich for them to want to stay there. because you know as you say, there wasn't the same danger as there was going to West Africa where there was high disease and therefore high fatalities. So is it as simple as that's the reason why The institutions were built better in North America than they were in West Africa, because of health reasons, because of the element of danger. Yeah, I think that's a big part of the story, Steph. But remember, it's the health of the Europeans. So the Europeans didn't care about local health conditions for locals. And in Africa where malaria was endemic A lot of people had got natural immunity or acquired immunity from having malaria when they were young, know there was a high death rate for children, but there was a high death rate for children in Europe as well. The question was when adult Europeans showed up If you took a thousand adult Europeans to North America, let's say in seventeen hundred About fifteen of them would die in the first year or two fifteen per year. loal diseases and that's actually about the same as in Europe. If you took the the same thousand Europeans to West Africa in seventeen hundred, eighteen hundred, about five hundred of them would die in the first year, another two hundred fifty in the second year. and quite soon you'd be down to very few people. In fact, there were multiple efforts to settle, take Europeans to West Africa that collapsed completely. And if you look at the record of expeditions where they tri quite carefully to explore the rivers in West Africa, they would come back they would take forty eight people and come back with two So it was appallingly high death rates for the time for the Europeans. Those were not the local death rates Steph. So yes, it was the, if you like, the luck or the unluck of when Europeans showed up before modern medicine. What were the health conditions for adult Europe? And just to add to that then, so that meant that impacted how committed they were to a place and therefore, how much they wanted to set up institutions that would help govern the rules for them being there as well. So because it was more dangerous, they just wanted to get in and out and extract the wealth from it rather than settling there and having more of a commitment to the place. Well, let's be careful. they did have a commitment, but the commitment was on a different basis. So think about West Indies, for example, the saying in the seventeen hundreds was You know, you've got to get in and out, make your money in seven years because it wasn't as unhealthy as West Africa, but it was pretty unhealthy for Europeans. So they were committed to slave plantations, right? It was primarily sugar was where the big money was, place like Barbados, for example. The strategy was not to bring more Europeans The strategy was either to exploit locals in West Africa or bring slaves over, which of course, was the strategy in the West Indies. and the slaves died at a very high rates, but the Europeans We're not bothered by that obviously that didn't care. So it's very much about commitment to which strategy? Which strategy do the Europeans choose to pursue for their own self interest I mean, I think you know, obviously there are sort of there's one qualification. would assume you would make Um And there's also actually a sort of question that's begged here, which I want to talk to you about. I mean, one is obviously if you are an indigenous American, a Native American or an indigenous Australian probably not going to think that colonialism did you any great favours. even if you know Australia and America today are much more prosperous than much of West Africa I suppose the question I had is democracy seems to me to be a possible shorthand but a rather misleading shorthand in the sense that I mean if I look at a country like Singapore, which has seen extraordinary rises in shared prosperity, how important is democracy when it comes to the kind of prosperity we want to see within Well you actually made two points there, but let me take them separately because they're both important. The first is on the caveat. Yes, you're absolutely, that Indigenous people were not treated well in North America, Australia, or other places. They were pushed aside. They also suffered from the diseases the Europeans brought. I think everybody's heard about the impact of smallpox, for example. and there are many tragedies that happened with long lasting impacts, including on the lives of people descended from indigenous Americans Native Americans today. But in addition to that, Robert, I would want to emphasize that slavery in the United States is a very strong counter to u The idea that somehow the U.S. got only good institutions and it was only fair for everybody and so on and so forth. It was for the Europeans who were, you know almost entirely white Europeans. That was the setup. that was who they were trying to bring over. And of course, many of them would come with no money. the Irish who came off the potato famine and the Italians who came later in the nineteenth century, but they were eventually able to establish themselves with more or less equal rights with other white people who'd arrived earlier. For slaves and former slaves, it has been a lot more difficult for reasons you understand. And of course, what's interesting and important and terrible is that even after the end of slavery, a lot of the mechanisms of oppression for black people in many American states, including the deep south persisted So this is a big part of our point, which is long there is long lasting effect of early institutions, including oppppression of local people when you arrived, but also the slaves that you brought. And it's a big fight to get out of that. And that leads me to the second question, which is, what's the role of democracy? Now I was actually in Hong Kong recently Robert. as you can imagine, the same question comes up in Hong Kong, talking about China. And I think and of course Hong Kong's hory grabbed everyone's attention along with Singapore, because these are places that are not primarily European And the strategy was not to bring so many Europeans there, but it was to build up a merchant class and it was to build up a hub of prosperity and that prosperity was actually shared with local people and local merchants rose up. But the key point about British governance, which was not perfect in Hong Kong. and the governance now is, do you have the rule of law? Equal treatment before the law, equal enough, Do you have corruption under control what people regard as being fair and legitimate governance? I don't think Hong Kong or Singapore would be regarded as democracy in a Western sense. but And I do think Singapore is quite an extraordinary place, very unusual and other attempts to do this to build someone that hass not been quite so successful. from the long term historical record, Robert, most authoritarian regimes I mean you can have good authoritian rulers. You can have author rulers who are very generous, they're very fed people and so either they get old or they get cranky or the next one is not quite so inspired, or they start fighting among themselves. So actually this liberal Western democracy model, which I understand you, gets plenty of U has attracted plenty of complaints over years and is not everybody's favorite at the moment, but it's actually got real strong lasting power to deliver what you care about, which is the rule of law and opportunities for entrepreneurs, enough competition protection for property rights and so on. So as long as your democracy can continue to deliver prosperity, which is a key part about I think our modern issues, I think democracy is the winner. But there's a lot of variation. types, different types of democracy, the French version, the British versions are different. Can you become prosperous without democracy? Yeah, I think to some extent you can, if you fix the economic institutions and if you can keep those stable and favoring prosperity But that's hard if it's not in a proper democratic framework. So on that point about fixing the economic institutions, you talked about the persistence and know this inequality, this continued inequality driven by this lack of change Is that because these bad institutions which are extractive, are benefiting the rich and powerful in those countries and therefore they don't want them to change? Or is it just because it's really difficult to change them because they've been around so long? Well, a bit of both, I'd say, Steell. Let me talk about a West Indian island, but I won't name it because I don't want to anybody particular get upset So on this island there was a lot of slavery, there were sugar plantations, and there were rich people as a result. and then when When the country ended slavery, a lot of the distribution of wealth remained, and when it became independent, of course, that sped through into the political system. So the economic power that arises from money and wealth is part of the persistence mechanism, Steh. Now of course, there are accommodations, including with people who get elected, and it's not the same situation in this island today as it was in nineteen fifty, let alone eighteen fifty The fact is that the same families, actually, if you can trace it back, the same families are substantially in control of the island and making the big decisions on the island as was the case during slavery. Simon, there's loads we want to talk to you about what this means for us, what we can take away from all of this. but let's go to a quick break This episode is brought to you by Vang Guard. Look, if you're listening to a podcast about finances, you likely already know that your money could be working harder. But we know it can feel overwhelming knowing where to get started and even dipping your toe into investing can make you feel out of your depth. It's a mindset that's pretty hard to shake without the right guidance. You might even find yourself wishing you could just get the pros to invest your money for you Well you can. With their managed ISEA, Vanguard's experts do the hard work for you. They'll match you to an investment plan that feels right for you and they'll handle the rest. No second guessing, just smart professional management. So stop wondering how to start investing and start making your money work harder. 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Donald Trump personally, and most powerful man in America, seems to have absolutely no respect for the rule of law. he is u abusing I mean, so many of America's core institutions Now You know, they're still there. some of them are fighting back. and I know that you know, the Trump center is now the Kennedy center again, which is u, you know, a small victory, shall we say? and, you know, there' been a few other little little little victories against Trump in that way. I suppose I'm interested how much damage? I mean, at the moment I mean, truthfully, America's economy is growing way faster than the European economy But how much damage? to Donald Trum Do prosperity of a country like America? Well, I think it's a stress test for the institutions right now, Robert. So in this last twelve months, I've signed five amicousriefs to the Supreme Court of the United States. So at least in the Aican judial system, particularly when cases reach the appeal stage or the Supreme Court for the ultimate decision, independent experts are not exactly invited, but invite themselves to provide an opinion on the merits of the case. So I was opining on, for example, Donald Trump's original twenty twenty five tariffs along the lines of do they make sense economically, but also are they legal because the legal justification of those tariffs was based on a particular statement of economic circumstances. Congress said, if these economic circumstances exist, then the president could do the following. and we were arguing that actually those circumstances didn't exist. And it was quite gratifying to see that the chief justustice of the U. Suprem Court he ruled against the tariffs or he was on the side the majority of ruled against him used a lot of our points and arguments without, I would say saying he got them from us, but that's totally fine. That's how it works. Donald Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center. So it's the Kennedy Trump and Kenny Center, or vice versa. and a court just ruled last week that he had to take his name down. So they took it down as far as I' caner see, but they put a big tarpaulon over it so you can't see that it's been taken down. So you know, there are these fine edges that are emerging here. But the court didn't say takeake the tarpaulon down. they said takeake the name down. So you know, this is where it is And I think we'll see what happens to the judicial system. We'll see what the Supreme Court says. And of course, there historically in the U.S. there have been some big confrontations over power and acccess and u issues around the court system and also And at the end of the nineteenthentury early twentieth century, the so called progressive era, there were a number of constitutional amendments that were passed because people felt that The system had become too slanted in favor of oligarchs, people who got their money from Um from business and put that into politics and made themselves into leading political figures. So you know adjustments may need to be made to the constitutional framework But you're right, it's under great challenge from someone who has very strong authoritarian tendencies. Yeah, because one of the things we've talked about from this is, for example, the Fed and the independence of the Fed and the pressure that Trump's put on , you know, the Fed chairman to the previous Fed Chairman to change interest rates, to cut rates and help the economy in the short term. And obviously it's the Fed's job to decide whether that's the right thing or not to do in the long term. And now we've obviously got the new Fed Chair who Trump's brought. so know you're seeing this happening, like you say, these institutions that have been there for a long time. Where does it end? do you think You have to keep watching the movie stuff. I'm afraid. it's still going on. Also one of the ammicus briefs I signed was saying that President Trump's attempt to fire Lisa Cook, who's the governor of the Federal Reserve system, that that was a bad idea from an economic point of view, prerecisely because independent central bank is better than all the alternatives. And actually, you know' interesting stuff independence of the central bank. has long been something that people on the right of the political spectrum have preferred. People on the left you know support it from time to time, sureure, but not as wholeheartedly as people on the right. And now of course, Mr. Trump is calling that into question. and a lot of people are having to decide, do they want to stick to their previous views? They were quite articulate and very sensible, or do they want to blow with the wind? So it's a big challenge, not just to the Fed, not just to the court system, but also to academics and social commentators and a lot of other people. Now I was recently in Budapers for The Champions League final, which sadly my Blg Arsen, in my view, were cheated, cheated out of the victory and, you know when you catch me on a bad night talk about You know, all sorts of you w they stop morning. Well you know, what I am interested in though is saw a few economists when I was over there, but also just talking to many Hungarians. And there is a sort of tremendous optimism in Hungary. Again, this is another sort of almost experiment in real time with essentially your case, there is a tremendous optimism that the replacement of Oban, who was absolutely trampling on their institutions by Peter Mago, who definitely has more respect for the kind of democracy that was created after the collapse of Cunism will lead to a tremendous economic revival and I think that's plausible. I don't know what you think, but I think that is plausible. Well first of all Robert I'm a shifer Wednes supporter. I have no sympathy for people complaining about Arsenal. You did win the league. Yes, exactly. secondecondly, yes,, I think the shift in Hungary is very positive and deffinitely what they needed But to go back to your earlier point about the U.S. economy, also, Robert, the fact that we have this AI revolution sweeping the world cannot be ignored in this context, right? So what's your opportunities? What's the risk? How do you play your cards? what cards you have Within the European Union, for example, those are incredibly important I think of governance as being a long term determinant of prosperity and it definitely plays out over decades. Authoritarian figures can offer you all kinds of things in the short run. and you can also have booms,? You can have a few people with a lot of money and some ideas become extremely wealthy There's a buzz around that and that may actually be not great for for democracy, depending on how they What kind of impact they want to have in the political sphere? Obviously, we saw that very point In the early days of the so called Russian democracy where you know we saw all these know I mean, they now seem to many of us like to have been criminals, as it were, essentially stealing Russian assets. But there was this illusion that democracy was taking root in Russia. Yeah, I spent a of time in Russia in the nineteen nineties. I spent even more time in Ukraine, actually very some of these are much more with Ukraine than with the Russians. But was I was in St. Petersburg actually nineteen ninety one when the attempted took place and then the Soviet Union fell apart and you're absolutely right that they didn't have a legacy or a history of institutions. And then there was this idea, this strategy that massively backfired that you could somehow Um transfer assets to these oligarchs actually everyveryone started recording the oligogues, and that would somehow strengthen democracy. Well, turns out if you give control of your assets, all assets to five or ten people. You don't get democracy. You get a very rich five or ten people and they have other ideas about who to support and so on Um, Building democracy is hard. And I think to the credit of the European Union Roberts It's provided a bit of an institional anchor and a benchmark for lots of countries. I also spent time in Poland, for example And I wrote a book in nineteen ninety five predicting that Poland would do well relative to other places in part because They'd created a framework in which entrepreneurs could flourish and build new businesses. And u That book is now very expensive on Amazon because there's not many of them and I think they were right. You absolutely were right. I've P was doing prettyly. Now we're going to do another episode on the costs and benefits of a I, But can I just ask an AI and digital question within this framework which is one of the big trends since the late nineties has been the creation of these multinational, often, you know know in a sense, you know American domicile, but these huge multinational digital giants. to what extent does your theory about needing robust institutions to guarantee shared apply to a world in which we have these enormously powerful transnational institutions, which you know to use a cliche are often more well they're certainly they generate more revenue than quite a lot of countries as it were. But also just the people at the top do exercise enormous amounts of personal power and they extract enormous amounts of personal wealth. How much are they challenged to your model of what are necessary conditions of shared prosperity? Yeah Joseph Schumpter is reportedly said, although I've not actually been able to find this quote. Everyone has elites. The important thing is to change them from time to time.. So you know, it's a little bit of the paradox of entrepreneurship, but in the paradox of opportunity, right? that you allow these companies to be created, you facilitate their ability to raise capital and to attract talent from around the world. and that's a good thing and certainly raises your income per capita and if you can share it, then other people can e good about this too But of course, when you allow that to happen, they become big. and when they become big, they get political power. This is very much part of the framework that we use in the Nobel Pice work.. When they've got power, do they really want entrepreneurs to come in and challenge their businesses So you know the success of the US, I would say, over two hundred years, the positive parts has been, you know, we allow people to build businesses and then they get overturned. So railway barons were the big players at the end of the nineteenth century. I don't think being a railway baron now gets you a lot of in Washington, although Warren Buffet did make good money of trains So as long as you're innovating, as long as new technology is coming along, and as long as you're challenging the incumbents, I think you can have very positive effects on your own economy I would worry globally, Robert about these US giants becoming so powerful and outrunning everyone except maybe the Chinese that they may strip value and move good jobs and profits from lots of other countries. every other country potentially is in the line of fie here. And I've been to a couple of recent discussions in the U S with very well informed, well placed people recently who were talking about setting up a sovereign wealth fund in the U.S to share the profits But whose profits are they sharing? And with whom? Well, I mean, even the most expansive version of this is about sharing these profits with Americans, peopleople living in America or resident or citizens or whatever But if these mega companies are able to strip and remove value from the rest of the world, you might actually get a nice pot of gold for Americans. But what does that do to the world? Right So I think you're right, Robert. this is I mean, we've seen these issues before. We've seen it in economic development. Have we ever seen anything quite so powerful, quite so global and so adept at taking value from other places. I don't think we have. I think we're in a new era now. I know Krugman has subsequently said been intduced and misunderstood. But you'll have seen the Krugman argument that actually, know Google did Europeans a favor by selling them all these amazing services. And you know that was a great boon to the living standards of Europeans. I mean, he subsequently said he didn't mean to say that meant that somehow Europe doesn't have a competitiveness or. But it is the case. I mean, the same was true, of course of of China you know, we saw vast amounts of important jobs shipped to China, but for many years you know, the long term political and economic consequences of that were in a sense anesthetized because we got all this incredibly cheap stuff from China and our living standards rose because our pounds and dollars just went further. How do you get goovernments are proper for the kind of economic shocks that these massive economic shifts, whether it's manufacturing to China or you know the impact on the nature of employment of AI, or you know there's a whole bunch of stuff that we've all lived through recently. You know onn the China front, of course, what what's scrabed everyone's attention now is that they quietly build up built up dominating position in the processing of critical minerals that you need to make silicon chips and everything else And u And now they're saying, well, you know, if you want to put tariffs on us, Mr. Trump There won't be any critical minerals for your defense industry, for example. And it's going to take the Americans quite a long time to catch up with that. So you know the I think that's straight out of Adam Smith, actually that strategy, Robert, which is build up a monopoly position, you know, make it really attractive for people, play the game their way and then use the market power that results. O one side of my family made screws in Sheffield for a hundred years at a company that did that and got wiped out by, you know, some combination of of automation and globalization and so on. And I think you're absolutely right to worry about The de industalization was handled badly and You know, led to leds to lots of problems and people leaving I left Um And the same thing could happen again. And I think we need to be honest with ourselves that you need to look at the gift torce in the mouth If somebody's offer you something for free, they say, Well, that's nice. Where does this go from here? What does that do to us strategically? What does that create in terms of economic opportunities? Where are the good jobs And I think that that's the question that we just got to ask again and again. and we do have to reposition our governments to answer that. At the same time, I'm not in favor of just saying, well, we'll provide subsidies to our own industry, or well have industrial policy and pick the winners and so on because we know that's a bit fraught and there's governance issues there. So we are going to need some new strategies to deal with this new world. So just as a kind of final question then, before we bring you back to talk about AI and how we all do well from AI I just wanted to ask you on this topic of wealth because there's been a lot of focus on that in this is how do you we are where we are, whether it's to do with bad institutions, good institutions and that's been the impact of where we are in terms of inequality Do you think then wealth taxes, for example, are a good idea? Like how do we redistribute wealth more fairly? So I think wealth taxes will be part of it, steh. So the fact of the matter is that if you're sufficiently rich in the billions multibillions class, you don't pay much tax And the proposal that I've supported is one in which established wealth. So you want to be careful with entreprenes you want to make sure they have an incentiv to build their wealth and so on. I don't think that's too difficult to add to this. But once you've got the established wealth, I think the average rate of taxation should be roughly the same as high paid professionals like lawyers, for example pay in terms of their tax. And Gabriele Zuckman has a calculation about two percent wealth tax. We've had him on the show that Yeah I wouldn' I would say though, I supported this proposal in France because I thought, well, you know, if anyone's going do aalth tax be the way it'll be the French And the French business press loves me on lots of these discussions and issues, but they don't love me on the wealth tax. I've got to tell you. nobody wants to tax the billionaires because they're afraid afraid the golden goose is going to get, you know It's game impeded. and I don't think that's right. and I think that it's unfair the current tax system. And I'm not in favor of punitive taxes on billionaires or massive redistribution. I just think they should pay roughly the same as other high income people pay, which is not difficult ask at all But it's not on the cards, is it in most countries? So do you think it's achievable then to have wealth equality or more fair distribution of wealth? I'm from the northern middle class stff. been sh Maybe the middle class then sounded more working class. I lost the accent when I got out, B The decline of the British aristocracy didid not cause any heartache in my part of Sheffield. I can tell you that the fact that all those beaul houses are now owned by the National Trust everyone go visit the garden and so on, what a fantastic outcome. So yes, And as you know, that was what the wealth distribution was all about, and that was handled by state taxes and also the effect of World War Ine and so on. So yeah, over time, I think established wealth inherited wealth is pretty unappealing. But you do want to encourage the entrepreneurs, You do want innovation You want a lot more demisis services, I would say. And you know, if Demisis service, I haven't talk about I've talked to him but not about just tax rates. But you probably don't want to tax capital on labor and talented labor more than it's taxed in Silicon Valley, for example, because That's the competition, isn't it But I think I think we can have it both ways. I don't think that solves all everybody's fiscal problems, including in the United States, for example. But I think it's a fair component of what we need to do So I think we're going to wrap up there and just to let listeners know, we've got another episode which I think we actually can Now sort of entitle as Be this is a phrase you used. Where are the good jobs in this AI economic and social revolution that we're going through. So do listen to that other episode as and when it's published, which will be all about whereere are the good jobs Ecellent and that's it for, bye bye. Gy Uncovered windows can make your home feel up to twenty degrees hotter. Stay cool, and save up to fifty percent off custom window treatments during the fourth of July megale at blinds dot com. From outdoor shades to room darkening blinds, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services, or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way