In this exhausting deep dive, Matt and Chris take a break from counting their billionaire stipends to devote (what some might call) an inordinate amount of time to Gary Stevenson’s recent appearance with a challenging interviewer: Tomás from Despolariza. They grapple with the indeterminacy of Schrödinger’s Gary, who oscillates between being an economic and mathematical genius revealing what THEY don’t want you to know on YouTube, and a pragmatic but selfless political activist who oversimplifies complex problems and sacrifices nuance (and himself) in the name of urgent reform.Despite insisting that he hates fame and has no desire to promote his best-selling book or be a popular YouTuber, Gary takes the time to remind us all of how often he’s recognised on the street and precisely how many millions of views his channel racks up each month. These are depressingly familiar guru tropes, as are his sweeping claims that you can’t trust politicians, economists, academics, journalists, the media, his old colleagues… or even graphs.Gary’s core message that growing inequality is economically and politically unsustainable is an important one. And his ability to communicate the stakes of that problem to a large audience could be beneficial. So the criticism lies not with his stated goals but with the guru-tastic packaging and unwillingness to deal with complexity.Luckily, there is a solution... Gary. Only he and his YouTube channel can save your grandchildren from abject poverty and Nigel Farage. And if you doubt him, just look at how many millions he made for himself and the bank with his uncanny predictions… or those monthly viewer stats. Oh, and did we mention he has an elite education from LSE?Links#89 GARY STEVENSON - Economics, Trading, Inequality, Wealth, Populism, Tax, Depolarize.Zucman, G. (2015). The hidden wealth of nations: The scourge of tax havens. In The hidden wealth of nations. University of Chicago Press.Francis-Devine, B. (2025). Income inequality in the UK. House of Commons Library.Francis-Devine, B. (2025). Wealth in Great Britain. House of Commons Library.
Hello and welcome to the Code Indegurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer.
We try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matthew Brown and with me is the Charlie Munger, my Warren Buffett, my offsider, my right-hand man, Chris Kavanaugh.
Chris, how are you going?
Yeah, yeah.
Many people call me the wizard of investing.
My friends, they're like, Chris, you went in elite university, like super mega elite, right?
And you're from a hard knock background.
Can't you give us the advice about how to be super wealthy?
And I say, you know, well, the first step is got to be me.
Got to be me.
Yep.
That's it.
That's right.
I'm not an economist.
I'm not an economist, but I did get excellent grades at school.
I am a professor, don't you know?
And you like the moonlight as a statistician of sorts.
That's what I do.
Yeah, indeed.
I got a manuscript coming out that's mainly mathematics.
It's got proofs in it and everything, Chris.
Look at that.
Look at that.
Thing for me, Matt, is I'm so tired.
I don't want to be doing this.
You know, other people could be here.
I have many other things.
I could be climbing up walls.
I could be eating sushi and stuff, but there's nobody else.
There's literally no one else.
No one else is going to take on these goddamn fat cat gurus.
Someone has to do it.
You know, who's doing it?
You know, the people in the world.
Who wants to produce 65 clips out of a two-hour episode?
Who wants to go back to a guru that we've already covered and have to listen to them all over again?
Definitely not me, but I do it for the kids, Chris.
I do it for our kids and our kids' kids.
And our kids' kids' kids.
Yes, so that's true.
We are back in Garyland, Gary Stevenson.
And I should tell a little tale here, Matt.
It'll be a brief one, but just to mention that this came about because somebody posted this on the subreddit saying, here's a new interview with Gary.
He addresses various criticisms that the DTG guys raised and I think gives good answers.
And I was interested and looked at it.
And he does provide some answers that are relevant, the points that we raised.
And we played a couple of clips from it in the last supplementary material, mainly his stance on graphs.
And then some people in the subreddit again, Matt was saying, you know, oh, you know, hiding his good arguments, you're, you know, selectively clipping him and whatnot.
Now, we were going to do the episode anyway, but be careful what you wish for because I will not miss a single argument that Gary makes in this.
Okay, it's going to be a fur breakdown of that.
But I do think it is a good thing to do because like my original plan was we'll go back and take some of the clips out of this just to just to do like, you know, a mini follow-up as we occasionally do with like Dr. K or Joe Rogan or Sam Harris.
And that's what I was intending to do.
But for that to happen, you have to take like 10 clips.
And as I said, I've took 65.
So this is very likely to be a full-length decoding again.
And yeah, sorry.
That's the way it went.
But I think there is stuff here.
But yeah.
And this, by the way, is a conversation that was on YouTube, fittingly, from a Portuguese YouTube channel called Despolarization, Depolarization.
And the title is Gary Stevenson, Economics, Trading, Inequality, Wealth, Populism, Tax, Depolarize.
And the guy interviewing him is a guy called Tom.
He seems to be like a kind of member of the rationalist community, or at least I detect some rationalist motifs in this content.
So yeah, and actually he does a pretty good job in this interview of putting difficult questions and following up points and whatnot.
It actually, in this respect, is probably one of the better interviews I've seen where, you know, Gary, it's long form.
Gary gets to respond to points, but he also gets like kind of critical points raised.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's unusual generally for any of our people we cover to actually be posed difficult questions in a long form scenario or not.
And yeah, well, listeners can be the judge as to the way in which Gary deals with them.
But I think some of the same points are raised that we raised in our episode.
So yeah, it makes sense to return to it.
And, you know, I'm not looking to take down Gary.
I mean, I think, yeah, it's not what I'm about.
I'm only doing this because you made me.
Well, that's the main reason.
But trying to find a positive thing to come out of it, I think it does provide some, you know, interesting examples on just how to be a judge of character and just detect whether or not certain rhetorical stratagems are in play or not.
Yes, that's right.
And let me just make one final reminder before we get started that as we declared on the last episode, neither Matt nor I are opposed to a wealth tax on the rich billionaires.
We're also not super in favor of growing inequality.
So actually, almost all of the potential policy prescriptions that are discussed are all fine with me.
And in most cases, they wouldn't in any way impact me because I am nowhere near the brackets that they're talking about.
So, I'm just pointing out that this is not a response which is based on we want to destroy Gary's agenda.
Actually, if he succeeds and manages to get reforms made, that mean there's higher taxes put on like the uber wealthy, great, all good, yeah, indeed.
Yeah, uh, so there you go.
Now, um, and oh, yeah, the other thing, we're not funded by billionaires, okay?
You'll see why that's significant.
Sadly, yeah, unless one of the Patreon members is secretly a billionaire, but if they are, they're not sharing if you exist, if you're out there in the patrons, you selfish bastard, you could you could do a little more.
Yeah, that's sadly, we're not.
Peter Till has not reached out.
Not yet, not yet, but hope springs eternal.
Um, now, I'm just going to give a little bit of flavor, Matt, at the start again.
I don't want to miss anything, lest I be accused of hiding what they were talking about.
But so the intro, which we're not going to spend that much time on, was talking about like Gary's background.
Some of it is familiar and just like a little clip to hear the kind of vibe of the interview.
I got expelled from school when I was 16 for selling drugs.
So I got into a grammar school.
I don't know like if Portuguese people know what that is, but it's kind of, it's a free school that's designed to sort of give poor kids a chance to compete with the fancy private school.
So you have to pass a test when you're, I think, 10 years old.
I got into that fancy school, which is a little bit further from my house.
And then I got expelled from school for selling drugs when I just turned 16.
What were you selling?
I mean, I wasn't going to show you.
I didn't say I was a drug dealer, but it was so, you know, I went into this kind of slightly fancy school, but I came from a very, like, I came from like the poor part of town.
The kids in that school were generally better off.
And, you know, you get to 15, 16, people start smoking weed.
People would just come up to me and be like, can you get me some weed?
Because they knew that I could.
Like, cause, you know, on my street, it was very easy to get, you know.
So, you know, I was poor.
They had money.
I wanted money.
I was like delivering papers.
So they'd like offer me some money to get them some weed.
It was like, I wouldn't say I was a drug dealer.
I suppose if you want to like be technical about it, I suppose perhaps I was.
But yeah, I got expelled for selling an extremely small amount of cannabis.
And I just turned 16.
Yeah, I don't want to try to portray myself as some sort of kingpin gang leader because that's not what I was.
That's nice.
Like, I actually genuinely mean that, you know, just talking about the background.
Gary went to a grammar school.
So did I. As it happens, it sounds like he did the 11 plus.
This is a test in the UK where you were kind of, you know, sorted into these schools.
And thing with grammar schools, or at least in the case of Northern Ireland, didn't cost hardly anything at the time.
So this was a way where people got into good schools without having to pay for private education or this kind of thing.
And then there was people taking drugs and selling drugs in my school as well.
That was, but, you know, it's cannabis right now.
But the thing is, Gary here, I would say somewhat uncharacteristically, downplaying.
It's not a big deal.
He, you know, he kind of just says, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, that's what he did.
But this gives a good vibe of like, you know, at the start of the interview, they're talking about his background.
They're looking at some photos with his family and stuff and talking about his upbringing.
Yeah, Dave, a little bit of color, a little bit of background to Gary.
Yeah.
Well, now, Matt, so, you know, there's talk about that.
Then we get to what we knew was coming, the LSE and the citibank era.
We know their story, right?
We've heard it in the previous content, but let's hear Gary describe his university life and introduce it to the audience.
And the last year of LSE and you need to get an internship, right?
Yeah, second year.
So second year.
So I went to LSE, London School of Economics.
For those who don't know, that's like a super elite economic school in London.
Like it's obviously not as famous as Oxford or Cambridge, but it's like just as hard to get into really.
So I got really good grades in my like exams and stuff.
I got into this fancy school and it's full of, it's super international.
It's like where like millionaires, like super, super millionaires from China, India, Pakistan, Russia, the Middle East, like it's where they send their kids.
So like Gaddafi's kids were at LSE, I think the same time I was there.
And it's that kind of place.
And, you know, at this point, this picture, I'm probably at LSE at that time.
So like I was kind of, I was like a little like kind of hood rat kid, basically, but I was like really good at maths and I got in there.
Ah, the familiar Gary motifs.
It washes over me.
So super elite university math where, you know, very fancy, very famous.
Only the rich can get in there.
Or, you know, if you happen to be Gary, because you're a math swiz, right?
Yeah.
He does mention his excellent grades there a few times.
And it wouldn't be a Gary interview unless he brought up his amazing math skills, his amazing grades, and the very prestigious schools he got into.
I have to give him a bit of a pass in this specific instance, Chris, because the interviewer is asking him about his autobiography and about, you know, his young life and so on.
So yeah, that's true.
That's true.
But it does happen.
Look, it does happen every interview, regardless, without fail.
But it's just the constant reference of like the super elite, super incredible university, like county.
LSE's like, it's got a reputation.
But anyway, anyway.
Okay.
I mean, this is actually the first hint of a common theme with Gary, which is kind of putting things in a hyperbolic way.
Like, I'm sure the LSE is a very high status score.
I'm sure it probably does have a higher number of rich or super wealthy students.
But to hear Gary say it, it's like all of them.
Yeah, except him.
Except him.
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
That's the kind of thing.
Like it's it's not completely false, what he's saying, but it is like a kind of exaggerated caricature, as we talked about last time.
And that is the common issue.
Like a lot of Gary's stories do feel like exaggerated hyperbole.
Okay.
So Tom responds to this point and raises the card game organized by Citi.
That combination of those three things is like so, I don't know, it's almost an archetype of working class East London.
Yeah, it's class.
Yeah, exactly.
So am I allowed to swear?
Yeah, it's all right.
So like I was like, fuck, basically.
I was like, my plan was to get these grades.
And it turns out the jobs are going to be given out based on these extracurriculars.
And I was like kind of pissed off.
I just, because I knew I was good at maths.
And I just decided to be like really like loud and kind of obnoxious in the lectures.
And I just hoped that like somebody would notice.
And basically what?
Because like LSE is like that kind of place.
And I was studying in the library one day in my second year.
So I would have been, I think, just turned 20 or maybe just before 20.
And somebody said, are you Gary Stevenson?
I said, yes.
And he said, Citibank hire one trader a year through a card game, which is basically a maths game.
And like I heard you're good at maths.
So if you like apply for this game, maybe you can win and maybe you can get a job.
And I was like straight away like this is, this is like, this is basically my only chance basically.
Because, because, you know, I don't need to have played the clarinet in the Royal Albert Hall, you know?
Like it's like a fair game.
And I was, I was so confident at like games and maths.
And that's probably why Citibank did it right.
Because they knew that there were these maybe people falling between the cracks who were really talented.
I realized now what they were doing was, they would pay like some of their interns.
So the interns come in after second year.
Some of them get offered jobs.
And like if you're at LSE or Oxford or Cambridge, they're going to pay you some money.
And they're going to say, find us those hidden gems at your university.
Because they did it to me the next year.
And I found somebody like that.
So two points here, Matt.
Again, this story has, you know, I'm sure there's, there's elements of truth to it.
But it has like, Gary was known around the university as the maths whiz kid because of interjections at lectures.
So then someone at the library comes up to him and is like, you're Gary Stevenson, right?
And then he finds out about the thing that he's like, this is my only chance.
You know, if he doesn't get this, this is it.
And it's, it's a key in all that hyperbolic.
And that thing where he says, you know, if you went to LSE or Oxford or these elite institutions and you were an intern, they would send you back to like spot the other diamonds in the rush.
Just to mention, Matt, again, my friend who was at SOAS, not Oxford, not Cambridge.
He came back at a jobs fair and he was recruiting people, right?
So like, I think this is just a common thing.
Not, it is not restricted to like the most elite.
So it's, again, it's just like the, everything is hyperbolic always.
Yeah.
It's a good story.
It's a good story.
Yeah.
You know, I think Gary's quite adhering really in this, in this bit and telling, telling the story.
Because it's a good story.
You know, the working class background and the rough, rough and ready past selling drugs casually.
Not in the scary kind of way.
It's all cool.
But, you know, we're really good at math.
You know, known around the place for that.
And he's got one shot to make it a big time.
Yeah.
And yeah, it's the stuff movies are made out of.
Yeah.
So like the guy, Tom, actually doesn't entirely understand the story, right?
Because like the game was rigged against Gary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've, I've heard this story a few times and I've, and I'm, I'm still sort of a little bit confused by it because it is, it is confusing, right?
Oh, you're like Tom.
Yeah.
Because was it rigged against him or rigged so that he could win?
Well, so the way it was set up, he explains it in excruciating detail in the book.
You know, it's, it's like a poker game, right?
You're, you're betting on what other people are holding and whatnot.
You know what you have, but you, you have to kind of guess what other people are doing based on their bet.
And in this story, he like works out a strategy, which is better than everyone else's because, you know, he's Gary.
And then he uses his street smarts and he's doing so well that each round people are dropping out or whatever.
And when it gets towards the end, he gets, I can't remember if it's like a terrible hand or a hand where it should be good.
It would only be bad if everybody else had like, you know, like you've got a king, but everybody else has a uses, but that would be so rare.
And then it turns out that everybody else does have aces and you feel, but you actually did the kind of right thing.
It's just that, and then it turns out, City announced that they rigged the game against Gary to see what he would do.
Now, the, the interesting thing is like the financial time said, you know, this sounds fantastic, but they investigated and said like, they got, you know, all the people that said this was broadly what occurred, at least in the final round.
So, so that, does that make more sense then?
Yeah.
Sure.
So they, they do do this kind of gamified testing thing of, of Gary, but also, but there are other, other recruits who were being tested at the same time.
Yeah.
Well, Matt, that's a good point.
So Tom brings up this point, right?
This is a lot of effort to recruit a single person.
But if I were one of those people who got a really high card and then in the end, the guys from Citibank came out and said, Hey guys, this was all a test to see if Gary could withstand being such a bad position.
I would be like, come on.
What about me?
You know, I'm good at this too.
You know, I get a chance to win.
Those guys, they don't give a shit.
I'll tell you why.
Because what I realized when I went to that final was, so I don't know, like if you went to like a kind of elite university or anything, but like when you go to an elite university, everybody there is from a rich family.
And when they, what I realized when I, when I, I don't come from a rich family and I'm not good at like networking.
And when I went to the final, I knew my only way to get a job at Citibank was to win that final.
But these other guys, they didn't go to that final with the intention of winning.
the final.
They went there in nice suits, trying to make some connections so they could put those connections on the application form.
form that's what they did so the other the other recruits it wasn't just gary didn't care at all about the about the outcome of it because it doesn't matter to them they come from super wealthy backgrounds and they don't care about winning games uh showing off that kind of thing this uh This didn't ring true to me in terms of,
like, I don't think people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are known for being less competitive, like less ego-driven, you know, less interested in showing off or succeeding.
No, no.
And like, you know, again, Matt, there's the presentation.
I don't know if you've been to an elite university, like me, right?
Like, but everyone else there is like super rich and thing.
And just again, Matt, I went to Oxford.
There was plenty of rich people wandering around Oxford, but there's plenty of normal people like me, middle of the road people and so on.
So like the presentation is extreme, as is the presentation that like the only person in the room, the only one that actually cared about winning the game is Gary.
Everybody else is an entitled rich arshole, basically.
And maybe, maybe it's true.
Like everyone else just fails upwards, basically.
They can't help but be ushered into these jobs just simply from their social connections, their high socioeconomic background.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We can let them spell it out in some detail.
You were playing the trading game, but they were playing the network.
They will have gotten jobs.
They will have gotten jobs.
They don't care about winning.
And this, I think, is a very interesting thing about being first about elite society in general, but also about being this kind of poor outsider in elite society, which is what you realize is these guys don't really give a fuck about being the best.
Like this is the thing, right?
So I come from a poor background and my dad worked for the post office and I'm poor and my dad's poor.
And if I don't do something big, I'm going to be fucked, basically.
So I need to win.
I need to win.
But these kinds of people who go to LSE, who go to Oxford, who work on trading pools and elite jobs nowadays, their dad's rich.
They live in a nice, big, comfortable house with a nice big garden.
Their dad works for the investment bank.
He's making a million euros a year, you know?
They go to private schools.
But all they need to do to win is follow the path that their dad sets them.
So there's this big difference between poor people and rich people, which is poor people need to stand out to have a chance.
But rich people, they want to fit in.
This is the big difference because in the society we live, and I think this is sort of the story of my whole career is because I come from a poor background, I need to be the best.
I need to be the best.
I need to be the best.
But people from rich families They just need to feed Yeah because they don't want to be Yeah, you don't want to stand out and you don't want to risk being like unagreeable towards anybody.
Exactly.
Listen, if you know that as long as you don't piss your dad off, you're going to inherit 10 million Euros.
What are you going to do?
You are not going to piss your dad off, right?
You know, and your whole life is about don't piss your dad off, don't upset your community, because listen, these guys are playing life on easy mode.
Kind of point, Matt.
Elon Musk's daughter, just as an example of somebody that is the child of the wealthiest man in the world and seems to be willing and interested in pissing off their father, right?
Yep.
Once again, I think the theme here is hyperbole.
It's not that there isn't a grain of truth in this.
You know, people from middle class backgrounds tend to have better access to social networks, old boys' networks, those things tend to exist.
Yes, that's true.
But the way Gary presents it is that he's a fucking unicorn and everyone else is playing life on easy mode.
Like every single other person who might be entering such a career has got a father with, if it isn't Gaddafi, he's got 10 million pounds, right?
Only Gary is smart.
Only Gary is trying.
Everyone else is just on autopilot going through blindly.
And, you know, the theme, of course, the theme of the story is that Gary is a very special guy, right?
With an amazing rags to riches, school of hard knocks, designed to be appealing backstory.
He's kind of doing, you know, class warfare position of it, that he's a member of the working class, real people, and he's like got into the hall of power, right?
But like, Matt, you know, I can't help but think about my own circumstance, right?
And like my dad worked as an electrician for BT, British Telecom.
You know, fine job.
And my mom was a...
Not like you and your dad with the goddamn stair company.
With our stair empire.
Yeah, like, so absolutely not.
No, no inheritance of millions, right?
My mom was a medical secretary.
And I had a choice when I went to university.
And I actually applied to do law and I applied to do study of religions with Tibetan.
And I ended up doing study of religions with Tibetan.
And now, this whole thing about like the presentation that if you're a rich person, you only do what you're told.
Like there's no rebels, right?
In the upper classes.
And the people that are less well off that don't come from inherited wealth, all they care about is like making money, right?
The most money possible, because they know what it's like to scramble.
And I know so many people from my background, from working class background, who went and studied English literature or whatever, because that was their passion.
And they go on to do different kinds of jobs.
Some of them are earning more, some of them are not.
But it's just that kind of white washing of like, if you disagree with Gary, it's because you, you must, you know, not know what it's like, the struggle or whatever.
And like, again, I started studying study of religions with Tibetan as my undergraduate.
And it's not because I had like a trust fund that I could fall back on.
That's right.
So your family wasn't rich, right?
You weren't playing life on easy mode, but nevertheless, you somehow resisted the temptation to become a trader and instead study something that you thought was interesting.
And look, in Brisbane, where I studied, there's the fancy option, which is University of Queensland.
There's the slightly lower status option, which is QUT, University of Technology.
And there's Griffith University, which I went to.
Perfectly fine university, but the third most prestigious.
I didn't give a shit about going to the prestigious university.
And you might say, oh, that's because you're fucking stare at.
He didn't have a stare at Borrow.
He was a builder, right?
He built houses at that time and we were not rich.
But I studied with the other people in my share house.
We all paid 45 bucks for a room and we lived in a share house.
They were all on Ostudy.
So they had less money than me.
They came from poorer backgrounds, I guess.
But we were all studying psychology.
And we were all studying psychology for the same reason, which was that we thought it would be cool to study psychology.
So just that flattening kind of narrative, which is there's two kinds of people.
There's super rich people who are going to make a lot of money, but they don't even have to try.
And they're just playing life on easy mode.
And they just get ushered into a comfy seat because of who they know.
And then there's the poor, hungry people who naturally, anyone with any kind of intelligence and talent is going to go for the brass ring and try to get into that.
Right.
And there's a lot of us who don't think like that.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the thing is like, I feel that a motif that comes across a lot is Gary is the champion of the working class.
Gary has, you know, their avatar that can beat the snobbish elites at their own game.
But it just cuts out the whole middle of society between like the two extremes as if they're not there and they don't really matter.
Right.
And like they do.
Anyway, anyway.
Okay.
So after LSE, as we know, he won that and he got into the trading game.
Yeah, it is.
So you can kind of sense like this.
It's addictive and it's obsessive.
So every trader has a P ⁇ L, profit and lot.
And, you know, there's a spreadsheet that goes out so you can see everybody's P ⁇ L. So everybody knows what everybody's making.
And, you know, some guys are in the red.
They're losing money.
So it's this kind of place where everybody walks around with their number on their head.
And that year, 2011, I was Citibank's most profitable trader.
And you can kind of almost see it in this photo.
It's like starting to get to my head a little bit.
Yeah, you're not even smiling anymore.
Yeah, I think I'm the big shot, even though like I'm a lot smaller than this guy next to me.
What I really wanted to do with my book was really get under the skin of these ideas about competition and ambition, wanting to win.
But it's a very masculine, very competitive place.
And it's all about numbers.
It's all about money.
But it's also about this game.
You know, this is a room full of people playing one big game about what's happening in the world.
And in a lot of ways, I miss that.
I miss that because I'm super interested in the economy.
It's quantified.
You can see who's doing better than others.
Gary, as we know, the most best in City Bank.
That's established.
And it's a hyper-competitive, hyper-masculine environment.
You know, Gary misses it.
He wanted to peel back the curtain there.
By the way, I worked in SalesMap when I was a teenager.
We also had like how much you sold this month and like, you know, who was the lowest, often me.
So unlike Gary, I was not the best at convincing people to part with their money.
But, you know, they love it.
I mean, you know, again, I'm sure there's lots of grains of truth with this.
I'm sure that's the culture of this place.
There's a lot of things about that, but there is a fair bit of truth in it.
But once again, I don't think I've ever heard like a personal anecdote of Gary's in which the subtext or the main takeaway is how fucking special Gary is.
Like he just, he brings it up in every single one.
I'd just like to hear one anecdote where that wasn't the main takeaway.
Well, we did hear one at the start, the drug dealer thing.
That's why I was so astonished.
No, no, that is the, that's him establishing that he's he's the rough diamond, right?
So, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So when you take it in the larger narrative, yes, you're right.
But it, he wasn't the best drug dealer.
So he did fill back there.
But so the thing about that is because of that trading, this race isn't familiar with McCiff.
Now I can come here and I can tell you what I think is going to happen and you can you can say I'm wrong, blah, blah, blah.
Maybe you will.
We'll see.
And I mean, maybe some people will believe you.
You know, people disagree with me a lot.
But when I was a trader, people disagreed with me a lot and I fucking loved it.
Because if I walk into a room and 100 people say I'm wrong, then I'm going to take everybody's money.
And at the end of the year, everybody has to accept Gary was the best trader.
So I kind of missed that like fairness, that transparency.
And you know, in the end, trading, how many worlds are there where a kid like me from nothing, from from poverty can walk in and at like 24, 25, be the big name at the bank?
That echoed to me, you know, when Brett Weinstein said, when everybody says that I'm wrong, that feels good because it shows me just how far ahead I am of everyone else.
And Gary here is saying like, you know, people are going to disagree with me, right?
They're going to say my figures are wrong.
That's what I like because just like in trading, I beat them all, right?
Like I won because people say I'm wrong, but I'm the one that was like the best trader.
And he's arguing that means that, you know, he's right about what he wants to say about the economy and stuff here.
And it's, this is just like a really very familiar motif in the gurus here that you hear over and over.
Like, I'm better at making predictions.
I have a track record, even from people that have no track record.
It's all self-declared.
Yeah.
I mean, look, the sympathetic way to look at that is I could see that there is appeal in any kind of job or endeavor where there is a clear marker for being right or wrong.
This is why some people like to study maths, right?
Because it's not like a matter of opinion.
You'll either be right or wrong.
So I think that part of it I kind of jog with.
But yeah, once again, the theme of it is Gary's always right.
He's a legend.
He proved everyone who disagree with him gets turned out to be proven wrong.
And yeah, anyway.
And now, Matt, one thing here is that like, this is the last bit before we start getting into the economic meat of this conversation but i do have to mention this now this is the thing matt where this guy tom he brings up a set of arguments right that he wants to reuse with gary and there's i think there's four so the the first of them concerns the financial times article so first little piece of discomfort for you yeah come on the financial
Times article.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
So the Financial Times article, um, for those of you listening to us who haven't read it, it basically, they claim they spoke to seven or eight people who worked with you and they say that it was like, you probably had access to the short-term interest rate traders, um, spreadsheet, but it would be, it was impossible for you to know if you were the best in the world, which is what you normally claim.
Well, so Citibank has two trading departments.
Uh, one is like global foreign exchange and one is what they call local markets.
Um, so there is a spreadsheet for global foreign exchange.
And so I know with absolute certainty, I was number one in global foreign exchange.
In the whole world?
Yeah.
In Citibank globally, yeah.
No, well.
So you had access to the PNL of every Citibank.
Yeah, we can see that, well, foreign exchange has New York, London and Asia, which is Tokyo and, uh, Sydney.
And yeah, we can see that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there are a lot of lies in that Financial Times article.
Yeah, I mean, I'm used to it by this point but um listen i don't think it's so as far as you know you were the top trader but not every citibank was in that spreadsheet so there was all there's also local markets which is the other side but um i was told by the like the global head and also by my boss yeah you were the top in global citibank 2011.
I'm pretty sure that's true.
So that's your main source, is what your boss told you.
Foreign exchange, we can see.
Global foreign exchange, we can see.
But I was told, yeah.
So this is a challenge, Matt, which is often referenced as like it's fairly meaningless.
But it is a claim that he almost constantly repeats at every interview.
And the Financial Times article challenged, right?
That it's essentially he claimed to be, you know, the best trader in Citibank, the most profitable.
And eventually gets down to a particular year.
But that is challenged by his colleagues in the article who say he wouldn't know.
And also he wasn't.
Yeah, yeah.
And they're liars, right?
The Financial Times is lying.
The former colleagues are lying.
Well, so first of all, you heard Tom raise the point that like, how would you know?
Did you have access to everybody in everyone else's department?
And Gary kind of implies, well, yeah, you know, we could see some profit and loss in other departments.
And my boss told me, and he's like, but were you relying on that?
Like your boss told you?
That's the source.
And yeah.
So we haven't got yet into why the Financial Times might have wanted to live, I guess.
But yeah, yeah.
You know, he could see.
He could see all the data from all the other traders.
But even if he couldn't see, his boss told him.
So just like doubly, doubly.
Anyway, I think, look, it doesn't matter, right?
It doesn't matter whether he was a good trader, a pretty good trader, a very good trader, or the best trader in Citibank.
I thought it was claimed to be the best trader in the world.
And it was, I know it's kind of changed a little bit from different branches and just foreign exchange and so on.
But, you know, there's a bit of a pattern here where the person that's always talking about their elite skills they went to, how they always can predict things right, and everyone else in the room is an idiot, and how they've been so successful.
You know, the self-aggrandizement and the hyperbole is a bit of a theme.
Well, Tom, the guy, actually makes this point.
Yeah, I completely understand that.
But apart from that, like, if it's not, I mean, I'm not sure about what I'm about to say, but maybe, let's say you are exaggerating it.
Is it necessary, though?
You know what I mean?
Because you could say I was one of the top traders in Citibank or something like that.
I don't think there would be any need to exaggerate it, you know.
Yeah, there is no need.
And so it would almost be a shame, you know, that that would be happening.
You know, the book is there, you know, I haven't exaggerated anything in the book.
I mean, I think whatever I said, I would have been accused of dishonesty in the book.
So, you know, I think in a way it's kind of funny, right?
Because, like, you know, you read the book.
The message of the book, the intended message of the book is like that the global economy is collapsing.
And it's going to destroy the living standards of your kids and your grandkids.
For me personally, I think that's quite an important story.
But the other message of the book is that there's a bunch of guys who are watching it happen.
And they're so obsessed with competition that they don't give a fuck.
And then what you get is a bunch of traders come out and say, Gary was not the best trader in the world.
Listen, whether I was the best trader in the world or not, your kids and your grandkids are going to be fucking poor.
I think that's the fucking story.
story you know i quit i quit banking in 2014 okay i didn't release this book until last year 2024 if what i wanted was to make the fucking gary stevenson show gary's the best trader in the world why wait 10 years so many things that are just a bit odd right like like the segue to the the world is about to end we're on a highway to ruin these masterminds because they're masterminds like him like like he was um the fx traders yeah the fx like
foreign exchange it turns out is the engine that's driving the world to to ruin and so they know but they're just so damn competitive that they like i mean i don't expect foreign exchange traders to care about anything about except foreign exchange trading right that's why they're foreign exchange traders yeah that's right but anyway i don't so it is it is the segue to the blustery kind of response you know well you know you know why would i lie you know i've got no
reason to lie and the most the more important thing is is that everyone it's about the kids it's about the kids the world yeah that's the real issue let's stop talking about this yeah so the this is like the bit that gets me is like the guy's point at the start is like, you know, if you just said I was like a good trader, it wouldn't impact any of your message, right?
Like you could say that, you know, maybe you just say, well, I exaggerated a bit or whatever, but like your message is still the same.
It doesn't hinge on you being the best trader.
But Gary's response is to say, yeah, so I, there's no reason why I would lie about it, right?
Then I haven't exaggerated anything.
And if that's true, then the world revolves around Gary based on the way that the book is described.
But so he's saying it's not important.
Like what's really important is what's happening.
That's what the book is all about.
But then like, why not just drop the claim?
Why does that matter?
Because Gary's point is that his colleagues are lying about him and he was the best.
Here again, he does this thing of like flipping between right saying the best trader in the world.
But the claim that he sometimes goes back down to is like the best trader in a department in Citi, right?
The foreign exchange disk specifically at Citibank with maybe some other branches as well.
Yeah, that's right.
So it just it just moves around and it just smells a bit.
It doesn't doesn't ring that true.
Imagine if you were saying to any of the other gurus and you were saying to them, but you know, you've made these claims and they were like, well, look, I just want to save the world, right?
Like I want to try and get these elites that are taking all our money, these people that are pumping these vaccines into our kids.
You know, the things that are said about me, they're obviously annoying, but that's not what it's about.
That's what Russell Brand does, right?
Like Russell Brand often says that, you know, they're trying to make this about me, criticism of me, because I'm revealing the truth.
And if you think that's being unfair to the way that Gary is framing this, so let me just go back a little bit to him talking about, you know, why his colleagues would disagree with him.
I don't think it's complicated what happens here, right?
Like you write a book, you call the global head of trading the slug, and then the global head of trading comes out and says, this guy's a liar.
You know, what do you think is happening here?
It could be that.
But in my head, at least, it could be true that you exaggerate your points.
Of course, of course.
Do you think my colleagues are happy about the book?
No.
I haven't read it yet.
So I don't think they probably are.
If you were one of my colleagues who was unhappy, what do you think you would do?
You're saying they probably are taking some form of revenge against you.
What do you think they would do?
You're in a situation.
You're like a very rich, very powerful, wealthy man.
Somebody's written a book that portrays you in a negative light.
And a lot of your ex-colleagues as well in a negative light.
What would you do?
What do you think you would do?
What I would do is maybe not what most people would do, but I can imagine people using the opportunity to get away from the people who are going to be able to do it.
They're probably going to call each other up, right?
And say, what the fuck are we going to do?
And they're going to make a plan, right?
And what's the most obvious plan?
Yeah, let's tell the newspaper she's a liar.
And I'm going to call them and the newspaper journalists are going to say, do you have any other sources?
And he's going to say, yeah, I do.
This guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy.
I mean, this is the most obvious, predictable response.
Conspiracy hypothesizing, Matt.
Like, you know, it's the evil people in the book.
They all got together and they concocted, you know, the story and said, like, the journalist is going to contact us.
We've got to take this guy down.
Yeah.
When I read the FT article, it didn't sound like they cared very much.
Like, they said, oh, yeah, Gary, he's a pretty cool guy.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
You know what I mean?
It didn't sound like that.
No.
A lot of them said, you know, oh, I like Gary.
Yeah, we got on, but like, I think some of his claims about a bit over egged.
Yeah, that's like that was it.
Like, it didn't sound like there was a conspiracy.
But so Gary has moved from the Cassandra type, you know, slight of hand, which is don't, don't worry about that because the world's going to hell in a handbasket.
I'm the only one telling you the truth about it to anyone who criticizes me is clearly fermenting a conspiracy and lying in order to take me down again because they don't want the truth to come out.
Yeah.
And at this point as well, that it'll come up again where it's like, I finished my banking job in 2014 and then I haven't released my book and gone on a media tour until 2024.
So that means why would I exaggerate or lie?
There's like a dozen reasons why you did it, Brett.
And like the person that's pointing out here, Tom, right, is saying, you know, well, like you're saying, you know, why would I exaggerate?
But like, I can think of a good reason because like it's a better story and it would increase your YouTube channel and that kind of thing.
Like there is a coherent story, but the guy's kind of like, no, no, no, it doesn't make any sense.
Why would I wait 10 years?
It doesn't make any sense that the guy that's always talking about his massive numbers, always talking about his amazing grades, always talking about how he's the most smartest person in the room.
Why would he exaggerate about his trading numbers, Chris?
It makes no sense.
There's nothing to it.
And yes, as you kind of suggested, Matt, and there was a theme right throughout the last content that we covered.
You know, Gary doesn't want to do this.
He doesn't want to be doing YouTube.
He doesn't want to be talking about this.
And we'll hear this from Pete Fukus.
So after he's saying, you know, why did I wait 10 years?
It doesn't make sense.
I spent 10 years floating around think tanks, doing more study, working as a journalist, trying to research, publicize this.
This idea of writing the book, it was a last alternative for me.
I don't like being famous, you know.
Before YouTube started blowing up?
Like how many subscribers did you?
You have 1.2 million now, right?
1.3 million now.
Yesterday you had 1.2 million.
But at what point did you start writing the book?
I started writing the book in 2022.
Oh, so you had 100,000 subscribers?
No, no, no.
I had only on the YouTube.
When I first got the deal, I think I had maybe something like 20,000 subs on YouTube.
Okay.
Yeah.
And it was like I was doing the YouTube.
You know, people can go and watch my YouTube.
It's called Gary's Economics.
And the YouTube doesn't really talk about my trading career.
The YouTube is like educational, economics, explaining the economy, explaining what's happening.
But you do say like a lot of times I was the best fucking trader in the whole fucking world.
That's like, I mean, you know how it goes, right?
Like I get caught.
So obviously, you know, people can go.
I wrote my first article in March 2020, beginning of COVID, because I could see it was going to be an absolute economic disaster.
And in the article, I barely mentioned my career.
But obviously, people like call me up and say, what the fuck are you doing?
Like, why are you not mentioning your career?
Like, if you want these articles to be read, you need to mention your career.
So then I start to use them, but I held them back.
I like that.
Yeah.
So just backtrack, let's follow the logic.
So he claims that he never talks about his career, never talks about being a trailer.
It's just educational economics concepts.
Certainly.
And the guy goes, hang on.
I mean, we listen to a lot of these episodes.
It's every episode.
And the guy says, no, no, you do.
Oh, well, you know how it goes.
In the first episode, he didn't.
And then people, Matt, just like the guy at the library.
They're calling him up.
You've got to tell people.
You got to tell them you're the best trader.
Like, what are you doing?
What do you think you're not getting the traction?
So, yeah, that is.
I mean, it could be true.
It could be.
Could be.
Could be true.
Yeah.
And Gary doesn't want to be like the book, Matt.
It was a last, it was a last effort, right?
He didn't want to do it.
But, you know, how do you accidentally publish?
Like, how is your first book for Penguin and this huge international bestseller?
So he's saying he had 20,000, whatever, subscribers, right?
So he doesn't have a huge audience if he's right about the timeline.
So did Penguin come and headhunt him because they heard, you know, through the grapevine, there's this guy, right?
There's this trailer.
Or is it that Gary pitched a book and had it shopped round and then got an offer from Penguin?
Because like not everybody gets offered book deals just randomly.
I mean, we do, but apart from us, right?
Like Penguin aren't rocking up the people.
Usually you have to make a pitch and whatnot.
But in any case, Gary didn't write a book, want to write a book, but then he did write a book and the book is doing well.
So how would you know that kind of thing?
And I would like to say also, by the way, I really worked hard on the book and I think it's a very good book.
But it's part of the political project.
And it's like it's working, right?
You know, I can't walk down the street in London.
Like it's working.
Yeah.
And before we were recording, you said that you weren't expecting to be this recognized in Porto, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've been recognized by like Portuguese people like three or four times a day every day.
Some guy stopped me on that big bridge by the river, over the river.
Ponte de Luis.
Yeah, the big famous one.
And he had my book in his bag.
It was like crazy.
So that's like, I was in it.
Before I was here, I was publicizing the book in Italy.
And I did get recognized a bit in Italy.
But here it's been way, way more.
And yeah, that's super cool.
And that's like, that's, that's crazy for me.
And I'm really pleased to see because I know like you have a lot of economic problems here, just like we do back home.
In fact, often they're the same economic problems.
But worse.
Yeah, well, in some ways, yeah.
But yeah, that's, I'm really happy.
I'm really happy to see that like Portuguese people, you know, I'm not from this country.
It's a long way from home, but I'm glad that I can, yeah, because at the end of the day, I think it's going to, this is not going to be the kind of problem that will be solved just in the UK or just in Portugal.
But if we can stand together across Europe, across the Western world, we can really do something, I think.
So yeah, to reiterate, the book is part of the political project.
It's not about Gary.
It's about fostering policy change.
And he hates being in the spotlight, but he's very glad to be recognized on the street, kind of semi-famous over there in Portugal.
He was recognized more in Portugal than he was recognized in Italy.
Not that he's paying attention to those kind of fancies.
No, he actually hates it.
He hates being recognized in the street, but he puts up with it because it's part of the political project.
Chris, you read the book.
To what extent was it about Gary?
And to what extent was it about?
It's not a vital political movement.
It's not a vital political.
I mean, I know that Gary is, like he says, he's kind of suggesting it's a critique of the system, right?
It's peeling back and revealing that the people that are behind the wheel, you know, the movers and shakers at the bank, the ones that are making millions.
They're a bunch of jerks, the ones who are not Gary.
Yeah, they don't care about the economy going to shit because they can make money out of it.
So that's bad, right?
So that is in the book.
That is in the book.
But I mean, the general book is just mostly about Gary and his trading.
And a lot of it is, you know, will he get a payout from the bank at the end?
You know, there's a large section on that.
There's him being a better trader because he realizes that the economy is going to go to shit.
But I mean, there is the overarching thing that basically like because Gary has the working class roots and because he's paying attention to the hardships of people, that he's able, you know, the meet the bets that win.
So I guess you can say that that is pointing out people are suffering and rich people are profiting off it.
And that's bad.
Right.
Okay.
Fine.
Yeah.
There is a little bit of a leap from Gary being recognized in public, his book seals doing well, and the political momentum existing across Europe to create laws that will address this.
But, you know, it's a bit like the underpants norms, right?
Question mark, question mark, revolution.
But So we might be doing him a disservice here because, you know, there are things that make Gary a bit different than others in this space, map.
I've got a lot of videos on the channel about why economics education is weak at the moment.
But moving on.
Yeah.
You know, but I just, these guys were wrong again and again and again and again.
And that was like, that was amazing for me.
That was amazing for me because, you know, you study economics at the London School of Economics or, you know, you probably, I think ordinary people believe that elite economists from elite universities in elite jobs like kind of know what they're doing, kind of understand what's happening.
But like, I was there with them and they were wrong again and again and again and again.
And I started to think, to be honest, like I was kind of excited because I was like, this is it.
Like I'm kind of like, this is a, I'm at the foreground here, you know, because I'm, I've done the study.
I'm here on the trading floor with like the best people.
They're wrong all the time.
So like, this is like open game.
A knowledge gap is an opportunity.
Yeah, exactly.
And I was like, damn, I want to be the guy.
And also, as a trader, you get this right.
You're going to make a lot of money.
you're gonna make a lot of money.
So the top economists in the world are there.
Yeah, that's right.
The absolute elite.
And they're all wrong, though.
I mean, they're professional economists, but they're actually trading foreign exchange, but they're all wrong.
And Gary.
Oh, no, no.
The economists are not trading foreign exchange.
I think in this story they are.
I think he's, this is the top.
In this story.
They are.
Well, yeah.
So you're right.
You're right.
There are people in trading that are not aware of what's going on, right?
Because they come from the elite universities and they've learned the techniques from the elite economists who are elitely wrong.
But like, isn't the thing that the traders know that the economists are all bullshit and they don't care about what economists say because they're just about making money?
Well, it's confusing because in this story, they are the economists.
They're the ones who graduated from the elite LSE with the economics degree.
Now they're trading foreign exchange, but they're still economists doing economy stuff.
And they're sort of getting by, but they're getting everything wrong.
And Gary can see that they're wrong.
And, you know.
It's not just Gary, though, Matt.
There is a figure in the book.
There's another guy that he says can see things like him.
It's another guy from working class background.
In the book, he's called Billy.
And he basically told me, like, fuck your textbooks.
Go and find out.
It's your job.
Like, you're in the Premier League now.
Play the real game.
Find out what's happening.
So I went out and I asked people.
And I think this is actually where I was quite advantaged by the fact that I came from a poorer background.
Because I could just go and I could like speak to my friends and I could speak to my parents and I could speak to my friends' parents and be like, you know, why are you guys not spending money?
And if you haven't ever done that, like you should do that.
Like you learn a lot.
But I mean.
And what did they answer?
Was it fear because they just come out of 2008?
No, I think it was, I mean, I think you know.
What do you think people said?
Don't have money, mate.
Exactly.
They said, I don't spend any money.
What are you talking about?
Like, I spend everything I get.
Like, my outcome is like, my outgoing is more than my in.
I can't spend any more.
That's what everybody says that.
What are you talking about?
I can't spend any more money.
But maybe those conversations were just with the lowest 10 or 20%.
And maybe between 10 and 20 and 90, people would have answered.
I think that's like people in the middle.
I think these are just ordinary people.
I think that's what it was.
But then you don't need to take their word for it, right?
Like you look at their financial situation.
This is like the movie The Big Short, where they go off and actually do the research and visit the housing estates and stuff and looking at the people giving loans and stuff.
And they realize that the mortgage-backed security market is totally corrupt.
But with Gary, he just needs to talk to his friends and family.
And it turns out they're not spending money because they don't feel like they have very much money and they can't afford to.
No economist has thought of that.
No.
That's not even a fancy model.
That's right.
This gave him the edge to.
I do like that Tom be at the point.
Like, isn't there an issue that, you know, by only talking to a handful of people that it might not represent the entire economy of our country, right?
Like maybe you're missing some percentiles.
And Gary's like, nah, nah.
They're just people, man.
They're just people.
You can extrapolate from the 10 or 50 people you talk to to the entire nation.
That's the way it goes.
So this actually leads to Gary's economic thesis, his overall thesis.
He summarizes it here.
And we're going to get into this point in like some of the objections, some of the responses he has to criticisms around it.
But it's a good place to start by him outlining his general idea about this topic.
I had friends like single mothers, like poor families, but most of them they own property.
Yeah, that was like very realistic and achievable thing for even a single mother 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
You were able to buy it.
Same here.
Yeah, yeah.
So what you had there was like ordinary poorer people, our parents' generation owning property.
But then when I look at my friends, I see a lot of people who would never be able to own property.
So there straight away, that's it.
That's your answer.
Like it doesn't make sense.
So what that means is middle-class families, like families in the middle, are moving from being property-owning, wealth-owning families to being non-property-owning, non-wealth-owning families over time.
So what you see there, it doesn't make sense to ask, that means their wealth is going down over time.
It doesn't make sense to ask a family like that, why don't you spend more money?
Because like you can't dissave forever.
Eventually you're going to hit zero.
So like straight away, bam, the reason these guys aren't spending money is because they're losing their wealth.
You follow that.
Parents' generation, middle class families or working class families were able to buy houses, right?
Despite, you know, maybe not having the best income, but they could save up and they could get mortgages and they get houses, right?
And then no, I, Gary's friends, none of them are able to afford houses.
So this speaks to the fact that something's gone on, right?
Like, because people's wages are whatever, they're maybe they've increased or maybe they're correcting for the inflation.
They're similar, but they're not Able to get on the property ladder, so what is going on?
And there might be an answer to that.
What I couldn't get out of my head when I left this meeting was the similarity between the situation of Western governments and the Western middle class, which is in both cases, you're losing your assets over time, your wealth, how much wealth you have is going down over time, you're accumulating debt over time, which must mean you're spending more than your income year after year.
And what I couldn't really shake from that was the impossibility of it.
In theory, it should not be possible for both the public sector and the private sector to lose their assets, to accumulate debt and to see their wealth share fall.
Like these, unless you, that can only happen if there's been like a war or like an earthquake or a disaster and the actual assets are being destroyed, which wasn't happening.
It's theoretically impossible for governments to be increasing the national debt, I guess, issuing treasury bonds and things like that.
And for people to be more indebted.
I mean, actually, if people are not buying property and not making investments and not borrowing for that, then like, actually, they're going to be less indebted, frankly, if you're not getting onto the property ladder.
But anyway, let's just take it as Red.
Take it as a given.
So you're following the public and the private sector are losing their assets.
They're accumulating debt.
Wealth is going down.
Where is it going, Matt?
What is going on here?
We cannot accurately measure the wealth of the very rich.
It's very, very difficult.
You know, we have economists doing that if you want.
There's an economist, French guy, Gabriel Zuckman.
He's really good.
Bring him on.
His French accent is quite strong, but he's a good economist.
He's doing that.
He can do that, you know.
What we can see is falling living standards.
And what we can see, look at the numbers.
Look at European government wealth.
Look at it.
Go and get the graphs of European government wealth.
Where has it gone?
It's collapsed.
European governments used to hold significant amount of wealth.
Now it's massively negative.
And then look at the increased size of debt of your average Western European family.
Who's it to?
We can see, what we see is the collapsing wealth of the middle class and the collapsing wealth of governments.
That is what we can see.
That is what is obviously true.
The statistics don't show you where it's gone because it's gone to a group of people who are very difficult to measure.
Listen.
Yeah.
But maybe it's the idea.
I can have it frustrating because I worked with these think tanks and I know it's all bullshit.
So it's the ultra wealthy, Matt, right?
Like Gibral Zuckerman, you know, says the ultra-wealthy are hiding their wealth.
So, you know, it's difficult for them to be tracked on because they have offshore accounts and they have transnational assets and all these kind of things.
So, you know, kind of like a vampire bat.
It's being sucked out of the economies and nations' wealth and then hoarded by these elites.
And that's what's going on.
That's what's going on.
Yeah, I understand.
So that's the thesis.
Now, one thing I might mention here is, you know, Gary relies on the fact that he knows people and he, none of his friends are getting houses, right?
And he's from a relatively modest background.
I'd say I'm of a relatively modest background.
I'm from a Irish Catholic family.
Two generations ago, everybody was working in fairly standard, you know, kind of working class jobs, working in bookies or working in garages, you know, these kind of things.
Previous generation, my parents' generation, a few more people going into trades, engineering, working as secretaries or one or two school teachers, right?
This kind of thing.
My generation, my current generation, all of my cousins, all of them, and there's a lot of them.
We've got a lot of cousins.
All of them that stayed in Belfast have houses.
I was wondering about this and I was talking to my mom the check and they all do.
Some of them have more than one house.
But from what Gary said, that's not possible, right?
Like there's even cases where there are people who are single, there are people that are married with two incomes, and they've got on the property market.
So how is this going on, Matt?
Like, how has my anecdotal experience contrasted with Gary's?
What should I do?
If I talk to people back in Belfast, they're buying houses.
Does the fact that Gary's family is in London, does that possibly relate?
And does it speak to the fact that maybe there might not be a universal experience around this topic?
I don't know.
Gary's from an elite institution.
He's the economist, the mathematician, not me.
But how do we reconcile the fact that we both have talked to people in our networks and we've had such vastly different experiences?
Yeah.
I mean, I could talk about my personal experience, which actually supports Gary's premise, which we wouldn't disagree with, which is that property has become more expensive in like capitalists.
High demand areas.
Yeah, Hyderbond areas.
Belfast is a Hyderbond, but let's...
Let's be honest, Chris.
It's a very high-demand city.
Be honest.
Anyway, Brisbane, where I grew up, is a high-demand city.
And, you know, Australia's got high immigration, population keeps going up.
Brisbane is a popular location.
I actually bought a house back when I was on a PhD scholarship.
It's true, my wife was working at the time, but she wasn't earning very much money.
And yeah, we could buy a house for $180,000.
And that house today is probably worth a couple of million.
And I very much could not afford to buy it.
I mean, all I had to do was just keep it, you know, and I'd be one of these fat cats, right?
But, you know, now I live in a house which is below the median house price cost in Australia and the countryside.
At least you have a fucking house.
That's right.
Gary has a house.
I don't have a house.
My cousins all have houses.
Gary's cousin's in London.
Mine's in a very low demand area.
But, you know, I mean, on the other hand, my brother, who's a school teacher, he bought some land, scraped together some money, built a place with my dad's help, mainly themselves, like on the cheap.
But it's worth a huge amount of money now because it's a high-demand area.
So, I mean, so what's not in dispute is that in high-demand areas like London or Brisbane, the cost of housing as a multiple of people's wages, their incomes, has increased a great deal.
But Gary's interpretation of this is this is because all of the super rich people are buying up the houses and there's not enough left over for the rest of us.
But by that sort of reasoning, like my brother would be one of these elite fat cats, but I'm not.
I mean, the alternative explanation is just it's high demand, right?
There's a scarcity of land in high demand areas.
The price of land has gone up.
And if you were lucky enough to be holding it 30 years ago or 10 years ago or whenever, then you're in a good shape now.
If you're unlucky like me and you missed out on these sorts of things, then no.
Well, like, yeah, I'm not arguing that like it's really easy to get on the property ladder or those kind of things.
I'm just saying that like, in my case, it's not like I have a family of Gaddafi children or 10 million trust fund babies, right?
These are people from fairly moderate Irish Catholic backgrounds and a lot of them have managed to get onto the property ladder.
I could get onto the property ladder if I bought a house out in the States in Japan, right?
Like because the population is decreasing here.
So actually housing prices outside, you know, Tokyo or the main centers, I think are not high because the demand and supply issues.
But in any case, it's just that flattening of the whole narrative where like the story that he weaves though, yes, it's appealing.
It definitely applies to a lot of people, but it's too flattening, right?
Like it's kind of casting things in this very simple binary.
And actually, this leads to the guy, Tom, who raises this critique.
Yeah, so this is one of my critiques I have for you, which is I think you polarize this issue a bit in the way that you most of the time I hear you talk about ordinary working class people listening to us at home and the filthy rich who needs a tax.
And if you look at this graph, which is from the Fairness Foundation, which I'm sure you know, you can see that, yeah, definitely the wealthiest 1% and wealthiest 10% are growing.
Their wealth is growing at a much faster rate than everyone else.
But it's a gradual curve, right?
There's like a peak at the 20%, right?
So the second decile.
Then it goes down a bit.
But then like right at the middle, it's gradually going up.
Sometimes I hear you say that people get money.
Let's say in COVID, people got a lot of money, but they were spending that money on their rent and on their food.
And that was all going to the richest of the rich.
It wasn't.
Some of it was going to the five, fifth, SIL, six, seven, eight.
You know, I think it's spread all around along there.
This is him making the point.
Now, here he's talking about, you know, wealth distribution and whatnot, but he's raising the same point about like only focusing on the top 0.1% and the bottom, you know, 10% doesn't model the entire economic reality.
Well, and this is the point that I've made before too, which is that you can look at the statistics and the vast majority of housing is owned by the people that live in it.
So by definition, it can't be the top 1% or 0.1% or whatever percent you want to get because like 60% is owner-occupied.
So the people living in it, so they're owned by the top 60%, right?
So, you know, housing as an investment, right?
If you're rich and you own the house, the place where you live and you presume you've got extra money, you're looking to invest it.
Most of them do not invest in accommodation, in housing, unless you're proposing there's a whole bunch of empty houses out there, like middle income, like middle standard type housing, which the super rich are buying just to hoard and not renting them, just keeping them for like no reason.
Then it's actually a pretty poor investment in any case to be buying accommodation in order to rent it, which is why you see in the statistics, again, that most people who buy an investment property to rent it out to someone else are kind of mom and dad type investors for whom it can kind of make more sense.
If you're super rich, you're into these SPACs and private equities or, you know, fascinating, exciting hedge funds type things because they frankly offer a better return on investment.
So yeah, it's just interesting how the narrative is very compelling because everyone who has missed out and not owned property during these great big housing booms that have happened in Australia and New Zealand and many places in the world, including Europe, it's natural to feel disgruntled and resentful.
I certainly do because I didn't benefit from it.
But, you know, the cause is not the super rich buying up all the houses, right?
This is not the reason.
No, there's a, Gary doesn't like graphs, right?
But there's a, there's a graph which shows the proportion of tenure from 1980 to 2024, right?
The UK.
And if you look at that graph, Matt, the owner-occupier rate is like a very flat curve that hovers in 1980 just below 60% and ever since then, basically up over 60%, right?
And then you have social renters and private renters.
And there's been some little changes there, but they both occupy the remaining 20 to 15% individually.
So like houses are Registered in the UK.
So, like, there isn't a secret world of hidden houses.
Like, because even if you take it that the rich have hidden company, you know, they have offshore companies and they've got shell companies and whatever, they're still only playing with the 20%, which is private renting, right?
They cannot be owned the owner-occupier one because then they're forced to live there.
So, like, it's yeah, even if you take it that the figures are not that reliable, and I think in housing.
They're reliable with housing because.
Yeah, but but even if you take it's not, you're probably only giving yourself, you know, single-digit percentages to play about.
So, like, Gary's account, it should take account of the fact that like a lot of people are the owners of their house or they are renting a second house.
And like, the big difference is age.
That's the key predictor.
Like, if you're 16 to 24, you're much more likely to be a private renter.
If you're 65 or over, you're, you know, 80% or whatever likely to be an owner occupier.
So it's like, it's age, but also those people die eventually, right?
And their house doesn't just get knocked down.
So, yeah.
So, so Gary's sweeping account does not match the data.
Like, it hasn't changed a huge amount in the last 30 years.
No, and but speaking of that, Matt, so there's a discrepancy between the kind of statistics and Gary, right?
And this guy, Tom, was showing him some around wealth, but Gary has a counterpoint.
Have you heard this phrase, when you know what's in the sausage, you don't want to eat the sausage?
Yep.
So I study economics three years at London School of Economics, two years at Oxford.
I've been in the sausage factory of economic graphs and economic statistics.
You should be very, very careful what you believe when you're given a statistic.
A fairness foundation.
How do you think they measure wealth change of the top 1%?
Well, let's go to the next slide.
So you have property, private pension, financial and physical.
How do I find out, like, okay, top 1%?
How do I get those numbers?
How do I find out how rich?
I want to find out how rich the top 1% is.
Where do I get the data from?
That's a great question.
Let me know.
Surveys.
Surveys.
Okay, you're a billionaire.
Some guy sends you a survey.
How much wealth do you have?
What do you do?
Is it exclusively surveys, though?
How else do you find out how rich the billionaires are?
If it's public, for instance, what stock they own, and sometimes it is, you can evaluate based on- Yeah, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
He appeared in the Sunday Times rich list, £720 million.
He was like very high in the rich list.
Do you know where he was the previous year?
What?
He wasn't in the rich list.
He married into wealth.
No.
Because nobody knew about him.
Nobody cared about him.
It's extremely difficult to measure the wealth share of the top 0.01%.
Extremely difficult.
Extremely difficult.
I mean, how do you do it?
How do you do that?
That's Sunday Times rich list.
Everybody knows it's made up.
Everybody knows it probably excludes a lot of the genuinely richest people.
Because we don't know these.
Listen, what you want if you're a billionaire is to be totally unknown.
Of course you do.
You know, only the stupid billionaires want to be known.
Only people who are stupid like me to be public.
The best thing you want to be in life is rich and unknown.
It's a lovely life to live.
You don't want to be famous.
Okay.
All of these statistics, all of these surveys, they are totally missing the enormous increase in the wealth share of the top 0.1, 0.01%.
Now, I know you looked into this as well, Chris.
And, you know, there's a kernel of truth here.
There is fair reliance on self-report surveys when they try to get estimates of wealth.
That's true.
And it is more difficult to capture the top 1%, partly just because they're quite rare.
So it's difficult to sample a small number of people who, if you want to get a, because they hold a lot of the wealth.
But, you know, I think he's exaggerating a little bit there because they don't just use surveys.
They can also use tax data.
Because the thing about all of the wealth that is held by super rich people is it is almost invariably invested in order to have a return.
So you can infer wealth from income by applying assumed rates of return, right?
So if someone earns 100,000 in dividends and the average yield is 2%, you can guess how many millions of stock they earn.
But what about, Matt?
What about the Panama Papers or the offshore tax havens and Cayman Island accounts and shell companies?
Isn't it the case that rich people with good accountants are able to move money around?
And not to mention, because of the differing tax laws between countries, that you can set your headquarters up in a country like Ireland, for example, and avoid paying tax on a lot of stuff that people might feel you should be paying tax on in the countries you're operating in.
Well, I think that's typically applicable to companies and corporations, right?
They've got a lot of flexibility in doing that.
As you well know, as someone who's earned money in the UK and Japan, you are liable to be taxed generally in the jurisdiction in which you live, right?
So there could well be people breaking the law and hiding their income, but, you know, there are a lot of people who aren't.
Yeah, but well, so the one thing that is true is like, I thought everybody knew that like it's not news to me that the ultra wealthy are engaged in like clever ways to try and pay less tax or to obscure their wealth in certain respects, right?
Like this is my image of what like the ultra wealthy and accountants do.
But I thought they were always doing this.
Like I didn't think it's a new thing they've started doing.
My baseline Assumption is that millionaires will try to just hide wealth and that various countries and locations benefit because people do do that, right?
Like you said, like Ireland, but like Switzerland, right?
Other countries set up that they're going to be repositories for people to escape the regulations in other countries.
Well, yeah, to some degree, but look, I think it's a lot of shades of gray here.
I mean, you looked into the academic research on this too, and it's a well-known thing in terms of it is a problem assessing wealth generally, not just of rich people, but of anyone, because what you're obliged to report to the tax department is your income, which is what you're liable to be taxed on.
There isn't some law where we all report, okay, this is my estimated wealth at the moment, right?
It's just not a thing that is typically gathered, except in the few countries that do have some form of wealth tax.
They attempt to do it.
But yeah, yeah, look, I think what you're saying is true on the margins, but I think it's also, you know, there's an infinite number of tax dodges I'm certainly not aware of, but it's still generally the case that you can get a pretty good estimate by doing things like that capitalization method.
And you can also sort of figure out how much money you might be missing by looking at the national income accounts data with tax data to estimate sort of the sort of gap in wealth shares.
I mean, in the papers that I looked at, they sort of would estimate what proportion of wealth is held by the top 1%.
And then after incorporating these uncertainties or biases down, they would maybe revise it up from whatever percent up a few percentage points.
Again, the theme is it's not that he's totally wrong.
It's just that he's exaggerating for rhetorical effect.
Yeah.
So there's a French economist that he references with Gibral Zuckman, who specifically wrote a book about the hidden wealth of the ultra-wealthy, right?
And he is making a claim, like he's done a model to try and work out an estimate how much it is.
And it's like a huge amount of money that has been hidden, but it's not something that switches the amount of wealth in the country to 80% the ultra-wealthy and 20% the rest of the economy or that kind of thing.
It's not like that.
Okay, but Chris, Chris, the important thing to understand here is that there's certainly a kernel of truth to what Gary is saying there.
It is difficult to measure wealth generally, but particularly when they're trying to build up those distributions of the percentiles, the 1% present a challenge because they're only 1%, right?
So a survey is only going to pick up a few of them and there's going to be a lot of uncertainty in their estimates.
I mean, keep in mind, these are anonymous surveys.
So there isn't anything to be gained by concealing your wealth in an anonymous survey, right?
So there actually isn't a really strong reason to assume that they're going to be keeping it a secret.
But it may well be the case that the richer you are, the more likely you are to underestimate it because whatever, you don't know exactly how much that Van Gogh is worth or whatever, right?
So there is that.
But, you know, this is not news.
You know, no data is perfect.
And economists have studied this a lot and triangulate their estimates using different methods, right?
We talked about those different methods.
There's capitalization methods and assuming the different rates of returns, you know, making assumptions about returns on capital, linking it up to national data sets and figuring out what the sort of gap is.
There are ways to estimate what the error is.
And, you know, with all these things, there's a range.
But from what I've seen, the range is in about a few percentage points.
So the estimate of the wealth held by the top 1% in the UK is like 20, maybe 22% in that sort of range.
And there is uncertainty around it.
But that uncertainty is like maybe 3% to 5% based on the limitations of the self-report data.
So the issue is, is not that there's no validity to what Gary's saying, but it's rather that he takes advantage of the fact that there's some uncertainty.
There might be some bias in the data.
So from there, he goes, we don't know.
We have no idea how much wealth the top 1% have.
They might have all the wealth.
We don't know.
0.1%.
That's right.
And this is why graphs and data are all bullshit, right?
So you can rely purely on vibes.
And this is the bit that I object to because that's simply not true.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, so like you said there, this is the way that Gary frames that same narrative.
And really, to be honest, the problem you have here, really, the whole problem is in the top 0.1%.
That's the whole problem.
What you are having is, Yeah, you're having this tiny group at the top absolutely sucking all of the wealth out of society.
And what that means is you're seeing compression within the rest of society.
So if you don't look at the top 0.1%, what you're going to see is inequality is decreasing.
Because they can't suck wealth out of the poor because the poor have got no wealth.
So they're sucking wealth out of the middle class.
So then you're seeing the middle class being compressed to the poor.
And then if you look at that, you're going to see inequality is decreasing.
But if the reason that inequality is decreasing in the middle is because it's all being accumulated at the very top, where it doesn't exist in the surveys, well, that's not inequality decreasing, right?
But if you look, the thing is, if you look at what people call the 20-80 ratio, that is decreasing.
And the 90% of the raw rate 10.
So if the richest 10 guys in the world steal all the money from the middle class, the surveys show that as decreasing inequality.
And it's completely bullshit because they're taking it from the 80 and from the 20.
Yeah, but also what happens is it disappears from the surveys entirely.
And there's a guy called Gabriel Zuckman, a French economist.
He wrote a book called The Hidden Wealth of Nations, which basically it tries to work out what's actually happening to inequality by looking at how much wealth is simply disappearing from the surveys.
Because that's what happened.
When it gets sucked into the top, the top 0.01%, it doesn't show up as extremely increased inequality.
It simply drops out of the data altogether.
Because of course, billionaires don't answer surveys honestly telling you how rich they are.
So I think you need to be very, very careful with these statistics.
Yeah, I saw, I've seen actually some YouTube videos where some influencer, you know, one of these sort of success type stocks and money making type things is interviewing rich people and they were really happy to tell him how rich they were because they enjoyed bragging about it.
Remember, this is an anonymous survey, right?
There's no reason to hide how much money you've got.
But just notice the language.
The language uses that they're sucking all of the money out of the rest of society.
But remember those statistics that we know are approximately correct.
It's about 20% at most 25% held by the top 1%.
Now, Gary's saying now, well, actually, it's not the top 1% anymore.
It's now the top 0.1% that are taking all of the money.
Now, it's going to be a lot less than 20%, right?
Whatever this amount is.
And it's just this, it's just rhetoric.
It's rhetorical language and sweeping hyperbole.
You know, that's not the way to think about economics or the causes of unpleasant things like housing and unaffordability.
Yeah, well, and so Gibriel Zuckerman, by the way, I believe he put the figure in his book, accepting his, you know, calculations or whatever, it was around $7 or $8 trillion in household financial assets held offshore, which was 8 to 10% of annual global GDP.
But that's not like speaking about any individual one country.
So like Zucman is doing what Gary says, right?
Which is saying there's a lot of wealth being like kind of hoarded off the books by the ultra wealthy.
And it's a significant amount, right?
Like it's a chunk of global wealth.
But it's not enough to do all the things that Gary's saying, right?
Even if we accept Zucman's estimate, it doesn't account for the majority of wealth.
But also, Chris, in looking at the time series data and looking at how that wealth held by the top 1% has changed in the UK over the last hundred years, I know Gary doesn't believe in data or graphs or anything like that.
But I mean, what I've seen is that it hasn't changed very dramatically since the 1960s.
Well, they're hiding it.
So they weren't hiding it back in the 1940s or 50s or 60s, but now they've started hiding it now.
Well, wouldn't they have been hiding it then too?
If they were hiding it then too, then the graph shouldn't be flat.
Why not?
Because nothing's changed, right?
They've always been stealing the majority.
The majority of their wealth just isn't in the graph ever.
It's never been in the graph.
No, but Gary is arguing that it's dramatically changing, that there's been dramatic changes, right?
Where 30 years ago, things were pretty much fine.
They've gotten incredibly worse since then.
But the data doesn't really show those dramatic differences.
Dana Schmar.
Okay.
How do you talk to people out there?
So, yes, look, now we were focusing on this through the issue of household ownership, right?
And Tom does get to this point as well.
And he's trying to present more data about it.
I understand what you're saying.
It makes absolute sense.
But do you think, so we're looking at a certain, we're looking at this graph.
It's by, it's, this data is from the Office for National Statistics, which is a government thing.
And yeah, you can see that, for example, property, it's not as polarized as you talk about it.
No, it's gradual.
The top, the bottom 30% don't own any property.
But then from then on up, it's gradual.
And I don't think these people are lying.
No, maybe the top 1% will lie a bit, right?
Of course.
So maybe you're saying that the ball at the top is like 10 times bigger than that ball.
I've never said it's not gradual.
It's not me.
This is people around me that like to like, I've always said it.
So people like to say to me, at what point are you rich?
They want me to say, oh, that 10 million euros, you're rich.
As if you go to bed with 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, and you're not rich.
You wake up with 10 million and you're rich.
Of course, this is a continuous problem.
It's not like discrete.
It's not like I'm not the guy out there like saying there's like 10 millionaires in an office ruling the world.
This is an economic analysis.
Inequality is increasing.
Larger and larger wealth share is being sucked into the tiny group at the top.
Yeah.
So we're just taking that on faith, basically.
I mean, so Gary is conceding that, yes, there's a spectrum of gradually increasing wealth.
You know, it's a whole distribution ranging from the first percentile to the hundredth percentile.
We can all agree on that.
But still, Gary does talk in quite sweeping language about the top 1%, top 0.1%.
He's clearly talking about the tippy top of the distribution.
And he's saying that they are sucking out all of the wealth, vampire-like, from the rest of society.
And this is why the rest of us are doing it tough.
But, you know, as we've talked about, the statistics show that most housing is owned by the people who live in it.
It's true that the bottom 20% or whatever don't own their own houses.
And that's sad.
But the people who are paying lots of money and benefiting from rising asset prices are often in the top 50%, the 60th percentile, the 70th percentile, right?
There's a great big swathe of percentiles there.
And when you look at the trends, according to Gary, like in the last 30 years, we've seen this massive crisis, right?
Where things went from being pretty okay 30 years ago, single moms being able to buy their own houses and being financially secure, till now, where it's absolutely impossible.
So he is clearly claiming that there's this massive crisis of inequality that has transpired over the last 30 years.
But again, if you look at the data, right, the data clearly shows that that is not the case, right?
There's been trends downwards in terms of the share of net wealth held by the top 1% over time, particularly since like a long time ago, like 100 years ago or more, where it was up to 70% back in the 1900s.
But in more recent times, it's been decreasing.
And yes, it has been increasing a bit, but it's within this range of like 15 to 20%.
That's just them getting better at hiding that.
Okay.
That's what's happening.
That's Gary's answer, right?
It's like, you believe those graphs?
I can make your graph.
Listen, listen.
Did you make those graphs?
Listen, if you want me to bring up, listen, I've told you.
I don't want you to make the graphs.
Yeah.
I just want you to show some graphs.
Listen, I worked in the sausage factory.
Okay.
Listen, I know these graphs are bullshit.
I know the graphs are all bullshit.
Right.
And so the guy, Tom, tries to kneel them down a little bit here and get a prediction.
So listen to this.
And if you look at what percentage of their own property accounting for mortgage an ordinary person owns at the age of say 30, 40, 50, all of these numbers are significantly less than they were 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Government wealth is unambiguously collapsing through the floor.
So the middle class wealth is clearly disappearing and the government wealth is clearly disappearing.
So your bet would be that if we looked at this same survey, this is a survey made between April 2020 and March 22.
If we looked at the same survey 10 years from now, you'd probably see like across the board less wealth.
So people declaring less wealth.
But the top would be the same because they're not declaring.
The problem is when you look at like dollar values, or this is in pound values, is that when wealth inequality increases, the price of assets increases significantly.
And that is because, very simply, rich people use the vast majority of their income to buy assets, whereas ordinary people use the vast majority of their income to buy goods and services.
So as wealth inequality increases, one of the major consequences of that, and we're seeing it everywhere, and you're definitely seeing it here in Portugal, and especially here in Porto, is increase in asset prices, most visibly for ordinary people, increase in house prices.
So you end up in this situation where an ordinary family, they used to own one house, no mortgage.
It cost like 50,000 euros, 100,000 euros, which I'm sure you could get a house for that not that long ago here in Porto.
In the future, they will own like 5% of a 1 million, 2 million Euro house.
So the guy, Tom there, to me, sounds like he wants Gary to kneel down, like, you know, what he's claiming, right?
Like, so you're saying the top 1% won't change.
You know, the vampire will suck out.
So obviously the wealth has to disappear.
But Gary's answer is kind of like, no, well, you know, it's more complicated, right?
Like, cause I think that's a very clear claim that you want to make.
So his answer then, Matt, is saying like when people previously owned houses, now they will only earn like 5% of a I think.
I think what he's referring to is that even people who buy houses are taking out loans for that house, right?
And he's again, he's exaggerating, saying, whatever, 30 years ago, people just owned their houses, owned their houses outright, didn't have any debt, right?
That took like 20 years to pay off a mortgage.
I know, I know.
So this is inaccurate, but I think what he's pointing at is that because asset prices are much, much higher, people are borrowing more money to get it.
I mean, the issue is, is that he's conflating different things.
So like there's lots of drivers of that.
So interest rates, they were as high as 17% back when I was a young man, like over 30 years ago.
But for a long, long time, they've been incredibly low.
They have gone up a bit recently, but they have been incredibly low.
And what that means is the cost of borrowing is so much cheaper.
So that drives asset prices up because you could borrow a lot more and it costs you the same amount in interest as borrowing a lot less back then, right?
So the prices increase to suit.
So you don't have necessarily poor people competing with rich people to buy things.
You just have people with similar amounts of money willing to pay more because the interest that they're paying is relatively less.
Makes sense.
Okay.
Yeah.
Anyway, my point there is, is that there's multiple factors driving asset price increases.
Interest rates is just one of them, but there's heaps of things going on.
Well, the guy, Tom, does make a point about, so in this story, the only people benefiting from house prices going up are the uber wealthy.
But then Tom, the host, wants to make the point that, Gary, it's not as easy to just say that house prices going up only benefits the uber wealthy.
And I think a lot of economists blindly look at that and they say, oh, well, people are rich enough because their wealth value on paper is higher.
But that wealth exists in a form of a house, which they can only access by selling their house.
I don't know.
But you can say that about the wealthy too.
Oh, it's non-liquid in the wealthy's hands too.
But listen, if I own one house, the only way for me to access that money is to sell the house, right?
If I own 20 houses, then I can rent out 19 houses.
I also own the stock market.
I think you need to recognize a flat position on housing is not zero houses.
A flat position is one house.
And that's one house with a mortgage paid off.
If you don't have one house with a mortgage paid off, you're not winning when house prices go up.
Especially if you have three or four kids.
They're all going to live in a house.
It's better than if the prices were going down, right?
You are winning.
Do you think so?
Do you think that the ordinary people of Portugal...
What do you think he would say?
He'd say, I want them to stay the same and go down, then I'll buy them and then I want them to go up.
This is like monopoly economics, right?
Where you say you keep buying houses, you get as many houses as you can.
I mean, that's not what super rich people do with their money.
Matt, no, you buy, like, Donald Trump has property, right?
Doesn't he have big skyscrapers and stuff?
That's right.
He bought five houses and he turned one of them into a hotel.
Like, I do like Tom's point there where Gary is like, but no, but like, you're not actually benefited the house.
And he's like, it's better that your house price goes down.
Like, if you own a house and all your house prices are going down, that's worse for people.
And then Gary's like appeal is if we asked the young student, like, would they want house prices to go up?
And the guy, Tom, was right.
Like, no, they wouldn't want it to go up until they buy it.
And then they'll want it to go up.
Like, that's kind of common sense.
And in fact, you know, just putting aside Gary World for a little while here and talking about the real world, I mean, this is one of the biggest political obstacles to, you know, doing something about housing affordability.
I mean, the problem is, is that most people, maybe 60, 70% of people still own their own house, right?
So in terms of the electorate, most people are quite happy to see house prices go up.
It makes them feel richer.
I kind of agree with Gary.
It's a Ponzi scheme.
It's a kind of a, yes, they can be sort of recycled into, you know, let's say you retire, right?
So you sell your own city house for all this money and you go live in a, you do a sea change or a tree change or you go to a retirement home.
You can sell it and you can capitalize that money.
But ultimately, it doesn't really make anyone richer.
But, you know, it's a real obstacle, I think, to policy that would help with this because most people are not actually in the housing market at the moment in terms of being a new, as a first home buyer.
You know, so there isn't the political will to make meaningful change that would fix it.
And, you know, the real thing that would help with it is increasing supply.
That is absolutely the thing that matters, right?
You have to increase the supply of housing.
But the issue is, look, there are multiple things going on.
Actually, the cost of building houses has increased a lot over recent years, right?
It's increased by about 50% in Australia over the last decade or so, right?
So just materials, labor, a whole bunch of stuff that goes into a house has become more expensive.
And so this is one issue.
But most of the cost of housing in a fancy city like London or even Brisbane is actually just the cost of the land, right?
Because you have scarce land.
And really what it boils down to then, because there's no more land, right?
You can't zone any more land in desirable locations in the inner city.
There's limited stock.
So the cost of it is just being bid up.
The only way you can make more housing is to zone stuff from low density to medium density, from medium density to high density.
And again, the obstacle here is not that there's this wealthy fat cats, Elon Musk and George Soros are running around buying up all the houses.
That's not what's going on.
What's preventing it is the people who own a house in a low density area, they don't want to see that kind of redevelopment happening.
So there's big just sort of obstacles to increasing the supply of housing in desirable inner city areas.
And that combined with low interest rates, cost of construction, there's probably about six or seven other factors coming into it.
I mean, that's ultimately what is driving in affordability of housing in those desirable locations.
So the point that's complicated is well taken, but it's not just on the issue of housing that Gary kind of oversimplifies things.
So they talk a bit about wages.
Okay.
Here's a good question for you.
When wages fall, who wins?
When wages fall, who wins?
It's complicated because of what you said, there's a marginal propensity to consume.
And so if you're from a poor family, you'll spend all the money you have.
And so if wages fall, there will be less money in those hands being spent.
Companies might profit because they have a bigger profit margin unless they change their prices.
It's complicated.
I would say when wages fall, workers lose and owners win.
Okay, but owners of company in companies in this case.
Yeah, owners of assets.
Owners of assets.
I own a company today.
I own housing tomorrow.
I own Apple stock a week later.
I own gold.
Assets are assets.
Assets are assets.
I'm a trader.
I put it to you that wages falling and house prices rising are basically the same thing.
I think it's a bit too simplistic.
It's a simplification, but it's basically the same thing.
You know, there's an asset price.
Because there are second and third order consequences of each of those things.
People have mortgages and this kind of thing.
But, you know, what really matters for housing affordability.
You know, like I think the guy's Tom's responses are good because he's trying to point out like, yeah, you can tell like a simple narrative, but if you start thinking through the complexities, it isn't like this simple, more listed play.
Yeah.
But Gary doesn't feel like that.
No, no, no, it's very simple.
I mean, that's the thing that's frustrating.
Like even my attempt there to provide a more detailed explanation for what's going on.
Like, I appreciate it.
It's unsatisfying, first of all, to listen to.
You didn't say anything.
I can see your eyes glazing over.
And I'm sure that I'd like, you know, I missed out like half a dozen things because, you know, it's just really, it's just a complicated thing.
It resists simple narratives.
And I think that's the frustrating thing with Gary, which is that he's got a nice, simple, compelling narrative.
It doesn't make sense in many ways, but I guess that doesn't really matter.
Like it's people are, you know, you've got a grievance.
Things are tough.
Someone's to blame.
Simple problem, simple solution.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, just to illustrate that, listen to another exchange between the two of them.
Within the realm of housing affordability itself.
Is it good for you, for Portuguese workers, if food is expensive?
No.
Is it good for Portuguese workers?
I mean, it depends.
Yeah, if you're a farmer, maybe.
Yeah, but is it good for Portuguese workers?
Is it good for Portuguese workers if energy is expensive?
It could be good for everyone if everything is more expensive.
You think it would be good for everyone if everything is more expensive?
Yeah, because if you're making more money, it's like that's why when you go to poor countries, things are cheaper because the economy is.
So what matters is the ratio, right?
What matters is the ratio.
Yeah, exactly.
What matters is the ratio.
Yeah, if you're a worker, if wages are expensive relative to goods and services and houses, that's good for you.
There, again, Matt, right?
Like Gary wants to say, you know, if food is more expensive, that's bad.
That's universally bad.
But the guy telling us saying, well, yes, like i see what you're saying but actually there's complexities hidden in there right and then like when he gives the example that if you're in a country where things are cheaper because the economy is less like healthy than in other countries then this isn't good right this isn't good when uh yeah like everything is super expensive in switzerland and most of europe partly because there are rich people yes yes but but also largely because everyone is
earning pretty high wages compared to how much they earned a long time ago or how much they earned in many other parts of the world so so yes um increasingly expensive desirable assets scarce assets like a a beachside house or an apartment in the inner city is going to be more expensive when the people living there have more money to to bid on those goods yeah yeah so you know gary said it's the uh 0.1 percent
it's not it's not the one percent it's the 0.1 percent to be honest i think this is the big con which is being played on on the western middle class which is they're being given higher house prices and told it makes them rich when it's becoming it should be becoming increasingly more and more and more and more obvious higher house prices make you poor because housing is a basic essential expensive housing makes you poor expensive energy makes you poor expensive food makes you poor unless you are the guy who owns the houses who owns the energy who
owns the food and that that's me and that's the rich like this is this is a this is this is a class war and and the rich are winning you know and the way you see that listen i when when i was a trader in 2011 there's a scene in my book with that guy actually i'm sorry the rich are winning who are they are you when you say the rich are winning who are you talking about it's it's asset owners the most important thing is it's not about how much it's not about your job it's about your asset ownership in your family but when i say that i want you to recognize for
an ordinary person you think if somebody is a millionaire they're rich if they have like a million euros in assets they're rich and of course a million euros in assets is more than your average family will have there are families out there more and more and more of them that have 100 million 500 million 700 million 3 billion 5 billion assets okay here's a question for you say you you are euro billionaire you've got exactly 1 billion euros in assets what's your passive income going to be on that 50 million about 50 million about 50 million so
about 4 million euros a month passive income so does that blow your mind chris that if you've got how much was it 1 billion euros then actually you've got more money than you know how to spend 1 billion euros yeah you've got like a huge amount of passive income from yeah interest did that yeah did that blow your mind
no it doesn't but but like it does it does speak to this issue that gary's concern is not with like it's not the all-in podcast hosts right it's it is elon musk right he would count in this category but it you have to be like the top top top top top top in order to qualify it's just his metric for wealth isn't it like the like the ultra ultra elite well it's
shifting he's it moves around right like at other times even in that clip at the beginning there it sounded like he's talking about anyone who who basically owns a significant amount of assets so so you might define it as anyone who's getting more of their income from assets than from their labor right so that that would set the bar a lot lower um try to be charitable here i mean look i i think there's some things he's saying that are right like for instance he he's right to say that um house prices or
asset prices going up does not benefit people whose only asset is living the house that they live in that's true and you know i and i also agree with him that i think the interests of people with assets and people who don't have assets who rely on their their their wages uh are not aligned and um you know just like the interests of people who already own their own house in a desirable suburb their interests aren't aligned with the people that
would like to live there because that would mean developing and building spoiling their nice leafy inner city suburb with uh mid-rise housing so you know um like i don't i don't disagree with the general premise that we should be doing something about wealth inequality and um not letting it get extreme and i definitely agree with the idea that we should be doing something to improve housing affordability for everyone and
discouraging just the uncontrolled um growth in and these kinds of non-productive assets but the only thing that i dislike is just this hyperbolic simplifying narrative because it's such a it's a wrong it's the wrong topic to be doing that kind of thing you say that well i'm gonna let dario to respond to you here's his rejoinder if you look at the history of europe the history of the world up until world war ii we all lived in extremely unequal societies with tiny
extraordinarily wealthy aristocratic elites and enormous amounts of extremely poor peasants that is because if you do nothing to stop wealth accumulation and compound interest of the very rich then they outcompete everybody else over time and end up with all of the assets so i'm not mahatma gandhi i'm not other theresa i'm not moral philosopher i'm an economist i've got a very good track record of predictions i made a lot of money on it if you do not take action against the wealth accumulation of the very rich with extremely large passive incomes it is a
mathematical certainty that they will swallow the middle class over time and what that means is no home ownership for ordinary families for your viewers for your listeners for their kids for their grandkids it means no no wealth for government which means no welfare state no education no housing no health care
yeah well you know when he started i was going to throw him a bone because i was like yes i agree with that he's completely right if you don't do anything to to rectify the the natural tendency of wealth to accumulate because it does just by the the virtue of compound interest compound investing then it does tend to increase just naturally increases it doesn't take some sort of evil capitalist society for it to even happen it happened naturally in the middle ages in
and in and in like he said in pre-World War II Europe he was quite right in pointing out that you know pre-World War I the vast majority of wealth was held by aristocrats and that that changed very quickly to due to the various disruptions that occurred in the 20th century.
And now it's starting to edge up again.
So he's not wrong there.
But I don't know.
When he started going on about how he's like the most amazing economist and, you know, like, it's like, you don't need like this, this is clear.
Well, that's the hyperbole, right?
He's not Mahatma Gandhi.
He's just telling it like it is.
And like the entire wealth of the middle class, except for the super elite, will disappear.
There will be no more social welfare programs.
There'll be no housing.
There'll be no education.
It'll all be gone because the billionaires are just kicking more and more of the wealth, sucking it up and hiding it offshore.
And that to me just...
Where like it's got to the stage where we're no longer even anybody's living in houses anymore, right?
Like it's only the ultra elite who own all the houses.
And it's, it's like a sci-fi thing.
But he was saying the same ago that he's not doing a binary.
Like this sounds like a binary.
Like he said it's not 10 people, but is it like 100?
How many is it that is in this class versus the rest of it?
Well, the thing is, you don't need to be a top trader or go to an elite school to study economics to understand about basic trends in inequality and what will happen if you don't have some form of wealth distribution through taxation.
But that's the thing.
I mean, if he's merely a polemical figure and he sometimes presents himself as this.
Well, we'll get to that.
Yeah.
I don't have time to do all this complex stuff.
Yes, I'm simplifying it for everyone.
I'm just a man with a mission.
I'm campaigning for higher taxes on the wealthy.
And that's fine.
You know what I mean?
He could be the greatest Unberg of wealth redistribution.
And I'm here for that.
That's fine.
I don't think you need to be dismissing all statistics.
You don't need to be ignoring the multiple causes of things and making false linkages, for instance, between the top 1% and the cost of a house in Middlesex.
These are separate issues.
Yeah.
Well, the guy, Tom, does make this point for you, Matt, generally about agreeing with him, but also the lack of nuance.
And I understand.
And I think you're right.
I think it's probably only going to get worse.
The only reason I'm showing you these graphs is because I think for people like me, if you want to convince people like me to follow you, maybe you have to be a bit more nuanced, you know, and not talk about, not say that 100% of the mortgage is going to the rich.
You don't say 100%, but you say the money that people are spending on rent and mortgages and food, it's all going to the ultra-rich.
It's not.
It's also going to pay the people who work in the supermarket and the people who work in the bank and the pension owners and the you have probably have teenage neighbors in your poor neighborhood who own Bank of America stock because they now have Revolut and other stuff like that, you know?
Yeah.
So everyone has access to be on the side of the of the good side of the mortgage.
Yeah, and you know, you know, listen, Thomas, there's a reason I went back and I did two years at Oxford and there's a reason that I, it was 10 years between me quitting and me starting a YouTube channel, you know.
You go, Matt.
So there's a call for nuance, right?
And Gary mentioning he went back to Oxford and there's a reason that he did that, okay?
So what is that reason?
I don't want to try to fix the economy on YouTube.
I think it's stupid.
You know, I think it's dumb.
It shouldn't be a YouTuber.
It should be academics and it should be people in government.
Okay.
I went into academia.
It's fucking broken.
It's broken as shit.
They are not going to fix anything.
They're not going to fix anything.
Okay.
Look at the politicians.
You think they're going to fix it?
Listen, I don't want to be on YouTube.
I don't like getting recognized in Liddell when I'm trying to buy chicken stock.
It's difficult for me to even live my life in London now.
Okay.
And I tried a lot of things.
I tried a lot of things to fix this problem before I decided I'm going to have a YouTube channel with my name on it and a book with my face on the front cover.
Okay.
I don't want to do this.
I'm not an extroverted person.
Okay.
I was floating around politics and academia and think tanks for a long time, trying to find somebody who's going to successfully stop our economies and our living standards from collapsing.
And you know what?
I didn't find that person.
And I'm looking for that person, but I didn't find that person.
So I started a YouTube channel because politician, you mean, like the leader of the political politics?
Yeah, it shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be me.
It shouldn't be.
It should be a guy in politics.
But listen, okay, you walk down the street, somebody's house on fire.
What do you do?
You call the fire brigade.
But what if there's no fire brigade?
You know, the people who are supposed to be fixing this are rich.
They're benefiting from it.
They don't give a fuck.
They're not going to do anything.
Okay.
I'm trying to find a way to fix it.
And I thought, and I still do think, that there is a big gap here on things like YouTube.
You know, if you look, I think that YouTube, social media is going to become more and more powerful, influential in politics.
I think you can clearly see that in the US.
I think it's going in that direction.
I thought there was a big gap for somebody explaining it, how it is, the economy in ordinary terms for ordinary people.
And unfortunately, that does mean you do have to simplify things a little bit.
Listen, if I could fix this by writing academic papers at university, I would be in a fucking university times.
And I was.
And I left because it wasn't going to work.
Well, he enjoyed getting recognized in Porto, but hated in Rwandan.
Little, by the way, Matt, Little is the cheapest supermarket, you know, there.
Oh, right.
And buying chicken stock.
And so he didn't say Waitrose or Marks and Spencer.
It's right.
He's going to Iceland and Little because.
He's still genuine from the blog, Chris.
He still buys this.
He's carried to the blog.
But like, he could have said, you know, I don't like getting recognized on my world tour where I'm around promoting my work.
That's right.
I didn't want to write this best-selling novel all about my life.
What an amazing trader I am.
I hate this shit.
But I realized that the only way to fix the world is to have an incredibly popular YouTube channel.
It's to become a YouTuber.
Yeah, that's it.
And look, like that line as well.
Look, I could have been an academic.
I could have wrote all these papers.
That's what I want to be doing, right?
But that's not bullshit.
It's all bullshit.
But it's all bullshit.
They're just making graphs.
But there's so many inconsistencies because sometimes he talks about how it's all abstract maths, but he understands.
He studied this amazing maths.
He's really good at maths and you need to have this amazing technical knowledge.
But then at other times, it's like, that's all bullshit.
All you need to do is go talk to your friends and stuff like that and pick up the vibe from the street.
Just like this inconsistency of like, are you happy with your success?
You like being famous?
Because sometimes it seems like he is.
He talks about it in a very positive way.
Then other times, the narrative is different.
And you just get suspicious when the narrative changes to suit whatever the theme of his rhetoric is at this given time.
And he concedes at least that he is simplifying things.
Yeah, this is one of the times that he answers this.
But again, like his brand is that he's the big brained economist from the elite school, which is going to, you know, go to the heart of the problem and explain.
Well, he is that, but he's also a man of the street who knows how to explain things.
Like, take two Jaffa cakes, put one here in your tea.
Like, I mean, while he explains the fact, you're laughing.
But in every Gary Experience video, there's two digestive biscuits.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, I mean, and the premise.
So, yeah.
So it switches between I'm giving this deep technical knowledge, deep insights to look, I'm just it's a political project.
I'm trying to make the world a better place by, you know, hopefully influencing politics.
But again, he doesn't seem to be interested in the policy when he gets challenged on his very simple approach to this, which is a wealth tax on the top 1%, which has many problems.
He says, well, I I'm not really interested in the details.
That's that's for us for other people to figure out.
I'm just an activist.
Spoiler, Matt.
Spoiler.
But, you know, I will I will get that.
But there is one thing there as well.
It's this is a minor point.
You might call this nitpicking.
But he gave this analogy of like you're walking down the street and you see a horse on fire.
What are you going through?
And he's like, well, you call the fire brigade.
But what if you live in a society where there's no fire brigade?
I'm like, that's like, well, I quite torture.
I'd like to imagine Jordan Peterson wouldn't find himself in that situation.
Yeah, I just wouldn't be there.
I wouldn't be there.
It would be possible.
Yeah.
So it's, you know, there's no politician, Matt, that's that's doing it right.
There's no academic that's doing it right.
The journalists aren't doing it right.
Gary can go on the YouTube.
There's a big gap there.
That's where the real political power is going to be.
And you mentioned that he acknowledges that he's dumbing things down.
He does here again kind of acknowledge that.
So, you know, you know, do I dumb things down?
Yeah, of course I dumb things down.
But is there anyone else on the Internet producing economics content that is as simple and as understandable as me?
I don't think there is, you know.
And I'm using that to generate political power, which I hope to use to protect the living standards of ordinary working class people here in Portugal and in the UK where I'm from and across the Western world.
And, you know, yeah, it is stupid.
It is a stupid way to do it.
The way to make things better shouldn't be by starting a fucking YouTube channel.
It's fucking stupid.
But I went to university.
It's not going to work.
I worked in the think tanks.
It's not going to work.
I looked at the political parties.
It's not going to work.
I am trying to do this in a way that I think will work.
And it's working.
You know, we're getting 50 million views a month on just the YouTube, you know, and it's growing.
So do I simplify things?
Yes.
Do I simplify things?
Yes.
And the reason I simplify things is because I want your viewers, kids and grandkids to be able to raise a fucking family and fucking dignity.
And if I have to simplify things to do that, then I'm going to do it.
Yeah, so in that sense, you're a utilitarian.
You don't mind maybe oversimplifying things because of your goal.
I'm not a philosopher.
I just don't want things to be fucking shit.
Yeah.
But even though you, whether you know it or not, you are a utilitarian.
Yeah, sure.
I got to say, like, a warning sign that should go off for people is any time that somebody says, look, the only reason I'm doing any of these things that grow my channel or promote my book or whatever, it's for your kids and it's to save the world and the planet.
Like, I don't want to do any of this.
Like, and if people are criticizing me for being stupid, for trying to save all of you, for being like the guy that wants to save your grandparents and grandkids and all the little animals in the forest, if people want to criticize me for being that.
Then I'm guilty.
Guilty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just like that rhetoric should be like a big, a big warning sign because it's like, it's presented in the language of, all right, yeah, like, fuck it.
You know, I'm, yeah, I'm just doing something stupid.
But like, at least I'm doing something and I'm doing it for the right reasons.
But like his thing where he was like, look, it doesn't work.
Politics doesn't work.
You know, the fake times, they don't work.
They're doing fuck all.
My channel, 50 million views a month.
And it's growing.
Really fun.
And I'm like, so what?
Chris Williamson probably gets 100 million views.
I was like, has he got a political project which is like, you know, going to change the way?
It's just that thing.
It's the same thing with Gary saying, I'm being recognized on the street.
So therefore, the project is working.
And my YouTube channel is growing.
So therefore, you know, it looks like something's actually happening here.
And it's like, all that's happening is your personal brand is getting bigger.
There's no actual like policy change or anything that's happened.
It's just a YouTuber has gotten more attention.
Well, this is the same thing we've seen with our classic gurus, right?
Who are obviously almost always on the right side of the spectrum.
But they almost invariably end up coming around to creating a grand project, right?
A grand project to save the world from the terrible people.
You know, they're not doing it for themselves.
Jordan Peterson's many, many business interests are not for himself.
He's trying to save.
He says this quite often.
Like, you know, he'll make money.
Yes, he's a capitalist.
You know, he believes in these kind of things.
But it's all about saving society from totalitarians and the woke collapse of institutions.
Like everybody is claiming that they are doing this for the purest motives, right?
Like, ah.
And look, there are people out there with pretty good motives.
But they just generally don't have all of these red flags attached to them.
And they don't tend to be acting like this.
Yeah.
Well, also, but like Matt, there's a thing that like who else is making economic content that anybody can understand?
Oh, there's a lot of it.
But do they have one million subscribers?
That's the question.
I don't know.
Probably some of them do.
But do they have Jaffa Cuit?
So, yeah, it's frustrating.
But this is the bit that like grinds our gears.
It's all of this is wrapped up in the Gary story, right?
And it's like, so if you're criticizing Gary, you want people, you want old grannies to not be able to afford their heating in the winter.
You want the billionaires to get richer.
That's what you want by criticizing Gary for simplifying the message.
You don't care about the poor.
And it's like, no, you can criticize Gary.
And you can also think that those things are bad, right?
The two things are separable.
Gary and welfare inequality are not intrinsically linked together.
So, yeah, it's that thing.
It is that thing.
Now, Matt, there's one thing that we have to not miss here.
It's the point where it is raised about how what he's doing is populist rhetoric, right?
And the guy, Tom, does the best job of highlighting this that I've seen.
And Gary's responses are quite interesting.
So let's move to the topic of populism.
So I'm 100% with you on the goal of trying to solve the cost of living crisis.
And I think wealth should be taxed more.
I like the idea of taxing wealth more than income.
I like your passion.
I think we also have a common goal in the sense that I think polarization, people being stuck in political tribalism, like anti-immigrants versus woke, so whatever words you want to use, blinds them from these big problems, which is the accumulation of wealth.
So we're 100% on the same page.
Nearly everything.
The only thing is like the method, you know.
And I think maybe this is the harshest critique I have for you today, which is I think you're a populist, Gary.
Okay, yeah.
I think you're a new form of left-wing populism.
And I don't know if it's conscious or unconscious, like how much you've thought about simplification.
But if you look at it, you're this larger-than-life, very outspoken character who claims to represent the people and against this political and economical elite.
You use a polarization of like wealthy against working class.
And you propose a very, like a one solution proposal for everything.
And this is the populist playbook.
Yeah, I like this interviewer, don't you, Chris?
I mean, because like I think, well, first of all, he sets up a good shit sandwich there.
Yeah.
But, you know, I liked the things that he said was good about Gary.
Like I'm also sympathetic with Gary's focus on like material things, economic stuff, right?
Rather than sort of, and he's kind of right about that sort of culture worry stuff.
And it is kind of a distraction, I think, if you're at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
Whether you're right-wing or left-wing, if your head's full of culture war stuff, then you're not thinking about the material stuff that matters, like healthcare, education, housing, minimum wage, stuff like that.
So I think, Gary, in that sense, could be my kind of guy, right?
But he's very accurate with his criticisms too.
Like he said, this is the populist playbook.
It's a left-wing variant of it, yeah.
Yeah, it's a left-wing variant.
And look, populism, there's a place for it, right?
Like there's a place for slogans?
You don't think so.
I mean, look, our, what's the word?
Our lens is an academic lens, right?
But, you know, Chris, come on.
Step outside your bubble.
Understand it's a big wide world out there.
There is a time and a place for politically oriented messaging.
Yeah, sure.
It definitely works as a tactic.
I just feel like, you know, not to geek it up, Matt, but it's like Boromir holding up the ring and saying, this is a gift.
We can use this.
Like, this populism.
No.
We know in general populist movements don't end up doing great things typically.
But, yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of examples like people can counterpresent.
But, yeah.
So, I just find populism, if you're going to decry it and it's oversimplifications and whatnot, on the right, that you should be a little bit consistent when it comes to the same strategies applied on the left.
But there is no doubting that it's effective in terms of, like, activating people and potentially increasing support.
Yeah, no.
Despite my earlier words, I basically do agree.
I think the problem with populism is what this guy is identifying, which is the simplification, you know, forming, like, an emotionally compelling narrative that isn't grounded in reality.
Right.
that's just a bad thing it doesn't like completely independent of whether immigration should be higher or lower or whatever and it's the same thing with Gary, you can be broadly sympathetic or even strongly agree with the idea of getting a better,
more healthy wealth distribution so that it isn't so skewed to ultra-rich people and go, well, the arguments you're putting forward for that are not just simplified approximations of the complex reality, but really just false.
And in that case, you're not really helping the argument.
No, well, let's hear Gary's response to the question that was raised.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say I'm a populist.
I don't try to be polarizing.
You know, I don't, I try not to villainize the rich.
I'm a rich person.
I'm a member of this group, Patriotic Millionaires, which is a bunch of rich people campaigning.
I don't think this is happening because the rich people are evil.
You know, some rich people are really nice.
I met some of them.
I hang out with some of them.
But look, you know, again, it's the same thing essentially.
So look, I always view this.
I always view this in two ways, basically, which is, okay, there's a serious problem.
I want to fix it.
I'm very confident if you do not stop the rapid growth in wealth inequality, this will get worse relatively quickly.
It's going to be really, really serious.
So how do we stop it?
There's basically two, in my mind, completely separate fights here, which is one, like a technical, technocratic, what is the actual like concrete tax policy solution to fix this?
And that's like a technical discussion, which we could have here.
It might be a bit boring.
We could do it.
The other one is, how do you actually get the power to do that?
Because we're not winning it.
You know, we're not getting it.
Inequality is getting worse.
The rich, especially the very rich wealth accumulators in most countries pay almost no tax.
Working people pay 50, 60% tax.
Donald Trump just got in.
He's reduced tax on the rich.
This seems to be the direction of travel.
We're losing.
We're losing.
Things will get worse.
You need to win two fights if you want to change the world, which is one, popular support and another, implementation.
What do you think of that, Chris?
Yeah, I think that is actually a good distinction that he makes, right?
Between one, being that there's the things that you say in order to create support and generate sympathy and raise awareness.
That's political campaigning or conscience raising.
And then there is the actual policy implications and technical aspects of it, which can be different than the broad message, right?
You might have a specific message, which is like, get vaccinated, but the actual rollout of how you're going to provide the vaccines in all these different places and whatnot is like a technocratic logistic matter, right?
So like, I do agree with him.
There's that distinction there.
And if you present yourself as doing one, and look, I'm campaigning to raise awareness of this issue.
I'm not focused on the technocratic solutions or how they'll be implemented.
That is one thing.
But in the case of Gary, I think he kind of slides between which one it is that he's actually engaged in.
But here, at least he's acknowledging that distinction.
And it sounds like he's firmly saying he's just in the campaigning promotion side of things.
Well, yeah, that's what he says here.
But yeah, I think I'm a bit less sympathetic to him or the point here than yourself.
Because first of all, at the beginning there, he says he doesn't vilify the rich, doesn't it?
Doesn't sort of flatten it into simple categories, but he does.
In his rhetoric, we've heard him do that many, many times.
He always frames this.
He always frames this as absolutes.
And I'll just do this.
But he does.
As far as I recall, every time he's talked about it, he's framed it in terms of absolutes, right?
There is one distinction that I think he makes, which comes up quite a lot in his content, which is he does clarify that he's not really vilifying the day traders or the people who are millionaires.
It's the billionaires.
That's who he's focused on.
Like that's, it's not point, not 1%, right?
Not the, but it, but it does move around.
It does move around.
And those distinctions tend to be really important for my second point, because like when it comes to what's pushing up housing affordability, if it's the case that it is in fact the day traders that are worth a couple of million pounds that are the ones responsible for pushing up prices, then that's kind of important.
Because if you've misdiagnosed the cause, then you're distracting people with a faux solution to the problem rather than actually identifying the thing that needs to happen.
So like you, Chris, I'm sympathetic to a point that's related to what he's saying, but isn't what he's saying, which is that you can, with public messaging, focus on a slightly simplified version of the complicated, technical, messy reality in order to instigate change.
And I've said similar things myself about health messaging, for instance.
You know, people would be very quick to point at Fauci or any medical authorities if they get some little technical thing wrong or something turns out to be not quite what the best guess was at the time, further evidence comes in.
But when you're doing health messaging, you can't give people like a 150-page report with lots of caveats and complications, right?
You need to give them a clear guide for action.
So there's that version, but it has to be directionally correct in terms of the thing that you are suggesting people do is fundamentally the thing that's going to fix the problem, right?
So if you're telling people to wear a mask, get vaccinated, whatever, social distancing or whatever, it may not be the whole story.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
There's a lot, a lot of little details that are not included in that, but it's still basically the solution to the problem.
Now, with Gary, he says, oh, you know, he makes this distinction Between, well, you know, you can have this very complicated technocratic discussion about what should be the actual policy things we should do.
That's not my job.
At the moment, I'm just focused on getting power, mustering public support and the will to change.
But, but he does, he does have very clear, he does, he's not raising awareness about social inequality.
He's saying we should do a wealth tax on the top 0.1%.
He's very specific about that.
He's very specific that the solution to housing affordability is going to be taxing these billionaires.
Right.
And if that's not the solution, right, then he's, he's not so like, I think he's, he's just not doing like before when he said he doesn't vilify the rich or whatever, and he's not making it into a black and white binary.
I don't think that's really true.
And I don't think it's also not true that he's attempting to raise awareness about social inequality.
No, his podcast professes to inform people about the economic reality and he advocates for very specific policy options with a huge amount of certainty.
He's not like spitballing, oh, maybe one idea is we could do this.
I'm not really sure if that's going to work.
He's like super clear.
So I just, he's misrepresenting actually what he does because it suits him in this particular moment.
Why?
In this moment.
Yes, I do get that.
And actually, almost immediately after when he's presenting the character of his critics, you might hear a little bit about that kind of rhetoric, which he says he doesn't engage in.
But also, I think there's a bad question from Tom in the middle of this.
We've been praising Tom, but you're about to hear a relatively bad question from him.
So listen to this.
So you're playing, you're first playing the popular support game, and then maybe later on you'll play the...
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you know, you can have the best front line in the world.
If you don't have a goalkeeper, you're going to fucking lose.
How far would you go?
Like, let's say a new study came out that if you wore a wig and a clown's nose, from now on and you'd be able to do that.
No, I wouldn't make you grow up.
I wouldn't do that.
You know, or lying a bit.
Listen, it's complicated.
No, I've been accused of lying.
I don't lie.
I do what I think is right.
You know, I live with my own conscience.
I try to simplify things and I try to win the public, but I don't, you know, the thing is, at the end of the day, I'm competing against people who tell you the problem is foreigners and immigrants and they're funded by billionaires.
Okay.
I'm not funded by a billionaire.
In fact, I would be a much, much richer person if I was not here with you, if I was still in a skyscraper.
You know, I don't need to do this.
I don't make money from this.
I'm not paid to be here.
So the like Gary's critics, I mean, he kind of presents there that largely his opponents are essentially the anti-immigrant, like kind of Nigel Farage.
But like there are criticisms of Gary from sources that are not like, for example, we are not right-wing populists, right?
And we are not opposed to wealth taxes, yet we are critical of the way that Gary presents and simplifies things.
So we're not funded by billionaires either.
We don't have to be here.
We're doing this in a spare time.
So we should be focusing on first we get the power.
Then we can worry about the messy realities and truths and things like that.
First, we've got to get the power.
Gary's not getting anything from this.
I might question that as well.
But yeah, so the one aspect there that's of note is there's lots of other people with large YouTube followings.
This is going to repeatedly come up and they have bigger audiences than Gary, like Russell Brown's YouTube channel is much bigger than Gary's.
Does that mean that he is therefore politically more powerful than Gary?
Like there's a very one-to-one translation with the notion that a YouTube audience translates to political power.
And I just don't, I hope that isn't the case, because if it is, we're screwed because the politics of various people with large YouTube channels.
So yeah.
It's almost certainly not the case.
And I think Gary's response would be, well, we just got to make the channel bigger.
If once it becomes the absolute biggest channel and everyone in Britain is watching my YouTube videos every day, then we'll have the political power we need to help the poor.
It's just, like you said, it's kind of convenient that that one-to-one correspondence is there.
Yes.
Well, to be fair to Tom, like that question about the client, I just thought the example was kind of silly, right?
Like saying, you know, if you dressed up like a clown and that would meet your message better, would you do it?
It's like, because that's just easy for him to say like, no, no, I wouldn't do that.
Right.
But the more nuanced question was one, like, what if lying is more effective?
Is that okay then?
And the guy kind of says, no, no, no, no.
But like, what happened to the mean thing is just get the power.
And he did mention like he's not getting anything from this, right?
He doesn't have to be there as per usual.
He could be out, you know, drinking pina coladas.
And Tom does push back.
And by the way, Chris, that line about, you know, this guy's motives are pure, right?
He doesn't care about money.
He's not trying to, there's no self-interest in this guy whatsoever because he's already rich, right?
He doesn't need to be doing this.
Does that remind you of anyone?
Matthew McConaughey.
We had exactly that line in the Matthew McConaughey episode from it was because it's an effective rhetorical trick there when there is kind of a slight mismatch between what appears to be the motivations and what they would like to project.
I like in the McConaughey one, it was the other guy, the self-optimizer guy, Dean Grazio, who was saying like, you know, Matthew McConaughey wouldn't need to scam.
Like, why would he do that?
He doesn't need money.
Where do you think about it?
Why would he be selling self-help scam course?
Does that make sense?
He definitely protested too much on that one.
Yeah.
Well, so Tom does push back on this claim that there's no benefit to Gary from like his YouTube channel and public profile getting bigger.
And listen to this.
You probably make good money from YouTube at this point.
To be honest, we don't put Ads in the video, okay.
Yeah, so really, like until like we had a big explosion in views like this year, but until this year, I was not really making hardly anything from the YouTube because I don't do my own shooting, I don't do my own editing, so I've got to pay for that kind of stuff as well.
Um, obviously, if it grows, then we will start to make money from it, but you know, I've been doing YouTube for five years and I made money like two months, you know, so like I don't make a lot of money on YouTube.
Okay, I mean money in two months seems like Gary's channel.
Let me just have a look for up-to-date information.
Okay, 1.4 million followers.
He says he doesn't put ads in, but what I presume he means there is that he doesn't have sponsors.
Yes, there's two kinds of ads on YouTube, right?
There's the YouTube monetization where ads appear naturally.
And I think our videos that go onto YouTube are monetized, right?
So we don't have advertisers either.
That's yeah.
Yeah, but we do make some money from YouTube.
Yes.
And if you scale that.
Yeah, multiply that by a large number.
Yeah.
So it's that kind of hyperbole, Matt, where he's like, you know, I have to pay editors.
I have to pay people to film things.
So I don't make any, you know, it's only two months really.
I've possibly made profit.
And is that really the case?
So you've only made money in the past two months for your 1.4 million follower YouTube channel.
Interesting.
Interesting.
So let me flag my doubt there.
But it is clear he could be monetizing more.
He could have advertisers and alert things.
He could be taking it to a Huberman level and have 100 different sponsors.
Yeah.
So give him time.
Give him time.
I'll say this.
Compared to Huberman, he has virtually no matter.
Yeah, compared to Huberman, yes.
Now, we've gone a little while about slamming the economists.
So of course that has to come up.
And this is part of why it's important to simplify messages.
Yeah, I mean, of course I simplify.
Like everyone in the game of like public relations of economics simplifies.
Like you have to simplify.
You know, I would love, I would love to be that point dexter sitting in like a room with no window somewhere, drawing up the tax policy that's going to save the world.
Where is that room, Thomas?
Fairness Foundation.
You know, these guys, look, Fairness, I know the guys who run.
I know the guys who run Fairness Foundation.
They're great guys.
I like them.
I know the guys who run Tax Dust UK.
I work with them.
Before I did this, I was floating around these spaces, you know?
Yeah, I imagine you were involved.
But one thing I want to show you from the website is a policy.
You probably know this, but you say annual wealth tax, right?
This is your proposal.
And they put it in this evidence, compelling evidence to emerging evidence versus low to strong impact.
And you're only talking about one of these, right?
Yeah.
There's the reason you're only talking about one of these because it's the most simple one for people to understand.
Yeah, I focus on the wealth tax because I think the wealth tax is the simplest way to push it.
Okay, so the same way my opponents are.
So you know you're kind of a populist in a sense.
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
It's just like my opponents are populists.
You don't win the, you don't.
Listen, I went to these universities, right?
And I've been in this think tank space.
Yeah.
I don't know if you spent time in that space.
It's a bunch of really nice fucking posh people.
Okay.
Yeah, I guess it's just, it's interesting, isn't it?
Like, it's like having your cake and eating it too.
Like Gary's brand is that he deeply understands economics.
And he's telling you like it is.
Yeah, that's right.
He's something like it is.
But then here he says, well, that's not what I do.
I'm simplifying things because I'm really an advocate.
But that's not true, right?
He says his mission with Gary's economics was about explaining how economics works to the wider public.
And he does present himself as someone who understands economics far better than mainstream economists and academics.
And he says he can't, he said he'd love to be that guy, that technical geek in a room somewhere or whatever, but he can't because he's usually talking to the public.
But like we covered in the original episode, there are so many easy to understand, clear and straightforward, yet accurate and detailed economics channels on YouTube.
So you can do that.
So I don't know.
Just that swipping around.
Like he just, he flips around for presenting it one way or the other, depending on what suits him.
Well, let me just clarify your point there, Matt.
So when you say he's not accurately describing what he does here, you mean normally he doesn't acknowledge that this is what he's doing.
But here he is relatively accurately describing what he does, right?
Which is select one point and promote it over all else and acknowledge that that is oversimplifying the situation because he wants to have an easy to spread message.
But elsewhere on his channel and in various things, he presents it that he is helping people to understand the economics that economists won't talk about and which is actually like the most important aspects of economics.
So it's not that he's like campaigning and giving them misleading representation for a cause.
It is that he is, you know, revealing the truths that the academic disciplines don't want you to know about.
That's right.
So which is it?
Is he giving people the deep, unfiltered, ultra-truthful explainer, you know, leveraging all of his experience and all his amazing knowledge from being at all the best universities and being the best trader in the world to tell you how things really work?
Or is he, you know, banging in the drum, providing a simplified picture because, you know, because he's advocating for something, for something good that is reducing wealth inequality.
Yeah, it seems like whichever suits him at the time.
Schrodinger is Gary.
Schrodinger's Gary.
Now let's return a little bit, Matt, to what you were talking about, because you suggested that there are YouTube channels that are doing the same thing as Gary, but they're doing it with more nuance.
Is that really the case, Matt?
is anybody actually doing what Gary's doing?
They're great guys, and you know, like they want to make things better, but they go home to their nice big houses and their nice, comfortable families, and they don't mind that they lose.
You know, I come from a poor family, and I know what's happening, and I know what's going to happen, and I want to fucking win, and I want to fucking win, you know.
What we need people on YouTube, obviously.
Look at what is happening in the US.
Oh, right.
Listen, you know as well as I know who's going to win the next election in this country.
And it's the same guys who are going to win the next election in my country.
And it's the same guys who won the last election in America, okay?
And you don't need to be a student of history.
Do you think Farage will win?
Yeah, I think he will.
I think unless I don't see anyone in the UK who has a better chance of stopping him than me and my YouTube channel.
And that's fucking ridiculous, but that's the truth.
Wow.
How does that make you feel?
It makes me feel fucking stressed out.
That's how it makes me feel.
You know, I don't want it to, I've said a million times that I don't choose this path of YouTube because I'm not one of those guys.
Hi, guys.
I don't like to do that.
You know, I don't really enjoy the pressure and the stress.
I do this because it's an emergency.
And I know that if we don't have compelling output on social media, then we're not going to fix it.
So look, there's 100 think tanks writing 57-page PDF reports and sending them to politicians.
How many people are there doing it on YouTube and winning the popular support?
It's just me.
And I don't want it to be just me.
And personally, listen, I studied maths.
I studied economics.
I had to learn to write a fucking book.
You know, I'm not a fucking writer.
I'm not a YouTuber.
I'm a mathematician.
I'm an economist.
I want to be in that room writing the tax policy.
I don't want to be making videos on YouTube, but nobody's making videos on YouTube.
You know what I mean?
Yes, the very reluctant YouTuber.
It's a motif.
It's a motif.
Now, his usual approach in, I guess, presenting himself as a very special and unique individual is that he knows more than everyone else.
But there, it's the different angle, which is he cares more.
You know, the people from the other institutes, these other think tanks, they might be focused on social inequality.
That might be on the label.
They might be rich.
But they're all rich and they don't really care if they lose.
Only Gary really cares.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the other YouTubers as well, you are talking about economics channels, Matt, but are other economics channels as focused as Gary on wealth inequality and apparently opposing Farage?
That's good to hear.
It would certainly be a shame if it ends up that Gary is co-opted by right-wing people who start using this kind of talking points, including it as part of their right's never going to use like anti-elite.
Yeah, they get the, you know, that's that's not what they do.
No, I mean, it's really interesting to listen to him because it's not, and I'm not sort of trying to cut him down or overly criticize him, but I genuinely find his rhetorical maneuvers quite interesting because I think that is what they are.
And, you know, we've, we've covered a few of them.
And another one of them, when he's facing this pushback here, is to make those references, like you said, to Nigel Farage, right-wing extremists, racists, like that's who he's up against, right?
So if you criticize him, then wait, these guys, they're evil and they're funded by billionaires.
And you're criticizing me for cutting a few corners, you know, not following the letter of the law or whatever.
You know, so that's, that's quite an effective approach as well, I think.
Yeah.
So everybody has their own issue.
And, well, one point, though, Matt, he is right, at least on the point of, there's a lot of reports issued by a lot of think tanks.
And it, it doesn't ultimately tend to end up like completely switching the political agenda, right?
Now, I might add to that.
There's a lot of YouTube channels with a lot of political messaging, and that also doesn't tend to completely swing the priorities and policies of politicians either.
But what about that?
That if you want to have an impact, making a simple message and a kind of, you know, anti-lite populist thing, it could work, couldn't it?
Well, I mean, I'm very familiar actually with that sort of interplay between academic-y, Boffin, technocratic stuff and advocacy, activist stuff, because that's literally where my actual work in gambling sits, Chris, right?
It sits there.
And I give presentations and people come and they're the head of like charities and or another people that's like literal advocacy sort of gambling group and whatever, all sorts of people whose role is mainly in that advocacy role.
So there is a spectrum and there's a legitimate distinction between people like me who do very dry, very technical, very statistical and boring, frankly, stuff that often isn't very compelling in terms of, you know, advocating for change.
But that material is then referenced and relied upon by people who have more of a policy activist advocacy, however you want to describe it, slang, right?
So this is entirely normal for that spectrum to exist.
But the difference is, is the people that are out there doing advocacy for gambling reform, they are not telling people that researchers like me, we don't care and it's all bullshit and totally ignoring everything that is in our boring reports.
No, they actually listen and they're informed by that and that informs their advocacy.
So they know that they're advocating for something that might actually work.
So when it comes to gambling, for instance, one of the things we know that's going to work is going to be like loss limits, right?
Carded gambling, where you have mandatory limits basically on what people spend, right?
This is what the research tells us.
That's what advocates tend to be advocating for.
But in sort of Gary world, right, you'd have one of these advocates out there with a YouTube channel telling everyone that only they understand gambling problems and addiction and how the big companies are ripping people off, Which is true, they are, then advocating for something that is completely unconnected to what the research says might actually work, misrepresenting the dynamics of everything.
So I think he's leveraging or pointing towards a legitimate spectrum, but the analogy doesn't really work because, like most of our gurus, he frames himself as a brave, unique source of truth without any regard for anybody else, basically.
Yeah.
Well, there's a section later, Mark, where they get on to other topics, but he returns to the kind of populist framing at the end when he's giving this kind of speele about, you know, what's going to happen in this.
And I think it's interesting to listen to because he does paint a somewhat dire projection of the future, but, you know, with the possibility that, you know, if we make the effort, we can do things, but we're probably going to lose.
So I think it's a kind of interesting presentation.
So listen to this.
I don't do this because I think it's easy.
I think the truth is, even if I win the PR battle, we will fuck up the implementation.
Probably.
Because we don't have enough popular understanding of it.
We don't have enough popular support of it.
I don't do this because I think I'm going to win.
I don't do this guys.
I think I'm going to lose.
That's what I think.
And I think the kids of our viewers will live in desperate poverty.
That's what I think.
That's what I do.
I do it because I want to try to win.
I want to try to win.
But if enough people understand that the implementation is important, then I can get the public behind me to stop the government from fucking up the implementation.
One thing I want to say is, people say it's impossible, but we did it.
We did it.
100 years ago, people in this country, in your country, in my country lived in desperate poverty and desperate inequality.
And there was no public healthcare.
There was no public education.
People lived in shit, low quality houses.
They ate ship food.
But people like my grandparents, probably your grandparents, they fought for something different and they demanded something better.
They demanded education and healthcare and food and housing for everybody.
And they knew that the way to do that was by taxing the rich.
And we had taxes on the rich of 90, 95% in my country, in the US.
And that led to a situation where ordinary people could afford good quality housing.
So for me, there, the salient thing is, you know, he acknowledges that the implementation is important because probably it's going to mess up.
It's not even going to work right, even if we get the support for it.
But he does say, like, if he can get the support behind him, he can stop the government fucking of the implementation.
So again, like, we better just hope that if Gary gets the support, that the government then brings Gary in to like make sure the implementation policies are exactly right.
Otherwise, it's probably not going to work.
And then he invokes the specter of, well, feudalism and rampant inequality and World War II and bonds and huge wealth taxes and all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, it's an interesting framing.
We'll probably lose, but there's a 1% chance if you focus on me that we can succeed.
Yeah, it's kind of the Yudkowski framing.
Like Yudkowski frames it as we're almost certainly all going to die horribly in a short period of time.
But if you listen to me, there's a chance.
There's a chance, right?
So I think it falls into that category.
I mean, it is interesting what he's referencing there, like these very high tax rates that historically existed in the UK.
And it's super interesting to me in sort of researching economic stuff, history of it and that, that, you know, in the UK, we think wealth inequality is bad now and it's inched up a little bit over the last few years, but before that it was declining.
None of those levels are even close to pre-World War II, like around 1910, turn of the century sort of area when the top 1% owned more than 70% of the wealth.
Now the top 1% is like, you know, whatever.
You can argue about it, but maybe a quarter, maybe 25%, something like that.
Like incredibly high.
And it's true that the kind of socialist policies, if one of the better phrases in the Labour governments, but also of wartime governments, to pay for the incredibly expensive cost.
I mean, and yes, that kind of produced more equality, but that was kind of, at least the wartime stuff was a byproduct.
The UK became incredibly poorer.
There was food rationing for decades after World War II, right?
Like, it was a, anyway, either way.
I mean, you had taxes.
Yeah, you had high taxes on high income and whatnot and dollar like tax increases, but you also had things like conscription, right?
A lot of sacrifices were made.
The rich sacrificed a lot of their money.
The rest of us might have gotten shot.
But the other interesting thing, too, is he's sort of referencing, I think, very high tax rates in the 1970s, labor governments.
And that's true.
They had incredibly high tax rates on wealthier people.
But importantly, I think it wasn't a wealth tax, right?
It was an income tax, right?
Those were income taxes.
They were very high tax rates on investment income.
I mean, that was kind of our substantive criticism of Gary, this obsessive focus with a wealth tax, the wealth tax, a wealth tax.
When, you know, a lot of a lot of other sources, including Labour government in the UK, which considered a wealth tax, rejected it, opted for things like this instead.
There's a range of ways to improve wealth inequality, apart from.
No.
Wow, you sound like such a point dexter.
I think people can wrap their heads around the difference between income tax and I think people can do it.
Yeah, well, you know, look at you, assuming that people could handle complexity.
That's not what Gary says.
You know, say, no, I've got a graph.
You know, Russell Brown doesn't understand graphs.
Okay, I don't know the guy, but you know, he probably doesn't, right?
You know, like, you know, you know, I could pull out a big fucking graph and slap you on the face with it if I want.
You know, you're a cameraman.
You're not trained to understand economics graphs.
You know what I mean?
It's, yeah, it's absurd.
Well, actually, so, you know, Tom is a bit taken back by Gary saying that he's not going to win.
And he asked him, like, for a follow-up, you know, you don't think you're going to win?
What's the reason?
And the reason will surprise you, Matt.
Or why do you think you won't win?
Because I think they'll, I think, I mean, I think eventually they will probably attack me and they'll take me out and I'll be gone.
I think that they will fund a lot, these far-right political parties, which are generally trying to reduce taxes on the rich.
They have a lot more money.
They have a lot more money.
They have a lot more.
Listen, the history of human civilization is largely one of desperate inequality.
The last 70 years are not normal.
Yeah, our grandparents fought for that and they got that, but we're not fighting for it.
And if you don't fight for it, you're going to lose it.
I'm fighting for it.
I'm here in Portugal to encourage Portuguese people to fight for it.
If enough of us fight for it, I think we can make it better.
I think history shows us that.
I think what happened in the second half of the 20th century shows us that.
If we fight for it, we can make it better.
It's possible to tax them.
Lower rates of inequality are possible, but only if we fight for it, only if we protect it.
Yeah, well, you know, he's right, I think.
And in some ways, the last 70 years have been exceptional, at least in the UK, in terms of much more reasonable wealth inequality.
Like I said, pre-World War I, it was pretty amazing, the wealth concentration.
On the other hand, he does say that they're going to take him down, those evil forces.
Gary is central to this struggle.
There's a chance that we can avoid this.
You know, there's hope.
We've done it before.
We've had welfare systems.
But if they take out Gary, if they take out Gary, what hope do we have?
I mean, they'll probably take him out, right?
It'll probably be hip bases.
They'll probably be decoding the gurus doing episodes on them.
And that is probably what will cause it all the collapse.
What are we doing, Chris?
We're supporting the far-right anti-immigration racist by even criticizing Gary.
I know.
I never thought of it.
And alongside that, Mike, you know, we're picking on someone that is very tired.
You know, they're playing a PR game.
Listen, you know my background.
Do you think I want to be working in PR?
You think that's what I want to be doing?
I don't want to work in fucking PR.
But the fucking PR of the left is fucking shit.
So I have to make a YouTube channel to convince the public that you need to tax the rich.
You know, it's, I don't want to be in PR.
I don't want, I was retired, you know, I could be in the Philippines drinking pina coladas, you know?
I do this because I fucking care about living standards.
People don't have to believe that.
At the end of the day, it is the ordinary working people here in Portugal, in the UK, that will decide whether to believe me or not.
And if they don't believe me, I'll be fucking rich either way.
It's their kids and their grandkids on the line.
Yeah, I've still got whiplash, Krish, because now he, so he's continuing on describing himself as like a PR.
He's been doing, he's doing PR for the left, essentially, doing straight up activism.
But when we first covered Gary, we evaluated him as he presented himself at that time, which is economics explainer, the guy that understands economics, that truly understands it, which is going to help you understand how economics works.
And you can check, you can Google this.
This is how his channel is described and this is how he's presented it.
But in this interview, that's no longer what he is.
He's now like just a proper political activist.
He's a PR.
He's a propagandist for good to try to fight the evil billionaires and the anti-immigrant far-right people, all these people that don't want any kind of wealth distribution.
Yeah, PR from a quantity, a PR guy, but he doesn't want to be that, Matt.
This is what we forced him to be because nobody else is fucking doing it.
Gary has to go and make the fucking YouTube thing when he wants to be in the room working on the numbers, working out the code, but nobody else is fucking doing it, Matt.
This is the problem.
And as you said, there is a kind of dual presentation there.
At one point, the interviewer Tom presses him a little bit on, you know, the details about the wealth tax that he's proposing.
And this interaction does further emphasize that point of distinction that you're drawing.
So let's talk about the tax itself.
So your proposal, your simplistic proposal is 1% on everyone, on all wealth above 10 million.
How much would that be in tax revenue per year in the UK?
Not enough.
2 billion.
Not enough.
2 billion.
Not enough.
I mean, to be honest.
What's your estimate, though?
If you want the numbers, talk to Aaron Advani, talk to Ben Tippett.
I'm not the numbers guy.
I'm the YouTube guy.
Oh, but come on.
You should know this.
Why should I know?
Why don't we?
You're saying that interview after interview, video after video, you're saying 1% for wealth above 10 million.
Come on, this is a number you should have in your head.
You know how much Rishi Sunak is worth.
So you should know this.
Listen, dude, I'm on holiday.
Listen, you can go and do the numbers.
You can go and do the numbers.
It's not going to be enough because these guys make 5% a year, right?
So if you tax them 1% a year on their 5% a year, then they're going to make 4% a year.
It's not going to stop their wealth from growing.
I think really, unless you stop the wealth of the super rich from growing, then you're not going to stop the wealth of the middle class and the governments from falling.
I think realistically, that's what you need to do.
Yeah.
So this was the issue that we brought up in our original coverage, Chris.
Like I actually, with a little bit of help from an AI, crunched the numbers.
It's not very hard to do, right?
Because you can guesstimate how many people have got that much wealth and you can guesstimate, you know, 1% of that.
It's not difficult to come up with some ballpark figures.
And it was very clear from that sort of back of the envelope calculation that it really wasn't going to do very much.
And Gary never addressed that.
He's just been hammering this wealth tax, wealth tax, wealth tax.
That'll fix it.
That'll sort it.
But now he hasn't, like, this is his one job.
This is literally his one job.
Like, like, he is.
He's on holiday, Matt.
He's on holiday.
I'm just, it's just amazing how he hasn't done.
Like, it was amazing to me initially that he doesn't present any details of this, explaining how it would work and why it's the best answer or explaining how it's the, you know, it's the cause of, you know, increasing house prices, just saying that they're buying up all the houses and it'll all be fixed by this wealth tax.
And now he's saying, well, it's not going to work.
There's not enough.
No, it's not.
He's not the numbers guy.
Yes, you are.
It's completely the opposite of what he's been saying every episode.
He's the brilliant numbers guy, right?
Now he's more than anyone.
That's all numbers and graphs, Matt.
It's all now.
He's a PR guy.
He's a PR guy now.
It's very hard to evaluate him even by his own metric because he's switching it.
He's changing the rules.
Look, Matt, last I remind you, Gary and graphs, they don't go together.
And I admire your passion, bro.
Another critique you get is that you never show any numbers.
Like I showed you so many, I showed you more graphs today than maybe you've shown on your whole YouTube channel.
Is that because you don't trust the surveys or because it doesn't fit your simplistic view of things?
Listen, probably you already know this, right?
But I'll tell you how these numbers work, all right?
There's right-wing think tanks and there's left-wing think tanks.
And they want to get the numbers that they want and they pay the money to the economists and they get the numbers that they fucking want.
That's how economics works.
That's it, Matt.
You know, so all the numbers, they're just like kind of, you know, lies, lies, and damn lies, right?
That's statistics, you 101.
You can make numbers, say anything you want, Matt.
Yeah.
So if you could do that, then what are we even talking about?
Are we even talking about economics with no numbers?
Like if there's no numbers, like how do you judge it?
Apparently, just go talk to your friends.
Well, well, this is a good point.
Yeah.
So, you know, we did cover this in the supplementary material, but for those that haven't heard it, there is some pushback and there is a response from Gary about this.
Okay, let me talk.
Let me ask you a question.
How many traders do you think are looking at these graphs?
I have no idea.
That means zero.
These graphs are not for the economists.
They're not for the traders.
They're for the public.
They're bullshit.
Traders want to know what's happening.
Listen, when I was a trader and I was making, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year for the bank, you think they asked me to bring up graphs?
No, the reason they backed me is because I'm right again and again.
You want to know evidence?
Go and watch my first video on my channel.
The COVID one.
June 2020.
It says that there's going to be a cost of living crisis, an inflation crisis, a massive increase in prices, of the gold price, of stock prices, of housing prices.
Was I right on every single one of those predictions?
Seems to me, yeah.
Yeah.
The same guy who was right on every single one of his predictions in 2011 was right on every single one of his predictions in 2020.
And that's why banks pay me millions of pounds to manage their money.
Now I'm out here telling people for free on YouTube what's going to happen.
I don't need to do that.
I could get paid millions of pounds a year to not tell you.
Okay.
I'm telling you.
And okay, if you want, if you want to- Yeah, if you want me to draw a graph, you know, listen, I'll find you 10 geeks to draw a graph.
They're bullshit.
The graphs are bullshit.
So what are you basing your what are you basing?
On actual genuine understanding.
So but where does the idea wealth inequality is rising?
Where does it come from?
Well, from the fact that ordinary families and governments wealth are collapsing.
So it has to be going somewhere.
Where do you think it's going?
You think it's this?
Okay.
I'm just curious.
Because it has to be going somewhere.
So that's your main argument.
Get a bunch of geeks in the room to look at graphs if that's what you want to do.
They'll make a graph for you.
Any graph you like.
Yeah, well, I think the interviewer is doing a lot of our work for us here.
I have all of the same questions for Gary.
But let's just follow the logic.
First of all, like the graphs that they show the public, they're all bullshit, right?
They're just doctored, manufactured bullshit.
But traders, you think traders look at those?
They don't look at those.
They're looking at the real graphs.
They got the good graphs.
They got the good graphs in there.
But Gary doesn't even need that.
He goes on intuition and vibes and he's always right.
That's why the banks pay him millions.
Now, admittedly, it's been 10 plus years since the banks paid him, but they would pay him millions if he wanted.
And they did pay him millions after a very complicated legal settlement.
But anyway.
They paid him millions at one point and they could pay him again, right?
Like he could be, as he said, Matt, he could be sipping pina coladas.
He could be retired, you know?
So yes, this is just, as we previously covered, Gary has this thing of implying that you can't trust statistics, right?
Because people can play around with figures, which is true.
They can selectively cite, you know, different kind of data and whatnot.
But that is not the same thing as saying like nothing is like you can't believe anything.
Everything is equally as valid.
Because that is the way that people react to, you know, anti-vaccine sentiment or climate science, climate science data.
Exactly.
Anytime people want to dismiss any kind of evidence, they claim basically everything is corrupt.
You can't trust any of it.
All of the data is bullshit.
And so Gary's doing that, right?
He's just doing it in solidarity.
It's the same as Jordan Peterson, right?
Yeah.
It's so complex, the climate, you can't model it.
All these people with their graphs, you know, they have uncertainty in those graphs.
But Jordan Peterson, he grocs it.
And, you know, he doesn't need to worry about any of those details.
So, I mean, it's very similar.
And of course, like, whatever Gary is saying, the theme is always the same, right?
You can't trust anything.
You can't trust any graphs, any data.
You can't trust any of the people.
They either don't know they're stupid or they don't care or they're deliberately lying to you because they're making money from deceiving you.
Really, it's just Gary.
It's just Gary.
He knows he's the smartest.
He's got the best motivations though, Chris.
That's the key thing.
Well, he does, yes, but he might not have the exact numbers to hand, but it doesn't matter, right?
Because numbers are bullshit anyway.
And when it comes to the issue about implementation, so as he has noted several times, there might be issues with implementation, right?
They might fuck it up, especially if you don't have Gary in a key role to sort it out.
But on implementation loopholes.
This is the real threat.
And I think actually, this is probably what we will get down the line because it will become, it will become increasingly politically unavoidable.
You have to tax the rich and politicians will do this.
They will fuck up the implementation.
And I'm aware of that.
I'm aware of that.
And I know you're going to hark back to the fact, well, you focus on PR and you're not focused on implementation.
Listen, when we win the PR, I will focus on implementation.
And I will be there making YouTube saying they're putting loopholes in the bill.
And I will try my best to stop them from putting loopholes in the bill.
Listen.
Gary, you know, the politicians, they're probably going to fuck it up, even if Gary gets the support for it.
But he'll still be there.
If he's not in the room, he'll be on YouTube.
so once, as a PR guy, he's mobilized all of society to campaign for this vague thing.
Yes, and defeated Nigel Farage, Fruit's YouTube channel.
Yeah, this vague thing, which, you know, there aren't any numbers involved.
His wealth tax idea, which he talks about every episode, probably is not going to work, but that doesn't matter because he's not in charge of actually figuring out solutions now.
He's just the PR guy mobilizing support.
Once he has mobilized support and the government's like, okay, right, we're going to have to respond to this, then Gary's going to switch to being the numbers guy again and actually going to stop.
I don't know.
I don't know.
He's gonna...
Well, he did say there that he'll be there and making YouTube saying they're putting loopholes in the bill.
Right.
He's going to keep the busters honest.
Yes.
Yes.
So he might also be in the room advising the government, but he could also be, you know, letting the public know what's going on on his YouTube.
So he's multitasking.
He's going to be very tired.
Very tired.
Very tired.
But so you get the general theme, Matt.
Now, the last thing I want to focus on, you know, this is a bit of a rationalist themed podcast, right?
So inevitably, there has to be a request to Steelman your critics' position.
Steelman, I mean, actually, in general, I don't see it as, you know, a bad thing to do.
It's just the way Lex Friedman kind of employs it is annoying.
But like the basic thing about look at someone else's opinion and show that you understand it and can present like the strongest version of it.
Fine, right?
Fine.
That's not a bad thing.
So the host tries to get Gary to Steelman.
And I think what happens is quite telling.
So let's listen to this little exchange.
So another little game we play here is steelmanning.
So in the spirit of showing people at home and in society that your ideas are only as strong as your ability to attack them, I ask people famous for defending a whole bunch of different ideas from, I don't know, people who defend monarchy to people who defend racism.
I've had all kinds of people.
And I asked them to steel man the opposite position to their natural position.
So I invite you to steel man the idea that wealth tax will not solve this problem.
Well, I mean, there's a lot of opposing arguments.
There's a lot because there's an awful amount of money that gets paid to people to argue against this.
I think it's always really interesting when I go on like TV.
There's always this debate format.
So it's like this, it's me and there's an opponent.
And I'm always going on for free and I'm always going on against somebody that works for some think tank owned by a billionaire, paid by a billionaire.
So there's an awful lot of money that gets paid to argue against this idea.
So do you think Dan, the guy that was with you on Direver CEO, do you think he's funded by someone to go on that debate?
I mean, he is himself a very wealthy man, right?
Yeah.
So he was there and they cut on.
There was a bit in that interview they cut out where he said, the reason I don't want to pay tax is because I might have a disabled son one day.
And at the same time, the government was slashing support for disabled people across the country.
They cut that bit out.
He doesn't want to pay tax because he's rich.
Good start there, Matt.
Have you detected the Steelman of his opposing position?
Explain that to me.
How is he still manning it?
Not so well so far.
He's managed to imply that everyone that criticizes him is funded by billionaires.
And the guy, Tom, points out, like, you debated with a guy who was a CEO type guy.
So was he funded by billionaires?
He's like, well, no, he's rich.
And he tells an anecdote about him saying something that looked bad, but it wasn't released on the episode.
So not a great start, the steel man in the opposition to say, well, they're all funded by billionaires.
Let's get that clear at the start.
So the host tries to bring things back.
Okay, well, let's take that for granted, but let's get back to the steel money.
Okay, but in that case, so you're talking more about when you go on TV and stuff.
You think the people who they choose for your opponents on TV, they're funded by the billionaires?
They work for these think tanks, the IEA, these like billionaire, you know, these billionaire-funded think tanks.
Yeah, mostly.
Or they are directly rich people themselves, or they or they work for the rich.
Listen, you know, there's two ways to be a journalist.
You sell news to the public or you sell the public to the rich.
Okay, never heard that.
And you can guess when the public's getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, which one of those things is becoming more profitable?
Your viewers can think about that.
Okay, so continuing along the same theme.
Yeah, all of the people he debates are corrupt in some way.
Can't be trusted.
The journalists as well.
It's really quite similar to the playbook of the right-wing gurus.
Nobody likes journalists.
I feel sorry if you're journalists.
They're always in the pay of the other side, aren't they?
Journalists and the blood-sucking lawyers.
Those are some people, you know, the constant villains.
But so to keep track, his critics are funded by billionaires, or they themselves are billionaires, or they're corrupt journalists.
Okay?
That's the steel man so far.
He may not understand what steelmanning is.
Does it continue the issue?
Yeah, so here Tom attempts to get a back on track.
So now you are still manning wealth tax doesn't solve this problem.
Well, because this, well, there's a number of arguments.
One is it's bad for the economy.
I mean, I don't even think there's any point arguing against that.
I think it's really, really clear that rapidly increasing inequality is bad for the economy.
I think living standards are collapsing.
Living standards will continue to collapse.
I mean, you can see in front of your eyes.
If you think this is working, then you're either rich or blind.
Okay, so let's do this a different way.
But there's another argument against, which is make all your arguments.
Do the steel man till the end and then pick on yourself.
Oh, so you want me to list up the arguments against?
Yeah, like pretend you're someone manifesting the problems with wealth tax and why it won't solve.
So argument one against is like, if like rich people are magic, you've kind of made it.
Rich people are magic.
Rich people are our God.
If you tax them, if you tax them, we are taxing our God.
They all good economic comes from rich people.
We cannot tax them.
We shouldn't tax them.
It's kind of more of a moral, religious argument, but it's been going back a long time and it's very popular.
Do not tax rich people because rich people are God.
That's number one.
So that's, you know, he still was having trouble there with the concept of steel body.
But when he got round, he got, you know, the first argument that people make against his position is we can't tax rich people.
their gods.
That's the number one argument that comes up.
It's like, don't tax rich people.
They're gods, right?
He's definitely got a grip on the steel mapping.
Yeah, he does not.
He does not have a grip on it.
Oh, well.
Okay.
Does he do any more steelmanning?
Is this it for the steelmanning?
Well, no, there is a bit.
And he does get the better argument here.
He devotes like an entire line to a better argument against it.
But this is the second part of the steel money.
Second one is do not tax rich people because they are powerful and they will leave.
This is a very popular one.
If you tax rich people, they will leave.
Are there any others?
Are there any others?
Don't tax them because we need them.
Do you think it could raise inequality?
Oh, so there's another one, which to be honest, doesn't get mentioned much, which I think is actually more important.
Because I can make a causal...
There's another couple of things, right?
Which is one, basically the implementation will be shit.
And I think this is actually, to be honest, this is probably actually the most realistic argument.
The implementation will be shit.
So I always remember about probably more than 10 years ago now, the British Conservative government, which is our centre-right political party, they brought in like an extra tax on the buying of second homes.
And I was interested in this because it was surprising because they're normally like a don't tax the rich party.
Conservative.
Yeah.
So I looked into it and there was a loophole that said, if you buy seven or more at once, you don't have to pay this extra tax.
Oh, I saw that, man.
That's unbelievable.
How did they justify that?
That's the end.
That's the end of the steel movie.
So to recount them, the rich people are gods.
That's number one.
So we can't tax them.
Second, we shouldn't tax them because they're too powerful and they'll leave.
That is one that people make, at least more than the first one.
But it only got mentioned as like a one line, no restriction.
And then don't tax them because we need them.
That was the third one.
Then he got the implementation and Tom said, what about the case that you could make that it will actually increase inequality?
Like there might be some causal, unintended causal things that you could game out where it leads to increased inequality.
And he said, yeah, you could do that, but he didn't go on.
Then he went on to the conservatives having like loopholes and stuff, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know what the guy was referring to in terms of that somehow creating more inequality.
But, you know, I mean, he did get there in the end to some extent, Chris.
So first of all, it is, it is a decent rejoinder to say that, you know, wealthy people will basically relocate to lower tax jurisdictions in the same way that corporations do.
Yes.
As an Irishman, you should be well aware of this.
The Irish economy runs on.
I guess that's the Southern Irish economy, like Northern Ireland.
Correct.
Yeah.
So there's that.
The other one, you know, the other one where he's on the right track is it's a decent counter argument, which is that, you know, you're removing the incentive for rich people to try to make more money, you know, or even to become, you know, wealthy beyond a certain point.
Right.
So that's going to discourage investment and all of the things that trying to make money does, right?
Presumably, according to economic theory, in terms of investing money.
The other fair one was that implementation.
Yeah, the implementation is too hard.
And, you know, this is the thing that we raised in our original coverage, right?
The problem with the wealth tax is that wealth, it's not something that is recorded, reported necessarily.
Now, some countries do do it.
There are a couple of Nordic countries which require people to actually report their wealth and so on.
But it's not something that governments generally know about.
And you can store your wealth in all kinds of instruments, like entities, financial entities that can be located overseas and all kinds of complex tax arrangements.
So you can kind of distance yourself from your wealth, you know what I mean, while still sort of having indirect control over it and still receiving income from it.
So it is problematic and a lot more problematic, for instance, than property taxes, because property taxes, the government knows exactly where all the property is.
It's all registered.
They know who owns it.
You can't take your property and take it to Ireland.
And, you know, a lot of wealth, a huge amount of wealth is stored up in property, both not just the ultra-rich, but amongst everyone who owns stuff, right?
A lot of people keep their wealth in property.
So this is the thing that Gary never really talked about on his podcast, which is that there are other taxes which can act to redistribute wealth that are much more feasible.
So anyway, I'm just defending him here, basically, which is that was a great defense so far.
But I think he is getting there in terms of still manning.
Like he's not explaining it much, but I think he's hinting at genuine objections to his proposal.
Yeah, but that's piss poor, Matt.
Like the thing is, yes, he mentioned eventually with like prompting, got to two or three objections, which people do rearrange.
But he spent like probably maximum two minutes on it.
Whereas his anecdote at the start about the Guyan Dari of a CEO is longer, right?
More impassioned.
And like the whole point is just model.
Like it wasn't endorse it.
It was just what do your critics say?
And it obviously was like difficult for him to get to that.
And he wants to quickly move on.
But like, that shouldn't be hard.
You know, you can take the position of the people that are arguing against you, present it charitably and say, this is what people will say.
And, you know, they have this point and this point and this sounds convincing.
However, I think this is wrong.
Right.
And we can get into why that is.
But like for lots of the gurus.
You should be able to do that.
Yeah.
It's really, yeah, people, some characters seem to really struggle.
Like if I was asked to say steel men, you know, like an anti-climate action, people that say we shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't do anything about climate change or it's not real or whatever, then I could still man that.
It'd be harder to steal men the people that are straight up denialists, sympathetically, right?
Because they are disregarding the data.
But, you know, people can make arguments, like the best arguments against doing something about it is that it's incredibly expensive, right?
Incredibly expensive.
And, you know, I don't agree.
And I've got lots of arguments against that.
But it's, you know, that is probably the best argument they've got.
You can identify that.
Yeah, you know, you can, you can still man the arguments for the lab leak.
I could still man the arguments for people that don't like vaccinations.
It's not that hard.
No, no, but it's, it's that point, like, because it would be like you ask me, well, well, what does Gary present himself as?
And me going, oh, he presents himself as the fucking savior of the world.
He's the one that's going to do it.
And like, no, no, no, wait, that's our critique of what he's doing, right?
Like what Gary's self-presentation is that he's one guy who cares a lot about the public and wealth inequality.
And, you know, he's seen it in his daily life.
And he's, he's doing what he can to try and address it.
And he's even sacrificing his time, his reputation.
He's willing to take attacks from media and billionaires just on the off chance that he'll be able to make an impact on people's daily lives.
So that's Gary's self-presentation, right?
It doesn't mean I have to endorse it to explain how he presents himself.
So that's the bit where like, I mean, and just that the first effort is the main argument is like rich people are gods.
And like, I mean, I guess some people might have evoked that.
There is like Elon Musk stance and whatnot, but that's not the main criticism of Gary's position that I've seen, you know, in general.
Like the main criticism is it's overly simplistic.
Yeah, that's, that's the kind of thing.
So anyway, I just think he did a bad job at that.
And it is somewhat telling when you're like the whole concept of presenting a strong opinion of your opponent's criticism is an F matt to you.
So agreed.
Well, now the very last thing, Matt, the last bit, and you can move in the charitable space here.
Some people will see this as like a low blow, not fair.
The very end of the interview is a kind of, like people will see this as a gotcha question, but see what you think.
I know you love to say you're not Mother Teresa, Magandhi.
You say that a lot, but do you think there's a moral position, which is that if you have a lot of wealth and giving away a bit of your money will not change your quality of life, that it's morally correct to give some of that money away to someone who will now be able to feed their kids because of it?
To be honest, no, not really.
I mean, of course, like if you do do that, that's a good thing and you should be proud of doing that.
But I don't really get involved in people's lives.
I know, but you are politics is ethics applied to the masses, right?
And so why do you want to tax the wealth?
Because you think it's unfair to people who can't feed their kids?
I don't want Europe to fall into mass widespread poverty.
I don't want to live in this Dickensian time.
You know, I don't, you've been to Mozambique, right?
So you've been to countries that have serious poverty.
I'm not an expert on Mozambique, but I guess there's a lot of poverty there.
It's one of the poorest in the world.
Yeah, listen.
And that kind of poverty existed here in Europe not that long ago.
I don't want to live that.
So this is the, you know, the kind of critique, like, you're a rich person.
Like, why don't you help out if you're going to advocate for equitable distribution of wealth?
And I would say, just personally, here, that so far, I think Gary's response is very decent, right?
Which is he's not telling people, other people to give away their money and donate things.
Like he's arguing for the need for a change to tax or this kind of thing, right?
Like it's not inconsistent to hold those two positions, right?
Yeah, yeah, I think so too.
You can't be advocating for what he's advocating for and not be some sort of saint who actually is so good that they donate, you know, a large proportion of their money because they're millions, right?
You can do both things, you know, but probably everyone, right, should be donating more, more money to charity than they are above a certain income threshold, anyone who's relatively comfortable.
So, you know, probably, you know, everyone falls short of that bar.
So I think it is a bit of a, I think it's a bit of a, you know, it's a bit of a difficult question.
Yeah, it is a difficult question, but so it continues.
And I think to be fair here, Tom makes the question more reasonable.
So listen to the way he nuances it.
I think it's important that someone like you exists.
Let me just make that clear.
But the reason I ask is because final critique, then I'll leave you alone.
I think for someone like me, your message would be stronger if you would be the change you want to see in the world in that sense.
Because I've heard you saying that you don't give away any of the revenue of your book.
You're not into charity.
You're not really into helping people around you.
And don't you think it would make your message a bit stronger if, let's say, 50, you don't need the money.
50% of your book's revenue went towards helping people eat their homes.
Yeah, you know, it might do.
It might be.
But like, that's, it's just, to be honest, these kind of, this kind of gesture politics is just not really my instinct.
You know.
It's more alignment, like with your message.
Listen, my alignment is I tell the public what's happening, you know, and I get up every day and I make a video.
I work hard at it.
I think a lot about it.
You know, I have to make my decision about how much to give and how much to keep, you know, and I've decided to give basically all of my time and energy.
And to be honest, if I'm being totally honest with you, I think if anything, I probably work too hard.
And I think if anything, I'm thinking about giving less.
I'm not money or less time.
Less time, Less energy.
But if you're somewhere between, like, I guess your wealth, your net worth is somewhere between 10 and 100 million, let's just say, you're in like worldwide, you're in the 0.00001%, right, of the wealthiest.
Well, I don't think my wealth is not 10 million.
No, but somewhere between 10 and 100, no?
No, no.
No?
Okay.
It doesn't matter.
You're still.
I made enough money that I never have to work again.
And ever since then, I've dedicated all of my time and energy to fixing this problem.
What about that?
I mean, he does, like, is he obligated to make a bunch of charitable donations?
I accept that there is a disconnect between his personal behavior and his message.
I mean, and he's constantly bragging about how he is one of the ultra-rich that he's suggesting should have wealth redistributed away from them.
So that is, that is a point.
That is a disconnect.
But I mean, I could still conceive of a person that was pro-social enough to want to donate a fair chunk of their time to advocating for something without actually being a saint that actually cares so much that they'll actually disadvantage themselves materially.
But I guess the thing that I think that makes this like a better question than people will give it credit is because he's not saying donate like half of your wealth or nobody should listen to you, right?
What he's saying is like, given everything you say, wouldn't it be just like a signal to people of your government if you did something like donate 50% of the income of your book, right?
He's not even talking about your wealth because you're constantly saying, I don't need the money.
I've already earned more than I need.
So like the money doesn't mean anything, right?
You say the YouTube revenue, they're not earning very much.
So you could easily like set up a, you know, a Gary inequality charity, right?
And it's just that bit where it's kind of like, then he moves on to, okay, well, like, how much, you know, how much wealth do you have?
Between 10 and 100 million, right?
Like, you know, are you in there?
And then Gary's like, no, no, no, I'm not that.
I'm not that.
And he's like, well, more than five.
And, you know, clearly Gary doesn't want to discuss his general wealth, but he's, he's also constantly invoking that he's a millionaire, right?
He's part of this.
So like when it comes down to it, he doesn't really want to discuss those things.
And he regards it as like, look, donate money.
Sure, whatever.
But I'm donating time.
And if anything, I'm donating too much time, right?
And I think those aspects kind of show this is a sensitive spot, right?
Like, well, it's, well, I think it all accumulates, right?
It is, it is some, it is something, as, as you said, like the bragging about the wealth, the fact that, you know, he does retain profits from his advocacy activities.
And at the same time, a lot of his discourse is incredibly centered around himself, around growing his brand, growing his channel, and so on.
So, you know, none of those things are, I guess, clinches.
But when you start putting all of this stuff together and the fact that he hasn't seemed to have thought through any of the specifics or made any like strong attempts to sort of realize this, like make this more concrete rather than just sort of easy, satisfying YouTube content.
You know, it does sort of increase one's skepticism.
Yeah.
Well, because it's just like, you know, I just remember like Hassan did a donation, the ideology, like one day thing where he donated the proceeds to yeah, and but that got media coverage huge, huge.
So like, it's kind of like donating some proceeds from something if you're uber wealthy.
It isn't a huge thing to do, right?
Like, so that's, that's the kind of thing.
But the guy is, you know, I think just the point the guy Tom is making is like, you know, if you're talking about PR being the important thing and all this kind of stuff, like wouldn't these kind of things, you know, help to move the needle for some people?
And yeah, and you can argue either way, but I think his question is better than like, you need to donate all your money or else like your arguments are crap.
Cause that's not what he's saying.
He's talking about.
I understand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, and he mentions the word alignment, you know, and it is sort of, it would make his, his behavior a bit more aligned with the message because currently his behavior seems very much aligned towards enhancing Gary in one way, shape or fall.
And which was, which would be totally in keeping with his previous career, which was also about making a lot of money, you know, working in the city, becoming rich, right?
Enhancing Gary.
And so one can't help but suspect that he is continuing with this since all signs sort of point that way.
Well, except though, I think the issue is like that people, as we know from the coverage here, when the issue that you're focused on, like when the thing is making money for yourself on FX trading, there's a clear, like it's, it's me benefiting, right?
But when the thing is increasing a YouTube channel where you earn money, but you're talking about inequality, then things get muddled.
And same with this book.
Like he, even though you read the book and you've told us it is largely self-aggrandizing autobiography.
It is.
But the way Gary presents it is that book is part of his advocacy campaign.
He wrote the book in order to try to.
He didn't want to write the book.
He didn't want to write the book.
That's right.
He didn't want to, but he did it to whatever.
So, but he's, you know, anyway.
Yeah.
So it is a little bit like the climate change activists, you know, investing in oil drilling and flying around in the pirate jet.
I mean, you know, there is a congruence thing.
Right.
Yes.
Well, last clip, Matt, because there is a rejoinder that Gary offers maybe to us and to Tom and to everyone out there.
And, you know, I just think, honestly, like, I come out here every day.
I make a video.
Do you know what the most common comment I get on my video is?
Tell me how to make money.
Tell me how to make money.
And I wake up every day and I tell people how to stop this problem.
And then I come on a show like this and they say, but what about money?
Give me some money.
Why are money?
Listen, I'm fucking sick of money.
And I know that I have the luxury to say that.
You know, can we just fix the fucking problem?
And you know, I write a book talking about how society is going to collapse and people say he didn't make that much money.
Like, for fuck's sake, you know, it's just, it's this money obsession that's killing our kids.
This money obsession turns the world into squid game, where all we do is, oh, I want to make more money.
I want to make more money.
I want to make more money than him.
Listen, society is fucking collapsing.
And if people cannot stop thinking about their fucking money to stop society from collapsing, then they won't have anything.
You know, so I just, you know, there's too much focus on money and not enough online.
And you know, let them attack me.
Gary, why don't you give us your money?
Why don't you give us more money?
I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is telling the public the truth, educating the public, giving them the information that they need to fix this problem.
And if they want my money, they can keep asking.
And I'll keep giving them information because that's what I think they need.
All right, Gary.
All right, Gary.
Yeah, maybe people keep asking him how to make money because he's always talking about he's a fucking genius at making money.
He's always bragging about how much money he's got.
But then why are people always talking about money?
I don't get it.
I don't get it either, Chris.
I know, I know.
I don't, you know, if you look at the comments under Gary's video, I'm not sure that that is the most common message.
But maybe he sees stuff that we don't see, right?
Like that's it.
And yeah, but you know, there is something to be mad.
Just that last thing with the rhetoric, you know, the cloaking of like, you, you, you guys all obsessed with money.
The world rolls about money.
You're all talking about money.
Like your thing is a wealth, Pax.
And now that this guy is asking you directly about like how much you earn.
Yeah.
And his whole career was about making money until he made however many million pounds.
And he's just constantly bragging about it.
But all the rest of you, you're all obsessed with money.
Come on, Gary.
That's a beverage.
Yeah.
And then it's all a tax.
You all want my money, but I'm going to keep, you know, I'll keep giving myself.
I'll keep giving the information.
You guys keep my money.
I'm going to keep my money.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to keep the money from the YouTube and the book and so on and whatever.
And I'm going to give you information because that's what you need.
But that's the thing, though.
I've got to keep going back to it because he doesn't.
Our main critique in our original episode was that the information in his postcards is incredibly thin.
That is just a statement of fact.
I'm sorry.
But he's a PR gamer.
He's not there.
No, he's a PR guy.
I feel like I'm eating crazy pills because I'm the victim of a bait and switch.
Because we cover secular gurus, right?
We cover mainly people with intellectual pretensions who are trading on this special knowledge that they've got, which they are supposedly unveiling to people and positioning themselves as the sole source of truth relative to the corrupt institutions and journalists and so on.
And that is how Gary presents himself normally.
That's how his podcast presents himself as that kind of guy.
And it suits him in this interview to suddenly, I guess, because he's getting asked difficult questions are like, what are the details?
What are the numbers?
Hang on.
This doesn't really, this part doesn't, this seems inconsistent.
This doesn't make with that.
And you know, now he's a PR guy.
So he doesn't need to answer any of those questions.
I'm sorry.
Well, you know, I'll round up by saying, if you followed us through this long episode, I'm sorry, but you know, this is what happens when people say you didn't cover all the arguments.
Be careful what you wish for.
But so Gary, throughout this episode, has said, you can't trust academics.
You can't trust politicians.
You can't trust the media.
You can't trust the elites.
You can't trust his coworkers.
You can't trust graphs.
You can't trust statistics.
Oh, and you can't trust think tanks.
Sorry, including charitable think tanks about inequality, right?
Because they're also well-intentioned, but they're kind of crap.
So what can you trust?
Well, fortunately, Gary has a YouTube channel where you can trust that because you know that he has the best intentions because he tells you that he has the best intentions.
And you know he has the best intuitions and can predict things perfectly because.
Because he went the LSE.
And he tells you constantly.
And yeah.
And you know that it can't be anything other than the best intentions because he's already rich.
He's keeping his money.
Thank you very much.
But he's already rich, doesn't care about making more money.
If he makes more money, that's incidental.
What he cares about is making society a better place.
And the way to do that is to grow his YouTube channel because that's the only way, right?
His YouTube channel is the way we're going to muster up public support that's going to pressure the government.
And then when the government inevitably sort of fucks up the implementation, the YouTube channel is going to be where Gary's going to hold them to a holder to fire.
Yes.
And save our children because our children are fucked unless Gary succeeds in this mission, Chris.
Yeah, he is the watcher on the wall.
That's the message that you get.
And a rhetorical thing that we hear a lot amongst dollar gurus is the criticisms, they will come from me.
They will, right?
People are going to critique me.
But when they do that, they're actually trying to steal from you, harm your children, and they are taking down one of your only defenders who's actually motivated to try and help you little people.
And like, come on, come on, you can see.
And you don't need to do any of that in order to make Gary's argument.
No, you can advocate for wealth redistribution, for reducing wealth inequality without doing any of those things.
It can be done.
You don't have to do any of that.
You know, and you can actually, especially with Gary's credentials and all of the free time he's got, because this is his one job, it seems, I think you can actually provide a little bit of detail.
You know, you can actually just do basic checks of like how much money, like a 1% wealth tax, which you've been talking about forever, will bring in.
Maybe there are some other taxes you should be advocating for.
You know, what you can actually substantiate claims like housing's unaffordable because the rich people are buying up all the houses because they seem on the face of it incredibly flawed.
So, you know, if your job is to be The economics understander and the person that is providing information to the people, then you could do a better job of it as well.
That's all.
Well, yeah.
And I also think the notion that, like, you know, basically, I mean, if you want to make the case that like media and think tanks have all got this wrong and like everybody is kind of looking down on the knowledge of, you know, the regular people, maybe you can credit the regular people and the general audience that they can handle some complexity to explanations.
You don't need to like dumb it down to, you know, like there's a single thing that will work and this is the only solution and whatnot.
Like that seems to me to be like discrediting the ability of the audience to handle like complexity.
I do, however, think that Gary's right in terms of that is a much more appealing approach to say that there are, you know, the evil elites out there.
People are trying to steal your money.
They're trying to hurt your the populist playbook works.
So he actually is correct in terms of like, if you want to get a more successful YouTube and you want to get a bigger channel, if you want to make a populist political movement, these kind of messages resonate more as we've, as we've seen.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So populist, the populist playbook does work in terms of garnering support amongst the disgruntled populace, you know, for the leader, right?
But where they fall down, of course, is in those simplistic policies.
You don't have to look very far on the right to see all kinds of populist movements in Australia, UK, and the United States.
And they almost always are tapping into illegitimate grievances of some kind or another, but they point the finger at the wrong causes, right?
Usually a simple cause and a simple fix.
And so you're, and even on the left, like I remember like populist movements that were for good things, like, you know, saving the environment, would focus on something like, like not using a plastic bag at the supermarket.
You know what I mean?
Whereas there are like vastly more important things, but everyone's feeling good because they got a bag.
So I do have an issue.
I think it's not enough to say, oh, you know, populism works because it's a motive and it's a good hook and it gets everyone on board because they also fizzle out very quickly because they don't often don't achieve anything.
Or if they do achieve something, they achieve the wrong thing because they are not actually focused on the correct causes.
So if you really care about housing in affordability, and I do actually, right?
It's a big problem in Australia.
I'm concerned about my kids being able to do things like get settled in a house, just like a lot of parents in Australia, then you have to focus on what are the real causes.
And I'm far from convinced that someone like Gary is pointing us towards them, that it's an interesting topic, economics and the causes of things.
All right.
All right.
Now, there we go, Matt.
We've finished this epic Gary.
Are we done with Gary now?
We should discreetly close.
We'll exit.
We'll exit that Gary discourse.
I mean, it might pop up on supplementary materials, but Gary, if you're listening, this is out of the Gary game.
All right.
You're welcome to your right to response if you want to come on.
We'll be happy to discuss the details of our criticism in person.
But yeah, I think we've covered Gary.
I'll have a lot of economics questions for Gary if he comes along.
To prepare, Gary, sorry.
Some graphs and numbers.
Yeah, yeah.
So there we go.
Into the rearview mirror goes Gary.
And I apologize, Matt, because it's my fault for getting so many clips from this episode.
But, you know, it happens from time to time, right?
You get excited.
You get excited.
You get too hyper.
And yeah, that's what happens.
There will be two versions of this.
So if you're hearing this on the main feed, you're hearing the director's cut.
Or sorry, the opposite one, the like mainstream release, right?
This is going to be way ahead of the time.
If you're hearing this on the Patreon, congratulations, you need it for the director's cut, which is probably way much longer than it should be.
But there we go.
Now, Matt, the very last thing.
We need to do this, okay?
I've got a system and I have got a list of people that I haven't shouted out who deserve a shout out.
They've been waiting or ignored for too long.
And finally, Matt, their day has come.
So with the help of my new and improved list, allow me to thank some of our kind patrons, if you would.
So conspiracy hypothesizers, Matt, we have Becca Thompson, Chris and Matt slash Fiction Writers Group, Daniel Kuntz, Darren Ferrocano, Heidi Sweiderberto, Ian Albotsko's sister, Pernell Margretha Abskile Gajere.
I think some of this is names, but nonetheless, Cara, Lame Kian, Leonard Creepers, Med Matt123, Mikhail Horngren, Sam Hall, Digi Waring, and Shunik Sakar.
They are all conspiracy hypothesizers, and they deserve recognition because I have not tried them out for far too long.
So there we go.
Thank you, one and all.
Thank you very much.
I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions and they've all circulated this list of correct answers.
I wasn't at this conference.
This kind of shit makes me think, man, it's almost like someone is being paid.
Like when you hear these George Soro stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Yes, yes.
Noy.
Revolutionary geniuses, Matt.
The mid-tier, able to access the code academia, the real precious resource.
It's cool to mid-tier, but it's a sweet spot, Chris.
They're Min-Maxine.
That's right.
That's the juicy part of the curve.
Yeah, and they've got names which are all easy to pronounce.
So good job to them there.
We have Chris Miles, Curious George, who challenged us not to think about a monkey when we heard his name.
Hope you didn't, Matt.
Eric Stern, Jack with three A's, Karina, reiterative number four, and Tommy Brooks.
That is our revolutionary geniuses for today.
Picking's a little bit slimmer there, Chris.
Well, there we go.
That's fine.
That's it.
Great for noting that.
Fine, kids.
I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time.
And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.
I'm someone who's a true polymath.
I'm all over the place.
But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.
Now, that's just a guess.
And it could easily be wrong.
But it also could not be wrong.
The fact that it's even plausible is stunning.
Okay.
Well, last mat, Galaxy Breen Gurus, those that really, really, really like us and support the show in tangible ways.
Everyone's contribution is tangible, but theirs is just slightly larger.
It's just more tangible.
More tangible.
Yeah, that's it.
But there we have Karina S, Chunky Lover 7695.
Jake Lawrence, Kyle Dunn, good old commentators there on the Patreon.
Ogelli also gets, okay.
And Paul BFB.
Brilliant.
There's legends.
Legends.
They are legends.
Legends.
Their tales will be told in the stars for eons to come.
So thank you, one and all.
We tried to warn people what was coming, how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and in everything.
Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense.
I have no tribe.
I'm in exile.
Think again, sunshine.
Yeah.
Michael O'Fallon.
You remember him, Matt?
You remember the good old Michael O'Fallon?
I checked in on him again, you know, once or twice.
How is he doing?
Yeah, same old, same old.
He's still working against...
He's against the globalists.
The globalists and the woke Marxism.
He's working away.
He's got his own mission.
They've all got a mission.
They're all fighting against the forces of darkness.
There's just some definitions of who the dark people are.
