all right so i want to talk about one of the most common questions we get on the channel  

which is: What is rich?

we get asked this a lot um and uh i think to be  honest often when people ask this the question  

they're really asking is do you want to tax me?  because obviously we talk on the channel a lot  

about we need to tax the rich more, we need to  tax the rich more and people are basically worried  

that it's going to be them that pays more tax so i  think the best way to answer this is basically to  

give a kind of accurate description of the wealth  distribution in this country and sort of where we   

are as a country um yeah with regards to wealth  and how it's distributed um the first point is  

to make you know whenever i talk about taxing  the rich i'm always talking about high wealth  

individuals & high wealth families it's not about   high income individuals or high income families  

who may not be necessarily high wealth um and i think  that's important because we live in a country now  

where housing is very very expensive and that  means that you could be high income you could be  

you know a banker like i was or you could be a  lawyer or you could have you know you could work  

in some industry making 70-80 grand a year which  is which is much higher than the national average  

um and still be actually struggling to  afford a home things like this um and  

i'm not at all looking to tax people you know  what i want to create here is a is a country  

and a world in which ordinary people can get  jobs work hard get paid have nice properties  

have nice lives afford families comfortably um  so when i talk about taxing the rich it's about  

high wealth families high wealth  individuals okay it's not about  

high income individuals who are not high  wealth you know i think it's i think i mean  

if you consider the situation we're in right now  you know i'm i'm not crazy rich and we'll get into  

that but i earnt a lot of money in a short amount  of time and i paid 50% tax on everything i made um  

which was you know a few million pounds um whereas  at the same time the Duke of Westminster earnt  

inherited i think £9,000,000,000 & paid nothing  so we currently live in a system where

people from poor and ordinary backgrounds who  earn decent amounts of money pay very high tax but  

people from very very rich backgrounds can earn  unbelievable crazy amounts of money it's important  

to realize you know this guy made more than a  thousand times what i made and paid less tax  

than me it's pretty crazy right and when you look  at it like that you have to kind of accept that  

we actually have quite basically a class-based tax  system whereas people from my sort of background  

my sort of voice and you know you don't need to  be from London you could be from wherever Glasgow  

or Manchester or Birmingham you know people  from ordinary backgrounds who earn high incomes  

sometimes not even crazy high incomes pay 50  percent but people from very wealthy backgrounds  

can earn billions and pay nothing so we currently  have a system where we're already taxing  

earners but we're not actually taxing these  very wealthy families in many cases at all  

so when i say tax the rich i'm talking about  very very wealthy families but then that still  

leaves us the question of how wealthy is  wealthy okay so the first thing to say is  

this country the uk is actually it has  a reputation as a very unequal country  

but if you look you know from an  international or a historical perspective  

it's not a massively unequal country compared  to where a lot of countries are or or even  

where this country has been in the past so this  country still has a relatively high percentage of  

people or families who own their own home you  know i think that owner occupied percentage is  

something like 78% um and that that's not the case  in a lot of countries right and it wasn't the case  

in this country 100 years ago so what that means  is a lot of people or families do own property  

some somewhere in the family it might not be  you it might be your husband it might be your  

uh your father you know i mean but a lot of  families own property um and that means that  

wealth inequality in this country is not  terribly bad you know if you go to a place like  

India which is very high inequality or  Russia which has very high inequality  

you'll see that ordinary families  often really struggle to own like  

decent properties whereas in this country  there is a lot of property owning people um

but what is happening is increasingly fewer  and fewer people are able to own property  

and especially if you look at younger  generations when it comes to owning property like  

they need to take really  really really big mortgages  

so what that means is generationally  ordinary families are losing wealth um

and then there's a question of where is that wealth going so when we talk about rich

what is rich? so to be in the top 1% of richest

people in this country you need  about three and a half million pounds  

which is this is quite a lot of money i think you  know three and a half million pounds is a lot um

but one percent of people in this country do  have more than three and a half million pounds um  

so really you know often i suggest okay let's tax  people above that level three and a half million  

pounds um but i think actually the most important  thing is that you hit the people at the very top

and the reason i say that is if you bring in a tax  that effectively taxes people who are three and  

a half million pounds and three and a half million  pounds a lot of money you know if you're worth  

three enough million pounds you can afford to pay  more tax um but if you hit those people but  

you don't hit say the Rishi Sunak, who is worth  apparently about 700 million pounds and his father  

knows worth billions um if you tax people worth  three and a half million pounds and you don't  

tax people are worth 700 million pounds then  ultimately that wealth which is currently held  

by the three and a half million pound families  will end up being owned by Rishi Sunak and then  

other people of that level of wealth you know so i  think really i'm i didn't come into this game as a  

with really a moral ethical perspective i'm an  economist and um what i see is is an economy  

where wealth is draining away from this you know we  we have a middle class in this country we have a  

group of people sort of a middle 50% of people who  can live a comfortable ish life and can accumulate  

assets but it's shrinking and their wealth is  moving to the super rich and i i see this economy  

and i say okay well if that keeps happening  it's inevitable basically they'll be growing  

poverty basically and that's not a good thing and  it's the direction of travel is important right  

so if you don't do anything to reverse that then  what you will see is this middle class and you  

know this might be a lot of people watching who  they own their own property, you know if it's in  

London they're probably like worth a million  pounds you know and maybe they don't have a  

massive mortgage on it or maybe they do a mortgage  on it so there's a lot of people in London who  

might be worth 500 - 700,000 pounds because  their property values have gone up um these  

people will be squeezed out over time and the  way they'll be squeezed out is essentially that

the rich will use their enormous incomes to  buy assets from them um and i think there's  

this problem where increasingly because house  prices are so high people who are not actually  

rich they don't live lives of luxury think of  themselves as rich because they look at their  

net asset their net worth and it's like it could  be a million pounds they could be a millionaire  

right um and don't get me wrong you know you  know if you do have a net worth a million pounds  

you're in the top two percent of the country you  know i mean you are well richer than average um  

but because house prices are going up and up  and up and up and up the only way to access  

that money is to sell your house and i think we're  increasingly seeing this interesting dynamic for  

ordinary families where they feel rich because  their house is worth a lot of money but there's  

no way for them to ever access that money so then  they end up panicking that if i say tax the rich  

i mean tax them but the reality of this situation  is if we don't tax the rich they will get your  

house in the end you know they will get your  house in the end and they'll push the price up  

and up and up and up and up but eventually we'll  not be able to compete with it um so yeah look  

i personally where do i sit in all this you  know i'm i'm probably not in that one percent  

i'm probably not worth three and a half million  pounds you know i don't see it i don't have a  

spreadsheet or anything you know what i mean  um but i would be willing to pay more tax if  

the richest paid it as well you need to hit the  top you know and i've said it before in the news  

i'll pay if Rishi Sunak pays it but um if you don't hit  these super rich then they will use their enormous  

incomes to buy your assets and that is what you're  seeing they'll squeeze you out what we're seeing  

increasingly is the middle class being squeezed  out now i know and i want you to think if you if  

you own a million pound house even if you're  in a 600,000 pound house i want you to think  

what are your kids going to do how are they on you  know regular income is 30-40,000 pounds you know  

how are they going to buy a house when houses  cost 600 000 pounds you know what i mean are they  

all going to live in your house forever you know  you know this is the situation we are in is that  

ordinary people in this country ordinary families  who do have wealth are losing their wealth year  

after year generation after generation to the  rich and if that is allowed to continue and and  

then they are paying higher rates of tax than  the rich do if that is allowed to continue then it  

is inevitable that we will see broad increase and  we will eventually reach a place of mass poverty  

in this country which we within 100 years ago  and you know you know go to India go to Russia  

and look at what really unequal economies look  like they are economies where ordinary families  

live very very difficult lives and  can't own property and if you think  

it can't happen here well it happened here  it was like that here 100 years ago and um

you need to look at the direction of travel of  wealth are ordinary people getting richer or are  

ordinary people getting poorer are the super rich getting richer or the super rich is getting poorer & 

at the moment we live in a time where ordinary  people are very rapidly losing their wealth  

and the rich are very rapidly getting it and you  need to look into the future and say where does  

that lead us as a country where does that leave  my family where does that leave my community  

and um you know we're going to talk  about different ways that that could be  

addressed um i've got some ideas about ways we  can do it to sort of address that balance but  

ultimately if you allow wealth to flow from if you  want our wealth to flow from ordinary families to  

the rich and you have no mechanism to get wealth  back from the rich to ordinary families then it will  

lead to a country of mass poverty and and you  know i've been betting on that happening for 15  

years and i've had millions of pounds doing it  um and i think increasingly it's becoming obvious  

that that's the direction we're going right you  know half the country won't be able to heat their  

homes this winter in 10 years time that would be  70% in 20 years time it will be nearly everyone you  

know that's that that is that is what happens if  you allow the people of a country to have all of  

their assets taken away from them you know you  need assets you need homes you need food and  

if you don't own anything it's going to be very  difficult to get that stuff so um you know i look  

at the world distribution and i look at the travel  of it and and and it leads me to see a very bleak  

future and and the way to push back into that  is tax the super rich and who is rich to be honest  

Rishi Sunak is rich he's worth £700,000,000  listen i'll pay it if he pays it and you know  

i don't want any situation where people who are  not rich are paying *HIGHER* rates of taxes people  

who are really really [ __ ] rich and that's the  world we live in right now you know and i know  

i've made a lot of money and i'm super grateful  but i'm not super rich i don't live a life of luxury  

but i paid 50% everything i earned and there's  billionaires in this country who don't pay that  

there's billionaires in this country  who paid less than me there's billions  

in this country that have paid less  than the people watching this video  

and you know if that's the situation that  we have if that's the world that we live in  

um yeah the future is going to be very dark indeed  but but we can push back and that's what i'm  

trying to do so uh so yeah i would just encourage  people to say look i'm not after i'm not after you  

i'm not after houses um you know i'm a relatively  sort of comfortably wealthy person myself um

but i see the direction of traveling on  me to change it so um i support it and i  

hope other people do too so yeah tax the rich, the really rich (good?)

housing could be so much more affordable wages  could be so much higher and we could have so  

many more options in how we live our lives some  of them put a lot of money into paying economists  

and think tanks to tell you that inequality  is important for the economy that is not true