Okay welcome back to Gary's Economics

today we are going to teach you

how to argue with your friends

about wealth taxes.

Okay so we are filming this in early August 2025

in an exceptionally exciting time to be an economist

to be involved in global economics

global politics

All of the traditional political parties

all over the world are dying

that's happening all across Europe

it's happening here in the UK as well

we've just seen probably the

the death of the Conservative Party

coming up very soon.

Labour Party in power are very unpopular

all of the traditional

political parties are super unpopular

and that is because

it is becoming increasingly obvious to everybody

that the economic status quo is not working.

What that means is

there is a phenomenal opportunity now to decide

as a society which way our economies are going to go

everybody knows this, the billionaires know it

that's why they are aggressively funding the far right

and that is why the far right is moving ahead

in this debate of how we shift our economy

but it doesn't have to go that way

a lot of people don't like the far right ideas

they don't like anti immigrant

anti foreigner ideas and there is a massive

massive space to basically take possession of

of this argent basically

the old ideas about the economy are dying

and the new ideas are yet to be born

and I think we are in a great position

to dominate

the conversation about the economy going forward

I think we're in this interesting space

where kind of

the economic status quo of the last 30 years

has failed

and you have the far right coming in

and I think we are basically

probably the best positioned guys to compete with them

but what we don't have is the billionaire

funding of the far right so

what I am depending on

is a kind of different model of how to educate people

how to win people over which is I educate you

you understand the economics of the situation

as fully as possible

and you use that understanding to educate your friends

and educate your family

we are using a human amplification model

I suppose as opposed to the billionaire

and the money amplification model

which is used by the main political parties

and also by the far right media

but I think we can win

but in order to do that

you need to know how to speak to your friends

and your family about economics

about wealth taxes about billionaires

about inequality so that we can spread these ideas

and we can dominate the conversation

and then we can win over politics

and the economic situation in this country

and in yours.

So I'm gonna break this down into kind of a checklist

basically so

you understand all of the most important things

about how to convince your friends and family

about the importance of managing inequality

about the importance of wealth taxes

and No. 1 on the list is don't be a dick

So don't be a dick is about not

basically trying to force your

opinions about inequality and wealth

taxes on your friends and your family

in an aggressive way. I think in

our culture we have this kind of idea

that the way to persuade somebody of something is

to have a debate with them

you see this all over the internet

you see this all over YouTube

with this guy destroys that guy

it's totally the dominant like media narrative

the media form of of how to discuss economics

is we have the left wing guy

we have the right wing guy

they fight each other to the death

and somehow that persuades people

basically having

done this work of persuading people on the economy

for many years now I'm convinced that debates are

almost never convince anyone of

of anything and they're just not a good way

to persuade people of things

the first thing is

you need to recognize where we are

as an economy and as a society

and again this is relevant for the UK and

and for every other western country

living standards are falling quite quickly

people's children and

grandchildren are and will be much poorer than

than they are or they were

and that is scary you know

you know that is scary

we're here in 2025 in most of the western world

we haven't experienced like

really widespread poverty for a long time

and we're moving into widespread poverty

and that's scary

and people are scared and people are stressed out

people don't know why it's happening

people don't know what to believe and

yeah people are scared

people are told the problem is foreigners

people are told the problem is immigrants and really

there's not a lot of good economics education

people are running around

they're scared and they're worried

and if you wanna speak to them

you need to understand that

and if you come in aggressively

if you force people into a debate

they don't wanna have

if you shout people down

if you try and win debates against people

you're probably just gonna force people

kind of further

into their own echo chamber

into their own thoughts

into their own sort of spaces

of fear and I think when people are scared

it's just really really difficult to move people

into a positive space

if we're gonna fix this

it's gonna have to be through sort of building

unity between the middle class and the working class

and I don't think we're gonna achieve that

by shouting at each other

so the key thing, number one

don't be a dick

understand that different people are

in different situations

here in the UK recently we've had a lot of recent

like far right protests at hotels of

refugees and this kind of thing and

there has been obviously

like counter protests where people on the left go

and sort of shout at them and

you know I understand that

I understand people on the left wanna protect refugees

wanna protect immigrants

it's important to recognise that

people who might not be on the same side as you

are scared and they're

in an economically difficult situation

and in many cases

they're struggling to look after their kids

they're worried about their kids' futures

they're being told the problem is foreigners

they're being told the problem is immigrants

I think the problem is growing inequality

I think the problem is billionaires

but you're not gonna persuade these people

just by going down and shouting at them

you need to be able to to be compassionate

to people who are in different situations

than you

that means

they might be getting different ideas from the media

they might be in different financial positions

When I talk about the economy

I'm always very aware that I am a rich person

I don't need to worry about paying the bills

if I'm talking to somebody who's not in that situation

I need to recognize that

they're in a different position

if you're a poor person

and you're talking to a richer person

you need to recognise

when you're talking about things like

taxing the rich they're gonna be scared

you're thinking about taxing them

the situation of a poor person is super different

to the middle class obviously

the middle class don't have this problem

of worrying about paying the bills

of worrying about feeding their kids

but the middle class is also being squeezed here

they're worried about things like

will my kids

be able to live the same kind of life that I did

will my kids be able to afford a home

will my kids be able to afford a family

if you can't understand with a bit of compassion

the position of people

who might be in a different situation than you

you're never gonna persuade anyone so that's it

have a little bit of understanding

have a little bit of thoughtfulness

don't force conversations on people you don't want to

On that subject of forcing conversations

I think it's important just to recognise

when is the right place

and when is the right person to try to have like

a productive educational conversation

these kinds of things

because No. 1 if you

go home and and try and argue with

your right wing dad or uncle

at Christmas when they don't want the conversation

all you're gonna do is build division

it's not really gonna help

but also recognize

especially with things like arguments online

that sometimes

people who have no interest in listening to you

or understanding

you are just trying to drag you into a fight

and waste your time, wait for the right opportunity

wait for the right people

wait for the right time, try and find times and spaces

where you can really have a conversation

that takes the kind of

morality out of it takes the politics out of it

and just explains very clearly

very educationally what is happening

I think that's the best way

to understand and that brings us on to point 2

which is understanding and education

so I'm a big believer that the best way to

persuade somebody of something

is to explain it very clearly

We are in a situation now where 70

80, 90% of people in this country and in your country

their kids and their grandkids

will live in desperate poverty

first take a little bit of time to sit with that

because that's a f**ked up situation

but also recognise that unless that means

unless you're talking to a very rich person

the person you are speaking to

has a strong self

interest for the future of their family

to agree with you

you should be coming into this debate in a situation

that what your aim is

is to protect your kids from poverty

and to protect their kids from poverty

that is the truth of the situation here

for 90% of the people in the country

the working class and the middle class

unless you can unite do something

about growing inequality

you will not be able to protect your kids from poverty

so your base stance for any

I'm not gonna use the term debate

because I don't think debates help

for any conversation about the economy should be

if we don't do something

both my kids and your kids will live in poverty

so we need to do something about that

and your your main goal should be to very

very clearly explain that point

because if you can explain that point clearly

then it's not gonna be about left or right

it's not gonna be about morality

it's gonna be about the very clear

shared interest that you have

with most of the other people in your country

of protecting your kids and your grandkids from poverty

Okay so how do you effectively

clearly educate the people you are talking to

to make it clear to them

that you're trying to protect their kids from poverty

that in my opinion

is all about understanding

the best way to educate and explain a concept

in my opinion

is to understand it as clearly as possible yourself

and that is why here on this channel

I try as much as I can

to do a lot of educational videos about the economy

and I really

really try to make it as clear as possible to hopefully

you the viewer

the thing that I'm trying to explain so part of the

my philosophy on YouTube of education is I

don't ever have scripts for these videos

maybe that's obvious. I plan the videos

but I never script them I'm not reading an autocue here

the reason I do that is

because I think the best way to educate somebody

else of a thing is to really

really really understand that thing

so during the weeks when I'm planning these videos

rather than writing a script

I'm just trying my best to really understand

the situation and the concepts

and my idea is, my belief is

if you come into a situation

with a complete understanding of

of what is happening

then you should be able to explain it

without needing to read off of a script

and I think that

I think that that comes through better

that educates better and that actually communicates

the understanding better so that means

if you want to explain to people that

if they want to protect their kids

and protect their grandkids from poverty

they need to care about the wealth distribution

care about inequality care about the tax system

shift the tax burden to the rich

you firstly

need to understand that very clearly yourself

and hopefully

if you've been watching this channel for a long time

you should be able to do that because really

like my No. 1 aim, absolute No. 1 priority

aim from this channel is to reach a situation

where the vast majority of the working class

and the middle class can understand

in simple terms

why changing the tax system

is essential for protecting the financial position

of their family

the financial position of the kids and their grandkids

in case you haven't fully fully understood that by now

I'm gonna mention a few of the videos on this channel

also one on another channel

which I think are probably the best videos to watch

if you wanna understand that very simple concept

so the first one is we have got a video series

understanding the economy

which I think is three or maybe four videos now

which really explains ground up why inequality matters

why people don't talk about it enough

why it's important to protect

your family's financial position

if you wanna watch just one video

I think ‘The Squeeze Out’ is is probably the best

I think it's

possibly the best video we've ever done on the channel

in just, in just really

really simply explaining that we have an economy

which has a small group of super rich

that are aggressively expanding their wealth share

and in doing so

they are basically out competing one at a time

every other group in society

and squeezing

the wealth out of other groups in society

and what that means is

the working class loses their wealth

the government loses their wealth

the working class goes into debt

the government goes into debt

and we are moving into the stage now

where the middle class starts to get squeezed out

as well. I think that video

The Squeeze Out

really explains really clearly this basic concept

which is you cannot have one group

even if it is a tiny number of people rapidly

aggressively

in a kind of compound exponential accelerating fashion

aggressively expanding their wealth share

in a finite economy which is not growing quickly

which has finite resources

if you have a section of an economy

exponentially growing in a finite economy

eventually that group of society will own everything

and what that means is nobody else

including your kids including your grandkids

including your government will own anything

and I often use the metaphor of a cancer

because really what this is

is exactly a cancer what you have is a group of society

that is aggressively

when a cancer starts is very small right

but the problem with cancer is it grows very quickly

it grows at an exponential rate

so when it starts growing

it's growing but then it starts to grow super

super quickly and relatively quickly

it takes over the entire host and it destroys the host

and this is what the very rich will do in our society

if untreated

so I think The Squeeze Out is a great video

The understanding the economy series is a great video

we'll link all of these in the comments

I also think the

if you want like a really short one

I think the interview I did

with Krishnan Guru Murphy

at Channel 4 is another really good

like basic description

but really the whole

everything on this channel is about

trying to educate you very clearly

on these simple concepts these very

very simple concepts. If you do not deal

with the aggressive wealth growth of the very rich

their share will grow and grow in an exponential way

exponential growth gets out of control very

very quickly

it will rapidly displace

all of the other wealth in society

your governments will break down

because their wealth will be lost

and the middle class

and the working class will also break down

and that is why you need to deal with it

so understand this simple concept

and I think it's important to recognize

when you deal with this

we exist in a political climate where a big strategy

which the

the far right or the billionaires use against me

is they point at me and they say

Gary's a communist, Gary's on the far left

and they demonize anything that is considered left

so personally I don't think this is

a left wing idea my background is not in politics

my background is in economics

my background is trading

I use these ideas to make a lot of money

trading financial markets

for me

this is like like car mechanics

you know a car mechanic looks at your car

he points out the problem

a doctor looks at your body you've got cancer

I'm an economist I can see what you have

the problem is a

rapid growth of wealth in this tiny little group

this is not a left wing idea

this is a do you want your kids to be poor idea

and I think that is an important

starting ground to work from

just make it really really clear

communicate to people that

the way that this is often portrayed

as a kind of temporary recession

is increasingly obviously untrue

something else is happening

what is happening is aggressive wealth concentration

amongst the very rich

that is squeezing other groups out of society

what that means is wealth owning becomes impossible

for other groups in society

what that means practically

is your kids cannot have a house okay

and now we're moving on

I think to the the most common kickbacks

Alright so now I'm going to address some of the main

push backs against the idea that we need to tax

the very rich, that we need to tax wealth not work

and I'm just gonna go through one after another

most of these already covered before on the channel

but it's nice to have them all in one place

I think

and we keep getting asked the same questions again

and again

The most common push back we get by a million miles is

you can't tax them, if you tax them they'll leave and

what this misunderstands is and this is a very

very common criticism

what I do is a kind of sometimes intentional

sometimes accidental misunderstanding of

I'm trying to tax

people who own an enormous amount of wealth

I'm not trying to tax high earning individuals

that's why we chose to use the slogan tax wealth

not work we live in a tax system

which already taxes high earning individuals

very highly it does not tax extremely wealthy families

or individuals very highly at all

so working people are gonna be paying 50

60% maybe more if you include everything

whereas billionaires are often paying 0%

this is an absurd tax system

so we're not trying to tax

first thing is to make it very clear

we're not trying to tax working people in fact

we wanna reduce tax on working people

we're trying to tax the billionaires

the super super rich

and this is relevant to the idea of if you tax them

they leave because if you try and tax a working person

like a doctor or a lawyer or a Youtuber

then that person can very often move to Dubai

or move to Singapore

and they can do their job in the other country

they can pay tax in the other country

which might be at a lower rate

they can avoid the tax

if we're talking about taxing billionaires

they don't make their money from their work

they get their money from owning assets

and assets means property

assets means land, assets means natural resources

assets means government debt

it means your mortgage

it means businesses that sell to the west

these guys they own largely property and debt

I think one way to think about it is if I have an asset

I get a passive income, where does that income come from

so if I own British businesses

it comes from British consumers

if I own British debt it comes from British mortgagees

people have mortgages, if I own British government debt

it comes from the British taxpayer

if I own British property

it comes from British renters

you know and the same is true all over the west

so if I own a ton of British assets

and I tried to move to Dubai

I'm still taking an enormous amount of cash flow

from British people

when they pay that passive income

so wealth holders can be taxed even if they leave

there's this absurd idea

oh my God, some people even start to mention

I think I'll do a brief segue here

because it's so ridiculous

some people start to mention

this idea of a Laffer Curve

about taxing taxing wealth

and the idea of a Laffer curve is

if you tax people so much

they will eventually like avoid the tax

so if you really increase tax on work

people will stop working

or people will leave the country

but if you really

if you, first of all this Laffer Curve goes up and down

so it's supposed to hit a top at like 50%

we're trying to raise tax on wealth from 0% to 2%

which is definitely not

a section which is downward sloping in this curve

how do you avoid a wealth tax

we're taxing ownership we're taxing hoarded wealth

the way that you avoid a tax on hoarded wealth

is you stop hoarding wealth

which is exactly what we want

we want the rich people to stop holding wealth

so that you can get your f**king wealth back

that's what we want, that is what we want

so we are not trying to tax working people

we are trying to cut tax on working people

we wanna attract productive people

productive businesses to the country

we wanna stop taxing ordinary working people like you

we wanna stop taxing ordinary working people

like your kids we wanna tax the super rich

let's talk about what happens

if you don't tax the super rich

if you don't tax the super rich

their wealth grows and grows

and grows and grows and grows

and other people in society like the middle class

like the government

see their wealth shrink and shrink and shrink

and shrink and shrink eventually

the government runs out of wealth

and has a choice between

shutting the welfare state down

taxing the rich or taxing the middle class

if you do not tax the rich

you will end up taxing the middle class

we here on this channel

are the people trying to protect the middle class

if you do not tax the rich

then the middle class will be next

and you are seeing this happen

we're gonna see this happen in the UK

in the budget this autumn

you are gonna see

because of the government's unwillingness

to tax the super rich that the middle class get taxed

you are seeing this at the moment with Donald Trump

in the US he is cutting tax on billionaires

and he is moving towards consumption taxes

which is tax on the middle class

Listen...

the billionaires are gonna try to tell you that

when I say tax the billionaires

I mean tax you at the same time

the billionaires are actively raising your taxes

if you want to protect your kids and your wealth

and your tax rates you need to protect yourselves

from the people who are going to take your wealth

which is the billionaires

now this is related to to the next point

which I'll just cover quickly

which is taxing rich people is really

really hard so we shouldn't do it

I agree taxing rich people is is super super hard

I think the main reason

taxing rich people is super hard

is because they have so much power

and influence over the media

and over politicians but I think we

we have a chance of doing it

and I think if we don't do it

then our economy will collapse

so I think it's worth

it's worth doing it to avoid our country collapsing

listen, our grandparents

and our great grandparents lived in desperate poverty

and they fought hard to make things better

and they did make things better

if you don't fight hard to protect the working classes

the middle classes then you lose the middle class

and you lose your wealth

just because something is difficult

that doesn't mean it's not worth doing

a country which refuses to do difficult

but essential things collapses, listen

curing cancer is difficult but if you had cancer

would you wanna try and cure it

or would you wanna just try and let it take control

it's worth doing

I'm gonna keep fighting so you should fight too okay

so the next argument against this

which is common is that it's not fair

it's not fair to tax rich people

rich people work so hard

they they deserve all of the money that they get

okay I just wanna make it clear

I'm not trying to tax working people

I worked very hard, I paid 50

60%, at the same time

the Duke of Westminster inherited £10 billion and

paid nothing

I don't think that's very fair

we always campaign on tax wealth not work

Unless you are a billionaire

a super wealthy person we are trying to cut your taxes

listen if you wanna talk about fairness

if we do not do anything about this system

then very very quickly

the billionaires will own everything

and you will own nothing and we will move into a system

where all wealth is inherited

and it is impossible for ordinary people to own wealth

does that sound fair to you

but to be honest once again

I think this is a general

a good general piece of advice

when you're talking about persuading people

personally I don't like to focus on fairness

I like to focus on

real outcomes which is

if you don't deal

with this aggressive growth in wealth

of the very very rich

then what that means is

there will be no wealth holdings anywhere else

so whether you want fairness

or whether you want unfairness

you have a choice, do you want untaxed billionaires

or do you want your grandkids to own property

you cannot have both

you cannot have everything being owned by a minority

and things being owned by the majority

you have to choose either you tax the billionaires

or you accept poverty for your grandkids

So the last criticism we often get

and I think it's been pretty well covered now

is the misunderstanding that

I'm trying to tax working people

I'm not

I'm trying to cut your taxes

I'm trying to cut tax on working people

if you do not tax the billionaires

we will reach a situation

where the billionaires end up taxing you

that's happening now in the US

it's happening now in the UK

tax wealth not work

we are the people who are protecting the middle class

if you are in the middle class

you should be on our side, support us

we're not trying to tax working people

we're trying to tax the super rich, look

this is if you do not tax the billionaires

then in your country just like in my country

you will reach a situation

where the only way to not shut the welfare state down

is to raise taxes on the middle class okay

we're gonna do it here

it's gonna happen in your country

it is happening now in the United States

this increase in tariffs is a tax on consumption

consumption taxes are regressive taxes

which are paid disproportionately by the middle class

we are already in this situation

the billionaires

in an attempt to protect themselves from taxes

are gonna raise your taxes

we are the group that is saying

cut taxes on working people

the billionaires

are constantly trying to tell you that

we are trying to raise your taxes

we're not

they're the guys doing it, tax wealth not work

reduce tax on working people.

Okay the next

and I think the last common criticism that we'll get

and I will say

if there are other criticisms you often get

stick them in the comments and

we will address them in another follow up video

I guess the last one I get is like

don't give money to the government

if you give money to the government

they'll waste it

governments have been basically

rapidly shut down in every country in the world

including this country

but I never said give your money to the government

what I'm doing is not about increasing government

it is not about increasing the tax take

what I'm trying to do

is protect you from aggressively growing

billionaire wealth I'm trying to change who pays taxes

at the moment

we have a situation where the super rich pay nothing

they grow their wealth massively

they squeeze out you and your family

while you and your family pay 40

50, 60% it's absurd

I'm not trying to give more money to the government

I'm trying to give more money to you and your family

I'm trying to protect your wealth

this is not about increasing government

I'm not a communist, I am the only person here

who is gonna give your kids a chance to own a home

Okay so to conclude

the situation that we're in is big and it's scary

the economic situation is gonna worsen really

really quickly, people are scared man

people are scared and people are right to be scared

it's important to understand that

when people are scared

and they see their family situation deteriorating

and they don't understand why

there's a very understandable instinctive

reflexive response

which is I wanna find the most powerful person I can

and I wanna try to get them to protect me

and if you look throughout history

you will see time and time and again

at times of serious economic deterioration

people vote for a strong man dictators

that's gonna happen now

that is gonna happen now because people are scared

in my opinion

the way to deal with fear is understanding

if people understand the situation

and how to respond to the situation

then they can act in a meaningful way

to protect their interests

while people are scared they're gonna rush to

kind of beg the protection of the billionaires

and they're gonna end up trying to be protected

by the exact people who are gonna eat their kids

so let's educate let's make things clear

let's make things clear to the public

what is happening is wealth inequality is increasing

that means the share that used to be held by you

by ordinary families by ordinary governments

is disappearing and is being held by the super rich

if you take that back you can own wealth

and you can have a good standard of living

if you don't take that back

the situation will worsen

it will grow, it will accelerate like a cancer

and your kids will live in poverty

the way to protect yourself

is to raise taxes on the super rich

so that wealth

can start flowing back to ordinary families

like yours

I know it's a lot to take in

when I first started

understanding that the economy was gonna collapse

back in 2011 I kind of had a mental breakdown

so I know like it's a big deal

but you don't have time to have a mental breakdown

right now you need to protect your kids

you need to protect your grandkids

and the way to do that is to understand the problem

and to educate your friends and your family

listen there is a massive space in politics

we can fill it. If we don't fill it

it's gonna get filled by some pretty bad guys

so support us, support the channel

understand, educate your friends

educate your family. Tax wealth

not work. Thank you very much