Okay, welcome back to Gary's Economics.

Today's video is going to be about mental health.

Okay, so when I decide to do these videos, I've

got a really long Google Doc which has a list of all

the subjects that I want to do a video about, and

I've had one on that list about mental health and the

relationship between mental health and the economy,

and economy and mental health for a long, long time.

And one of my friends is always

telling me I need to make that video, but

I've put it off for a long time.

Largely because, firstly, I don't like to

do videos on subjects that are not directly

related to the economy, and I like to try and

stay in my lane and be super economy-focused.

And secondly, because, it felt a little bit,

perhaps a bit personal, a bit indulgent.

Anyone who's read my book will know that I've

had problems with mental health in the past, and

perhaps I was a little bit unwilling to be one

of those typical guys on YouTube that starts talking

about his own mental health in his videos.

But I've decided to do it this week for a couple of reasons.

The first one is, the last few months

since I got back from being away,

I've been doing a lot of videos about

explaining why we need wealth taxes, how can you

convince your friends that we need wealth taxes.

And obviously, really, this whole channel is

me trying to persuade you and, me trying to

persuade the public that we need wealth taxes.

And the longer I've been doing that, especially

the last couple of weeks, where you put out

your arguments for wealth taxes and you see

people coming back with their arguments

why we shouldn't,

the more I start to feel that in a way

we're not really arguing about the economy at all.

I think we're putting out this

idea into the world, there's massive

economic problems, we need to fix things.

And, often what we get back I

think is kind of an emotional response.

And I think the emotional response we get back

when we send this message, "The economy is collapsing,"

is a pretty understandable emotional response, which

is that people are scared and people are worried, and

they don't want the situation to be what I'm saying

it is, which is that the situation is really bad.

It's getting worse.

The way to deal with it is to work together

to fight against the richest and most powerful

people in society, because that's scary.

And I think really, a lot of what I've been

doing the last few months, these few years, trying to

convince people we need wealth taxes in the economy,

a lot of the problem we are having is actually about

mental health and people who are scared

about what's happening in the economy.

And people who, because they are scared, are

looking for simple solutions and are

unwilling to engage with what we are saying.

So wanted talk bit about that.

I wanted to talk about my relationship with that,

because this is something that I went through

when I first realised these things were happening.

The second reason why I wanted to do it is because

I myself have been having a little bit of a difficult

time, especially the last, say, month or so, mental

health-wise, motivation-wise, and I thought that meant

it was a good time to talk about mental health, what

it means to the economy, what it means for this

channel, and what it means about how we fix things.

And thirdly, I've been re-reading one of my

favorite books recently, which is this book here.

Not being paid by Camus.

He's dead.

This is, The Plague by Albert Camus.

Camus is a French-Algerian author who wrote

this really beautiful book about what it means to live

in a collapsing society and what that,

what that does to us and our mental health.

So yeah, we're going to talk about mental health

today and how that affects the economy.

All right, so the first point I want to make, which

is that the crisis of mental health which we're

living in, in this country, in the US, across

the world, and the crisis of the economy are super

related in a way that should be really, really

obvious, but for some reason is often ignored.

So I went on Question Time this year,

I think it was maybe in March, and

the subject of mental health came up.

There's lots of statistics showing

that, especially for young people, like

mental health is really deteriorating.

Lots of people are stressed.

Lots of people are depressed.

And we were asked, the panel, you know, "Why do you

think people are stressed and depressed?" And,

one of the ladies on the panel said she thinks it's

because of mobile phones and social media.

And you know, perhaps that is a part to

play in it, but it was very frustrating for

me because we live here in a society where

it is increasingly impossible to do like simple things

like buy a house and have security for a family,

be able to get like a decent living environment.

To get that you need work all the hours God sends.

You need to get a really competitive degree, and

I think it should be really, really obvious that

a big part of the reason why people, especially

young people, are having mental health problems,

is because it's increasingly impossible just be

able to afford the basics of life for most people.

So I think we'll put up a little clip of me

trying to convince the people on Question Time

that mental health is, is not just because

of phones and it's not just because of individual

problems, but is related to societal problems.

I think we need to talk about the unbelievably

hostile circumstances young people face

with regards to their economic futures.

More and more and more young

people growing up in poverty.

But even aside from that, we've got

people with jobs in London who are homeless.

So that means if you're a young person, you

know that even if you get an ordinary job,

it's not going to be enough to buy a home.

It's not going to be enough to have a family.

So, so just doing the right thing,

working and getting job is, it doesn't

even guarantee you can feed your kids.

You know, we have to look at this and then

obviously, if you're a young person, you're

thinking, "Well, if I don't get the best grades

and I don't get into the best university, then

I'm not even going to be able to have a family."

You know, what kind of world have we made here?

You know, we need to look at it...

We always look at the individual.

This person has a mental health problem.

This person has a mental health problem.

It doesn't come out of nowhere.

These people don't just suddenly get sick.

My dad worked for the post office and he had a

family and he bought a house and he has a retirement.

He has a pension.

Kids can't get that.

Kids can't get that.

Unless they make millions of pounds,

they can't even have a family.

It's ridiculous, you know.

It's not just a problem for

individuals, it's a societal problem.

We need make sure young people have economic

opportunity. It's super, super, super

frustrating when people treat mental health

problems as if they're like a broken leg.

Like, you ****** up, you jumped

off a building, you broke your leg.

Now you have a problem.

These things are to do with society.

If you create a society where people have security,

where people can get good quality secure work, and

that secure work will be able to provide them with

the basics they need to support a family and to

support a family with dignity, then a lot of people

will be relatively happy and calm and relaxed.

If you create society like we live in now... I live

in a city where people work full-time jobs and are

homeless because they can't afford to pay rent, you

know, nevermind being able to do things like support

a family with dignity, get financial security.

People will feel insecure because

they genuinely are insecure.

And I think it's really, really important

that we start viewing mental health problems,

especially when they exist in societies where

the economic conditions are deteriorating

really quickly, as being related to the economy.

So, mental health and

the economy are not unrelated.

If you create an economy where people can live well,

a lot of people will feel secure because they are secure.

If you create an economy where it's very,

very difficult to get security, people will

feel insecure because they will be insecure.

And this relates very much to my own

personal story and, the story of my book.

So, some of you might not have read

my book so, or know my personal story.

So I made most of my money in 2011 by betting that

basically the... the economic crisis would last forever.

That was just after the 2008 crisis.

And what I bet on was that the economy and

living standards for ordinary people would get

worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.

And I bet on that again,

at the beginning of COVID 2020.

So I'm somebody who has been very aware for a

long time that living standards were going to fall.

And a big part of the story of my book,

especially the last section of my book,

is very explicitly about

depression and mental health.

And that was me sort of trying to deal with

this recent awareness that I had at

a very young age, in 2011 I was 24, that living

standards were going to get worse forever and

that, there would be big explosions in poverty in

my country, in your country, in the Western world.

And you'd get people who'd read the book

asking me, you know, "So, how did you make your

money?" "Oh, I made my money betting society would

collapse." And then they'd say, "But how did you fall

into depression when you made so much money?" And I

think it would be like super interesting really that,

that so many people sort of failed to recognise

that, knowing that the society you're in is

collapsing and is going to collapse would have

an effect on an individual's mental health.

The, the little quote at

the front of the book, I've got couple.

One of them is from the Japanese film director, Akira

Kurosawa, saying, "In mad world, only the mad are

sane." and this is basically about the...

What I wanted in this was to point out the fact

that the book is partially about me going mad, but

is it a mad thing to do, to go mad when you know

you're in a society that is about to collapse?

Yeah, that's really what I wanted to talk

about in this video because I think it's

super relevant to our work, trying to persuade

people they need to take action on inequality.

This question of what does it do to the individual when

they realise they are in a society that is collapsing?

The way that this crisis is often represented

in the media or from politicians is kind of as what

we call a recession, which means a couple of bad years.

One bad year, two bad years, maybe if you're

really unlucky, three bad years, and then

things will start getting better again.

But the reality is unless you're in the top 10%,

really this just gets worse and worse

and worse and worse and worse for you.

So, my plan was like, well, listen, this is like

really big political opportunity because the

political status quo works really, really badly

for like 90% of the population, and that means

we have a really good chance here to unite 90% of

the population to push for something different.

Like in a democracy, if you have a status quo,

which is going to impoverish the kids and grandkids

of 90% of the population, all you need to do is

show them the truth that this is going to happen,

and you'll be able to motivate them to demand

something different from their politicians.

And I think the problem with that plan

is really a problem of mental health.

And I'll explain why.

So this concept that what we were actually in

economically was a structural crisis of growing

inequality, that the bottom 90% was having their

wealth kind of aggressively out by the

top 1%, that is something that I realised in 2011

when I was working as a trader.

At the time, my job was basically to predict

and bet on the future strength of like nations.

So the UK, the US, Europe, these kinds of things.

And it's a funny job in a way because

if you think that the economy is going to be really

bad and the economy turns out to be really bad,

then you make money betting on terrible things.

But that is your job, so it's this kind of strange

job which is slightly dehumanised in a way.

Like if you think a bad thing's going to

happen, your job is to bet that bad thing is

going to happen, and you're kind of encouraged

to think abstractly, step outside the box.

And, if you get it right, you make a

ton of money and nobody really questions like

whether it's the right or the wrong thing to do.

And it felt like a very natural thing

to do for somebody who studied economics.

So, I did economics undergrad at London School of

Economics, and then went into an economic analysis job.

Your job is to look at economies, analyze economies,

make predictions, bet on those predictions.

So when I first put this bet on, I didn't really on

any conscious level think, "What does it mean to bet

on a collapsing economy?" Like I was a young person,

this was my job, I was trying to make money.

I put the bet on.

And it wasn't really until the end of

the year... That year, so this was 2011.

At the end of the year when I got paid on the year,

that I started to really think about, "What does that

mean?" And to be honest, what you see in the sort of

latter part of my book is a long period of me having

this, what you might call, like cognitive dissonance,

which is one part of my brain knows... Well, I

think the first thing say is, when you first put the

bet on, you don't know for sure that you're right.

It's kind of, you're confident, you're confident enough

to bet on it, but you're not sure it's going to happen.

Then at the end of 2011, I was Citibank's

most profitable trader in the year that year,

based on betting society would collapse.

And you get paid a ton of money.

And I think that's probably where like part

of you starts thinking, "Is that like, okay?

Like, should that be the way the world

works?" Like, should you just be paid

a ton of money if the world's going to collapse?

Should you do anything about the economy collapsing?

But I think this is really the big question,

which was, you know, my plan is to show people the

economy is collapsing and hope they will take action.

But when I myself realised the economy was

collapsing, it was a long time before I took action.

And it started a sort of battle in myself where

first of all, you just kind of...

You don't want to accept it.

You don't want to... Because I think if you

were to accept it, it would demand action from you.

So for me as somebody who had made millions

of pounds betting on society collapsing,

I think there's a pretty obvious moral case to

make to somebody like that, that is like, "Well,

maybe you should stop the economy from collapsing."

But obviously to do that, I would have had to quit

my job, and I was making an enormous amount of money.

That would be scary.

Like, I worked really, really hard to get that job.

I came from a poor background, so walking away

from like such a well-paid job was a big thing.

But also like, what do you do?

Like, how can you actually stop this?

And you have these arguments towards the latter

part of the book, where I'm sort of arguing with other

guys at Citibank, my colleagues saying, "Maybe we

should do something." There's one specific discussion

with, a guy who in the book is called Arthur,

where I say to him, like, "Do you think we should

do something about the collapsing economy?" And,

he thinks I mean like, "Do you think we should put

a trade on?" He just keeps saying, "But you already

put the trade on." And I keep saying, "Should we

do something?" And he just doesn't understand it.

And I think what you kind of see here

is basically when you confront somebody

who is working really hard, leads a stressful

life, has worked hard to get the job that they're

in, or is struggling to put food on the table,

anybody, you say, "Hey, society is collapsing.

Let's stop it," I think a very, very normal

emotional human response is to say like, "**** you.

I'm busy.

I'm stressed.

Don't come and tell me we need

save the world, because not my job.

That's the job of the politicians.

Other people should be doing that." And I think a

lot of the pushback that we get, that I get

is basically from people who are kind of struggling

emotionally with the same thing I struggled

emotionally with for a long time, which was, "Oh, ****,

the society we live in is collapsing.

What the **** do we do?" And I think this kind of

debate which I had in my head or in my heart or

in my body sort of in 2011, 2012, and I didn't

finally quit that job till 2014, is to some degree

the argument that we're having in society now.

Because it was pretty clear to me by 2012 that

what was going to happen was living standards would

keep falling basically forever until we stop them.

But I don't think that became really obvious in wider

society, until maybe the last couple of years.

I think you did start to see this

understanding grow more and more and more.

I think that's part of the reason why Brexit happened.

I think that's part of the reason why Trump

got elected both the first time and the second time.

Now we're sort of moving into this space where

it becomes more and more obvious to everyone

that society is collapsing forever, the economy is

collapsing forever, and people as individuals need to

basically decide, "Okay, what do I do with that?

How do I deal with that?" And

this is where Camus comes in.

So I think this book, this book... Camus,

a French Algerian author, he lived in France

during the Nazi occupation of France, and he saw

the rise of the Nazis in the mid-20th Century.

And the book is about an epidemic

of plague in a city in Algeria.

It's a metaphor for, for fascism and for

the Nazis and the growth of Nazism in Europe.

But what he talks about is when you live

in the society that starts to collapse,

what do people... how do people react

to that, and how should people react to that?

And in the book, what you see is, basically

most people just kind of freak the

**** out and kind of lose their minds.

And I'm not going to criticise that response at all

because, that's basically what happened to me.

I had basically a breakdown

when I realised society was collapsing.

I realised it a long time before everybody else.

I've had about 14 years to come to terms with it now.

And you see some people become extremely religious.

Some people become extremely angry.

Some people become violent.

Some people become greedy.

A lot of people become hedonistic.

And I think it's super, super

understandable, this is a reaction.

And when I put my message out there into the

world on the videos saying, "Listen, if we

don't take action, society is going to collapse,"

a lot of the responses I get back

are basically... And, you know, people say, "Oh,

the pro- but the actual solution is Bitcoin.

What you actually need to do is to print money.

You know, the problem is actually immigrants.

The problem is actually foreigners." What

I really hear is a lot of people saying,

"Listen, I'm ******* stressed enough as it is.

Don't you dare tell me that this is my problem and

I need to fix it." The best example of that

was I gave a speech at like a really fancy,

advertising company once, and I was on a panel.

And I did this thing that I do where

I say, "Listen, actually we have this

fundamental problem with inequality.

It's going to get worse and worse.

If we don't take action, society will collapse."

And, um... a lady went up after me and

I think by all accounts, she's a very nice lady.

And what she said was, "Listen, the economy

is part of God's plan and it's like nature.

It's like the changing of the seasons.

Sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets

worse." And, this was very frustrating for

me in this room full of rich people because

if these people can persuade themselves

that inequality is part of God's plan,

that sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets

worse, that is a very, very good way of convincing

themselves that they don't need to take action.

And I think a lot of what we are seeing at the

moment is people starting to realise their society

is collapsing and desperately trying to find a

story to tell themselves, "I'm going to be okay.

I don't need to take action.

I don't need to be responsible for fixing this."

So, the truth is, what we are selling here

on this channel is the truth, but it's not

the most promising choice, right?

Because what we are saying is

we have a society-wide economic problem.

The problem is being caused by the very rich.

The people who are supposed be fixing it,

the politicians, the economists, are kind of

incompetent, kind of a little bit bought.

They're not going to fix it.

The job and the responsibility falls on you, ordinary

people, to unite together to educate one another

so that you can push back and fight against the

richest and most powerful people in society.

I think we have to accept that especially in the

very individualistic societies we live in here in

the UK, US, that is not the most appealing message.

And we're not the only guys selling a message

about, "How do you fix this?" There are a

lot of other messages online that's saying

there are other ways to fix your poverty.

I'm going to show you one now from a Instagram

account I've been really enjoying lately.

Listen to this.

Slaves worked all the hours they were awake

for their entire lives.

I think, like, if they can do it, so can I.

You know, Aldous Huxley once said that a

really efficient totalitarian state would

be one with slaves who do not have to be

coerced because they love their servitude.

The reason I wanted show you that is because

as we move further and further and further into this

collapsing economy, and more and more people lose

their minds, people are going to look for ways to get

out of this that they think can protect themselves.

And I think one thing that is super

interesting about this is one of the other

big solutions that people being sold is if you

just work harder, if you work really, really,

really, really, really, really hard, maybe you

will survive the collapse of your whole economy.

And I think it's... it's really appealing

in this post-Thatcher/Reagan world.

There was a quote which, Jack, my

cameraman, told me from Margaret Thatcher.

She said, "Economics are the method.

The object is to change the soul."

And I think that maybe 50 or 60 years ago, we might

have lived in countries where people understood

that the best way to protect your interests

from the rich is to work together.

But as we've moved into very sort of individualistic

mindset, people have been increasingly convinced

that the best way to protect yourself from

the rich is to work really, really, really,

really, really, really, really, really

hard and to compete with other poor people.

If you do that, if everybody does that, if

everybody works really, really, really, really hard to

be the best and lowest paid and hardest working slave,

all you will do is push wages down incredibly quickly

and impoverish yourself and everyone around you.

The only way to fix this is

to find ways to work together.

Okay, so what do you do if you're in that situation,

if you're in a society that is collapsing?

The rich are taking everything.

The 90% are being killed.

The only real way to stop it is to try and unite

that 90% somehow, or as many of it as you can.

But you live in this

phenomenally individualistic society.

Okay, so I'll talk about what I did.

And the truth is, you know, I kind of had

a mental breakdown basically, and this is

the story of the latter part of the book.

I think it's quite beautifully written

personally, but you can read it if you're interested.

And I tried really, really hard to

convince myself that this was not my problem.

There's a side character in my book who,

I wanted to include more, but I didn't have space.

There's a guy called... In the book, he's called Hong.

Really, really nice guy, maybe not the best trader.

But he did this amazing thing, which

is he used to take like 30 sick days a year.

And another guy who I used to work with

called Billy had a little book where

he used to record all of his sick days.

That was on top of his 25 holiday days.

And, nobody got really pissed about

this because he was such a nice guy, and,

he had managed to do this thing in his work

where he had kind of emotionally detached himself

from his work, and he wasn't making the most

money as a trader, but he was a really nice guy.

He was doing his job pretty well, and

he had managed to be emotionally detached.

And I used to sit on my desk on Citibank

trading floor, and I used look at this guy.

In the book, he's called Hong.

This is the scene I wanted to include in the book.

And I used to say to myself, "Why

can't you just be more like Hong?

Why can't you not give a **** about being the best

trader, not give a **** about the world collapsing?

Just get paid your half a million pound

a year and live a ******* good life."

And I tried and I tried and I tried for a long

time, to ignore this sort of, I guess, this

social responsibility to try and fix things.

And then when I tried speak to traders

around me, you know, "Should we do things?"

They just sort of laughed, you know.

Because obviously there's no... You can't pick

up the phone and speak to David Cameron and say,

"The economy's collapsing." And they

said, "It's impossible to do anything." And,

I told myself it was impossible to do anything.

And the truth is, you know, I made this realisation

in 2011. I didn't quit 'til 2014.

I tried really, really, really, really hard

to not do anything about the collapsing economy.

But eventually, the truth is, my body kind

of made the decision for me, and, I got more

and more depressed, and I got more and more sick.

And I didn't really get better until I chose to

quit that job and try and ******* do something.

So personally, I think, and I think this is

the message that Camus comes across in his book,

in a society that is collapsing,

the only way to be healthy and to be calm is

to try to do something to stop that collapse.

But the truth is, even when I did quit in

2014, I didn't work very aggressively, at

fixing the collapsing economy for a long time.

This YouTube channel was started in 2020.

So I haven't spoken much about the

period between me quitting my job in 2014

and me starting this YouTube channel in 2020.

And people who read my book, I kind of wanted

give the impression that I never really wanted

to work for charity and it was kind of like

a game I was using get out of the bank.

But the truth is, that whole period, 2014 - 2020,

I was working in trying to find ways

to stop the economy from collapsing.

And the first thing I did, which I think is

kind of the logical thing to do if your plan is

try and do something about growing inequality,

is I went and I researched the political Left.

It's a common, conspiracy that I'm some sort of

leftist, some massive leftist, some massive communist.

But the truth is, I was never on the political

Left and, I never voted for Labour,

at the point of leaving my job.

But because I thought the problem

was inequality, I assumed the political

Left would be the right place to go.

And I started research the political Left

and I volunteered at some think tanks.

And, you know, I met some great people

who I do still talk to today.

But I was actually like often very,

very frustrated at, number one,

there was almost nobody working on inequality.

And number two, there were a lot of sort of very

posh, well-meaning people who didn't seem super, super,

like really actively concerned and aggressive

about working really hard try and fix inequality.

And I think this is another sort of mental health

wall you can hit when you try to fix things, which...

And we see this a lot, which is people watch our

videos, they become convinced like I was convinced,

and they're like, "Oh my God, I want to do something.

I want to help." But they, similarly to

me in that period of time, they don't know where

to go, they don't know where to use their energy,

they don't know how to actually take action.

So, this is a kind of next step from a mental health

perspective, which is you've realised what's

happening, you've had your freak-out, you've gone

mental for a bit, you've managed to calm yourself down.

You're like, "Now I want to help," and

you can't actually find a place to help.

So, I think with regards to this, I'm always...

We have this discussion quite a lot on

the channel, where we, we talk about like

should we get people to send letters to their

MPs or should we give them like calls to action?

Should we arrange like a march?

Should we arrange like rally?

And I've always been on the side of, I don't want to

arrange these kind of big grandstand events.

What I want to... Because we're not...

I don't want people to give everything, get

super excited, and then burn themself out

because we haven't built those structures.

So what I would say is if you do want to help

and you're in that sort of space, recognise it's

a long-term battle, recognise it's not all on you.

We are not able to give jobs and work

to everybody who wants to support.

What we would ask you to do is always

watch and understand the videos, share the

videos, share the message, get good at explaining

in a simple way that the reason the economy is

getting worse is because of growing inequality,

and just build that message, build that message.

If you're an ordinary person,

that's all we would ask of you.

If you are somebody who is in some position

of power, like you... you are on the political

Left or you are on the political Right, I

think you should be asking yourself, how can

you create spaces for other people to get

involved so that they can support this message?

But the final big realisation that I made in that

period when I was trying to figure out ways to fix it

was basically that the fire engines are not coming.

So, there are these institutions in society that are

supposed to protect us from economic collapse,

which are most obviously the politicians, but also

the academic economists, institutions like central

banks, which are full of economists that are supposed

protect your country's economy, things

like the civil service, things like the media.

These guys are all supposed to

realise there is an economic collapse.

And the big thing that I realised after leaving

the bank is that basically these institutions are all

kind of broken and not able to recognise that basically

what is happening is being caused by inequality.

And that was kind of the second

big shocking realisation for me.

And it's also another big shocking realisation,

I think for... to give to ordinary people.

The truth is, the institutions that are supposed

to protect your economy are not functioning.

They're unable to realise

that inequality is the core problem.

That's another thing we just need to sit and

take a long breath and think about, because

that means that if you are just a regular person,

the responsibility to protect your family and

your kids' and your grandkids' future falls upon you.

And that is another thing which is going to freak

people out from a mental health perspective.

But I think the way to deal with it

is to understand it, to accept it, and to find

some way that you can contribute fixing things.

Take it easy.

Don't work too hard.

Support us.

If you are able to get yourself into a

position of power, we really, really need to

get this idea better understood amongst people

like politicians, economic academics,

economists, the media, civil servants.

We need these think tanks.

We need these people to understand better.

If you do not deal with growing

inequality, your society will collapse.

And if you are working in one of those spaces or are able

to work in one of those spaces, please try your best to

spread that message so that people can understand it.

So that brings us to where we are now basically.

The message that I want to send across is that

the reality of the situation is really, really bad.

That is a massive opportunity because it is going to

damage 90% of families in my country and your country.

If we can unite those families, we can

definitely create change politically.

But it is a massive blow to tell people that

that is going to happen, and we need to find ways

to support each other to get people to understand

what's happening and not freak the **** out.

And that's true for me as

well, and it's true for you.

Listen, I've known for 14 years now

that our economy was going to collapse, and,

the truth is like for the last three years

I've known we had a real opportunity, a really

big opportunity to build something big here.

I'm really proud of what we've built.

I have probably pushed myself a bit too hard.

I took six, seven weeks off earlier this

year, and I came back, and I was really

sort of gunning for it, ready to sort of

go and hold the politicians to account.

And, I've been meeting people at think tanks.

I've been speaking to politicians and celebrities

and trying to build... trying to build a bigger

social media infrastructure for these sort of ideas.

But for the last few weeks, I've been really

struggling a little bit just to make videos, just

to sort of find the creativity to make good videos.

It's a funny thing for me because my background is

maths and economics, and, I'm always really, really,

really confident with the economics understanding.

I'm really confident at trading.

But this YouTube and also the book,

it's not just about understanding the economy.

A huge part of it is this kind of creative

job of how do you package it, how do you make

it compelling, how do you draw people in?

And it's really, it's that kind of creative

energy that I've been struggling a little bit

with recently, and it's, it's the first time

that's ever really happened to me, to be honest.

When I wrote the book, it was kind of amazing,

I could just... it took a long time for

me to figure out the shape of it, but once

I had that, it just really flowed through.

And for the last sort of two, three years, I've taken

these big breaks, but I've felt really, really

confident about the creative product we've been making.

And especially the first half of this year,

I thought the videos were amazing, and I really

wanted come back and really hit the ground running

with videos, but I'm honestly just starting

to feel like I'm a little bit running on empty.

And that, and that's been difficult for me.

But I think I've got my

plan for what I'm going to do.

I'm going to mix up videos a bit.

You might find this surprising.

I hate talking to camera, and if

you look at the older videos we used to do,

I used to do a lot of videos where I would talk

to, my mate Simran used to stand over here, and,

I found those videos way, way easier to make.

I think I might need to basically

reduce a little bit my shoot days, and

only do some to camera and do some off camera.

I think I'm going to have to do that

basically in order to slow things down.

It's disappointing for me because,

I really feel like we're sort of, we're

really getting close to building something.

But I can only carry as much as I can carry, and,

basically I need you guys to do a little bit more.

I need especially... If you are somebody

who has influence in one of those spaces,

the political left, the political right,

government, politicians, media, civil servants,

academia, I really need you guys to start

carrying it a bit more and push it a bit more.

Because I don't think I'm going to be able to keep

pushing it as much as I have been the last few years.

But I'm not going to take a break.

We're going to keep shooting at least

for another couple of months.

Look, the strategy is simple.

If we've got enough people, we don't need

individuals to throw themselves at the barricades.

We don't need individuals to burn themselves out.

Understand the message, spread it, bring people in.

But we also need to build models of

strength that aren't just about individualism,

people being the best, people being richest.

Because the problem is here is really quite simple.

If we can find enough people in this country,

in your country, who are willing to be unselfish

enough that they don't prioritise just their

interests, but they work together to build and

spread a simple message, then their financial

interests will be protected in the long run.

If we are a country that is too selfish, that it

cannot find enough people to protect their collective

interests, then most people will be bankrupted.

So it's kind of this beautiful irony in

a way, which is if people are so

blinded by their selfish material interests,

then they will be materially bankrupted.

But if enough people can stand together to work

together to protect their joint material interests,

then their material interests will be protected.

So it's a battle in a sense

for the soul of the country.

I know which side I'm going to fight on.

I hope you fight too.

You know, I've mentioned Margaret Thatcher in this

video, and she said once, "There is, no such thing

as society." I think what she meant by that was

it is the job of all of us to simply protect ourselves.

The problem is we are in a competition for

resources here, and if we deal with this

in a series of one-on-one battles,

then basically the rich will take everything.

So if we live in a society of individuals

where nobody helps each other, where nobody protects

each other, then who protects the poor from the rich?

So that's it basically.

My video on mental health.

I think it's difficult to be mentally well

when you're in society that's falling apart,

especially a society that tells us

our individual responsibilities are only to

ourselves, but makes it almost impossible

for us protect ourselves individually.

I think the way for us to stay

mentally healthy is... is to fight back,

but to fight back in a way that is balanced.

Don't burn yourself out.

Support each other.

You're going to need each other.

All right, that's it for this week.

We're going to do some more,

off-camera stuff I think.

I've got a couple of good ones coming up.

One about how to build a wealth tax in

terms of implementation, and one about

why you need to forget about money.

Yeah, we're going to try some

new sort of video styles out.

Let us know what you think when you see them.

That's it.

Thanks for your support.

Tax wealth, not work.

Thank you.