okay welcome back to Gary's Economics for this

the last video in this season of the channel

I'm gonna take a break

I'm going away for a couple of months

so I wanted to make a video

looking back over what has unambiguously been

the most mental season of Gary's Economics so far

okay

so what have we done this season on Gary's Economics

we've only been back about four months

in that time I think we have been one of the fastest

if not the fastest

growing YouTube channels in the entire country

we've successfully

pissed off a big chunk of the most annoying people

and newspapers in the entire country

we have effectively driven wealth

taxes and the idea that we need to tax wealth

not work

really aggressively into the public conversation

we started to achieve the things which

I've wanted to achieve for a long time and

that's basically thanks to you guys

last time I put the channel on pause was

last year we shot

I think at the beginning of July or the end of June

and it was just after the

general election had been called and

I was quite knackered then

probably not as knackered as I am now

but I got quite emotional in that video

I watched it back

and the reason I got emotional was because I said

in that video

it's I I worked really

hard last year

we had the channel running for most of the first

like 2/3 of the year

and then when the election got called it

the channel grew massively

but when the election got called

a little bit earlier than I was expecting

it was just really clear to me that

that we weren't gonna be able

I wasn't gonna be able to influence the election

it was really clear that Labour were gonna win

but it was really clear

we weren't gonna be able to influence their pitches

their policies

and I think I said at the time of the video

it's difficult when you've worked so hard

to look at how much work you've done

and how far you've come and

and then to look up and realise how much further

you have to go before you can have any power

before you can have any impact

and it was I was a little bit depressed to be honest

at the making that video

but now filming this 17th of April

this time we're putting the channel on pause

it looks realistically I'm not just saying this

it looks like something that eventually we

we could maybe win

the speed of the growth of this channel and this

this message

in this last season

the last four months has been just unbelievably big

it it was for periods

the fastest growing YouTube channel in the country

which it which is insane for a channel

which is essentially talking about about

redistribute politics and economics

every newspaper in the country been speaking about it

during this season we had the Spring Statement

which is kind of like a mini budget here in the UK

for those who don't know and

during the coverage of that budget

I think the single

most prominent

criticism of the government's economic policies

during that period

was why are you not taxing the rich more

you know that's not just us

and that's not just this channel that's

that's pushed that message

but I think a big part of it has been us and

I have said before on this channel and I've

I've thought for a while

I've been very confident for a long time

that the economy would get worse

because of this worsening wealth inequality

and that would move the

economic and political conversation

into a space where people demanded something

new and I was of the opinion for a long time

and I still probably am that the new

this new right this alt-right

the far right whatever you want to call them

the anti immigrant right

would eventually win power in a number of countries

really quite simply

because they were the only political

solution on the table

that felt like something new on the economy

and I believe for a long time

that if we can get this idea on

the table

that there is an alternative

which is taxing the rich more

taxing workers less taxing wealth

not work

that we could have a really good chance of winning

policy change in the long run

and for a long time it felt kind of unbelievable

kind of unachievable

because it just didn't seem like there was any demand

in the kind of

halls of power

it didn't seem like anybody was talking about it

it didn't seem like we could get it into the

overton window to use a term

I introduced a couple of videos

to get it onto the table basically and

it is just the first step and to some degree

it is only in this country

but we've got it onto the table

in the last four months

we have got that onto the table

and this is now something that politicians

have to talk about

it's something that politicians get asked all the time

it's something they have to have an idea about

we've obviously not won the Labour Party over yet

which are the party in government

we've not won the government over yet

but I never expected to win them

now I think I've said very clearly on the channel

my plan was to

make this something that we can

hopefully force Labour to do

coming to the next election

and the unbelievable growth in this channel

the unbelievable growth in this message in the last

four months makes me really for the first time in

in the history of doing this channel

makes me feel this is genuinely something

that we can achieve generally something that

that we can win and

that is something that I am very proud of

and it's something you can be very proud of

because ultimately this is a YouTube channel

it is increasingly a political movement

which bases entirely

its power on its popularity with the public

its popularity with you

its growth comes from people like you

telling your friends

telling your families telling your mum

like I always say

it's working you know

the reason that think tanks lobby

the politicians instead of speaking to the public

is because they don't think it works

they don't think you guys are powerful

they don't think you guys have power

they don't think there's any point talking to you

they don't think there's any point

basing movement on you and educating you and

and we are proving them wrong

and that's something we should all be very proud of

but basically I'm totally knackered

we used to shoot every three weeks

and we would try to shoot three or four

or maybe even five videos on a shoot day

and that was how we did it but

I've been so tired the last few weeks

that I have been unable to shoot more than one video

a shoot day

which has meant that I have to shoot every week

which means in the end

I probably am ending up doing more work

because I'm shooting every week

I think the quality of the videos

if I say so myself has been really

really good

well done also to Jack for his fantastic editing

I think the quality has been really good this season

but the flip side of that is it's just

really taken out of me and I'm quite knackered

which means we're not gonna be able to reshoot

we're shooting this on the Thursday

it's gonna go out on the Sunday

and it will be the last video of the season

and it'll be a couple of months break

but I'll be back so for now just quickly the recap

when I think back to this season

I always think the video I did with Aaron

Bastani at Novara

right at the beginning of this press campaign and

the first question he asked me was

were you surprised by how well the hardback did

so the hardback came out last year

and it was No. 1 for two weeks

and I always ask these guys not to send me the questions

before cause I like to sort of be

kind of actually answering them in the moment

rather than trying to like

remember my rehearsed answer

but I said to him

I was disappointed that the book didn't do better

because I thought

I thought the book got like

mischaracterized as a kind of a finance book

and I thought that it was actually a really good story

and I thought it had the capacity to do

to be much more than like No. 1 for two weeks

and maybe people thought that was quite arrogant

at the time but

it's been number one for 11 weeks and

I'll be honest I didn't expect it to do that much

and I think that kind of encapsulates

how I feel about this whole season

which was

the YouTube grew six times sub numbers last year

and I didn't think

we could possibly keep growing at that rate

but then we've grown

like two and a half times in the last three months

basically everything this season was way bigger than

I expected the book sold way better

the growth in the subscriber numbers and the views was

like dramatically more than I expected

the increase in like

public recognition that I get and like public sort of

critique and the increasing like

recognition on the streets has all been just like crazy

it has been absolutely crazy

for me personally

that is like amazing this was always

like the plan for the political project

but it's been quite a lot for me

personally and

it's been knackering

and I worry a little bit about how this channel

is gonna work for me

like long term from a mental health perspective

especially if it keeps growing and I think politically

you know if we wanna win

I need to to make the channel keep growing

but I need to find ways to make sure like

we find that balance where the channel is growing

but I'm not going insane basically

that brings me onto my next point

which I've got written down here

which is how can we win so obviously

I'm going away for a couple of months

and I want to talk a little bit about when I go away

I've taken breaks the last two years

this one will be a little bit shorter

there's always two reasons I go away

which is 1 to stop me from going insane and 2

because the channel has been going really quickly for

about two years now and every time the channel grows

I need to kind of take a step back

and reassess the situation politically and be like

what are we gonna need to be effective politically

in the next couple of years

the channel is much bigger now than it was even

3 or 4 months ago

so what are we gonna need now in order to win

so I think the first thing to say is

I think what

the last four months have proven is that the

the very basic strategy

has a lot of potential which is

I think there is

like a massive demand amongst the public for like

a very clear simple economic political message

which is

the reason we are getting poorer

is because of this massive growth in inequality

and we're not gonna fix that

unless we stop that inequality from growing

the inequality of wealth from growing

I think that is powerful for a number of reasons

one because it's true

I think that is the biggest thing, two

because it's simple, three

it doesn't like

muddy itself

by trying to deal with loads of issues at once

it just aggressively deals with this one issue

of worsening living standards and worsening inequality

so I think that course is running that can work

that will work and I would encourage

other people to look at that and say

you know

this is a message that that can win politically

the second thing is I think this

I think the slogan tax wealth not work

has a lot of has a lot of legs in it

you know I know

I don't really love condensing things into slogans

but the truth is you know

I think you do need to do that if you if you wanna win

so I think the first thing is like

I think this is a winning strategy

I think if enough people get behind this

if enough people support this

we can win power on this

and we can change policy on this

just a very clean

simple economic message

the reason living standards are falling

is because wealth inequality is growing

the rich are making enormously more money

the middle class

and working class are getting squeezed out

the only way to fix it is to stop growing inequality

to tax wealth not work

I honestly think that can win

I honestly think that can win

but there are some clear weaknesses that I see

I think the obvious

like the really

really obvious weakness at the moment is that

at the moment this idea and these like

slogans is just like way too tied to my personal

like brand if you wanna call it that

like my like media identity

and you can see that in the way that

like the right wing press has

especially in the last like month or so

just like

really aggressively tried to attack me as a person

like they're not really engaging with the ideas

it's just like can we somehow attack Gary Stevenson

can we take him out

and that is because they can see that at the moment

the idea the economic ideas are really solid

but they are so attached to me as a person

that if you can take me out

you can kind of like kill the movement

so I think what that shows

us is that we absolutely need in the long run

more people doing it we need more diversity of voice

I think in particular

we need what I I'm thinking of as academic cover

which is economists people at think tanks

people with this kind of academic credentials

I have got two

economics degrees from two top universities

but because I am a Youtuber now

and because I look and sound working class

it's very

very important that we have these this academic cover

so I think we really

really need more support from these think tanks

especially the left wing think tanks

like the New Economics Foundation

like IPPR like the Resolution Foundation

they really need to be coming in and doing work on this

I would love to see more economists from from academia

writing papers on this speaking publicly on this

looking into things like the squeezing out of wealth

of the middle class where's the wealth going

you know what would the dynamics of that be

how does that affect living standards

we need more academic cover

but we don't need just academics

we just need way more diversity of voice in general

so one thing that I've seen

which I've really liked

it's been very meaningful to me personally is

is when like

different kinds of communicators and artists come in

so there was a clip of me on the

on the Rizzle Kicks album

Jordan Stevens who I know a little bit

they put me on the on the album

somebody sent us a cartoon

they'd be making based on the

the educational series learning the economy

which is on this channel

that stuff is really powerful as well

I think I would love to see more communicators

I think when we get loads and loads of messages

like tons of messages of people like

we love what you're doing

how can we help you can I come and work for you

how can we help and it's impossible really

for me to even read all these messages

never even reply to these messages

so what I wanna do is tell you don't come to me

just do it

just understand the messages and just do it

just go make the thing you know

this guy is making the cartoon making the music

you know

whatever you wanna do you wanna print stickers

you wanna make merch

I'm not gonna sue anybody for making any merch

using our name

or making any art using our ideas or make any music

like taking clips just go make it do the thing

I wanna see more influencers coming through

talking about these ideas

I wanna see economists talking about these ideas

I wanna see artists making art

I wanna see musicians making music you know

stickering campaigns, I would never

ever encourage anyone to do a graffiti campaign

or a stickering campaign or a posting campaign

just do the thing

do the thing that you wanna do that do the thing

use your skill

and if that means just like

make a little community group

talking to your community

and there's the thing which I always encourage just

just go and do it share the message

but when I say that

I always wanna caveat that with the thing I always say

which is this is not a thing we win today or tomorrow

or next week or next year

I don't wanna tell you like go out

do it go out and do it

go out and do it and then have you run out

exert a ton of energy exhaust yourself and then

be knackered and depressed that we haven't won

find a way to use your skills

or your community to build this message

over the long term in a way that's sustainable for you

and your mental health but

what we really need

what I really need is for this message

these ideas to not be so associated

with just

particularly me and my name and this YouTube channel so

you know

if you're a young person thinking about what to study

and you're willing to go study economics

go study economics

f you're an economist nowadays

go and write papers on these ideas and whatever

if you can get in the civil service

if you can get into government

if you can create something

if you can make a little group that wants to meet

and talk about these things

just basically build it build it yourself

go and do it

don't try and like pile everything up on top of my head

because

there's only so much

I can balance on my head before I go totally insane

that's another thing

the other big risk I think to

to this movement is is really my mental health

to be honest

I think anyone who's read my book

you know my book

is partially about you know

me experiencing a burnout

me overworking

I think there's a kind of like irony to the book

which is like the book was supposed to be in a way

like a criticism of modern culture which

which really lionizes like hard work and ambition

there's a quote by not Shakespeare

but a contemporary of Shakespeare

which is ambition is a great man's madness

and I wanted to try and sell a story of

of a way of living which was a bit more balanced

that we didn't have to be totally obsessed about

working hard and achieving um

and I locked myself

in my room for nine months to write a book

about that that was supposed to be a best seller

and now it is 11 weeks a best seller

and now I've got this massive YouTube channel

and I'm working my absolute tits off

driving myself mad

I need to find ways

if this is gonna keep growing and growing

and growing and growing it's gonna be difficult for me

and I need to figure out like

how I can manage that personally

on that note I wanted to really thank

everyone who's subscribed to the Patreon

like last year

we were funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and

this year they they didn't renew our funding

which meant we came into this year

basically the only way that we could have funded it

was basically me paying for it

we open the Patreon and

the patron guys have you know

they basically made it that I can have a manager

none of the money ever goes to me

I didn't even see the money

there's a separate bank account

someone else managed it

and it means that I can totally focus on

all the creative work the political work

and I haven't had to focus on the financial work

so and also

it's just been really

just meaningful to me to see people like

willing to step in it and support it with

with their money

which makes it feel like it's not just me doing it um

and that means I can use

that money to think about things like

getting an assistant getting a PA

I think we are probably gonna need

somebody to do like outreach work

where they they can

I get tons of messages

so many messages from including like politicians

journalists celebrities

influencers people at these think thanks

and it's impossible for me to even keep on top of it

so we might be able to hire somebody to do that

and we're only able to do that

because of the guys who support the patreon

so I wanted to thank you specifically

everyone who's on the patreon

there are a few little loose ends

I wanna tie up before I go away

I plan to do another video before we stopped it

but like I'm just basically

I don't know if you've ever played the Sims

and I was like when you play the Sims

and you try to get your Sim to like

do some studying

and he's like so knackered that he just is like no

I refuse it

this is my own brain is doing to me at this point

like I'm I'm properly exhausted

but I wanted to do a couple of videos doing

covering just a couple of the

the common critiques that we've had in the last

like couple of months

and I'm not gonna do that video

so I'm just gonna include them very quickly

in this one

one of the big criticisms we've had is that um

raising tax on on wealth is like

is pulling up the ladder you're

you're preventing people from being able to get rich

now you are rich yourself

and this is just like totally insane

basically that

the whole thing I'm trying to do is

lower taxes on working people

and raise taxes on hoarded wealth

so that very very wealthy people have to sell assets

and those assets go back into the economy

and ordinary working people

get higher wages and pay lower taxes

and can afford to buy assets

like the whole thing I'm doing here

is trying to make it so that ordinary

working people

young working people who wanna produce good things

who wanna do good work can get rich and

and buy assets the other attack

which I get is that just like

I wanna increase taxes and

and increase the state

which is mad because I've always made it totally

totally clear that I'm not trying to increase taxes

I'm trying to change who pays taxes

I want to move the tax burden away from working people

and towards the super rich

and I think when you see how

like these attacks are constantly

attacks on things that I've never said

I think it kind of makes it clear

what is really happening here

which is you basically have a lot of rich people

who are just trying to find any way to

argue against the idea that they should pay more tax

it's a lot of rich people who control a lot of media

fund a lot of media they don't want to pay tax

the last thing was

this constant attack that I get which is well

taxing the rich is hard and

if you wanna tax the rich so much

can you please show me your like

completely designed tax plan

I think it should be clear at this point that I am

by far the the biggest and most recognized

public campaigner

for the need to stop growing inequality

and that there's quite a lot of pressure and work on

on just me to to push this campaign

I think we've had massive massive amount of success

but even just driving

the sort of public education campaign is really

really knackering for me and it's been a ton of work

it should be obvious

that I am not gonna be able to do that

and simultaneously by myself

design a complete tax plan for the country

and this is what I mean when I say we need more people

we need more people you know

I'm gonna call out like the think tanks

the left wing think tanks like where are you

we need you we need you guys to make these tax plans

I can't be the guy that wins the public

support for this

and gets attacked by the Daily Mail every day

and writes the whole plan

by myself like we need to have more people behind this

more people behind this

so if there's any economists watching this

people in government

people in civil service and people in the think tanks

help us draw up these detailed tax proposals

because I'm knackered and I can't do it by myself

we need help we need help

the last thing I've got here is

the personal attacks on me

I don't really like doing these lists

but I'm so knackered

this is kind of all I've got left really

loads and loads of personal attacks on me

which to be honest

often are the funniest part of my day

the one thing I wanna say about this is

you know I'm in a very

very fortunate situation here

I don't need to win this I'm a rich guy

if we lose I'll continue to be a rich guy

I'll get richer and richer

I don't need to win

so the Daily Mail can attack me all they want

when the Daily Mail attack me

what they're trying to do

is make sure that you pay higher taxes

and your family falls into poverty

and their billionaire owners don't have to pay tax

so really in a way

if the public can be convinced that I'm a dickhead

well I can finally go on holiday

it's your family's finances on the line

couple other things which I've got to tie up

we never answered

whether we’re gonna have Labour on the channel

thank you to everybody who

who replied about having Labour on the channel

I have decided first

I've been so knackered

I haven't really been able to seriously consider it

but I think what I'm gonna do is go back to them

and ask them if they would be willing to speak to me

not on the channel

about the economy and about their policy

because I think it has to be clear

I think our best chance in this country at least of

making change is is to influence the labour body

I think they will be

because the economy will continue to worsen

I think they will be like really phenomenally unpopular

and they will continue to become more unpopular

as we approach the next election

they'll be forced to do some change

and I want us to be able to influence that change

basically so I want

I want to be able to influence them

I don't think having them on this channel helps because

you know if I get them to send

you know Torsten Bell or someone on this channel

to defend not taxing the rich

and I have a massive argument with

you know somebody who could be the next Labour leader

for all I know I don't think that helps us get

we’d probably get views on here especially

you know we’d probably get some

some subscribers

but I don't think it helps our political power

just like having a massive public fight with the exact

people that we need to influence

I'm gonna try to see if they're interested

interested in talking to me about policy

and if they're not then I'm probably not interested

in having them on the channel

second thing

very little one is as the channel is growing a lot

there's been a massive growth in scammers

trying to convince people to join

like online

WhatsApp groups and stuff

trying to sell like like crypto and trading scams

I would never do that if anybody approaches you

it's a scam

when this first came up

we would try to get these guys taken down

but like all it means

I spent 20 minutes getting a channel taken down

and they just open 10 more channels

so there's really nothing I can do

you can complain to Instagram if you want but

just don't give any scammers your money

we don't sell any trading tips

and we never will okay

that's it basically yeah

lastly just yeah

thank you for just

the unbelievable growth it's

it's hard for me personally sometimes

as I've been

someone who has been betting on a weakening economy

for 14 years now and

and I'm very very confident that I'm right on this

I've made a lot of money on it

I think it's gonna keep happening

and the truth is in my heart of hearts

I've never really believed

that we could do anything to stop it

there is a little scene towards the end of my book

where when I used to be a trader

I'm speaking to my junior

an Australian guy in the book is called Arthur Kapowski

where I said to him like

do you think we should try and do something

about the collapsing economy

and he just didn't understand

and he just sort of laughed and he was like

you know there's nothing you can do

there's no way you can stop it and

the truth is like when I quit banking

I think in my heart of hearts

I believe that he was probably right

that it was kind of a fools errand that I was doing

walking away from a lot of money

to try to stop a bad thing from happening

which in reality

I would probably never be powerful enough to

to stop or even influence stopping

and I probably really did believe that

until up to about a year ago

but don't believe that anymore

I think we can maybe do this so

so let's keep building let's keep building

I wanted to there was another video that I wanted to do

which I've too knackered to do

which I'm gonna just tie in to the ending of this

I wanted to do a video this is so random

I wanted to do a video talking about the

the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire

and the reason I wanted to do that video is because

a lot of people don't know this

but the Aztec empire

which was in what is now Mexico

was a massive empire with

they think something like 12, 13

14 million people and the group of Spanish people

who eventually conquered the entire Aztec empire

was less than 3,000 people

and how was it that 3,000 people were able

to conquer and and destroy and

take all of the wealth and the land of an empire

which was you know more than 10 million people

what they did was they landed

they worked out the kind of political groupings

and they allied with the larger group

and they used that group to destroy the smaller group

and then

they split the larger group into smaller groups and

and they did the same thing again

they use the larger group to split into smaller groups

and through that repeated plan

3,000 people were able

to totally dominate and take all of the wealth

and all of the land of an empire of

you know 13 14

15 million people and

more than 10 million Aztecs died

at the hands of just

3,000 people. This is what can happen

if ordinary people in society

allow themselves to be driven against each other

and to hate one another

that can allow a tiny tiny

tiny group of people to to take all of your wealth

to take all of your assets

and to totally destroy your civilization

and your quality of life

and everything that you care about

this is the direction that

that we can go in

if ordinary people are unwilling or unable to

you know

look to the people that live either side of them

and stand with them to protect themselves from

from the rich and the powerful

and for a long time I thought that

in our increasingly individualistic society

because ordinary people were not sort of willing or not

not able to to look past their very narrow

selfish interests and stand next to each other

that they would lose

but the last few months

but I've seen so many people across the country

willing to take time out of their day

take effort to try and support a movement

that they don't gain anything from personally

because they know it's what the society needs

to protect each other

have made me believe that maybe

maybe we can win this

maybe we can stop wealth

flooding away from ordinary families

towards the rich

maybe we we can get that back and maybe we can win

but it's not going to be just me who wins it

and it's not going to depend really on me or what I do

it's going to depend

on you and how many of you

are willing and able

to spread that message and

I'm going away for a couple of months

I'm gonna be

yeah in Japan

Italy Portugal

Sweden and mainly promote my book

but when I come back

I wanna see more people making cool things

if they're gonna grind down

the ordinary people of this country

I want to

at least see you make some cool stuff on the way down

that's what's gonna help us win

you guys ordinary people

getting behind the simple idea that

if you don't stop growing wealth inequality

it will destroy living standards for ordinary families

for your kids and your grandkids

I've said it before I'll say it again

we're not gonna win this today

we're not gonna win this tomorrow

so um

be calm

be patient

be there for each other

God knows you're gonna need each other

but keep building, if you keep building

we can win this good luck