Okay. Welcome back to Gary's Economics.

Today we are going to talk about Elon Musk.

Okay.

So for those of you who don't know,

Elon Musk is the world's richest man.

And he is the owner of Twitter and Tesla.

And he has recently made his big entrance

to politics supporting Donald Trump aggressively.

Donald Trump, of course, won the election.

It looks like he will give Elon

Musk an official role in the US government,

and he has started intervening

quite aggressively in politics and a lot of countries,

including here in the UK, but also all across Europe,

generally supporting the anti-immigrant,

far right, right wing parties.

And we're going to talk today

about what we can learn from that, from this,

this movement of Elon Musk into politics.

So I think the first thing

which we can learn about this maneuver

from Elon Musk is,

I think it's a really good

demonstration of something

which I've been trying to educate,

trying to illustrate a lot on this channel,

which is that when the super rich

get really, really rich, that doesn't not affect you.

It has an impact on you.

On this channel, we talk a lot about the need to tax

the rich more in order to protect living standards.

And we often get the pushback,

that's the politics of envy.

You shouldn't tax the rich.

It doesn't matter if rich people get rich.

We should focus on getting rich ourselves.

The rich being rich doesn't affect us.

And this is a really good example of why

the rich being super rich does affect you.

The rich get richer and richer and richer

and ordinary people owning fewer and fewer assets.

That affects you

because the rich are competing for the same resources

that you need.

There's only a certain amount of things

in the economy,

only certain amount of housing,

only a certain amount of education, universities,

doctors, dentists, physical space in the cities.

As the rich get aggressively richer,

they start to consume more stuff.

And that means less stuff for you

and the way that you normally see that is, for example,

housing in the cities gets more expensive.

That's because the rich are consuming more.

The rich are richer,

they can pay more, they push the prices up.

But it's not just housing. right.

It's the same with, for example,

university education, access

to doctors, access to dentists,

access to space in the cities.

You know, you see here in London,

we see a lot of pubs closing down.

They're being replaced by generally housing.

Whereas if you go into the center of the city,

luxury hotels, luxury restaurants, theaters,

they're booming. They're doing better than ever.

What you're seeing here

is the rich competing with you for space,

out competing with you.

And the result is you get less space.

And the way that you see that is generally

the prices of things that you buy are going up.

And I think with this Elon Musk case,

we start to see another example of this,

which is the rich are also competing with you

for essentially the ownership of

your politics, your politicians and your media.

And this has always been the case.

It's the case also for economists.

So I studied economics

when I was a teenager

at the London School of Economics, which was...

which still is a big elite university here in London.

And I got very good grades there.

And I had a choice when I went to graduate.

Who do you want to work for?

Do I want to work for the government?

Trying to help the economy?

Trying to support the economy for ordinary people,

getting paid 40, 50, 60 grand a year?

Or do I want to work

managing the money of the rich,

getting paid 1 or 2 million pounds a year?

And it's not just bankers, right?

It's the same for dentists. It's the same for doctors.

I went to a grammar school

and a lot of my friends are dentists

and they can work in the NHS,

or they can do botox to rich people,

and they can get paid 3 or 4 times as much, right.

But it's also the same for politicians.

And I'm always reminded of David Cameron.

So I think the Prime Minister of the UK gets paid

something like £150,000 a year.

I think that's the salary.

David Cameron after he left office,

he went to work for a finance company called Greensill.

And I think within the first year

he made something like £10 million.

Now I want you to ask yourself,

why does a finance company

pay David Cameron £10 million

one year after he leaves office?

Is David Cameron an excellent trader?

Is he an excellent financial analyst?

If your politicians are getting paid

100 grand a year, 150 grand a year by the people,

and they can also get paid £10 million a year

to work for the rich.

Who do you think the politicians really work for?

I'm also reminded of Rishi Sunak Right.

Rishi Sunak is a really interesting example

because his father in law

is one of the richest people in the entire world.

He's a billionaire, so he's...

the money which Rishi Sunak gets to be prime

minister is absolutely, totally irrelevant to him.

But the money that

his family will get from his father in law,

that is

clearly enormously his major financial interest. Right.

So

you’ve got to ask yourself then, when somebody like

Rishi Sunak is deciding things like,

how should we set tax policy?

How should we tax rich people?

Do you think he speaks to his father in law?

When David Cameron knows that

when he leaves office, he's going to work for Greensill

and get paid £10 million in one year,

when he's making these decisions,

do you think he speaks to the guys at Greensill

who are going to pay him £10 million?

So in the case of doctors, dentists, universities,

but also economists, also politicians,

you are in a competition.

The politicians can make a certain amount of money

working for you,

and they can make a certain amount of money

working for the rich.

And when the rich are super, super, super, super rich

and your average taxpayer is increasingly poor,

it gets harder and harder and harder

for you to compete with them.

And I think this is the reason why we saw

for long, long periods of time,

really high amounts of corruption in poor countries

because the local people of those countries

can't afford to pay their politicians very much,

whereas extremely wealthy people in other countries

can pay these politicians enormous amounts

to basically give the resources of those countries

to these wealthy people.

And I think this thing which has been happening

in poor countries for a long time, you know,

if you speak to people from

sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America,

a lot of places in Asia, that they've been seeing

this kind of corruption for a long time, in the West

we've been relatively protected

by that for a reasonable amount of time,

because we've had a wealthy taxpayer,

and we haven't had these super wealthy

foreign billionaires who can influence our politics.

As inequality has increased,

the taxpayer, ordinary families have become poorer,

the superrich have become richer,

and you have basically found yourself

in the same situation

that Latin Americans

and Africans have been in for a long period of time.

You cannot compete anymore

for ownership of your politicians

with the super rich,

and I think this is a classic example

of why inequality matters for you.

Because if you allow the super rich to get even richer

and you allow the middle class

to lose their assets,

they will increasingly outcompete

you for the things that you need.

And that includes your politicians

and includes your media as well,

it includes your media as well.

Now, if we consider the media,

if you work as a journalist,

you need to be paid.

Most people need to be paid.

They've got to pay the rent.

They've got to pay their bills.

There's two ways

you can be paid as a journalist, right?

You can sell journalism, sell news to the people,

or you can sell your services to the rich and say,

if you pay me, I will sell stories that promote

the ideas that you want to promote.

You know, if you are an American watching this channel,

you'll be very aware of where that ends up.

You end up with extremely biased media.

Their job is not to tell you the truth,

their job is to sell a certain story for you

because they get paid

by very rich people

who want you to believe certain things.

So this is the effect of inequality.

This is the effect of inequality. This is...

this Musk thing makes it really, really clear

how inequality affects you.

If you allow the rich

to get really, really rich

to get really, really powerful,

they outbid you for control of your politicians.

They outbid you for control of your media,

and they outbid you for access to your resources.

And then what you get is politicians

who don't care about you,

media who lies to you,

and the inability to access resources,

which includes things like food and housing.

And where does that lead us?

As soon as Donald Trump won the election,

Tesla stock price doubled.

Tesla's stock price doubled.

Why did Tesla's stock price double

when Donald Trump won the election?

Because traders think

that Donald Trump is going to use taxpayer money.

Your money if you're an American

to give to Tesla and to give to Elon Musk.

That is what inequality does.

Inequality

gives the rich

the power to directly access your tax dollars.

That is the end result.

That is why you need to care about inequality.

That is why you need to care

about the distribution of wealth.

That is why you need to care

about the distribution of power.

Okay, so that's my first point done.

Elon Musk makes it really clear

that inequality affects you in a material way.

The second point,

I wanted to talk a little bit about Elon Musk's

support of far right parties across the world.

When I say far right, what

I mean is anti-immigration parties.

I know some people don't like the term far right.

Why is Elon Musk supporting

anti-immigration parties all around the world?

And to me, this is...

it's really, really obvious

why he comes in and supports that.

And I want to talk a little bit about it,

because I never hear this

discussed really in the media.

So on this channel

I talk a lot about, and I have been talking a lot

about for a long time,

the fact that the economy

is going to keep getting worse,

living standards will keep falling.

It'll be difficult for you to get financial security,

to get good quality housing, to get good quality jobs.

And because inequality will keep rising,

that will keep getting worse.

And I think

when I first started saying that, you know,

and I first like betting on this back in 2011,

that was a really

not popular opinion.

There was a general sort of consideration

that the economy was getting better

and it would recover. It would get better.

Now, as I say this, at the beginning of....

at the beginning of 2025,

I think it's becoming increasingly obvious

to people who are watching that,

that is what is happening.

The economy is on a structural downtrend.

Things are going to get worse and worse.

And as that happens,

it creates an obvious tension in politics,

which is that

people do not want to accept the situation

where their family gets poorer every generation.

People don't want their kids

to be poorer than they are.

People don't want their grandkids to live in poverty

and people demand change in politics.

And I think whilst

a lot of these kind of old school politicians

cling on to this hope that we can keep going

the way we're going,

it's becoming increasingly obvious to anybody,

kind of half smart,

that people are going to increasingly

demand some kind of change.

What that means is

we're kind of already in a situation

now in our society where there has to be a discussion

and there is already discussion about

where do we go, how do we change things.

And I think in the next

ten years, probably, maybe sooner,

you will see a significant change

in the way our politics is run,

what politicians offer and what people demand.

And that is because

the status quo is increasingly

obviously not working for most people.

So if you're somebody like Elon Musk

and you are the richest person in the entire world,

you're going to look at a changing world

and you're going to look at people

that are demanding different things.

You're going to look at people who,

people like me

who are demanding

less inequality, higher taxation of the rich, lower

taxation of ordinary workers. And

there's an obvious

reflex reaction for somebody like Elon

Musk where he says, well,

I don't want to pay higher taxes.

So I want to avoid this

outcome of higher taxes on the rich.

So you need to sell a different story.

And I think it's... it's

already really clear what the

big alternative stories are.

Our story, which is getting bigger,

the reason you're getting poorer

is because of the super rich,

need to tax the super rich more.

But there's one story which is much bigger than that,

which is the reason you’re poor

is because of immigrants.

The reason you’re poor is because of foreigners.

And if you are Elon Musk,

you're looking out there in the world of,

you know, new alternative economic ideas.

Which one of those ideas do you want to win?

Now, I would like to make it clear,

I think a sensible billionaire

would probably realise it's economically

destabilising to keep inequality growing more and more.

But most billionaires don't think like that.

They just don't want to pay higher taxes.

They want to keep getting richer.

They're kind of obsessed with it.

That's why they get rich.

So what are you going to do?

You are going to financially support

the idea that immigrants are the problem.

And I'm not...

I think sometimes people think that I'm

some sort of super pro-immigration guy.

I'm not a super pro-immigration guy.

I recognise that it is massively

in the interests of the rich to tell you

that the problem is immigrants,

because if you don't think the problem is immigrants,

you might work out

that the reason you're getting poor

is because of the super rich,

and they don't want you to know that. So

this is the situation Elon Musk is in.

He's going to support that.

And it's the truth is,

and something increasingly worries me,

it's not just Elon Musk is going to support that.

You know, other super

rich people are going to support this idea

because they realise

that hatred of foreigners and hatred of immigrants

is the main thing

standing between them

and high levels of taxation,

and they don't want to pay more tax.

So they're going to fund it,

they're going to fund these ideas.

And more and more money is going to flood into that.

If inequality keeps increasing

and keeps increasing and keeps increasing,

living standards will get worse

and worse and worse and worse.

It will be extremely destabilising,

and it will destabilise an economy

which already provides

unbelievable levels of luxury

to the rich and the super rich.

I don't think this is the right

thing for billionaires to do.

You know, there's this story,

I don't know how true it is, that the reason that

the French

cut off the heads of the rich and the English didn't

is because the English accepted...

the English super rich accepted...

they need to give a bit back,

and they gave a little bit back to ordinary people.

They increased living standards of ordinary people.

And apparently that's why we still have a royal family.

And the French royal familiar are all dead.

I think a sensible billionaire would accept

that if they stop inequality from increasing,

we can stabilise this fall in living standards.

And they can protect their own situation.

But the fact is, most super rich don't think like that.

They very simplistically want to keep their taxes down.

I wanted to talk a little bit about where that puts

these guys, people like Musk, who are funding

and increasingly funding

anti-immigrant political parties,

anti-immigrant ideas because

what is interesting is

it is in their interests for people to hate foreigners

and for people to hate migrants,

and for people to think that migration is

the key problem.

But it is, interestingly, also in their interests

to keep migration high because

what these guys primarily need

is for you to hate migrants

and for you to think migration is the problem.

And the best way for them to achieve

that is to have loads of stuff

in the media saying migrants are the problem

and also to have really high levels of immigration,

because if immigration is really low,

first of all, it will rapidly become clear

that that didn't stop the economy from getting worse.

But secondly, it's a lot

easier to get people to hate migrants

when there's loads of migrants coming all the time.

And that is why you see

Trump in this really interesting situation

where he's simultaneously

funding anti-migrant parties

and arguing

that we need to have high levels of immigration

in the US.

And it really, really reminds me

of what the Conservatives did when they were in power.

So the Conservatives,

and I think this is the smartest thing they did,

and I'm surprised

in a way that they've got people

smart enough to do this.

The Conservatives really,

really fought hard to have a specific

kind of migrant kicked out of the country,

which was illegal migrants coming over in small boats.

At the same time, the Conservatives did Brexit.

Before Brexit, the UK has to accept EU migrants.

There's a degree to which the UK doesn't control

the level of immigration, of legal immigration.

After Brexit, the UK can choose

how much legal immigration it has.

So the Conservative Party basically had complete power

over the vast majority of migration,

illegal migration is only,

I think, 2 or 3% of overall immigration,

97%, 98% is legal migration,

which they could have reduced. But they didn't.

They did this

really interesting thing of

really aggressively trying to stop this really small

kind of immigration that they couldn't actually stop,

and massively increasing the number of visas,

which they gave legally to non EU immigrants.

It was like super, super smart.

They managed to simultaneously portray themselves

as the party of low migration

whilst massively increasing

non-EU migration to the country.

And I think this kind of

shows you in a way, what

the correct tactical play is from the billionaires.

Tell you to hate migrants,

and make sure there's tons of immigration,

because that makes you hate people,

that makes you hate immigrants.

And

I think the final thing that we learn from

Elon Musk is basically how important it is

for billionaires, that you guys hate each other.

So what I try to do on this channel

is to make it clear to you

that

the reason you're getting poorer

is because inequality is rapidly increasing.

If you don't stop inequality rapidly increasing,

you will keep getting poorer.

The only way you can really protect yourselves

is by working together

as a mass of not super rich people.

And using that political power,

that only works if you guys don't hate each other.

And every week I put these videos out

and I get people in the comments saying

that's never going to work.

People are never going to work together.

Tell me how I can protect myself.

Tell me what I can do.

Give me trading tips. Told me how I can protect myself.

Rising inequality, rising top 1% inequality,

means more and more and more of you lose every year.

There's no way to change that

other than stopping inequality from rising.

I think what people like Elon Musk want

is for you guys all to be living in this Squid Game

where you all think, I don't care

if only one of us will win and 99% of us will lose.

I want to fight the people around me to be in that 1%.

You need to change the game.

You need to change the game.

You cannot

play a game where every single year,

95% of you lose,

96% of you

lose, 97% of you lose,

and you keep hoping to be in that 1%.

You need to change the rules of the game,

and that means working together.

So to conclude,

Elon Musk is a great example of

why inequality is a danger for you and your family.

These guys are going to take the things that you need.

They're going to take your politicians,

your economists, your media,

and ultimately your housing and your food.

That is what it means.

You need to fight inequality.

The only way to do that is to work together.

That's why these billionaires want you

to hate each other.

If you hate each other, they’ll win.

If you work together, you can win.

Support

the channel,

tax the rich, cut tax on ordinary working people.

Send this to your friends, send this to your mum.

Thanks for your help. Good luck.