My name's Gary Stevenson.

I'm the author of The Trading Game.

And we are going to talk a little bit about inflation.

The first thing I want to say is I was going crazy

about inflation from the very beginning of the COVID epidemic.

I wrote articles In March 2020, I put out my first video

on my YouTube in June 2020, saying we were going to have an inflation crisis

after the end of lockdown

because in my opinion, it was really obvious

right from the beginning of COVID and I’ll explain why.

We could see very clearly, very early on that

there was going to have to be a long lockdown

and that would be very expensive for the US government, for the UK government.

We knew truly enormous amounts of money were going to be given out.

Now my background,

which obviously if you read the book, is as a trader who looks a lot at inequality.

So when I see that

enormous amounts of money are going to be given out by the government,

the US government, UK government,

the first question I'm asking is who's going to end up with that money?

The total amount of money given out by the US government

since the beginning of COVID, $10 trillion,

which is just under $80,000 for every US taxpayer.

What that means is if you are a US taxpayer and you do not have $80,000

cash more now than you did four years ago, someone has your $80,000.

It's very important that you know who because if you're going to give out

that much money,

you are going to dramatically transform your wealth distribution in your country.

I was sort of obsessed

at the beginning of COVID in understanding who has the money,

because it's quite hard to understand where it's gone.

The reason that money was given out because a lot of people lost their jobs

during COVID, couldn’t work.

So you might think that it's people who couldn't

work are suddenly richer in COVID, but they're not because they lost their jobs.

So if you follow the money one step further, you can look at the corporations.

Well, they're not paying wages anymore.

Maybe they're richer, but they're not because they're closed down.

Well, who normally pays corporations?

Well, that's customers.

And this is the correct answer.

The people who accumulated money during COVID were customers,

but not all customers, right?

Because if you're an ordinary family from a poor background,

you're still paying your rent, still paying your mortgage,

still paying your bills, your expenditure didn't go down.

What expenditure collapsed during COVID?

Luxury expenditure.

Who has the highest luxury expenditure?

Rich people.

So what happened during COVID was rich people

stop spending because it was illegal and the government

effectively printed money to pay your salary instead,

which you use to pay your rent or mortgage.

That went to rich people and rich people kept it.

Imagine if we brought in a tax

that took $80,000 from every US taxpayer and gave it to the rich.

What would you expect to happen?

Explosion in Inequality.

Living Standards for the rich

getting much better and ordinary people getting much poorer.

We literally caused inequality to increase at the fastest rate in the history

of the country during a time when the economy was literally closed.

And we were surprised when living standards collapsed on the reopen.

The most frustrating thing about this is it's fixable

because we can reverse those inequality increases by taxing the rich.

One thing that I want to make clear is when I say tax rich people, I'm

not talking about lawyers and doctors and, heaven forbid, maybe even bankers.

I was a very successful banker and I earned a lot of money

and I paid a lot of tax.

I was paying over 60% at the peak of my career.

And at the same time as I did that, the Duke of Westminster, who is a member

of the British aristocracy, inherited £10 billion and paid nothing.

Now, what we have in my country and in your country

are increasingly class based tax systems where hard working people

from poor and ordinary backgrounds work hard and pay a huge amount of tax.

And very, very wealthy people from very, very wealthy backgrounds

don't work, make enormous amounts of money and pay nothing.

We need to shift the tax system away from taxing working people and towards

taxing these small amounts of individuals who increasingly own

everything in our countries and are driving our families

and our governments into debt.

It's about shifting tax, in my mind away from work and towards wealth.

It's the only way to prevent inequality

getting higher and higher and living standards from falling.

And I'm not just saying that.

I'm betting on it.

I've got a long track record of being right,

and I don't wanna be right on this one anymore.

Good luck.