We have to do it about energy prices Sim 

it has to be about energy prices

We were gonna do a video about something else today but we have to do it on energy prices  

because massive things are happening that  are going to affect you and your family  

and you need to understand what's going on

in the last couple of months you'll probably be  aware there have been significant increases in  

energy and food prices in the last couple of weeks  with the escalating crisis in Ukraine there's been  

significant further increases in those prices  i woke up this morning and i saw the oil price  

had hit $140 a barrel for the first time in more  than 10 years the wheat price has increased 45%  

just this week and 65% this month you are not  seeing these prices in your bills or the shops  

yet but you are going to, what that means is on  top of the already significant increases in the  

cost of basic living - bills & food prices  are going to increase significantly more  

this is going to cost an ordinary family  like yours thousands of pounds a year  

in many cases this will be thousands of  pounds a year that that family doesn't have  

that means a large number of families in this  country will not be able to heat their homes to  

feed their kids to pay their mortgages to pay  their rent people are going to become homeless  

millions of people are going to be  in these kinds of situations here

we have to do something about it, the media  and economists are presenting this like  

it's an unavoidable consequence of what's  happening in Ukraine like nothing can be done  

here are some facts you need to know the average billionaire in this country increased 

their wealth by £630million during Covid  the first year of Covid saw the biggest ever  

increase in billionaire and millionaire wealth  ever in the history of this country 

billionaire & millionaire wealth increased by 22%  in just 1 year, ok, this is not a situation where  

everybody's suffering this is a situation where  you and your family are suffering but billionaires  

and millionaires have never ever made more money  in the history of this country okay so when people  

tell you there's nothing that can be done to  help your family pay the bills and heat your home  

i want you to realize make sure you're  aware and the people you know are aware  

there has never been more money in the bank  accounts of the rich and the super rich  

this is not a force of nature  this is a political choice  

okay now for the economics bit, who uses the  most energy? rich people have got bigger houses  

bigger cars and take more flights, in the extreme  cases, they've got luxury yachts and private jets  

they use the most energy, so when energy prices  go up, it should hurt them the most right? wrong!  

rich people might use 10 times as much energy as  you but they'll have 100 times as much income and  

500 times as much wealth so as a fraction of their  income and their wealth the amount they spend on  

energy and food is basically nothing if we look  at disposable income the situation is even more  

extreme right disposable income is your income  after you take away rent, food, mortgage, bills  

a lot of ordinary families have nothing left  that means they have nothing with which to pay  

this extra two-three thousand pounds a year listen  the rich are generally sitting on half a million pound  

a million pound disposable income if their  bills go up ten thousand pound it's not going to  

hurt them at all whereas for ordinary families  they're going to be left with nothing to eat  

when you hear energy prices going up i want you to  understand this is a tax on the poorest in society

poor and ordinary families are going to pay where as rich families are not even going to notice

this way of dealing with the crisis hurts ordinary families the worst

so how should we deal with this?

so how should wedeal with this? we need to use less energy most  families are using just about as much energy as  

they need to heat their homes and get themselves  to work and back whereas the super rich are often  

using way more energy than they need the sensible way to deal with this crisis would be  

to ask the rich and the super rich to reduce their  energy consumption but when prices go up that

doesn't affect the rich's behaviour at all they can  easily afford that it will be ordinary families  

forced to reduce their energy consumption by not heating their home

now economists have been saying for a long time that the best way to reduce energy consumption

is to put a tax on energy use, the problem with this is, as we're seeing in this crisis poor and ordinary

people spend a much higher % of their income &  disposable income on energy than richer people  

so if you tax energy use it pushes the price  of energy up like we're seeing now and that  

massively hurts poor and ordinary families  and does nothing for the rich and super rich  

so is there a better solution how about instead  of taxing people for using energy such that poorer  

people lose a big chunk of their disposable income  we start rewarding people who use less than the  

average amount of energy that would mean that the  majority of families who use less than the average  

would start receiving money every year for the  energy that they save this way the rich who use  

the most energy would be paying money to poor  and ordinary people instead of punishing poor  

and ordinary people for something they did nothing  to cause we can actually reward poor and ordinary  

people for using less energy, look this  isn't just an idea that I made up, this is an  

idea called the carbon dividend and it's been  around for a long time it's a very simple way  

of reducing energy consumption in such a way that  instead of punishing the poor you transfer wealth  

from the rich and the super rich who can afford  to pay it towards the poor and ordinary people  

who are often struggling just to survive it's  very simple you can reduce energy consumption  

on the back of the rich but we're choosing to do  it on the back of the poor why are we doing that?

you know i'm not sure to be honest i'm not  sure why we're not doing that and maybe  

Rishi Sunak who is worth an estimated 200  million pounds and whose father-in-law is  

a billionaire or one of his people can get in  touch with me and explain why we're choosing  

to load this crisis on the back of ordinary people  instead of taxing millionaires and billionaires  

but in the meantime i'm going to have to assume  that Rishi Sunak and the current government  

do not have your best interests at heart  so what is the government actually doing?  

they're gonna have to do something and they're  gonna throw a few schemes together to give a few  

families a couple of hundred pounds, bear in mind  you are losing thousands of pounds during this  

crisis and the super rich are making millions, are  they raising taxes on the super rich? well actually  

they're raising national insurance which  is a tax which specifically hits your wages  

and specifically excludes the incomes  of millionaires and billionaires  

listen what's happening here is serious it's  not funny it's going to hurt millions of poor  

and ordinary families yeah ordinary people  like you are going to suffer in this crisis  

while the rich and the super rich are  making millions even billions of pounds  

it doesn't have to be that way the money  is there we can support ordinary people  

but only if we choose to tax the rich and the  super rich but they're not going to give it to  

us easy we're only going to get that if we come together and push back

keep watching

housing could be so much more affordable wages  could be so much higher and we could have so  

many more options in how we live our lives, some  of them put a lot of money into paying economists  

and think tanks to tell you that inequality  is important for the economy - that is not true!