If you don't fix wealth inequality then we have to have high taxes on the middle class and

bad education, bad healthcare, bad welfare state you know you get the worst of all possible worlds

The reason i think that wealth inequality is the most important thing in the economy is um

basically because all the other problems housing, lack of good jobs, lack of good wages

government debts, government deficits, not enough money for good quality education, health care

these are basically all being caused by problems with wealth equality and i didn't

i didn't really go into work in the city with the idea that i was gonna, as an inequality campaigner

basically i wasn't a campaigner i just wanted to i wanted to be able to forecast well & to make money

and um it needs to be understood that markets and economists are continually forecasting incorrectly

um so they're missing something that's very important there's something very important

that they don't understand and uh things continually fail to improve because they're missing something

and having studied economics at university and then gone on to work in the city

i can see that these guys don't understand the significance of inequality

and because of that they've been constantly struggling to understand why there's not

enough spending and demand in the economy and um once you understand that the problem is spending

and you also understand that most ordinary people are basically most ordinary people

they spend everything they make in their lives right the vast the vast majority of people die

with nothing left they spend everything and yet we've got a problem of not enough spending um

so for years i sort of struggled to understand how can we get this spending and um it basically if

if governments are governments are already overextending they're borrowing to spend

ordinary people are borrowing to spend, the only people who can inject that demand into the economy

is the rich basically

but i think all of the other political demands that people want - more affordable housing

better jobs, a stronger economy in a variety of ways they simply are not affordable unless you

fix inequality specifically wealth inequality um but if you do fix wealth inequality basically

anything becomes affordable so it drives me mad that economists don't talk about inequality more

but i guess i should be grateful that they don't because that's why i've been able to

make so much money because their predictions are always wrong and mine are always right but

we simply cannot build a better society without the wealth of the super rich

and if we don't do anything then not only will we not access their wealth but they will continue to

progressively take more and more of our wealth so really i'm not saying it's the only thing

that matters in the world of course it's not but in terms of the economy basically nothing else is

possible unless we fix wealth inequality so it's the it's the cornerstone it's the foundation stone

we need to fix wealth inequality and then all the other questions we can ask and we can answer

do you want a big welfare state? okay well you can have one if you fix wealth inequality if

you don't then you can't have one, okay well do you want low taxes? well you can have them if you fix

wealth inequality, well if you don't then you can't have them, if you don't fix wealth inequality then

we have to have high taxes on the middle class & bad education, bad healthcare, bad welfare state

you know you get the worst of all possible worlds whereas if you fix wealth inequality then you know

like we could build, we could have that 15 hour week if we wanted to or we could have

100 hour week and we could be phenomenally rich you know what i mean but if you don't fix wealth

inequality then the direction of travel is downwards basically and that doesn't that doesn't end

there's nothing within the system that automatically fixes that so you know i believe that capitalism

can be a great system and it can provide great human outcomes but if you don't fix

wealth inequality we will get bad outcomes for the vast majority of people, so it's not a question of

do i think it's the most important thing i think nothing else is possible if you don't fix it

so um yeah we need to get people people behind it and um it's important to understand

that the economists don't realize that most economists don't realize that

but it's also important to understand that most economists come from wealthy families and

they own property so they're not being hurt by it and they're well paid so unfortunately

it falls upon ordinary people who are the people getting hurt to come out and fight for it

um and people need to come out and fight for it people need to come out and say we're not gonna

we need to start demanding explicitly from governments - measure wealth inequality and

make sure it's decreasing - because it's increasing and as much as that happens then less and less will be

politically and economically possible in terms of getting society more...

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