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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
EMERGENCY DEBATE: They Lied About The Economy Recovering! Is A Financial Apocalypse Coming?
02:25:57
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- [00:00]
Gary Stevenson
I'm sick of multi millionaires telling kids who can't afford to turn the heating on. You just need to be more entrepreneurial. It's sick, Dan. It's sick.
- [00:08]
Daniel Priestley
Well, your video where you talk about if you don't have a rich dad, you're screwed. Well, to me, if I had have come across your content at 19, 20 years old, I would have been screwed.
- [00:16]
Gary Stevenson
My friends can't feed their kids. Okay, if it was that easy, why is everybody not telling me?
- [00:20]
Daniel Priestley
I'll tell you why people aren't doing it.
- [00:22]
Gary Stevenson
It's because you're not going to say one thing back on that.
- [00:27]
Stephen Bartlett
Today's debate is fiery to say the least, but important nonetheless, as I sat down with two leading experts in wealth and entrepreneurship and the economy to discuss the state of the U.S. the state of the UK and the Western world.
- [00:39]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think the reason the average British American are getting poorer is because they don't know how to create wealth?
- [00:45]
Daniel Priestley
No. The reason people are getting poorer is because of big governments, record levels of taxes, an outdated schooling system, technology and remote working.
- [00:52]
Gary Stevenson
You sure about that?
- [00:53]
Stephen Bartlett
How do you disagree with those opinions?
- [00:55]
Gary Stevenson
Living standards are falling because of growing wealth inequality. If you allow the rich to get richer, they squeeze the middle class and the poor class out of things like housing. Let's cut tax on people who are working hard and let's raise tax on the richest and most powerful people in the world.
- [01:07]
Daniel Priestley
That's an overly simplified view of things. We now have a thousand millionaires a month leaving, which means every ordinary person who pays ten grand a year in tax will now have to pay 20 grand a year in tax. You end up cutting off your nose to spite your face.
- [01:19]
Gary Stevenson
If we are a country that don't try and do things which are necessary because they are hard, then our kids will live in poverty.
- [01:25]
Daniel Priestley
What do you want people to do?
- [01:26]
Gary Stevenson
There's a lot of different ways.
- [01:28]
Stephen Bartlett
Buckle up. I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button. Wherever you're listening to this, I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps. When you hit that subscribe button, the show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time, Gary. Daniel. Daniel, you've been on the show a few times before, so I want to start with Gary and understand a little bit about your backstory and who you are. And having been through the trading game and read and watched many, many of your videos over time, I have a, a sort of deep understanding of that. But for anyone that doesn't know you, can you give me a picture of the context that has brought you to where you are today? Writing about the things you're writing about today and running the YouTube channel and speaking to the subject matter that you're speaking about today. Take me right back and give me as much as you possibly can.
- [02:41]
Gary Stevenson
Okay? So my name's Gary Stevenson. I was born in a place called Ilford, which is in outer East London. Quite a poor family, little terrace house by the railway, you know, playing football in the streets kind of stuff. Always very good at maths since I was a kid. Very talented math student. Eventually able to get into the London School of Economics, which is an extremely elite university. Economics university in the centre of London, which is basically a kind of investment banking boot camp. Got a job as a trader, started working full time as a short term interest rates trader at Citibank in London in June 2008. When I was 21, obviously. Exactly. That's just before the big credit crash, the big Lehman crisis. And I watched the Lehman crisis happen in front of my eyes. I was short term interest rate trading is basically like short term loans. And during the credit crisis, what a credit crisis is, is nobody can borrow any money. So like short term loans become really, really important. My desk, which was like historically an unfashionable area of trading, became like the center of the crisis. Well, one of the centers of the crisis became people started making tons of money. I was working with all these crazy people and you can imagine me like I turn up 21 years old and then like within three months, like everyone around me is making a ton of money during the credit crisis. But what really interested me was what happened after the crisis itself, which was. So we're betting on interest rates. Long story short, interest rates come down when the economy is weak and they go up when the economy is strong, when the economy is overheating. From an inflation perspective, in 2008, all the interest rates go to zero. So suddenly, our job is basically predicting and betting on when will those interest rates go back up, which is when will the economy recover? And this is Super Interesting in 2008, because all the interest rates went to zero so quickly. Before 2008, it's important to remember, rates would move from like five and a half to five and a quarter. And then here in 2008, everywhere in the world, slashing to zero.
- [04:43]
Daniel Priestley
Boom. Half a percent.
- [04:44]
Gary Stevenson
Exactly. And everybody, all the economists were like, well, this is going to cause a massive recovery, because they thought that interest rates were powerful. And everybody predicted that rates would come back up in 2009, which of course, we now know they didn't. Then everybody predicted that rates would go up in 2010, which we now know they didn't. And then at the beginning of 2011, everybody was predicting rates would definitely go up this year. And this, to me, was so interesting, so interesting because, you know, I studied maths and economics at one of the best economic universities in the world, and now I'm working with these traders who are getting paid millions of pounds a year, million pounds a year, to predict the economy, to predict the interest rates. And everybody is wrong year after year after year. And this was. I was so amazing to me, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's like, wow, like, this is a big thing that we as a society should understand, and, like, we're getting it wrong. But secondly, if all of the best guys in the world are getting this wrong, then if I can figure this out, I can make a ton of money here.
- [05:48]
Stephen Bartlett
Gary, how much money did you make for Citibank at the age of 24 years old?
- [05:53]
Gary Stevenson
That year. So that year, 2011, I put this big bet on that it would get worse forever. And I was Citibank's most profitable trader in the world that year, and I made them just over $35 million.
- [06:05]
Stephen Bartlett
You made them $35 million. You eventually decide to leave Citibank? Yeah. Why?
- [06:10]
Gary Stevenson
I mean, I think that's an interesting question, right? You know, in the sense that I've just explained to you what happened, which is I made a ton of money by betting on the collapse of Western society. I did it in 2011. I did it again in 2012. Um, I would prefer for it not to collapse, Stephen, and I'm trying to stop it from collapsing.
- [06:38]
Stephen Bartlett
When you say it collapsing, what exactly are you referring to that you don't want to collapse.
- [06:44]
Gary Stevenson
So you born in Botswana, right?
- [06:46]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [06:46]
Gary Stevenson
You still have family there?
- [06:48]
Stephen Bartlett
I'VE got family in Nigeria, which is where my family are from. I was born in Botswana because we were visiting there, but got family in Africa.
- [06:54]
Gary Stevenson
Do you go to Nigeria much?
- [06:55]
Stephen Bartlett
No, I've got a home in Cape Town in South Africa. So I see that it's a great place if you want to see inequality.
- [07:01]
Gary Stevenson
I think there is a naivety in this country, in places like the US that the kind of inequality, the kind of broad poverty that you see in places like South Africa, in places like Nigeria, in places like India can't happen here. It will happen here. That is the future of this country, that is the future of the us And I'm not just saying that. I'm betting on it. And I've been betting on it for 15 years. And I've been right for 15 years. That is what I'm trying to avoid.
- [07:30]
Stephen Bartlett
Daniel, where do you come from?
- [07:34]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, so I grew up in Australia. I was born to low income family. I grew up in a place that had 24% unemployment. Pretty much the only jobs or opportunities around me were things like the trades, building, construction, pest control, hospitality and tourism. So at 14 I got a job at McDonald's and then I got a job in a bar and Pizza Hut Deliver driving. And I discover entrepreneurship. So I discover books about entrepreneurship and I discover that some people make millions similar to yourself. You saw Canary Wharf? I read a book about business ownership.
- [08:10]
Stephen Bartlett
As we sit here today. Can you give me the overview of your business success since then?
- [08:15]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah. So I now have a group of companies that I've either started or bought. I've just sold a company, so there's seven companies in the group. I've started a couple of software companies. One of our companies is now the fastest growing, one of the fastest growing companies in the uk. We, you know, we're a software business. I've got a couple of agencies, I've got an education and training business.
- [08:36]
Stephen Bartlett
And where, when you think about the UK and broadly the Western world today, what is your assessment of where we're at as a country and what's concerning you? Because Gary expressed quite articulately that his big concern is that because of what wealth inequality, we're going to end up in a similar position to the likes of India. What are you concerned about?
- [08:53]
Daniel Priestley
I agree that it wasn't that long ago that we had real serious wealth inequality in this country. There are amazing photos from like 100 years ago of kids working in mines and kids doing oyster shucking and all this horrible work. And you know, there's a book, Charles Dickens wrote called the Tale of Two Cities. And the opening line of the book is, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And I think we've actually gotten to that point here where some people in the uk, it's the best of times, if you like. In your situation, you're booming, you're a globally successful business. I've got a globally successful business. And then there are a lot of people who completely cannot relate to this. Energy prices are now the most expensive in the Western world. House prices are completely unaffordable. It used to take three years to save for a deposit. It's now 20 years if you, you know, theoretically 20 years if you can save for a deposit. Food prices are through the roof. So we're in a really difficult, like, for anyone who is not tapped into digital economy, fast growth and all of that sort of stuff, life is getting harder and worse and things are collapsing. If you, if you would go with that, the. There is a predictable path countries go on. And there's this thing called the Economic Freedom Index. And the Economic Freedom Index basically says, how economically free are you? How. How much access do you have to free markets? Can you start a business? Can you scale a business? Does anything inhibit your ability to run your own life? Countries that have high degrees of economic freedom have very low poverty, they have widespread affluence, and countries that have low economic freedoms have high poverty. And it can be the difference between less than 10% right up to 70% poverty rates. And when countries go on a path towards economic freedom, poverty just drops. So India, for example, has been on that path, and they announced today that they've almost eradicated abject poverty or extreme poverty. The UK went on that path of low economic freedom to high economic freedom, and we saw poverty rates come right down. But in 2008, when the global financial crisis happened, one of the things that happened is the government said, we need to step in and we need to take charge. And everyone said, please do. So they came in and they said, all right, we're going to ramp up debt, ramp up taxes to pay for the debt, and we're also going to put all regulations in. And unfortunately, that starts to reduce economic freedom. Then the pandemic happens and they say, oh, we're going to spend more money again through debt. We're going to have more taxes, more regulations, less economic freedom. So the UK, we went from an 82. When I arrived in 2006, we went from 82 out of 100 down to 68 out of 100. So we're less economically free. And predictably, what we will always see happen if you lower people's economic freedom, more poverty, less affluence, the millionaires and the wealth creators leave. The people who are stuck in dead end, jobs or no jobs, get incredibly frustrated. Everyone starts looking for someone to blame. People are angry and they're like, who do we blame and who do they blame? It's very different because in the US we blame us blame someone different to the uk. So we have a historical cultural memory. In the UK we have a cultural memory that the people to blame are the rich. So we have landlords and aristocracy and the landed gentry, those guys are to blame. Right? So blame the rich is what we say. In the uk. In the US they have a very different view. Their cultural memory is that they're anti government. They want limited government. In 2023 there was this song that came out called Rich Men north of Richmond and it was the number one song in America. And the lyrics of the song basically says, people in Washington do not care about working people. They are taxing everything we touch. You can't earn money. They depreciate the dollar. They tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. And they want to control our lives. Those are the lyrics of the songs controlling our lives and taxing us. So the American reaction to this is who's to blame? Government. So we want smaller government, we want a department of government efficiency to come in. We want someone as a wrecking ball who will come in and smash government. The British instinct is hate the rich. It must be the rich's fault. So when we look for like all of the western countries that implemented lower economic freedoms, created more poverty, less affluence and more disruption to their economies. So both US and UK for example, in Australia as well, but both sides of the pond want someone to blame. It's just that the Americans blame government and we blame the rich.
- [13:32]
Stephen Bartlett
Gary, I'm sure you have a lot to say there. I know you both use the word collapsing so you agree that there's a problem here. But I think you, from studying both of your sort of perspectives, you think that the solution and the cause of the problem is different.
- [13:47]
Gary Stevenson
I mean, I put bets on, I put bets on, I put bet. That's what I do, I put bets on. At the beginning of COVID we knew the government's going to give enormous amount of money out. Total amount of money. Now UK government deficit since the beginning of COVID is £1 trillion. US number is $14 trillion. That's you know, £20,000 per UK adult. My background is, I understand that when the distribution gets worse, when inequality gets worse, living standards fall. So when, when the UK government was going to give a trillion pounds out, all I wanted to know was who's going to end up with that money? That's all I wanted to know. And I mean, the US number 13 trillion, 14 trillion is just outlandish. But I think the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my whole life was that at the beginning of COVID the very beginning of COVID we knew governments across the world were going to be giving out tens of trillions of pounds, dollars, euros. Nobody even thought to ask who's going to get tens of trillions richer. Nobody in the Conservatives, nobody in labor, nobody in the Republicans, nobody in Democrats, nobody in the media, nobody in academia, nobody at the central banks, nobody asked this. It's almost beautiful. It's, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So I, I sat down and I did, I did the analysis at the beginning. Because lockdown is essentially banning the spending of the rich and replacing that spending of the rich with printed money from government. What happens is the government gives workers money. They use that money to pay their bills, to pay their rent, pay their mortgage. It goes to the rich. The rich can't spend it because they're locked indoors. And what you get is essentially an enormous amount of money from the government to the poor to the rich. And this massive, massive transfer of wealth that was obviously going to, that was so obviously going to happen at the beginning of COVID Nobody discussed it, which I think is itself amazing. Let me ask you a question, right? If we would now to pause the economy for two years and during that pause, massively increase wealth inequality, what do you think would happen to broad living conditions when we unpaused?
- [15:53]
Daniel Priestley
See, one of the things that I think happened during the pandemic is everything went digital and entrepreneurs and investors did actually think about what would happen. The investors immediately boomed stocks like Zoom and Microsoft, and we ended up with the magnificent seven. I don't know if you, you know, there's seven big tech companies in the USA market and those big seven companies have gone from 5 trillion valuation to 17 trillion valuation in the time of the pandemic. And if you think about what did the pandemic do, everyone had to work from home, so we all had to have Microsoft subscriptions. Everyone went onto websites, so we all went to aws, Amazon, we all started buying and learning how to buy from Amazon rather than buying from our local high Streets. Every business in the world figured out how to run their business remotely. We had this massive transformation. It was. It was like. It's actually a wholesale transformation of society that we all learn how to live and work differently. I saw a boom in entrepreneurship. So what I saw as an entrepreneur accelerator, someone who runs an entrepreneur accelerator is just there was this sudden boom in people launching businesses, setting up Shopify accounts, setting up YouTube businesses. So the money really has moved from the traditional economy, the 2019 high street economy, over to the digital economy. And what we see is that the investors know what's going on and they just invest in this magnificent seven company. I think 50% of the gains of the S&P 500 is tech companies. So all the money just goes flooding into the technology companies. My belief is that technology is really dividing people. That essentially, if you take anyone from any background, if they work in technology, if they're in media, tech, finance, any of that stuff that operates online, they tend to actually do pretty well after the pandemic.
- [17:45]
Gary Stevenson
Can I ask you a question?
- [17:46]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, go for it.
- [17:46]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think the average Brit, American, Australian, wherever the person out there is watching, if they quit their job and go work in tech, do you think they'll be able to get financial security relatively easily?
- [17:59]
Daniel Priestley
Depends when you define financial security. The issue with house prices, the ability.
- [18:04]
Gary Stevenson
To raise a family, have a home.
- [18:06]
Daniel Priestley
So having a home is a big issue, right? So here's, here's what I. Here's what I see with houses, because houses annoy me as well. My dad bought a house for $18,000, which is about £10,000 or less than £10,000, and it's probably worth over a million dollars today. So something went on. And this, by the way, is not UK specific. The socialist countries had house prices go through the roof. If you go to Norway or Sweden, their house prices grew by 600% in the.
- [18:34]
Gary Stevenson
It's happening everywhere.
- [18:34]
Daniel Priestley
It's everywhere. Everywhere.
- [18:35]
Gary Stevenson
It's not specific to anywhere it's happening. But.
- [18:37]
Daniel Priestley
But what happened. What, what has definitely happen, UK is we actually have a housing traffic jam. So in this country, in the UK, we have 9.5 million homes that have two or more spare bedrooms. Big family homes have two or more spare bedrooms. And when you look into who owns those houses, 78% of housing wealth is baby boomers. Now, anecdotally, I take my kids trick or treating at Halloween and we go down a street that is big family homes and you go knock on the doors and it's all people over 65, right? And they're living in a big family home with empty spare bedrooms.
- [19:12]
Gary Stevenson
You think the average American over 65 is living luxuriously?
- [19:16]
Daniel Priestley
The average American over 65. So more than half of the US economy is in the hands of baby boomers. Right. So they own all the houses. The houses got bought up cheap. Baby boomers still own those houses to this day. The big family homes with multiple spare bedrooms are empty. And now that creates this traffic jam.
- [19:35]
Gary Stevenson
People my age, my grandparents, yeah, they all own property. Yeah, all four of them died with nothing. Because that wealth which they had in property was, was used in equity release schemes, it was used in paying through their retirement, it was used in end of life care. Do you think when those old people die, young people today will be rich?
- [20:03]
Daniel Priestley
There is half the economy held by baby boomers. It's either going to be passed down or passed into the aged care industry. Or passed into. But the issue of why we can't get homes. Two things. Government massively inflated the value of homes through debt. So they just injected like low interest rates that you're involved in.
- [20:22]
Gary Stevenson
Who is the debt to?
- [20:24]
Daniel Priestley
Well, the debt is to anyone who can take out a loan. Because if 0% interest rates or 2% interest rates.
- [20:28]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think it's the debt? It's the ordinary families. Do you think ordinary families are the creditors?
- [20:31]
Daniel Priestley
When you say ordinary families, you mean bottom third.
- [20:34]
Gary Stevenson
So if your average British or American family now has half a million pounds.
- [20:38]
Daniel Priestley
Of debt, it's anyone who has the credit, it's anyone who could get there at that particular time, Anyone who could get their hands on a loan to buy a house.
- [20:45]
Gary Stevenson
But who has the housing, who is on the other side of the debt? So if the average British family.
- [20:49]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, the banking pound in debt. Well, the banking license.
- [20:51]
Gary Stevenson
Does the average British family have half a million pound of credit?
- [20:53]
Daniel Priestley
Well, a lot of people have got a lot of equity in their home.
- [20:55]
Gary Stevenson
Now you think the average British family is sitting on half a million pound cash?
- [20:58]
Daniel Priestley
I'd love to look at what the actual number is, but it's a couple of hundred thousand worth of equity. 78.
- [21:03]
Gary Stevenson
But what about the credit on the loan? Credit on the loan. Bear in mind, bear in mind, it's.
- [21:07]
Daniel Priestley
Disproportionately older people, so 78%.
- [21:09]
Gary Stevenson
So you think the average British old person is sitting on millions of pounds of cash?
- [21:13]
Daniel Priestley
Not millions of cash, no equity.
- [21:14]
Gary Stevenson
Well, someone is on the other side of the mortgage.
- [21:16]
Daniel Priestley
Just want to say the difference is if you inflate the value of a house, you don't have cash, you Have a house that's worth a lot of money. So 78% of home ownership wealth is in the hands of people over 65 now. It's baby boomer generation. And they got a great gift from the government, which is the government said, we're going to just give free loans away. If someone previously could have only afforded to take out a 200 grand loan with low interest rates, they can afford a 300 grand loan.
- [21:41]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think it's okay that the average British or American young person will never own any wealth?
- [21:46]
Daniel Priestley
The issue is not whether it's okay or not. The issue is what do you do about it?
- [21:50]
Gary Stevenson
Do you own wealth?
- [21:51]
Daniel Priestley
I've got wealth, yeah.
- [21:52]
Gary Stevenson
Do you own wealth?
- [21:52]
Daniel Priestley
But it depends what you call wealth.
- [21:54]
Gary Stevenson
I do. So do we three multimillionaires? Do we think it's okay that the average Brit or American young person will never own any wealth?
- [22:01]
Daniel Priestley
To me, that's not.
- [22:02]
Gary Stevenson
Because I don't think that's okay.
- [22:03]
Daniel Priestley
To me, that's not the debate.
- [22:04]
Gary Stevenson
But is it okay?
- [22:05]
Daniel Priestley
It's not. Well, it's not okay. No. We want widespread affluence.
- [22:09]
Gary Stevenson
Would you rather the people who currently are multimillionaires, would you rather that all of the world was owned by their kids?
- [22:15]
Daniel Priestley
I think that the way you see the world as a trader is that the world is a zero sum game and that there's basically the pie is a fixed pie and it gets sliced up.
- [22:26]
Gary Stevenson
How fast is the pie growing?
- [22:27]
Daniel Priestley
Now there's something like this.
- [22:28]
Gary Stevenson
What's the UK GDP growth at the moment?
- [22:30]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, it's not. It's not high. Right?
- [22:31]
Gary Stevenson
1%. How much did your wealth grow in the last year?
- [22:34]
Daniel Priestley
Exponentially.
- [22:35]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, so if our worlds. My wealth probably grew about 20% in the last year, maybe 30. Okay, if our worlds are growing 30% and the economy is growing at 1%, where is it coming from if it's not coming from our viewers?
- [22:46]
Daniel Priestley
So I'll tell you where my wealth comes from. My wealth comes from building technology companies. And the way it works is pretty weird, which is that I invent something out of my head and I go to investors and I say to the investors, here's what we're going to create. And I give them a spreadsheet and then they say, we'll give you a couple of hundred grand to get started, which is called seed capital. But that on paper makes me worth a couple of million.
- [23:11]
Gary Stevenson
Nice.
- [23:12]
Daniel Priestley
But there's nothing has been taken from anyone at this point. The investors have said, okay, we'll invest some money then. As the business succeeds, some more investors come along and they say, we'll give you a little bit more money to keep growing it. And I'm innovating something new. And let's say investors come in and give me a million pounds for 10% of the company and the rest of the company's worth £9 million. Well, $9 million, right. So I'm not stealing something from the existing economy. I'm bringing something from outside of the economy into the economy. And my quote unquote net worth is growing exponentially because investors say, we'll give you a little bit of money that values the rest of the pie at a lot of money. But everyone's getting richer in the wealth create. There's where there's wealth extraction, which is what traders do. They extract from the existing economy and they bet on the economy. And then there's wealth creation, which what entrepreneurs do. They come up with new ideas, better ways of doing things, and they build wealth.
- [24:11]
Gary Stevenson
So do you think the reason our viewers, the average British American are getting poorer is because they don't know how to create wealth?
- [24:19]
Daniel Priestley
No, the reason people are getting poorer is because economic freedoms are being eroded when we have high economic freedom.
- [24:24]
Gary Stevenson
And you associate that with taxes?
- [24:26]
Daniel Priestley
Well, anything that it could be anything that impacts economic freedom. So taxes and regulations are big.
- [24:32]
Gary Stevenson
Was economic freedom higher in the 50s?
- [24:35]
Daniel Priestley
50S was okay, so 50s was a interesting time. We were in food rations in this country till 1956. So we had 10 years of food rations. After the war we had a labor shortage because only really men worked. Women hadn't entered the workforce in mass. There had been three or four hundred thousand men killed in war. So we actually had this big labor shortage. The whole country needed to rebuild because of the blitz had bombed it. So we had this huge need for economic activity and not enough people to do it. We only had 2% unemployment. People who had had their legs blown off were put to work at that particular time. So we had this boom, this post war boom. And we also had the post war baby boom which drove consumption. And then when we got to the 60s, we had the roaring 60s or the, the swinging 60s, right. Pretty amazing time in Britain. And along comes high taxes. And they put up the taxes massively at the end of the 60s and it pretty much crashed the economy. One of the things that happened.
- [25:34]
Gary Stevenson
So what were the tax rates in the 50s?
- [25:36]
Daniel Priestley
Well, they went up as high as 80 to 90% for the top, for the top earning. I think it was in the 60s.
- [25:41]
Gary Stevenson
You sure about that?
- [25:42]
Daniel Priestley
I think the 50s are unique.
- [25:44]
Stephen Bartlett
What is the answer, Gary? I feel like, you know, they went.
- [25:46]
Gary Stevenson
Up off the wall.
- [25:46]
Stephen Bartlett
They went up after the war.
- [25:47]
Gary Stevenson
Well, in the us, actually, tax rates started to go before the war, but.
- [25:51]
Daniel Priestley
Also the size of government as a percentage of gdp was like 30%. It was a tiny. Like we are now 45% of the UK economy is government spending. We have got a massive.
- [26:01]
Gary Stevenson
Who funds that spending debt?
- [26:04]
Daniel Priestley
The bank of England allows them to print endless amounts of debt which just.
- [26:08]
Gary Stevenson
Debt deflates taxes.
- [26:09]
Stephen Bartlett
Gary, I want to get your opinion here because you're asking a lot of questions, but I actually don't know your opinion.
- [26:13]
Gary Stevenson
I just want to know what Daniel thinks and I want our viewers to be able to research Daniel's opinions.
- [26:18]
Stephen Bartlett
But how do you disagree with those opinions?
- [26:20]
Gary Stevenson
Listen, Daniel's a businessman. He's obviously a very successful businessman. You know, I've not been anywhere. I'm not a businessman. I'm not going to pretend to be a businessman. I'm an economist. I make money by being right in the economy. Daniel's a good businessman and I'm right on the economy. You know, it's as simple as that. Basically, you know, I'm not a good businessman, but I've got 15 years of being right on this, on the economy. And look, I know you're probably a wealthy man, you probably don't want to pay high taxes, you probably don't want your kids to pay high taxes. But we exist in an economy where wealth is being extracted out of the middle class, out of the working class, very, very rapidly. It's benefiting people like the three of us at this table. It will benefit our kids. You know, our kids will be rich, their kids will be poor. And I just think we should be honest with them. Capitalism's finished. We won. Well done, Stephen. Well done, Daniel. Well done, Gary. It's over now. Our kids will be rich, their kids will be poor, they'll pay the taxes. We won't pay the taxes, we'll avoid it. I'll make money betting on it year after year. Why are we lying to them? Why are we lying to them?
- [27:17]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, I think that's an overly simplified view of things. I don't think it's an overly simplified.
- [27:21]
Gary Stevenson
View of things that has made me a multimillionaire.
- [27:22]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, well, look, entrepreneurs take bets on the economy as well. We take bets differently when we start a company. We're betting on how the economy would.
- [27:30]
Gary Stevenson
Be British and American, worker at the 50th percentile. Do you think their kids will be Richer than they are.
- [27:36]
Daniel Priestley
It depends if we have economic freedom or not. Right. We're going to have a split test of this. I think we will. We're going to have a split test. We're going to have. The UK seems like we're going to have more taxes, more regulations, and it seems like the US is going to have less taxes and less regulations. Here's what I've noticed. I've noticed that places like Singapore that have small governments have got widespread affluence. There's not a lot of poverty in Singapore.
- [27:59]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah. Except for the cleaners living in the closets.
- [28:01]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah. You know, look, but we don't count.
- [28:04]
Gary Stevenson
Them in the statistics, just like we don't count our viewers.
- [28:07]
Daniel Priestley
That's not widespread in Singapore.
- [28:09]
Gary Stevenson
Well, there's a lot of people. Whoa. I've seen them in the closets. I've seen them in the closet.
- [28:13]
Daniel Priestley
There are. There are some, but they're not Singaporeans.
- [28:16]
Gary Stevenson
Well, also, they only count the rich ones.
- [28:19]
Daniel Priestley
Look. Also, the issue is that they've come from even worse conditions. In many cases, people move to Singapore for an increase in lifestyle. Right. You could take Ireland or Switzerland. Right. Economically free places. Ireland was economically in a disaster.
- [28:36]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think the average Irish person lives well?
- [28:39]
Daniel Priestley
Well, their economy. Their economy almost collapsed in 2011 and they went down the road of lower taxes, lower regulations, and they attracted all sorts of businesses into the economy.
- [28:52]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think that works well for the average Irishman who doesn't own a home in Dublin?
- [28:56]
Daniel Priestley
If you measure everything by home ownership.
- [28:58]
Gary Stevenson
I'm measuring people by the average. I want to know what the average man or woman in Dublin today lives.
- [29:03]
Daniel Priestley
Like, by the way, I, I'm also furious about the home ownership thing. Everyone is. I think it's utterly ridiculous the way home. Like the idea that homes are now worth 10 times the average wage, all of that. Difference is I blame government for that. I blame high taxes where they've. Because of high taxes, they can take out more debt, they can then inflate the economy.
- [29:24]
Gary Stevenson
So do you think if we shrink the government, if we start to slash government spending, do you think that would improve living conditions?
- [29:30]
Daniel Priestley
Well, the UK government is 45% of the economy. Like, that's a huge government.
- [29:34]
Gary Stevenson
It's biggest living conditions will increase in the next few years because we have a US government now that's planning to slash the US government.
- [29:42]
Daniel Priestley
Well, that's what the US voters have asked for.
- [29:43]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think it would improve living conditions?
- [29:46]
Daniel Priestley
Do I think it'll improve for the average American if they're Smaller government. Yeah. I trust markets.
- [29:51]
Gary Stevenson
So you think the average US American will be rich in three years? And the.
- [29:54]
Daniel Priestley
Here's what I trust. I trust economic freedom. If people have freedom, they create better decisions for their own life. There's two ways to make decisions.
- [30:01]
Gary Stevenson
Do you have freedom?
- [30:01]
Daniel Priestley
Right, you have freedom. I've got less freedom than I did when I arrived.
- [30:05]
Gary Stevenson
Just because my sister can't pay the rent, is that freedom?
- [30:07]
Daniel Priestley
The if you're living in a country.
- [30:09]
Gary Stevenson
She can't afford to live in the city that she was born in.
- [30:13]
Daniel Priestley
I agree. You and I agree on the problem. You keep bringing back to the problem.
- [30:16]
Gary Stevenson
I keep bringing it back to people because the people who watch we're millionaires, okay? The people who watch us are mostly not millionaires. Is life going to get better for them?
- [30:24]
Daniel Priestley
Life will get better if you are connected to the most productive parts of the economy. If you pretend that it's 1955 and you recreate the post war era conditions, if you try to go back to 1955, I don't think that's going to work.
- [30:39]
Stephen Bartlett
So let me ask on that then the point about if you're connected to the most productive parts of the economy. I was quite surprised when I was doing some research on this to find that there's quite big differences between the UK and the US in terms of GDP growth. In Q4, 2024, the US economy grew by 0.6% while the UK growth was 0.1%. So they're doing significantly better in that regard. US GDP per head stands at $82,000 per head, whereas the UK stands at $49,000 per head. And stock market performance, which is an indication of, I guess, whatever, rose by 300% in the US, whereas the FTSE 100 declined by 20%, which is the UK stock market. Productivity growth since 2018, productivity increased by 30% in the United States, which has outpaced the UK. And lastly income growth since 2007, American income per head has increased by 70 while it has decreased by 2% in the UK in dollar terms. So they seem to be doing better if you just look at the economy. Why is that? Is that because they lean more into technology and to innovation and entrepreneurship? And is it because of the things you were saying earlier about their attitude towards the government, like reduced government spending versus tax the rich? Why? I'm keen to hear Gary's view on this because I understand yours, because you've just said it.
- [31:56]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, I think these are great statistics. And of course the US has a strong reputation for Being very free markets and being very small states. In the last five years, 10 years, 15 years, we've had a UK government that has been aggressively slashing the state. And the U.S. the state's bigger than ever.
- [32:14]
Daniel Priestley
It's 45% of the economy.
- [32:16]
Gary Stevenson
And the U.S. we had a government in the last four years which has been running a massive, massive deficit. So in that period of time, it appears the government which has been aggressively increasing its deficit has massively overperformed the government which has been aggressively slashing the state. That's what it looks to be from the last, I mean, by Joe Biden enormously increased the deficit enormously. And the Conservatives were austerity government for 14 years. Which one seems to have given the better numbers?
- [32:46]
Daniel Priestley
Well, I mean they were austerity in name only. They went from 30% to the state was 30% of GDP to 45% of GDP.
- [32:53]
Gary Stevenson
Government services are better funded.
- [32:55]
Daniel Priestley
Now the government is terrible at doing most things. That's the problem. You don't want, you don't think that.
- [33:01]
Gary Stevenson
Spending on government services has been slashed.
- [33:05]
Daniel Priestley
Let me zoom out a little bit.
- [33:06]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think the police spending has been slashed?
- [33:07]
Daniel Priestley
Oh, police spending is definitely.
- [33:08]
Gary Stevenson
Education spending has been slashed.
- [33:09]
Daniel Priestley
Do you know where it ends up? It ends up with like big corporates, big consulting, who get paid $50 million to produce a report to tell government some thing. All of these big, I won't name names, but all the big consulting firms, they're all blood suckers to government. They, they know that the money's in the government and they set up business models to extract that money from government. And it also is in the financial trading side of things. One of the issues that we've got right, and this is a big, big issue as well, because you care about wealth inequality. One of the biggest issues I see is that during the pandemic we all learned to work remotely and remote work became the norm. And what I see at the moment is huge amounts of what would have been normal British jobs are going to the Philippines, going to India, going to Vietnam, people who work remotely. Now. We now have a thousand millionaires a month leaving to go to Dubai. We have 120,000 British people living in Dubai. In that economy, the world's become incredibly mobile. And one of the things that's happening is that what would have previously been good British jobs are getting moved overseas to lower cost countries. And that's technology that drives that wedge. The US is very smart in that they've built a technology powerhouse and the UK has completely lost our Technology industry, our tech industry is in decline. Same across Europe, China and the US know that the game is tech and they're basically pulling all the tech company into the, into their borders. And what's happening a lot is the erosion of good jobs and the erosion of just normal, well paying jobs because they're going. And it's a bit of a self fulfilling loop that the more we lose millionaires, the tax burden falls on everyone else. So they put the taxes up and then the millionaires say, oh, the taxes are too high, so they leave. I've watched some of the most incredible entrepreneurs that you would want here that would employ your sister at a high rate and they've picked up and left because the taxes are too high.
- [35:09]
Gary Stevenson
So are you saying we should tax working people less?
- [35:12]
Daniel Priestley
Well, the overall government has to be smaller. You can't. Whoever.
- [35:18]
Gary Stevenson
What do you want to cut in the government?
- [35:19]
Daniel Priestley
If you. Yeah, well, I mean you'd have to. Child services, we'd have to get. No police, education, nhs. All I know is this, pensions, you go to Switzerland, they spend 20, 25% disabled benefits.
- [35:32]
Gary Stevenson
What do you want to cut?
- [35:33]
Daniel Priestley
Hold up. All I know is in Switzerland, I'll.
- [35:35]
Gary Stevenson
Tell you what I want. The government is 25% taxes on those entrepreneurs and raise the taxes on the billionaires because I worked my tits off.
- [35:43]
Daniel Priestley
How many billionaires are in the UK?
- [35:45]
Gary Stevenson
There's a lot of billionaires in the UK.
- [35:46]
Daniel Priestley
150.
- [35:47]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah. So tax them all. What do they pay? Listen, I work my tits off and I paid. It was 50% top rated tax. 50% top rated tax plus national insurance, 60% to bring my family out of poverty. At the same time, the Duke of Westminster inherited £10 billion and paid nothing. Do you think that's fair?
- [36:03]
Daniel Priestley
That's not true.
- [36:04]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, why is it not true?
- [36:06]
Daniel Priestley
Because the Duke of Westminster is one of the highest taxpayers in the country.
- [36:09]
Gary Stevenson
What does he pay?
- [36:10]
Daniel Priestley
Well, on the trust, the Grosvenor Estate, they don't pay inheritance tax because trusts can't die. They pay something called periodic taxes, which.
- [36:18]
Gary Stevenson
How much?
- [36:19]
Daniel Priestley
6% every 10 years.
- [36:20]
Gary Stevenson
6%. So they pay 0.6%.
- [36:21]
Daniel Priestley
6%.
- [36:22]
Gary Stevenson
So I paid 6% and this guy pays 0.6%.
- [36:25]
Daniel Priestley
Apples with apples. Inheritance tax is 40% across the course of your life. If a trust is. If a person lives who owns a trust for 70 years, then 6% times 7 would be 42. So they actually pay more.
- [36:39]
Gary Stevenson
So he pays 0.6% a year.
- [36:43]
Daniel Priestley
But that would be the same as.
- [36:44]
Gary Stevenson
What percent did I pay per year?
- [36:45]
Daniel Priestley
No, no, no, but that's 60%. Hold up.
- [36:47]
Gary Stevenson
So you're saying I pay what, 60 over 0.6? 100 times the tax rate.
- [36:52]
Daniel Priestley
You're not comparing apples with apples.
- [36:53]
Gary Stevenson
Why is it not apples with apples? This guy pays 0.6% a year. I paid 60% a year.
- [36:57]
Daniel Priestley
That's inheritance tax.
- [36:59]
Gary Stevenson
I paid that 60% every year. D. Every year I pay.
- [37:02]
Daniel Priestley
You're paying income tax, so why have.
- [37:04]
Gary Stevenson
I, the Duke of Westminster pay more than him?
- [37:06]
Daniel Priestley
The Duke of Westminster pays income tax? He probably. He probably makes your bill blush.
- [37:10]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, he pays income tax.
- [37:12]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah. Well, if he's going to live, he has to withdraw money to have his income. He also. Let me give you a list of all the taxes he would pay. He'd pay income tax, corporate tax. He'd pay stamp duty when he buys a building. He pays any of the other taxes, vat, when he spends money. All the same taxes apply to a duke as they apply to anybody else.
- [37:30]
Gary Stevenson
So you think he pays income tax on the income on that?
- [37:33]
Daniel Priestley
Any income he draws.
- [37:34]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, well, I'll be honest. The viewers can research whether he pays income tax on his income. Of course he does.
- [37:37]
Daniel Priestley
I mean, how could he not?
- [37:39]
Gary Stevenson
He's in a trust.
- [37:40]
Daniel Priestley
But the only difference with a trust versus income is that the trust pays periodic tax versus inheritance tax.
- [37:47]
Gary Stevenson
0.6%.
- [37:48]
Daniel Priestley
But we're only talking inheritance. That's just one type of tax.
- [37:52]
Gary Stevenson
So you think he's paying 60% on his income?
- [37:54]
Daniel Priestley
He's one of the highest taxpayers in the uk. I'm not like his big fan club, but the truth is he's one of the highest taxpayers in the uk. He's one of the biggest employers in the uk. He's one of the, like, one of.
- [38:03]
Gary Stevenson
The biggest landowners in the uk.
- [38:04]
Daniel Priestley
Landowners in the uk, Right. So the issue is, is, does he pay tax? All the same taxes that apply to you apply to him. And if you want to set up a trust, you can also pay periodic taxes as well, which would be on top of all the other taxes.
- [38:18]
Gary Stevenson
So what would you say?
- [38:20]
Daniel Priestley
But it's just not true that he doesn't pay tax.
- [38:22]
Gary Stevenson
No. What would you say? This guy, he's inherited £10 billion. So he's worth £10 billion. What would you say will be the total amount of tax he will pay in his lifetime?
- [38:30]
Daniel Priestley
Well, I know that. Just the smallest.
- [38:32]
Gary Stevenson
If I make £10 million, I'm paying 60%.
- [38:34]
Daniel Priestley
Just one sec. You're talking about income versus the transfer of an estate.
- [38:40]
Gary Stevenson
So why, why is it that the Duke of Westminster can be worth £10 billion.
- [38:43]
Daniel Priestley
Just. You're comparing your income.
- [38:45]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [38:46]
Daniel Priestley
Versus the amount he inherited, which is not a fair thing. That's not.
- [38:49]
Gary Stevenson
Because that's his income.
- [38:50]
Daniel Priestley
Inheritance is not income.
- [38:52]
Gary Stevenson
So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So if I get given £10 billion, I don't pay any tax, but if I work for £10 billion, I pay 60.
- [38:59]
Daniel Priestley
Well, if you inherit, this is the.
- [39:01]
Gary Stevenson
Tax system that you want, you will end up in a system, I'm just saying, where the kids of the rich will own everything.
- [39:05]
Daniel Priestley
Just saying.
- [39:06]
Gary Stevenson
That's what I'm saying. You know what I'm saying? And that's fine because that's our kids.
- [39:09]
Daniel Priestley
You're not telling the truth about his.
- [39:10]
Gary Stevenson
Let's support it. Let's have a taxes system where your kids and my kids and Steven's kids are multi millionaires and these guys out there can't afford to feed their kids and put the heat in.
- [39:19]
Daniel Priestley
That's not what I'm saying.
- [39:19]
Gary Stevenson
But that's what you will get.
- [39:20]
Daniel Priestley
That's not what I'm saying.
- [39:21]
Gary Stevenson
That's what you will get. That's. Listen, that's what I'm betting on. That's fine because I'll make money in the markets. It's fine. And you'll make money. And you'll make money. It's our viewers who will be poor. And that's fine. That's fine. That's fine for us.
- [39:31]
Daniel Priestley
Let's explore the other alternative. Right, so let's say tax the rich. Right? So let's play the game of tax the rich.
- [39:35]
Gary Stevenson
Tax the owners, not the workers. Yeah, the owners, the owners.
- [39:38]
Daniel Priestley
So the issue that we have with the rich is that the number one most valuable assets in the economy now are intangible assets. So there's this chart called the s and P500 of the 500 richest countries in the country. In the world. In the U.S. sorry. In 1970s, 75% of the value of the S&P 500 was physical assets like property. And today it's less than 10%, it's closer to five.
- [40:05]
Gary Stevenson
So you think that housing is not particularly important.
- [40:08]
Daniel Priestley
Just, just let's stick with what I'm saying, okay? The, the, the powerhouse, the engine room of the economy is digital assets. And that's reflected in the S&P 500, for example, which is 95% intangible assets. One of the issues that we have is that the richest people are completely mobile now, so they can be absolutely anywhere in the world. So if you come up with this idea of let's tax richest people, 1%. If a tiny proportion of them leave, we're all in trouble.
- [40:36]
Gary Stevenson
So these really rich guys, what do they own?
- [40:41]
Daniel Priestley
Companies.
- [40:42]
Gary Stevenson
And why are those companies worth money?
- [40:45]
Daniel Priestley
Because investors say they are.
- [40:46]
Gary Stevenson
And where do the revenues come from?
- [40:48]
Daniel Priestley
Globally. The issue is, is that these companies operate globally now.
- [40:51]
Gary Stevenson
So it's like a billionaire.
- [40:53]
Daniel Priestley
Take my company, for example.
- [40:53]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [40:54]
Daniel Priestley
My company has 8,000 customers in 150 countries.
- [40:57]
Gary Stevenson
Okay.
- [40:58]
Daniel Priestley
We could be anywhere.
- [40:59]
Gary Stevenson
If you push a country, is your biggest single revenue Source probably the U.S. now, let's say you move to Cayman Islands and the US Says we're going to tax your revenue at point of sale. What can you do?
- [41:14]
Daniel Priestley
Well, that's different, right? Because that's not taxing billionaires, that's taxing companies. See, when you say tax the rich on their wealth.
- [41:21]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [41:22]
Daniel Priestley
That's different to saying tax companies are consumption tax.
- [41:25]
Gary Stevenson
Oh, but you just said the rich own companies. You said that's what they are.
- [41:27]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, but you're saying how do you tax them? Right. So do you tax their wealth, which is what they own, or do you tax the companies where they trade? Typically, consumption taxes get passed on to consumers.
- [41:39]
Gary Stevenson
It's not consumption taxes. It's the tax on the ownership.
- [41:41]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, but if you simply say when you're doing revenues, then that's a consumption.
- [41:47]
Gary Stevenson
If we start to tax profits.
- [41:49]
Daniel Priestley
By the way, I'm not exactly against you on companies. I think it's disgusting that a British company can take out a Facebook ad to sell to a British consumer a British product, and Facebook pretends to be in Ireland on that transaction. And Amazon, you can buy something on Amazon in Britain from a British supplier, from a British warehouse. And Amazon pretends to be in Luxembourg in that situation. And that sucks. Right? Like, that does not seem fair. And it strikes me as very strange that the government is okay with that. Right now the government is chasing down mums and dads who sell a few things on ebay and chasing them for taxes, but they don't talk to ebay. They're paranoid about someone doing a little bit of a side hustle on Facebook. But Facebook's fine to pretend to be an island. So I don't agree with all of that. Right. Like, I think we're missing some serious tricks here. But the idea with taxing billionaires at wealth, billionaires will just leave. They just get up and leave. And not just billionaires, but what do billionaires own?
- [42:49]
Gary Stevenson
What do billionaires own?
- [42:50]
Daniel Priestley
Companies.
- [42:51]
Gary Stevenson
And where do companies get their money from?
- [42:52]
Daniel Priestley
Revenues.
- [42:53]
Gary Stevenson
And where do the revenues come from?
- [42:55]
Daniel Priestley
Purchasing. People purchasing. Where do those people live all over the world?
- [43:00]
Gary Stevenson
We can tax them at that point.
- [43:01]
Daniel Priestley
Well, that's consumption.
- [43:02]
Gary Stevenson
This is the thing.
- [43:03]
Daniel Priestley
That's a consumption tax.
- [43:04]
Gary Stevenson
No, it's not.
- [43:05]
Daniel Priestley
It's a consumption tax. VAT is a tax on revenue.
- [43:07]
Gary Stevenson
Tax these guys on profits based on where the revenues come from.
- [43:09]
Daniel Priestley
So it's very easy to move profits internationally. See, Stephen had a Starbucks cup when he buys that Starbucks.
- [43:16]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [43:16]
Daniel Priestley
It's bought from a British company who licenses the Starbucks logo. Yeah, from Luxembourg or somewhere like that. So 15. So here we are saying, oh, we're going to tax their profits. They say, ah, I wish we were profitable. Sorry. Unfortunately, we had to do that licensing deal with that international company.
- [43:33]
Gary Stevenson
I know how profit shifting works, okay? So I don't think. Are you telling me a company selling to the uk, the us, enormous amount of profit in the US and they turn around and say, actually, our profit's not in the us. You think the US is incapable of going and looking at that, seeing where the profit is?
- [43:51]
Daniel Priestley
I'm not saying that you can't do this. I'm saying that the benefits of doing it. It's so hard to tax wealth, for example, or it's so hard to tax millionaires and billionaires that you end up cutting off your nose to spite your face for every. Like, if we create Britain, for example, and we build a brand, which is that we're anti wealth. We don't want you to ever have more than 10 million. If you've got more than 10 million, we punish you. Every young entrepreneur who comes to me and says, dan, do you think I should start a company here in this country? I'm going to say, well, if you do, they'll take it as soon as you start to make it. They'll take it as soon as. If you're successful, if you get investment, they're going to tax you your wealth. If you sell the company, they're going to take it off you. I'm going to basically say to that young entrepreneur, don't build your business in Britain. Go start it somewhere that they're more proactive and positive towards entrepreneurs.
- [44:42]
Stephen Bartlett
Are we seeing that now with this? They call it the millionaire exodus, which is for people that don't know the UK is set to lose the greatest proportion of millionaires in the world. This parliament. I'll put a graph on the screen, which is this one here, this one here, and that little red line here is us losing all of our millionaires at the moment. And in 2024, it's an estimated that 10,800 high net worth individuals left the UK, which is a 157% increase from the previous year, which means that one millionaire is departing every 45 minutes. The UK millionaire exodus is equal to losing 530,000 average taxpayers. And another stat, the top 10% of earners in the US account for nearly half of all consumer spending. The top 1% of income taxpayers in the UK are projected contribute about 30% of total income tax from 2024 to 2025. Why are all these millionaires running away?
- [45:36]
Gary Stevenson
Well, it's not because they're taxing their wealth, because we don't have any wealth taxes.
- [45:39]
Stephen Bartlett
Why do you think they're leaving?
- [45:41]
Gary Stevenson
I think the reason they're leaving is because the UK economy is really, really weak. Because the UK consumer is really, really weak. Because you've absolutely crushed the spending power of your average British family.
- [45:50]
Stephen Bartlett
And where are they?
- [45:51]
Gary Stevenson
Average British family can barely afford to feed the kids and turn the heating on. So why are you going to start a business here when the customers are absolutely impoverished?
- [45:58]
Daniel Priestley
Look, it corresponds with a new tax that we brought in which was we ended the non dom scheme. So the non dom scheme basically said, if you're living in the uk, but you've got businesses all over the world, then we only tax you on what you've got in the uk. And if you die in the uk, we'll only tax you on your UK assets for inheritance tax if you're a non dom. But if you die in the UK and you've got wealth in India, once that non dom scheme ended, they basically said, we will tax you on everything globally. If you're an economic, if you're a tax resident in the UK, everything you've got globally, we want 40% of it. So unfortunately, every wealth manager contacted their clients and said, you can't stay here, you're going to have to get out. It's gotten really bad. A thousand people a month are leaving. And in the UK, 1% of people pay 30% of the taxes, 10% of people pay 60% of the taxes. And you imagine if we're sitting out at dinner and there's 10 of us out to dinner and one person says, hey, I've got this, I'll get 60% of the bill tonight. We say to them, no, it should be 70%, should be 80%. And they say, you know what, I'll get up and leave. So they leave, everyone else's bill just doubled. So what's going to happen is if we drive the millionaires out of this country, everyone, every ordinary normal person who pays ten grand a year in tax will now have to pay 20 grand a year in tax.
- [47:15]
Gary Stevenson
So the reason they left is because we used to allow them to not.
- [47:17]
Daniel Priestley
Pay tax on their global incomes, on their global.
- [47:21]
Gary Stevenson
Isn't it a bit more like if we were 10 of us at dinner and there was one guy who came onto dinner on the condition he wouldn't pay their leaves because these guys weren't paying tax Anyway, if the reason they.
- [47:30]
Daniel Priestley
Left is because they weren't paying tax, it's like saying. It's like saying, hey, I'll pay 60% of this table. And they say at the table, hey, wait a second. We also want you to pay for everything that's happening at other restaurants as well.
- [47:42]
Gary Stevenson
Isn't it a bit more like these guys? We're stretching the analogy on a condition. You yourself said no, you're 100%. The reason why they left is because we let them live here on the condition that they didn't have to pay.
- [47:53]
Daniel Priestley
Taxes on their global. Yeah, taxes matter, right? So why is everyone going to Dubai? Dubai, they're going there because there's no tax.
- [48:00]
Gary Stevenson
These guys, they live in Dubai. Their money comes from the West. They are making money from the West. While your average Western, ordinary person watching this show now cannot afford to buy a house, can't afford to have a family. We can tax those revenues at the point of sale. Why do we allow these guys.
- [48:16]
Daniel Priestley
It's a quarter consumption tax.
- [48:18]
Gary Stevenson
No, it's not. It's a tax on.
- [48:19]
Daniel Priestley
When you just said at point of sale, which means it's a consumption based on the profits.
- [48:24]
Gary Stevenson
You look at how much profit. Well, that's not, that's not where the profits. Exactly. It's not consumption tax. I'm saying so.
- [48:30]
Daniel Priestley
No. So if you tax profits. Yeah, right. Then those profits have to accumulate in that country. And because of the digital ecosystem that we now have, the world we now live in, I can lease the database off of my company in Luxembourg. I can license the. I can license my logo from.
- [48:49]
Gary Stevenson
I understand how profit shifting work. Listen, these guys are not Gandalf. You just say, we don't accept profit shifting. We don't need to accept profit shifting. China does not accept profit shifting. We did not accept profit shifting 50 years ago. We do not have to accept profit shifting. But you have a government class who are extremely wealthy and a media class who are extremely wealthy saying it's impossible to tax rich people. And I would like to say I will agree 100%. It is difficult to tax rich people. It is very, very, very difficult to tax rich people. I don't come here saying I want to tax rich people because it's easy. I know it's hard. I know probably I'm going to lose. I know our viewers kids will live in desperate poverty. I know that. I do this because it is hard. If we are a country which says to ourselves, we don't try and do things which are necessary to keep our kids out of poverty because they are hard, then our kids will live in poverty. I don't need to be here. I'm a multimillionaire just like you. I could be in the Philippines drinking pina coladas. I come in here because I come from a poor background, and it's ordinary families like my family, like the kids I grew up with whose kids are going to be in poverty. It's difficult, but it is necessary. Sometimes we have to do things not because they're easy, but because they are hard. That is what makes a rich country rich, and that is what protects ordinary people. Listen, our grandparents lived in poverty. Did they say, let's not change it because it's hard? No, they didn't. They fought and they demanded health care, education, housing, food. And they got it. They got it. So you think we're not supposed to live a good quality life? They got those things. They got those things. And they were aware that in order to do that, you could not allow the super rich, who have been living lives of luxury for hundreds and hundreds of years, to eat everything while ordinary families couldn't afford to feed their kids. I know it's difficult. I know it's difficult. And I know I'm probably going to lose. I know that. I know I'm probably going to lose, and that means our viewers will be poor. But I do it anyway because I do not want this country that I grew up in to fall into desperate poverty.
- [50:44]
Daniel Priestley
I agree with you on the passion and I agree with you on the problem. I don't agree with you on the Solution. Because in 2019, we know we were in 2020. And that's not what I'm saying. In 2020, we made a decision globally to shut down the economy. And we taught everyone that they can live and work from anywhere. The biggest threat to everything you're saying is remote working. The fact that we can live and work from anywhere. Our grandparents, their boss, if their boss owned a company, that company had to physically be in the country, and the boss had to physically be in the country. If we look at today, there are plenty of fitness trainers who work for a gym and the owner of that gym is somewhere overseas. Plenty of people work, work in a restaurant and the owner of the restaurant lives overseas. You can live in, you can run a business from anywhere in the world right now. So the problem that we face is that you're describing. On one hand, you say we need to tax it at the point of sale, which is a consumption tax, and then it's a tax on profit. Okay. And then you say a tax on profit, and then you say, oh, but then we'll stop profit shifting. By the way, I'm also actually all for this idea of stopping profit. I've already said I think it's utterly ridiculous the way that many of these global companies are treated and if we don't stop that, then all the money just flows out to the tech companies. So I'm with you on that. But when you say tax the rich, the actual people who own the companies, those people can just be anywhere right now, so.
- [52:09]
Gary Stevenson
But their revenues can't. Their customers. Their customers are where their customers are. Their customers are where their customers are. Listen, Amazon doesn't pay any UK tax, doesn't pay any US tax. Where are the customers in the UK and the us.
- [52:19]
Daniel Priestley
Uk, us.
- [52:21]
Gary Stevenson
Do you really think it's impossible for us to tax that?
- [52:23]
Daniel Priestley
Well, you're talking about taxing people at 10 million plus, right? So this is a lot of startup entrepreneurs.
- [52:28]
Gary Stevenson
Jeff Bezos is a lot more than 10 million. Jeff Bezos is worth a lot more than 10 million.
- [52:32]
Daniel Priestley
But you talk about anyone above 10 million is on your radar.
- [52:35]
Gary Stevenson
You don't want people worth 11 million pounds to pay more taxes.
- [52:38]
Daniel Priestley
I'm not just talking. It's not that.
- [52:40]
Stephen Bartlett
Dan, you're worth more than £10 million. So if we tax people on, as Gary says, that have more than 10 million, what are your options to avoid, say if your objective was to avoid that, what options do you have?
- [52:53]
Daniel Priestley
Look, if my objective was to avoid it, I pass a board resolution that we're moving the head office somewhere else. Yeah. We move the intellectual property somewhere else, I pick up and move my family somewhere else and within about a week or two we've got a wework office somewhere else, I've got a new house on Airbnb somewhere else and I cut ties with the UK and I'm non tax resident here and I can, I have a digital business. I can literally make my head office anywhere in the world. If there was a particular country that turned hostile towards our operations, then I'd have to Withdraw service from that thing, you know, so that that's possible, but it's unlikely that that would actually happen. But ultimately, if I choose to get up and leave, then I get up and leave. Now the bigger issue is would I have even come here in the first place? And then there's another issue. And here's the other issue, Gary, for you, you've just had 750,000 subscribers to your YouTube channel.
- [53:46]
Gary Stevenson
It's 820, right?
- [53:47]
Daniel Priestley
It's 820, right. So it's going up fast. I could have one of my analysts at a consulting company do a valuation of your brand and do a valuation of your YouTube channel. We could say this is a fast growth media company and it's worth 11 million, right? So we could come up with a forecast and a projection and we say Gary's Economics is actually a new fast growth media brand. It's worth 11 million. Now your channel, now you have to pay 100 grand a year in extra taxes because you're a millionaire.
- [54:16]
Gary Stevenson
Sorry, 1% on wealth above 10 million on 11 million is going to be 10 grand taxes.
- [54:21]
Daniel Priestley
Oh, you're saying only on the part above.
- [54:23]
Gary Stevenson
That's how taxes work.
- [54:24]
Daniel Priestley
So it's not on everything. It's. Okay, so it's a, it's a marginal tax.
- [54:27]
Gary Stevenson
That's how taxes work.
- [54:28]
Daniel Priestley
It's above that. So, okay, so, but is it fair that like who gets to decide what wealth is wealth and what it's worth? Because wealth, let's just hear me out. Wealth is a technical term for unrealized gains, right? It's not real. You know, someone buys a house for 20 grand and it's worth 200 grand, they've still got the same house, but now they've got wealth. If someone starts a business and a tiny little seed investor puts in a little angel investment, now they've got wealth on paper. But who gets to say, what is wealth? Like for example, if you introduce wealth taxes, theoretically that will actually reduce the value of wealth, of things anyway, because things inside that economy are now subject to a disadvantage. So therefore investors will be unlikely to invest in them to a certain point. And also people start cutting and dodging and weaving and ducking and weaving. So they say, oh, our UK operation's worth 10 million, so we're now going to start a second company over in some other country and make sure that's where the wealth accumulates. So it's incredibly difficult because it is just unrealized gains.
- [55:34]
Gary Stevenson
I know, I know it's difficult. Difficult, yeah, I know. These guys have the best accountants. I know it's difficult.
- [55:39]
Daniel Priestley
So what if there was an easier solution?
- [55:41]
Gary Stevenson
If there was an easier solution, I would support that. You know what I mean?
- [55:44]
Daniel Priestley
It's called economic freedom. The economic freedom index.
- [55:46]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, well, this is how. Give them more economic freedom and then they'll be rich. Yeah.
- [55:51]
Daniel Priestley
So this, this diagram here basically says the most free countries have less than 10% poverty. In fact, less than 7% poverty. As soon as you reduce economic freedom, it jumps to 30% poverty. You reduce economic freedom again and it jumps up to huge, huge amounts of poverty. So these countries here are the least economically free and these countries are the most economically free. The countries that get in the way of your economic freedom have more poverty and the countries that let people make decisions for their own life.
- [56:18]
Gary Stevenson
What you're saying is if the governments of our countries cut taxes on us, the three multimillionaires sitting at this table, that will improve the lives of the ordinary British and American workers?
- [56:29]
Daniel Priestley
I'll give you a real life example.
- [56:30]
Gary Stevenson
To feed their kids.
- [56:31]
Daniel Priestley
I'll give you a real life example. I know of a company that was going to give pay rises to its employees and then national insurance went up.
- [56:37]
Gary Stevenson
And instead of giving national insurance a tax on employment. Yeah, I'm saying to reduce that, I'm saying to reduce taxes on. I want your viewers, the viewers here to be paying less tax whilst multimillionaires pay more tax.
- [56:48]
Daniel Priestley
Good, in theory. But if you could tax rich people 1% of their wealth above 10 million, I did a back of a napkin calculation, you might be able to get 20 billion. Yeah, right. That's if they don't leave, that's if they don't respond to it, if they just happily pay it, you get 20 billion. That's less than a week worth of current government spending. So the government's out of control. 1.2 trillion a year of government spending is now what they spend.
- [57:13]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, so let's cut that, get that 20 billion and cut the taxes for the viewers. Cut their income tax.
- [57:19]
Daniel Priestley
So that works out about 250 a year.
- [57:22]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, so let's do more. Let's make it 60 billion.
- [57:25]
Daniel Priestley
So then you tax 3% above wealth.
- [57:27]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, do that.
- [57:28]
Daniel Priestley
Right. And then you also bring it down.
- [57:29]
Gary Stevenson
Bear in mind, this is what governments do. We make five or six. Yeah, and then that's what they did.
- [57:33]
Daniel Priestley
You know what they do?
- [57:34]
Gary Stevenson
That's what they did in the Second World War. And that's why my dad could afford a house.
- [57:36]
Daniel Priestley
Well, they actually, that's not why you could afford A house.
- [57:38]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay.
- [57:39]
Gary Stevenson
All right, well, who's buying? If ordinary people are losing their houses and the wealth, which they are, and we're getting richer, who is it who is now owning the houses if it is not us?
- [57:47]
Daniel Priestley
The government used to own the houses and then they sold them.
- [57:50]
Gary Stevenson
Government wealth is collapsing. Government wealth is collapsing.
- [57:52]
Daniel Priestley
But what they did is they sold the houses to the people.
- [57:55]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, but. But ordinary middle class is also collapsed.
- [57:58]
Daniel Priestley
You can only do that once. And they did it for the baby.
- [58:00]
Gary Stevenson
So you think it's our viewers who have got my houses now? Who, where is the wealth going, Daniel, where is the wealth going? Who has the wealth now? Who is getting rich? Who's getting the wealth that is lost by our viewers?
- [58:09]
Daniel Priestley
I'll tell you where the biggest amounts of money are going. The biggest amounts of money since the pandemic. 11 trillion went just to the value of seven companies that own technology. So the biggest seven companies in the USA, 11 trillion has.
- [58:24]
Gary Stevenson
And you don't want their billionaire owners to pay more tax.
- [58:27]
Daniel Priestley
Would that help the uk?
- [58:28]
Gary Stevenson
Well, if you use that money to reduce tax on working people, then it would help. Yeah.
- [58:32]
Daniel Priestley
They own shares in the usa. They're US citizens, so that doesn't help.
- [58:36]
Gary Stevenson
Us here, but it will help the American consumer. And then we can export the American consumer and it will mean the American consumer has money and then it will show British people how much you can achieve by taxing super rich. We can raise tax on our super rich here. And then what I want is these guys to be taxed so much that they start to sell assets and then ordinary rich people can buy assets again. Because what I want is our viewers to be able to own things, to be able to own their own homes.
- [59:00]
Stephen Bartlett
When I hear this, I admittedly don't know as much about these issues as you guys do, but when I hear that there's these seven tech companies in the us, my brain goes, can't we have one here?
- [59:11]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, yeah.
- [59:12]
Stephen Bartlett
Can't we start? And then. So my brain goes, what conditions do.
- [59:15]
Daniel Priestley
We have to create one of our ones that we had?
- [59:17]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, what conditions do we have to create to have one of those seven tech companies here? Especially in this sort of AI world we're heading towards where, when I was reading through the stats, most of the investment in AI, which is going to be hugely destabilizing across every industry from driving to any form of knowledge work, even podcasting. I can play your podcast now, which sounds exactly like me. Which has a 4.6 star rating on Apple, which was written by AI. In My Voice, published by AI Wild. And who's accruing the value there? Well, it's a company in America called elevenlabs and it's bloody OpenAI. And I go, why can't we have those companies here? We need them here because China and the US are dominating this next revolution. And I worry as a bystander that if we don't create entrepreneurship friendly environments here, we're gonna, we are gonna become India.
- [60:08]
Gary Stevenson
If you want businesses to thrive, you don't need just a good environment for entrepreneurs. You also need people to have money that they can spend. And we are in a country where increasingly most of the people out there have almost nothing left over at the end of the month, they can barely pay the bills.
- [60:27]
Stephen Bartlett
Those companies are selling globally. Right. So they don't need any particular company to do well. They just, they sell to anywhere. So like OpenAI, ChatG, we're all using that bloody product and paying our 20, $30 a month.
- [60:38]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah. Where do they actually get their money from? They get their money from selling data to the rich. Right.
- [60:42]
Stephen Bartlett
My point was making the environment more friendly for entrepreneurs. Because when I start a company, I am at a. I can't explain the disadvantage I'm at at the moment. If I start that kind of company here in the uk, there's no investors, and then all the talent seems to flock over to San Francisco. So the, the guys that built, the British guys that built an AI company called Fixer, which I was going to invest in, all British lads from London, they went over to San Francisco. They're like 25 year olds. They've just raised at a 60 million valuation. They're in this room, this building in San Francisco full of entrepreneurs, and they're pumping knowledge and capital into this room.
- [61:15]
Gary Stevenson
With all due respect, Stephen, you're not a great example for the fact that it's impossible to start a successful online brand in the uk. Facts. But I also realized that the problem of.
- [61:25]
Daniel Priestley
But he started when things were different.
- [61:27]
Stephen Bartlett
But I also realize I don't like using personal examples because there's a huge amount of privilege and.
- [61:32]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, Is there a chatgpt in Germany?
- [61:34]
Stephen Bartlett
No.
- [61:35]
Gary Stevenson
Is there a chatgpt in France?
- [61:37]
Stephen Bartlett
No.
- [61:37]
Gary Stevenson
Is there a chatGPT in Australia?
- [61:39]
Daniel Priestley
No.
- [61:40]
Gary Stevenson
Is there a chatGFT in China?
- [61:41]
Daniel Priestley
It's China and one sec.
- [61:43]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, exactly. What you have here is an extremely low labor, extremely high capital model which employs extremely few people across the entire world that is focused in basically two cities.
- [61:52]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [61:54]
Gary Stevenson
Good luck competing with that.
- [61:55]
Stephen Bartlett
How do we create an environment where the UK can start to build some of these companies which are going to capitalize on this next technological revolution. How? If you were Prime Minister, what would you do?
- [62:05]
Gary Stevenson
I think you need to look realistically about what companies do we have a chance of growing. You know, I'm not an expert in AI, but I think trying to compete with San Francisco in London will probably not work.
- [62:15]
Daniel Priestley
Why?
- [62:16]
Gary Stevenson
Try and do it. You know, try and do it. And listen, I know that you can get a lot of likes saying, let's just invest in AI, let's just invest it. Only one city in the world outside of China has managed it. China has managed it by basically state capitalism. You know, this is very similar in a sense to what we had with microelectronics in Japan in the 80s. Right. When you have a new industry, especially these industries which are very capital intense and don't employ many people, you get a first mover advantage. They tend to win eventually. Often they get undercut by cheap arrivals. And that does happen, you know, that does happen. And you might start in AI. I don't think AI is going to become a massive, massive employer. Of course, you know, a lot of countries are going to be like, because basically it sounds good, we're going to invest in AI. We're going to invest in AI. Personally, I think we should be looking at what does the British person need? You know, we live in a country where the housing stock is falling apart.
- [63:01]
Stephen Bartlett
If we say AI when we talk about AI, I think we're actually talking about technology. Because even a podcast like, a podcast like this, you don't think of this as an AI company. But actually now, the editing process, the scripting process, the transcription process, even YouTube itself is an AI company. So it's really technology we're speaking about here. And I'm wondering why we can't create a better environment in the UK to start launching and building some of these technology companies. We've even seen that.
- [63:27]
Gary Stevenson
I think we should, and I think we should be looking, we should be looking at reducing taxes on people who work and make money. This is what I've been saying for the whole time.
- [63:34]
Daniel Priestley
What about people who start companies, yeah.
- [63:37]
Gary Stevenson
We should reduce their taxes on the income that they make. But then if they start owning a 50 million pound company, are you telling me, if you come to me and I say, all right, you want to start a company, we tax you very, very little on a company that you start. If that company becomes worth 20, 30, 40 million quid, then we're going to start taxing you, you're going to come and say to me, oh, no, sorry, 50 million is not enough for me.
- [63:54]
Stephen Bartlett
So can I ask a question on that? So my company was valued at 50, whatever, 100 millions, congratulations. I still had, because I hadn't had an exit event, I still had £10,000, £20,000 in my bank account. Are you saying at the point when I sell the company, or are you saying just because I have shares in the company, I think you can structure.
- [64:17]
Gary Stevenson
It in a number of ways. You can structure it a number of ways. My preferred way is to stop people from hoarding enormous amounts of wealth for enormous amounts of. Of time. That's basically my preferred method. There's also the wealth tax method. There's also capital gains as a method. There's a lot of different ways here. There's a lot of different ways here. But you have to deal with the problem of if you do not tax very wealthy individuals and very wealthy families, their share of the pie will obviously grow over time, and they will. And they are, as we are watching, squeezing out ordinary families. You have to deal with that.
- [64:45]
Stephen Bartlett
My friend sold his company in the uk. It's a company everybody knows. And he, I remember him saying to me at the time, it was in the middle of the pandemic, he'd got this big exit event, I think he'd made 300 million. And he goes, I'm off. I go, where are you going? He goes, I'm gonna go to Dubai and Monaco and live between the two. And I said to him, explain to me why. He goes, well, the amount of tax I'd have to Pay in the UK is equivalent to me paying 20 million rent in the UK for the next six or seven years, which you'd have to stay here for. So he went, and he pops back in every now and then. But it meant that he could keep that 150 million. Whatever tax he would pay, never had to pay it to the uk is living this high flying life now in Dubai, drops into Monaco every now and then. And I remember him saying to me, well, Steve, I'd have to pay 20 million rent a year to live here. And he went on to say, the UK product just isn't worth it. He goes, crime, I'm gonna get my Rolex robbed off me. He goes, the healthcare system isn't the best. The education system isn't necessarily the best. And the particular one was crime, which is, I'll get mugged walking through London streets.
- [65:46]
Gary Stevenson
Stephen, if you allow British people who own £300 million of British assets to technically live in Monaco and not pay tax. Then you will get crime and you will have dirty streets and you will have a bad healthcare system and you will have education. Because if you give all of the wealth to a group of people who do not tax, there'll be nothing left to provide things like health care and education for ordinary people. It's not unconnected.
- [66:08]
Daniel Priestley
These people are not technically living there. They're moving out. My friends have moved out of the country. They don't come back to the uk. They've left and they leave with.
- [66:15]
Gary Stevenson
So they built a company here. Now they be globally and pay no tax.
- [66:19]
Daniel Priestley
They typically build globally. Business, okay. It's not that they.
- [66:21]
Stephen Bartlett
It was a global business.
- [66:23]
Daniel Priestley
They don't pay no tax. They pay extortionate amounts of tax. Right. Anyone who's here is paying extraordinary taxes, more than they've ever paid before. 1% pays 30%, 10% pays 60% of 1.2 trillion a year.
- [66:38]
Gary Stevenson
300 million. How much tax rate he's paid in.
- [66:40]
Stephen Bartlett
His life, I have no idea. I have no idea. His business was global, though. His biggest customer was the US.
- [66:46]
Gary Stevenson
So I pay 60% and our viewers will pay 30, 40, 50%. Do you think it's fair that your 300 million guy pays his 2 or 3?
- [66:52]
Stephen Bartlett
I have no idea what he pays.
- [66:54]
Gary Stevenson
Well, it sounds like he didn't pay 50%.
- [66:56]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, he dashed before he got the tax bill.
- [66:59]
Gary Stevenson
But why do we allow it? Why do we allow it? I'm not allowed to not pay my tax.
- [67:02]
Stephen Bartlett
What could you have done to.
- [67:03]
Daniel Priestley
You are allowed to. When you were in Japan, you wouldn't have paid UK taxes.
- [67:06]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, because I was working in Japan and then I paid Japanese taxes.
- [67:09]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, because you were living in Japan. This is the thing. People can live wherever they want now. So.
- [67:13]
Gary Stevenson
But we're talking about. This is. I think we should stop obfuscating tax on people's work from tax.
- [67:22]
Daniel Priestley
So I'm talking about entrepreneurs. Work generates wealth.
- [67:25]
Gary Stevenson
So if I earn a billion pound of British houses.
- [67:29]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah.
- [67:29]
Gary Stevenson
And then I say I live in Dubai and I'm getting the rent on a billion pounds of houses, which would probably be something like. That's going to be something like £50 million a year. So I'm getting 60, 50, £60 million a year of rent from British people.
- [67:43]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah.
- [67:44]
Gary Stevenson
And that gets paid to me from British people.
- [67:46]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah.
- [67:46]
Gary Stevenson
And I pay. And I don't pay taxes. I live in Dubai. Do you think that's fair? All right, so let's change that. Let's. Let's make People pay taxes in their world regardless of where they live.
- [67:56]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah. The question would be, though, how would you tax people? Right. And how would you actually structure it? Because regardless of what you feel like is fair, this is the thing. It's not about fairness. It's about what you can pragmatically and practically do in the modern economy. You might say, oh, I actually like. For example, if we said what's fair, A lot of people would say a flat tax is fair. You make one pound, you pay 20%, you make £1 million, you pay 20%. Make £100 million, you pay 20%. So a lot of people would say the fairest tax system would just be a flat tax on everything. Right. That would be a fair thing. It's pragmatically, can you do it? Is it actually good for society? Should people be excluded from that? So it's not about fairness. It's about, pragmatically, what can you get away with?
- [68:32]
Gary Stevenson
All right, well, pragmatically, what we can get away with is desperate poverty for our viewers.
- [68:35]
Daniel Priestley
Kids, if you want to have. Can we zoom out just a minute? Right, I want to zoom out.
- [68:40]
Gary Stevenson
Let's zoom away from our viewers.
- [68:41]
Daniel Priestley
Kids, forget about them.
- [68:43]
Gary Stevenson
They're not that cool.
- [68:44]
Daniel Priestley
I'm a dad, right? I got three kids.
- [68:46]
Gary Stevenson
You are a multimillionaire dad. Do you know probably don't have the same problems as our viewers?
- [68:50]
Daniel Priestley
Do you know that? Do you know that kids born into the top have a 60% chance of dropping out of the top? Right? 60%. That's the number. It's called persistence. You can Google it. The persistence rates is actually only 40% for the richest, which means 60% dropout in the second.
- [69:05]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think your kids have a 60% chance of living in poverty?
- [69:07]
Daniel Priestley
Also not poverty.
- [69:08]
Stephen Bartlett
Do you know what's interesting? We're all trying to aim at the same goal, I think, here.
- [69:13]
Gary Stevenson
I'm not sure we are, boss.
- [69:14]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, that's fair. That's fair. Maybe we're not.
- [69:15]
Gary Stevenson
I suspect some of us are maybe trying to protect our kids.
- [69:17]
Daniel Priestley
No, I want widespread affluence through the technological revolution that's happening, and I don't want the people who create that to want to go somewhere else.
- [69:25]
Gary Stevenson
So you agree with me that we should cut tax on wealth creators and raise tax on wealth hoarders?
- [69:31]
Daniel Priestley
Well, broadly.
- [69:33]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, so let's do it. Let's cut tax on people who are working hard, creating a good product, making a good income, and let's raise tax on people who are sitting there on 2030-401002-00500 million pounds of assets that they're going to give to their kids and they're going to use to dominate society and squeeze out the middle class.
- [69:50]
Daniel Priestley
Who's an example of someone who's hoarding wealth?
- [69:52]
Gary Stevenson
She's an act.
- [69:54]
Daniel Priestley
So his family owns a tech company.
- [69:56]
Gary Stevenson
His wife's dad owns a tech company.
- [70:00]
Daniel Priestley
That's what I mean.
- [70:00]
Gary Stevenson
Which he will inherit and his kids will inherit.
- [70:02]
Daniel Priestley
His net worth that is quoted is based upon his wife's.
- [70:05]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, but that company already exists. Yeah, it's created now. Yeah, it's worth billions.
- [70:10]
Daniel Priestley
But they have to reinvent that business every two years like it's a.
- [70:14]
Gary Stevenson
So you think that the reason, you think that if Rishi Sunak's father in law stopped managing the company it would be valueless?
- [70:20]
Daniel Priestley
No, I think it hires hundreds of thousands of people and it's, you know, it's a big company. I don't know a lot about that particular company, but I know it's a tech company.
- [70:28]
Gary Stevenson
Steve Jobs died. Is Apple valueless?
- [70:31]
Daniel Priestley
No.
- [70:32]
Gary Stevenson
Let's not pretend that these creators are the sole reason these companies are valuable.
- [70:36]
Daniel Priestley
Sure.
- [70:37]
Gary Stevenson
You know, and what we're talking about in many cases, you know, I was a trader, okay, And I'm worth millions of quid and you know, now that is just assets. I just own that asset. I own the assets. And that will grow and it will grow and it will grow and it will grow and that will squeeze out and squeeze out and squeeze out and squeeze out our viewers. And I'll give that to my kids. They don't even need to work. They wouldn't even have to work. They could just live on. I could live off the wealth. Is that what you want?
- [71:02]
Daniel Priestley
Do you think there are any opportunities for people today? Like if you're born into a poor family, do you think it's possible that housing being shit and we can both agree on that, but do you think there are new opportunities that didn't exist for our parents or grandparents, but they do exist for people today?
- [71:19]
Gary Stevenson
I think the reality is for kids from poor backgrounds it is almost impossible to realistically get even financial security, never mind wealth.
- [71:29]
Daniel Priestley
But why do you think you could do it? I could do it, he could do it. But you don't think other people could do it?
- [71:34]
Gary Stevenson
Well, the first thing is I'm 38 now, so I'm not a kid nowadays. Listen, I won every maths competition I've ever been in, you know what I mean? Since I was a little kid, I didn't even have a desk in my house. You know, I was one of the top students at lse. I still had to win my job by cheating in a card game. You know, that's the world that we live in. I don't think that's a very replicable strategy. And it's very easy for people like us who've made money to say, oh, we did it, aren't we great? Go out and, you know, you've said that you think if young people go and work in tech business, they can get financial security. If it was that easy, they'd all be doing it. You know, they're not idiots. Our viewers are not idiots. They're trying, they're trying. They want to find the good opportunities and they work. Listen, I'll speak.
- [72:10]
Daniel Priestley
I'm not the one saying they're idiots. You're the one who says that they can't do it anymore. I see people do it all the time. Like I'm working in entrepreneurs, people from poor backgrounds.
- [72:21]
Gary Stevenson
But then why are our viewers, you think all of our. If it was that easy, why is everybody not doing it?
- [72:25]
Daniel Priestley
Tell you why people aren't doing it. We went through a schooling system that taught us how to get an office job.
- [72:29]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, right.
- [72:30]
Daniel Priestley
Went through a schooling system to prepare us for a, a world that doesn't really exist anymore, which is the industrial revolution world. And you have to go through a process of figuring out how it really works. So what I see is the most often the people who do really well financially, who are young, they dropped out of school, they dropped out of university, they started learning how to do things by doing their own research, they start their own business or co found a business, they take a very alternative path. None of that was taught to us at school. None of it's taught to us in normal society. We have a school system that manufactures people for a set of skills that are not particularly valuable anymore. And we also get them in debt for those skills. When people sidestep that and say, okay, I'm not going to get into university debt, I'm just going to go off and actually figure out how the world works. There's actually loads of opportunities.
- [73:20]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, so I guess we've sorted it then. All of our viewers need to do is go and buy Dan's book, become an entrepreneur and become a millionaire. It's that easy. Why weren't you guys doing it to begin with? They're idiots. The viewers are idiots. They should be just being more entrepreneurial. It's as simple as that. More entrepreneurial. Start a business. Listen I come from East London, okay? My friends can't feed their kids, okay? And if it was as simple as going out and being an entrepreneur, I can bet you they would do it. I can bet you they would do it. Let us. I'm sick of multi millionaires telling kids who can't afford to turn the heating on, you just need to be more entrepreneurial. It's sick, Dan. It's sick. But I suppose this gives people mental illness. It gives people mental illness. Tell them the truth, okay? We, your older generation, we took the opportunities and now it's almost impossible to get out of poverty. And don't just stand at them, wave, you know, your millions of pounds in front of them and say, if you are entrepreneurial like me, you could do it. You could have it. Because it's sick. Because they can't. They can't feed their kids, Dan. They can't turn the heating on. Don't tell them to be more entrepreneurial. Fix the system that drives more and more and more of them into poverty every generation.
- [74:24]
Daniel Priestley
I find it very strange that you think it would be easier to fix the entire global economic system than to start a business and fix your own personal economics. The thing that I know that gives people mental health issues is feeling that they have no agency in their life, that they can't do anything. Your video where you talk about, if you don't have a rich dad, you're screwed. There's no such thing as meritocracy. You're never going to be successful. To me, if I had have come across your content at 19, 20 years old, I would have been screwed. I was so. I'm so glad that I came across people who said, Daniel, you weren't born into a rich family. You don't have any bank of mum and dad, but it's cheap and easier than ever to start a business. Start by working for someone who's got a business. Then figure out what's your opportunity. And there's a way. There is a way. I've actually worked with a lot of teenagers from poor backgrounds. And one of the things we do is we tell them if it's possible for someone else, it is possible for you. I also worked in rural Uganda with a charity that did work with the poorest of the poor. One of the most incredible things I ever saw was a woman who started out literally picking food out of a trash pile. And she was basically, they shared with her how to start a chicken business, which then ended up as a pig business, which then ended up as a Cattle business. And she ended up making hiring 15, 16 people in her local community. The power of entrepreneurship is that starting with nothing, you can actually make improvements. I'm not saying everyone ends up as a millionaire, and I'm not saying everyone ends up equal, but I'm saying you can make improvements in your life. And the thing that causes mental health issues is the feeling of having no agency or no control over your circumstances until the world changes. The whole economic system, them.
- [76:11]
Gary Stevenson
Listen, I never told people don't work hard. I never once said that. Never once said that.
- [76:16]
Daniel Priestley
You said if your dad wasn't rich, you'll never be rich, which is true.
- [76:19]
Gary Stevenson
In 99.9% of cases I've never told people don't work hard.
- [76:22]
Daniel Priestley
That's actually not true in 99% of.
- [76:24]
Gary Stevenson
Cases I've never told people don't work hard. Okay? And listen, if you think that Ugandans should be more entrepreneurial. I've never been to Uganda. Maybe that's the problem out there. Maybe that's the problem in Nigeria. Maybe that's the problem in India. Listen, I've never said don't work hard, okay? When I brought my book out last year, the hardback, like, I was at some event and I come out, I was drinking London Bridge and I come out late. It was like. It was like 1am and some guy come up to me when I was unlocking my bike. Some guy from Newcastle, which is the northeast of England. It's this quite poor town. There's a lot of working class people there. And he said, I've been watching you on YouTube and I love your stuff. And this guy started crying. This guy started crying on the street right in front of me. He's like, I work so hard, Gary. I work two jobs. My mom's sick and I'm trying to help, I'm trying to support, and I don't understand why. And, and I'm sorry that I'm crying, but nobody ever told me that it wasn't my fault before. That's what he said to me. Okay? And listen, listen. I believe 100%. Aspiration, ambition, entrepreneurial spirit. I would never see a kid that has that and say, turn it off. Okay? But the flip side of your if you just work hard enough, you can make it is if you didn't make it, it's because you didn't work hard enough and it's your fault. And I would like you to sit and think very hard before you send that message to young men and young women in our society.
- [77:49]
Daniel Priestley
Meritocracy doesn't mean that everyone ends up with the same result. What I'm trying to. Here's what I'm trying to achieve. I'm trying to achieve the people who have ambition, who can go for it, are incentivized to do it and incentivised to build jobs and build companies.
- [78:03]
Gary Stevenson
And what about the ones that just want to work hard and have a good family and take care of them and have a home and be able to turn the heating on and be able to have financial security?
- [78:10]
Daniel Priestley
They need to work for a business, don't they?
- [78:11]
Gary Stevenson
They need to work for you.
- [78:12]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah. Pardon?
- [78:13]
Gary Stevenson
They need to work for you.
- [78:14]
Daniel Priestley
They would need to work for a business. Some business, right? If someone doesn't create that business, then where do they work for? We now have, by the way, we now have 11% of. 11% of working age people are now declared too sick to work. Right? We have a huge problem in the UK, we also have 25% of people who are working age don't work. It's 1 in 7 men don't work at all.
- [78:36]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think they're lazy, Dan?
- [78:37]
Daniel Priestley
I think the system is collapsing. Do you think the system is changing.
- [78:40]
Gary Stevenson
The average British American? Here's what I think is lazy?
- [78:42]
Daniel Priestley
What I think is happening is that the technology companies are totally transforming and disrupting everything. And what happened is around the post war era, we had good jobs. You could work in a local thing. What's happening now is that jobs are going to the Philippines. They're going to. Technology does three things. It makes jobs more simple, which makes them replaceable. It makes jobs global, where you can move them to anywhere else, and then ultimately it automates the job altogether and gets rid of it through code and software. And what's really going on in the last, especially five years since the pandemic is technology has decimated the existing systems that we all relied upon when we grew up. And when I say the education system isn't really working, it's still pretending that there are office jobs available for people when they graduate. And it's still pretending that there's like 1950s scenarios available when actually my kids are going to be disrupted by AI, everyone's kids are going to be disrupted by AI. These sorts of things are the things that really we also need to be talking about.
- [79:48]
Stephen Bartlett
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- [81:33]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [81:34]
Daniel Priestley
A lot of people.
- [81:34]
Stephen Bartlett
So most of them are failing. The ones that emerge from that, people like me, then we have a bias where we go, well, it works for us. I don't come from money, so I have the same bias. Like I watched.
- [81:43]
Daniel Priestley
Well, I've built from scratch several times because I got disrupted several times. So I've had to start with nothing several times and build.
- [81:50]
Stephen Bartlett
But you start from nothing.
- [81:51]
Daniel Priestley
But I'm a certain type of person. Right.
- [81:52]
Stephen Bartlett
And when we say start from nothing, you actually started with a wealth of information and the whole game in building intellectual capital. Intellectual capital having been through it before, being around that mentor that gave you the information.
- [82:02]
Daniel Priestley
Also, having access to a great market, like having access to a free market, is a big thing. I was born in Australia and I moved to London at the peak of London's economic freedom.
- [82:09]
Stephen Bartlett
So this can't be broadly applicable advice, can it?
- [82:13]
Daniel Priestley
Well, I think personal agency is broadly applicable. I got this friend of mine who woke up one day, he went out clubbing, went out to a nightclub, felt sick, collapsed, woke up and they had chopped off all four limbs. Right. So he had quadruple amputee, he was 19 years old. So he wakes up in bed and he basically says, I'm a quadruple amputee. I was fine 48 hours ago and now I'm a quadruple amputee. And he decides to make this decision in the hospital room that this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to him. And he makes that decision.
- [82:45]
Stephen Bartlett
Even that is a consequence of him and his wiring. What I'm trying to understand is, but.
- [82:52]
Daniel Priestley
He ended up starting a clinic and as a multi million dollar clinic. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. Not the rule, it's incredible. But you only need a few people to succeed and the whole economy starts to improve. We actually, in this uk, we only at the peak of our entrepreneurial, like blitzing it, where we're doing so well. There was only 40,000 scale ups. 40,000 companies were creating jobs, growth, higher wages, investment into the company, into the country. You know, it's only 1% of people who pay 30% of the taxes and 10% of people who pay 60% of the taxes. So you only need 1 in 100 to actually create something that's valuable and you get an extra 30% of taxes.
- [83:32]
Stephen Bartlett
But so that again is. We need this one. That's advice for the people that end up getting into that 1%.
- [83:38]
Daniel Priestley
But who does everyone else work for? Like all jobs, growth comes from entrepreneurs.
- [83:41]
Stephen Bartlett
So what are you saying to those, the 99% there? Are you saying, go get a job?
- [83:45]
Daniel Priestley
Well, you need wealth creators in the economy who are building something. Like you take Gymshark. People who work at Gymshark, they're super glad that this guy started the company. They're really happy that there's a company, otherwise where would they go? What would they work? Where would they work? So if Ben decides that he doesn't want to start that company in the UK, or if he gets to 10 million and stops, then all of those additional jobs are toast, they're all gone.
- [84:13]
Stephen Bartlett
So are you encouraging the entrepreneurial? You're not encouraging everyone to become an entrepreneur, you're saying those that have those that bias or that.
- [84:22]
Daniel Priestley
I'm saying we need a system that encourages the people who can to do.
- [84:26]
Stephen Bartlett
And what about everybody else.
- [84:28]
Daniel Priestley
Well, the flow on effect is that that creates jobs, that creates wealth in the economy and free markets lift everybody up. Free markets just means that everyone's trading with everyone. You know, it starts to like the whole thing. I mean it's just a tale as old as time. As soon as economies are free and there are entrepreneurs starting things and growing things, everyone's life improves, everyone's lives get better.
- [84:51]
Stephen Bartlett
And what's your, what part of that do you disagree with, Gary?
- [84:55]
Gary Stevenson
I think it's. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. The only period. Listen, the last 70 years are not normal, Stephen. The last 70 years are not normal. The last 70 years in Europe and the US where ordinary people like my dad could work for the post office on less than average wage and buy house and support family. It's not normal. It's not normal in the world and it's not normal in history. Most countries in the world are not like that. Most countries have a small super rich elite and a very large group of extremely poor people. That's most of the country and it's most of history in this country and it's most of history in the us. You know, we talk about Charles Dickens. I read Hard Times. I read Hard Times. And this is written in the 19th century when Britain was like the industrial super of the whole world. And at the time the government was talking about should we tax these industrialists? And the industrialists were saying, if you tax us, will throw our factories into the sea. And it just reminds me, you know, the only time we've ever really been able to provide decent living conditions for ordinary working people was the period after the war where we massively redistributed wealth. And now we're losing that holding of wealth of the middle class.
- [85:59]
Stephen Bartlett
Can you acknowledge though that that was a completely different time as it relates to being able to.
- [86:03]
Gary Stevenson
It was a different time, but you know, I could, you know, because of technology. Nigeria today, Brazil today, the UK 300 years ago, France 200 years ago. There is only one specific that we have ever successfully provided broad living standards for ordinary people. And it was a period of time where we protected a broadly equal wealth distribution and taxed the rich at very high rates.
- [86:24]
Stephen Bartlett
And you can acknowledge that that's extremely hard to do because the nature of the economy 100% is now different.
- [86:30]
Gary Stevenson
That's the reason why all of our grandparents and our great grandparents and our great great grandparents lived in poverty. And that's why I know I'm probably going to lose and that's why I bet on the economy getting worse. And that's why I know poverty is going to increase, because it was extremely difficult to get that unusually fair share for ordinary working people. And I know we're losing the argument, and I know that Farage will win, and I know that Trump will win, and I know that, and I know that things will get worse. I don't think I'm gonna win.
- [86:52]
Stephen Bartlett
So if, you know, you're promoting a strategy that is not gonna work, and it sounds like you think is incredibly, almost impossible, then why would you not be more practical in your solution?
- [87:05]
Gary Stevenson
Stephen, if it was impossible, I wouldn't be here.
- [87:08]
Stephen Bartlett
So you think it's possible?
- [87:09]
Gary Stevenson
Of course it's possible. Of course it's possible.
- [87:11]
Stephen Bartlett
But you believe you're not going to win.
- [87:13]
Gary Stevenson
I'm a betting man, Steve. I'm a betting man. I put my bets on, you know, I am if I get better. Okay? So my YouTube channel is growing really, really quickly. And, you know, I'm obviously starting a bit of a movement and there's a lot of political support, and if it keeps growing, we'll get more political support. At the end of the day, I'm trying to tax the richest and most powerful people in the world. And most of these people will come out and attack me and they'll try and stop me. And I do not have billions of pounds, hundreds of millions of pounds, to use to support my YouTube channel. I am counting on ordinary people, like your viewers, to support and share my message. Now listen, for most of history, that has not worked. And for most of history, ordinary families live in poverty. I don't think it's impossible that we ordinary people can win and get a fair share. But I think it's worth fighting for, Steve, So I fight for it anyway.
- [87:55]
Daniel Priestley
He's right that for most of history, you've had the super elite, and then everyone else is down here and it's massive. Wealth inequality is almost the normal for the last 5,000 years. And almost everywhere you've got kings, queens, dukes and peasants and serfs down there. There have been economic situations that have been different. Dubai is a really strange situation. It's a desert. It's inhospitable to live in. It's the last place in the world most people would think or choose that they would want to be. And yet it's one of the most economically rich places in the world right now. They actually didn't start with oil wealth. They were able to borrow money to build Dubai, but the low tax environment has now attracted some of the world's most talented people to go and build technology companies there. And if you, I don't know. Have you been there recently?
- [88:40]
Gary Stevenson
I've been to Dubai, yeah, A few years growing up, I've been there.
- [88:42]
Daniel Priestley
So at the moment, it is the most thriving entrepreneurial community on earth outside of the us but probably even rivaling the US that there are investors, there's entrepreneurs, and the wealth is going through the roof. I've got two friends who are personal trainers, fitness trainers. One fitness trainer has decided to stop working more hours because he's hit 50 grand a year and he now gets taxed at 40%. So he's basically decided he's going to earn right up to 50,000 and then stop working. And then the other fitness trainer went to Dubai, launched an online fitness community and has just bought a $350,000 Ferrari. And one entrepreneur is super pumped and super excited about building a business because he's not overtaxed. The other entrepreneur has literally said, I'm not willing to do this because of how much I have to do.
- [89:29]
Gary Stevenson
Just want to be clear, I've always campaigned for lower taxes on working, on working people. Always. Always.
- [89:34]
Daniel Priestley
So, but here's the. But here's the thing, right? If I was asking you, you've just become one of the best selling authors in the country. If your publisher came to you and said, because you're in the top 1% of our authors, we're going to halve your royalties if you sign a second book with us. You wouldn't sign a second book with them. You go to another publisher who says, we'll pay you more royalties because you're so successful.
- [89:53]
Gary Stevenson
I would have written this book for free, Dan. I would have written this book for free. In fact, the first time I got offered a deal, I said, don't pay.
- [90:00]
Daniel Priestley
Me in advance, then give your royalties away.
- [90:02]
Gary Stevenson
Why?
- [90:03]
Daniel Priestley
Well, because if what I'm saying, fine.
- [90:05]
Gary Stevenson
I'll give my royalties away, I'll shut my YouTube channel down, I'll stop working.
- [90:09]
Daniel Priestley
I'm saying we respond to incentives, that if your publisher, if Penguin came to you and said, book number two, you get half royalties because you're in the top 1%. Would you sign with Penguin or would you go with someone else?
- [90:19]
Gary Stevenson
I walked away from a 2 million pound job a year to run a YouTube channel. Do you think I do the work that I do for money?
- [90:25]
Daniel Priestley
I'm not talking about that you do it for money. I'm just saying if you had the option to sign between two publishing contracts, and all things being equal, one's going to penalize you for being in the top 1% and the other one's going to reward you for being in the top 1%. Of course you would go with the normal, like if all things being equal, you want to write a second book. Anyway, it's the same for entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurs start companies, we can either start them in high tax economies or with a stroke of a pen start them in low tax.
- [90:52]
Gary Stevenson
I think the rich world is going to have to start rethinking the fact that it allows people to very, very wealthy people to own enormous amounts of their physical wealth, go live overseas and not pay tax. I think that has to be revisited for sure. Because what you're saying is I want the benefit of being able to sell to the US market and the UK market, but I don't want the obligation of having to pay US and UK taxes. And you are correct that at the moment the US and UK governments allow that. And I think that's phenomenal taxes.
- [91:17]
Daniel Priestley
You're on worldwide income.
- [91:18]
Gary Stevenson
Well, only a small amount, right. So I think that realistically, I think that the US and UK governments have to stop that. But the way I see it, the US and UK governments and increasingly a lot of global governments are kind of being brought up by the elites. And you know, we have Elon Musk is basically the President, right. And we had Rishi Sunak whose father in law was one of the richest men in the world. Like if you're Rishi Sunak, who for our American viewers was our Prime Minister until very recently. His father was one of the richest men in the world. He's got £700 million personal wealth. He's going to be making 30, £40 million passive income and you're getting paid 130 grand a year to be Prime Minister when you're making policy. Do you think maybe I'll ask my father in law at once?
- [91:56]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [91:57]
Gary Stevenson
You know, the fact is what you're seeing here is if you allow the rich, I'm never ever against entrepreneurship. I'm not against people getting rich. If you allow the rich to get richer and richer and richer, they squeeze the middle class and they squeeze the poor class out of things like housing, of things like space in cities, of things like energy and of things like owning a share in government and owning share in the media.
- [92:16]
Daniel Priestley
Do you acknowledge that countries that adopt a anti rich big government approach tend.
- [92:21]
Gary Stevenson
To collapse like this country in the 60s, the U.S. in the 60s?
- [92:26]
Daniel Priestley
Well, we needed a U.S. bailout, we needed an IMF bailout in 1976.
- [92:29]
Gary Stevenson
But the U.S. did the same thing. The U.S. had even higher taxes than us.
- [92:32]
Daniel Priestley
We basically like you take, you take all the countries that, where the government becomes big, they meddle with your life. They're involved in every decision. Right. Half the economy. I mean, here's one of the things.
- [92:42]
Gary Stevenson
This period is known as the golden age of capitalism. It's the period of time when this period, this period 50 years after the Second World War.
- [92:49]
Daniel Priestley
Oh, it's the golden age of middle class. To be middle class.
- [92:52]
Gary Stevenson
You don't care about the middle class.
- [92:54]
Daniel Priestley
No, of course I do. But the 70 years after the World War II.
- [92:58]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [92:59]
Daniel Priestley
Where the government sold off all of its houses to middle class people. So we got housing wealth. But you can only do that trick once. Right. So you can only sell off all the houses to everyone once, which is why all the baby boomers own them.
- [93:10]
Gary Stevenson
Well, the living standards collapsed after the houses were sold. There was a long period where the houses weren't sold between the Second World War and the eighties.
- [93:17]
Daniel Priestley
When do you pinpoint living standards collapsing?
- [93:19]
Gary Stevenson
Well, I think there's a few obviously big moments. I think 2008 is a big moment. I think Covid is a big moment. I think it's the 80s where you start to see the wealth distribution go. What matters is actually the distribution itself. So once you change the tax system, it takes a bit of time for the wealth distribution to change. But once you start, for me the big thing is the loss of wealth holding. I want ordinary families to be able to hold wealth. And once you lose that. I agree with you, you lose the middle class. And you will not find me a single country in the world now or the history of the world that has provided good, broad living standards without allowing ordinary families to own assets.
- [93:53]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, I agree. And take Singapore for example, where everyone's encouraged to own properties. They've got an amazing system in Singapore.
- [93:59]
Gary Stevenson
They've taken a massive government, by the.
- [94:01]
Daniel Priestley
Way, enormous government, 25% of GDP.
- [94:04]
Gary Stevenson
But they own all that. They own the houses, they have a wealth. They own all the houses.
- [94:08]
Daniel Priestley
They don't own all the houses. They have a sovereign wealth fund that circulates houses through.
- [94:12]
Gary Stevenson
They own houses, they've solved problems. Singapore owns the house they own. The Singapore government owns an enormous share of the houses.
- [94:17]
Daniel Priestley
The uk.
- [94:18]
Gary Stevenson
So do you think we should own.
- [94:19]
Daniel Priestley
The houses owned by pension funds? People they force, not force their citizens, but they direct their citizens into home ownership.
- [94:27]
Gary Stevenson
So you don't think the Singaporean government owns a large share of Housing.
- [94:29]
Daniel Priestley
I just know that the Singaporean government's only 25% of the economy, but they're.
- [94:33]
Gary Stevenson
A big share of the housing.
- [94:34]
Daniel Priestley
75% of the economy is.
- [94:35]
Gary Stevenson
I would like to say, by the way, just to be really clear, I've never ever once advocated for big government. Never a single time. Never taxes a bigger government. I want higher taxes on the wealth orders so we can tax wealth creators and working people less. I don't want a bigger government. I want our viewers to have more money. I want our viewers to have more money. And also I want to tax those super rich so that they stop squeezing ordinary families out of asset ownership.
- [94:58]
Daniel Priestley
It just, yeah, it seems like an obvious solution. It seems like, yeah, it seems good solution. It seems like, like, hey, who's got the money? Rich people.
- [95:08]
Gary Stevenson
Not the money, the assets.
- [95:09]
Daniel Priestley
Who's got the assets? Rich people. Then let's just take them off them and.
- [95:12]
Gary Stevenson
No, no, no, I don't want to. I don't want to redistribute. I am the only person on this table anti redistribution because the redistribution is happening in front of our eyes. The middle class is losing its assets. Government is losing its assets. Those assets are being accumulated by the rich. I want to stop the redistribution. Please, please. I am the most anti redistribution person in this game. We need to stop the redistribution of wealth away from ordinary British and American families.
- [95:38]
Daniel Priestley
So the difference is, for me it's very simple, which is I really truly believe that free markets and low governments and less taxes creates more wealth in the middle.
- [95:48]
Gary Stevenson
Dan, freedom for the heroin is death for fishes. If we have complete freedom, multi millionaires like you and me will get richer and richer and richer every year and we will squeeze out and we will eat the middle class though, if wealth.
- [96:00]
Daniel Priestley
Inequality could be solved but everyone does worse, is that a good solution?
- [96:04]
Gary Stevenson
Obviously not. The whole reason I do this, because I don't want ordinary people to collapse into poverty. This is about people being able to feed their kids.
- [96:10]
Daniel Priestley
So wealth inequality is not the problem. It's collapsing.
- [96:14]
Gary Stevenson
Quite contorted. Yeah. I mean, it's quite contorted. The problem is collapsing living standards. I am somebody who has made millions of pounds by understanding the simple fact that living standards are falling because of growing wealth inequality.
- [96:27]
Daniel Priestley
So living standards, if they were to increase. But they were super rich.
- [96:31]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah.
- [96:32]
Daniel Priestley
Is that a problem?
- [96:33]
Gary Stevenson
I think you do need to be worried about extremely wealthy elites. Yeah. I think what's interesting, you look at the founding of the United States. These guys. The founding of the United States conceptually is really based on These ideas of distribution of power. That's why you have the President and the House and the Senate and you have this independent judiciary. They're like, we cannot allow power to become concentrated because they came from a Europe which had extremely concentrated power and extremely wealthy elites and extremely broad poverty. So I think that allowing a small group of society to increasingly monopolize power and wealth over time is obviously something we should be worried about. But primarily the reason that I worry about wealth inequality is because I see and I bet on and I make money on the fact that it causes living standards to fall.
- [97:18]
Daniel Priestley
By the way, I actually really agree with you. And the founding fathers of the US they did, especially around the 1900s, they did want to break up monopolies. And breaking up monopolies was one of the big things that they did. Trust busting, where they broke up Standard Oil and all of those sorts of things. One thing I do really see happening at the moment is that we have a stupid, outdated definition of monopolies, where we use monopolies the same way they used it when they had the oil companies that owned all the oil. In the technology world, a monopoly is formed through an ecosystem. So Amazon, for example, owning AWS and Audible and this and this and this and Whole Foods, it creates a fortress that's almost impossible to compete with. And Google owning YouTube and Gmail and all of this, they create these fortresses through ecosystems. One of the things that I do think we need to look at is compulsory breakup of big tech once you hit a certain time, because it's very difficult. Because do you know billionaires have two big fears, right? Keep them up at night having nightmares. Number two is high taxes. Number one is that startup entrepreneur who disrupts their business and they want to kill that early. Steve Jobs at 24 years old disrupted IBM and and Jeff Bezos disrupted Walmart. So they are terrified of entrepreneurs in the middle. And they want to create government regulations to say, hey, you know what, let's cap entrepreneurs at 10 million. You can get to 10 million. It's okay for us. We're way past that point. But Gary's our guy because he's going to cap everyone.
- [98:53]
Gary Stevenson
I never said cap anyone at 10 million, by the way, because what do.
- [98:56]
Daniel Priestley
You think will happen? People stop. As soon as you have wealth taxes, people just give up.
- [99:00]
Gary Stevenson
They just don't want to be sending me our viewers. If they said if they knew they could build a 20, 30 million pound.
- [99:04]
Daniel Priestley
Company, it sounds ridiculous, but they knew.
- [99:05]
Gary Stevenson
They would have to pay 20 if you get, if you're if you're worth 30 million, 1% above, it's 200 grand a year. So if I said, if you, you can have a 30 million pound company, to traders, stop. Just bear in mind, right, you make 5% a year on your wealth, right? So if you've got a 300 million pound company, you're going to be making £15 million a year. And I'm turning to you and I'm going to say, you know, you've got to pay 200 grand a year on your 50 million pound revenue and they're going to say, you know what, I'm not going to start a business. I don't want to be worth 30 million quid. This is, you know, this is ridiculous. You know, nobody is going to say, oh my God, I don't want to be a multi, multi millionaire because in 20 years time I'll have to pay 1% taxes.
- [99:38]
Daniel Priestley
But most traders, most traders are earning what most people earn in a lifetime. Traders can earn in a year. Most traders don't stop.
- [99:46]
Gary Stevenson
Talk about that a lot in my.
- [99:47]
Daniel Priestley
Book, right, so most traders just keep going. Entrepreneurs are the same that they're motivated to keep going. But when you have wealth advisors and investors saying, do not build a company in the UK because they're anti wealth.
- [100:00]
Gary Stevenson
Listen, I'm not trying to make the UK anti wealth. I'm not trying to make the UK anti wealth. I think the UK and the US need to be looking at a situation where you cannot allow people who own enormous businesses that sell to your country to live in Dubai to live in the Cayman Islands and not pay tax. And I don't think that's a controversial position.
- [100:19]
Stephen Bartlett
I've got a question for both of you, which is if you are a young person and you're 18 years old now and that you're listening to this, but your objective really is an individualistic one. You want to get rich and you have a great future for you and your family, like all of us have been able to do. What would your advice be to them, Gary, at this moment in time, this.
- [100:36]
Gary Stevenson
Is such a hard question. I know Dan's angry at me for what I put in my video, how to Get Rich. Somebody came around to my house and asked me this the other day. Obviously I get asked it a lot because stupidly, I'm very public about the fact that I'm rich. What I did is not replicable. What I did is not replicable. It's not. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's not. People always Say, why don't you teach me to trade? Like, it's hard. It's hard trading and it's dangerous. And I think a lot of young men are getting sort of sold into trading and becoming gambling addicts. You know, work hard. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't even say, don't become an entrepreneur. I'd never, ever said these things. Work hard. You know, if you think that you have an opportunity in tech entrepreneurship, go for it. Understand it's risky. I think that sometimes this message, just become an entrepreneur and you'll make it is a bit dangerous because I think most people who try to become entrepreneurs fail. And I think it's super, super dangerous. The reality is, and you know, maybe Dan won't like this, maybe you won't like this. I think it is very, very difficult for a young man or a young woman from a poor family to become rich. And I think it's increasingly hard even to just get those basics of financial security. So listen, obviously reduce your spending if you can. Don't buy into this like Balenciaga bullshit. Stay away from that. But work hard, study hard, try to get a good job. But also understand we are shrinking the seats on the lifeboat. That's what we're doing. We used to allow 50% to be secure. Then it's 40, then it's 30%, then it's 20%. You know, you've got family in Nigeria. If a young person from like shantytown in Nigeria came to you and said, stephen, what could I do to get rich? You would have to say to him, realistically, listen, you are in a difficult situation here. You need to work really, really hard. But if you are able to make enough money to support a family, be proud of yourself.
- [102:18]
Stephen Bartlett
What I would actually say to them, so, yeah, I have got family in Nigeria. For people that don't know I'm by blood, half Nigerian, I would say to them that knowledge is really your life raft. So obviously there's a big tech boom happening in Nigeria which is liberating a lot of people from that situation. So I would try and tell them to get on the life raft that is like knowledge of this new revolution. So from Nigeria, you can learn to code. And then the great thing now is that we literally have. Actually, this is quite interesting. We're building a tech company in San Francisco called Flightcast. It's live. Everyone can go look@flightcast.com and the lead developer. Oh, and Guessradar, the lead developer of Guessradar is a Nigerian guy.
- [102:56]
Gary Stevenson
But how many of Those jobs in the Nigerian tech sector are going to kids that grew up in the shanty towns.
- [103:02]
Stephen Bartlett
I have no idea.
- [103:03]
Gary Stevenson
Because I worked in. People ask me, tell me how to do what you did. I worked in Canary Wharf. It's in East London. I could see the building from my house growing up. There was not a single other kid from East London the whole time I was there.
- [103:18]
Stephen Bartlett
Do you know, to Dan's point about this remote work revolution where, like work now has. You can work from anywhere. And in our company, Third Web San Francisco, some of the staff that we now have are in the Philippines because they just have, like great creatives there. It's obviously more cost effective. Isn't this a huge part of what's going on in our economy, this digitalization and this remotification of work?
- [103:40]
Gary Stevenson
It is, it is, it is. But I think for many people, you know, I'm sure you pay your workers in the Philippines very, very well. Most of these people, they used to have a half decent wage on office and now they're locked in their bedrooms, barely paying the bills.
- [103:59]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, in the Philippines.
- [104:01]
Stephen Bartlett
Not in the Philippines. The Philippine guys are balling out of control.
- [104:04]
Daniel Priestley
I'm saying the Philippines is booming at the moment.
- [104:06]
Gary Stevenson
So you think the average person in the Philippines is living a luxurious life?
- [104:09]
Daniel Priestley
Have you. If you. What's happening at the moment?
- [104:12]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think the average person in the Philippines is living a luxurious life?
- [104:15]
Daniel Priestley
There is this thing called remote foreign workers, and this is a huge boom and the economic.
- [104:22]
Gary Stevenson
So the kids should move to the Philippines then. It's great. You get a great quality of life in the Philippines. You know what, when I looked at the slums of Manila, they should just get jobs. I don't know why they're not getting their laptops out. The poverty in the Philippines is horrific. Listen, Philippines is a beautiful country, an amazing country. I love the Philippines. I've done a number of times.
- [104:37]
Daniel Priestley
It's flowing in there at a rate that's never been.
- [104:39]
Gary Stevenson
What is the life like for your average Filipino?
- [104:41]
Daniel Priestley
Well, would you agree, though, that their economy is just getting flooded with money at the moment? Like, money's flowing in there, money is.
- [104:47]
Gary Stevenson
Flowing in, but it is not giving a good quality of life for your average Filipino.
- [104:51]
Daniel Priestley
That's not true. Remote foreign workers.
- [104:53]
Gary Stevenson
Well, we can. Remote foreign workers, Filipino viewers, to tell us what's that.
- [104:56]
Daniel Priestley
Remote foreign workers can actually support their. Often support their.
- [105:00]
Gary Stevenson
I don't know what the average wage is in the Philippines.
- [105:02]
Stephen Bartlett
Just to bring it back to this point, though. So I wanted to know from Gary, he Said work hard. If you're a young guy listening to this now, I was reading this really interesting article yesterday from the. I think it was from major newspaper, talking about the Lost Boys. And it goes to show that I think it's one in seven young men that is at a working age now are out of work. So there's lots of talk around young men in particular and how they're struggling. You'd say work hard, Gary. You'd say work hard.
- [105:25]
Gary Stevenson
No, Balenciaga. But the big thing is. The big thing is recognize the situation that you're in. And I would encourage them to support my work and follow my channel, because the lifeboats are shrinking. And trust me, we're going to get our kids in the lifeboats, and we all know that, all right? And if those lifeboats are shrinking, if you don't. If you don't stop the ship from going down, it is not you and you and me who are going to go down. We'll be fine. If you don't fight the political fight, I guarantee you, people like Daniel will.
- [105:54]
Stephen Bartlett
So you're saying that they should also get involved in the political fight?
- [105:57]
Gary Stevenson
You have to. You have to. That's what our grandparents did.
- [105:59]
Stephen Bartlett
And if they. If they want to become millionaires like you and me and Dan, well, it.
- [106:03]
Gary Stevenson
Sounds like Dan's got better advice for that than I do.
- [106:05]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay, well, I'm gonna ask Dan as well, but I just wondering. I'm wondering how your advice ties into sort of like the young person who's trying to liberate themselves from where you came from or where I came from.
- [106:18]
Gary Stevenson
You know what? I don't think I'm the guy to say that, man. Because, you know, I had this unusual gift from a young age. I was very, very, very good at maths, and I just followed that. And, you know, my sister, she's a poet, and she wrote a really successful grime and musical about Dizzy Rascals first album. All right? She comes from, obviously the same family as me. Poor family. She works so hard. She works so, so hard. Two degrees. She can barely pay the rent. All right? So I don't want to turn around to our young kids and say, well, I've got this talent. Follow your talent. Because it doesn't work, Stephen. It doesn't work.
- [106:53]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [106:53]
Gary Stevenson
Wait. My sister does great work. But financially, for young people, following your passion, following your talent, unless you come from rich family, realistically, very, very rarely works. And I know it worked for the three of us at this table, but let's not pretend that Everyone experiences the same things that we experienced.
- [107:10]
Stephen Bartlett
What would you say to that, Diane, and what's your answer?
- [107:12]
Daniel Priestley
I think there's two economies going on at the moment. There's a dying economy, which is the industrial revolution economy, and that is all the office jobs and the factory jobs and all of that sort of stuff, which is very much being automated away and moved globally. And at the same time, there's this new bubbling up digital economy, which I'd call the entrepreneur economy or the digital economy. Both of these economies are kind of coexisting. One's going like that, one's going like that. And if you want to be economically successful, you need to stand next to the biggest piles of money that you can. Unfortunately, being a poet doesn't pay a lot of money, and we all know that that's not a surprise. If you came from a very rich family and you were a poet, you'd probably be one of the 60% who fel of a rich family as well. If you want to be economically successful, you need to say, what is the thing that's economically booming right now? Gary saw the finance industry at that particular time. But if we actually look at the finance industry now, it's in decline and trading is being replaced by AI robots. People who worked in your career are going to be replaced by IT systems that basically do similar jobs. It's going to be replaced. You know, these things happen. We're going through a massive technological change. But at the same time, it's never been easier to learn skills for free on YouTube. It's never been easier to join communities where you can get mentoring and get support. There are communities of angel investors who do invest in startups. It's never been cheaper or easier to start a company. There's never been more software and technology to scale and grow. You know, in just in a short space of time. I would say do what Gary's done. Gary publishes online. He's built a personal brand. He's attached it to a recurring revenue model he's got.
- [108:59]
Gary Stevenson
I also work for three for free for four years. So I'm not sure how replicable that.
- [109:03]
Daniel Priestley
Is, you know, so build a personal brand, attach it to a business model. That is, that is where money's flowing. These are. These are positive things you can do. We all have to play the cards we're dealt. You can always find someone who's done better with better cards or someone who's been dealt better cards, and you can always find someone who's been dealt worser cards, no matter who you are on the planet. There's someone better, there's someone worse. You have to play the cards that you're dealt. You cannot sit around waiting for the economic system of the world to be changed. You have to say, you know what? These are the cards. I was born at this particular time in this, these circumstances. These are my strengths, these are my weaknesses. I'm going to play the cards that I've dealt. Personal agency is what gets people to feel good about their life, to make progress. And as soon as you play the victim mindset, as soon as you say, oh, you know what the answer to all my prayers is, Gary's going to change the system, you're in serious trouble.
- [109:56]
Gary Stevenson
Could I just say one thing back on that? If we become a society of individuals who think only individually and never consider broader societal problems, we will become a society that becomes unable to fix societal problems. I'm somebody who has made millions of pounds betting on the collapse of society, the collapse of the middle class. I don't want to be giving stock tips on the Titanic. Okay, I understand. I understand that we live in individualized societies and it's not popular to say, hey, you need to protect your society. If you don't protect your society, your society is going to collapse. And, and the British public, the American public, have a choice to make it. What would that mean?
- [110:36]
Daniel Priestley
What do you want people to do?
- [110:38]
Gary Stevenson
I want them to get involved with. Watch my channel, subscribe to my channel, watch your content on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. Share it with your friends, share it with your mum. But then what? And then push for change. Push for change like our grandparents did. Push the politicians to tax working people less and tax extremely wealthy wealth holders more.
- [110:56]
Daniel Priestley
So vote for the Greens.
- [110:57]
Gary Stevenson
Vote for whoever gives you that. Whoever gives you your share of the pipe. Listen, this is not football, okay? I'm not here. Gary Stevenson, member of the Green Party. I'm here to protect the working class.
- [111:06]
Stephen Bartlett
So that's their sort of, that would be their social and sort of political energy would be to stand up and fight. But in their, in their personal lives, are you telling them to start businesses, take big risks, work really hard, go for it, because they can also.
- [111:19]
Gary Stevenson
You know, I would defer to you guys on that. You know, I'm not a businessman. I'm an economist. That's what I am. You know, I made my money by being an economist. I'm a very, very good economist. My predictions will be right. People can go and watch my predictions. At the beginning of COVID I predicted the entire Covid crisis. Exactly correctly, in May 2020. You know, this is, you know, I'm good at this. And listen, I'm never going to come here and say I'm a better businessman than you. And I don't. I'm pretty sure that I'm not. I'm a very, very, very good economist. This will happen.
- [111:46]
Stephen Bartlett
Is there something that I can do if I'm sat here listening at home? I understand everything you said. I believe everything you said. I believe that it's going to get worse for me. Do you think I should still take responsibility of my situation and fight to make my life richer, better, more?
- [112:01]
Gary Stevenson
100%? 100. 100%. Because you know, and I'm sure you know, if you're average British or American, if you don't do that, you're not going to be able to turn the heating on. You have to do it. You have to do it. And I've never once, you know, I think my opinions are often mischaracterized as being anti ambition. You've read my book. Do you think I'm anti ambition?
- [112:18]
Stephen Bartlett
No.
- [112:18]
Gary Stevenson
I work my tits off to make money and I want every single young person in this country to be able to make money if they want to, if that's what they want to work towards. But we've created a society where it's almost impossible for young. Listen, I've been there. I've been at lse, I've been at Oxford, I've been in the City, I've been in the media, I've been in politics. All of the guys at the top are a bunch of rich idiots. We are not allowing these smart kids from ordinary backgrounds to get into those spaces. Why do we pretend we're not doing that?
- [112:43]
Daniel Priestley
I disagree with that. You're talking about two types of elite spaces. Elite space of elite universities and you're talking about the elite space of derivatives training. There's the real economy where entrepreneurs do their work. Then there's the first derivative which is the banking system. And then there's the second derivative which is rates traders like yourself, right? These are places that normal people don't want to end up. Most normal people who grow up in normal households don't wake up one day and say, I want to be a rates trader on a double derivative of the economy, making bets. Most people want to start a business that employs people and they want to grow that business and be successful.
- [113:21]
Gary Stevenson
Do you think that starting a business is a realistic high success probability chance of ordinary poor people becoming rich?
- [113:30]
Daniel Priestley
I know that economies Thrive when entrepreneurs are active. And it's not just the entrepreneurs they.
- [113:36]
Gary Stevenson
Create is that our viewers can do. And most of them will end up rich.
- [113:39]
Daniel Priestley
You only need 1% to improve the whole economy.
- [113:42]
Stephen Bartlett
There's a really interesting stat that says globally around 65% of ultra high net worth individuals are self, self made. Approximately 19% primarily, primarily inherited their wealth and about 16% inherited wealth, but significantly grew it through their own Ventures. So 65% of the ultra high net worth individuals globally are self made. Does that not mean that if I want to become an ultra high net worth person, it's going to come down to.
- [114:06]
Gary Stevenson
Listen, we are just come off the back of the golden age of capitalism when ordinary people like my dad, you know, I grew up in Ilford, it's in East London. It's a very immigrant area. Most of my friends I grew up with with come from Pakistani, Indian immigrant backgrounds. They came over with nothing. They worked really hard, they made money, they had their own assets. We had a period where ordinary people could make money and could make wealth. So obviously we are now in a period where there are rich people who made money during that period. But it's over now.
- [114:31]
Daniel Priestley
I'm seeing ordinary people making money all the time.
- [114:33]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, so you're telling our viewers they're idiots. Why are they not making money?
- [114:36]
Daniel Priestley
I'm not telling anyone they're an idiot. I'm saying if it's that easy.
- [114:39]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, all right, fine. Go and buy Daniel book, read it and become a millionaire. Because Dan thinks it's easy to become a millionaire being an entrepreneur. But I suspect having not been an entrepreneur, that most of the people who've read your book are not millionaires.
- [114:51]
Daniel Priestley
Everything you've touched has turned to gold. You turned yourself to academia, you got an amazing qualification, you turned yourself to banking, you became 2 million a year. You turned yourself to being a writer, you become Sunday Times bestseller, You turn yourself to content creating, you get 800,000 followers and now you sit there after all of that evidence and say, oh no, it's all over, guys. I'm smart enough to do it, but you guys are not smart enough to do it.
- [115:14]
Gary Stevenson
If you think you can teach, you've got your book. If you think you can teach them.
- [115:18]
Daniel Priestley
So you say that you're smart enough, but they're not smart enough.
- [115:21]
Stephen Bartlett
I wonder if we do have a bit of an education problem at the heart of this. Cause I was thinking about your sister and I was like, right, if I was the CEO of Gary's sister, what would I do? There's Two things I do right now. The first is I go, where's. Where what. What marketplace is really valuing an ability to write and write in an impactful way. I go, right, she needs to start an Instagram page. Because I've seen what happened with Jay Shetty. This guy's pulling in tens of millions a year because he took nice words that were motivational, poetic, put them on there. And I go, also, YouTube needs to get to YouTube, because if she can talk like you, then she's gonna do exceptionally well on YouTube as well. But the old. There's not gonna be a great economy, necessarily, for someone who's doing poetry in many other places other than what I'm saying is the Internet. But in school, we don't te. There's no YouTube class for YouTube. And it's such a huge part of the economy. I mean, me and you have seen that there's been this decentralization of media.
- [116:14]
Daniel Priestley
Where the megaphone was growing at 20% a year.
- [116:17]
Stephen Bartlett
The megaphone was people watching.
- [116:19]
Gary Stevenson
Start a YouTube economy.
- [116:20]
Stephen Bartlett
But it's the Internet.
- [116:21]
Gary Stevenson
It's easy.
- [116:22]
Stephen Bartlett
I'm not saying it's easy.
- [116:23]
Gary Stevenson
It works for most people, Steven.
- [116:24]
Stephen Bartlett
For most people. No, it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
- [116:27]
Gary Stevenson
Why are we pretending it does?
- [116:28]
Stephen Bartlett
But what I would say is if in school, we taught young kids a couple of new things and we stopped teaching them about Pythagoras theorem, which, by the way, ChatGPT is going to do for you with your eyes closed, and we taught them about the new economy of the Internet, about the ability to start a shop. It's crazy that the school system was designed in such a way where they put me in exclusion unit because I was so preoccupied with doing business deals at school. And my headmaster came on national TV on what I lied to you and said, yeah, we unexpelled them eventually because he made the school so much money. But the system was punishing me for entrepreneurship, and it wasn't teaching me anything about the new economy, which is technology.
- [117:07]
Gary Stevenson
Steve, do you think it matters if the percentage of young people who are able to achieve financial freedom and have a family is shrinking?
- [117:14]
Stephen Bartlett
So do I think it matters if the percentage of young people that are able to. Are you saying attain wealth and have a family?
- [117:20]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, if I achieve financial freedom and have a family.
- [117:23]
Stephen Bartlett
I think that's a really big problem. Listen, I think that's a really big problem.
- [117:27]
Gary Stevenson
I know, listen. And I know you've got this podcast, and I know you inspire young people, and I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that you inspire young people to go out and work hard and try and achieve something. But I'm an economist, and what I see is the percentage of young people who make it shrinking. And I think if you combine those two things, you reach a really dangerous place, because we go and tell the young people it's there for you to start a business. And at the same time, the number of people who make it is 10%, 5%, 2%, 1%. And there will always be that one person who makes it. There will always be that. Stephen Bartlett in every country the world is making it through. You know what I'm saying? But the systematic issue matters, Stephen.
- [117:59]
Stephen Bartlett
Can we not change the education system? So that when I was 16 and they threw me in the exclusion unit, which made me. Which could so easily have made me think that I was a failure because my brothers who went. Jason went to LSE and became very much like you and now works in my company managing my investments, he, in that education system was rewarded. So I sat there as a kid thinking, rich and successful. My older brother Jason, because he can do maths. And I thought, I'm going to be a failure because I like this thing called entrepreneurship. And I have adhd, so I can't pay attention in lessons. What I'm saying is, if the education system was designed in such a way where people like me who were entrepreneurial, who were interested in the Internet and couldn't stop playing video games, were clapped for and said, oh, my God, double down on that. I think the net benefit, when you think about what the backbone of the economy is, which is entrepreneurs starting businesses, would be profound for this country here. Yeah, but that. But, but I think that I believe this needs to be such a radical overhaul of our education system if we want to stand a chance of capitalizing on what the economy is today.
- [119:00]
Gary Stevenson
Yeah, I think. I think you could probably change the education system in a lot of ways that could improve it, but you're kind of changing the education system on the Titanic. What my perspective is, I can tell you with a very, very high rate of certainty if you don't fix this problem of the wealth being sucked out of the middle class, 95, 98% of people will be in poverty in this country in 70 years.
- [119:19]
Stephen Bartlett
I agree with you. This is the thing. I agree that you can't have a group of people at the very top that own all the assets and all the money, or else, I mean, it's gonna come from somewhere and I remember the day that I printed off the Job Seekers Allowance form when I was stealing Chicago town pizzas 10 years ago in my room in Moss side in Manchester. I remember what it feels like to not have my parents speaking to me, to have all these CCJ letters and bailiff letters on my desk and really have no answer how to get out of this situation to the point that I was like, shoplifting. I'd call the Just Eat driver and then try and persuade him just to give me the food that was 10 years ago for me. So I've not forgotten those years of my life. So I understand what it is to be in that situation. And on an individual level, I need some answers because I'm not gonna wait for these people in fucking the Parliament to fix my life for me. So I need some individual answers. And then I do also care about the bigger picture. So I'm not like here as someone that just wants to accrue loads of wealth myself, of course, listen, let's be honest. There's not many human beings that wouldn't like more money. So I try and acknowledge that bias. But what I'm. The big issue I have is how. And from my personal experience as someone that now employs hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people here in London, up in Manchester, in our offices, there are a set of things that would make me leave this country if it became increasingly less friendly to entrepreneurs. I reckon if we come back here in five years time, I reckon I'll employ 500 more people in the UK. And actually, as you look around this room, you can see the age of them. These are young people. There are things you could do to make me not do that.
- [120:56]
Gary Stevenson
I mean, it's probably worth pointing out that we're not taxing wealth and you're leaving the country anyway.
- [121:00]
Stephen Bartlett
Stephen. No, I haven't left the country.
- [121:02]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, you're gonna stay.
- [121:03]
Stephen Bartlett
I'm a tax resident here. I pay my taxes here, and I have zero in tax. And changing that, I'm also on Dragons, you know, so we're investing a lot of money in UK businesses.
- [121:10]
Gary Stevenson
But listen, I want to raise. I want to tax only high levels of wealth. Only high levels of wealth. And listen, don't get me wrong, I understand very rich people will complain and very rich people will say, just like they did in Dickens, I'm going to throw my businesses, I'm going to throw my taxes, my. My businesses and my factories into the sea. Steven, your viewers are here. Listen, Stephen, your viewers are here. You are a very wealthy person. They are paying 20, 30, 40, 50%. You should be paying your fair share, Stephen. You should.
- [121:38]
Stephen Bartlett
I think that I should pay.
- [121:42]
Gary Stevenson
More.
- [121:42]
Stephen Bartlett
Tax, especially when I don't think my kids should get. Should benefit from my wealth. And maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I actually don't. I don't think I should be able to pass down my assets to my children.
- [121:54]
Daniel Priestley
You can't. It's 40% tax.
- [121:55]
Stephen Bartlett
I think it should be more.
- [121:56]
Daniel Priestley
It's 40, yeah.
- [121:57]
Gary Stevenson
I mean, let's not pretend rich people don't successfully pass their assets to their children.
- [122:00]
Stephen Bartlett
No, I'm just telling you now, I think I'd be robbing my children of something from the background that I came from. If my child gets fucking, if my child gets tens of millions, let's say even when I die. I don't think that should happen.
- [122:13]
Gary Stevenson
But I agree. People say, when I talk about my sister, people are like, why don't you just give your sister load of money? Listen, my sister works hard. She's a smart person. She works hard, she produces good work. I want to live in a society where people like my sister are able to support themselves with the work that they do. But we're destroying that society.
- [122:28]
Daniel Priestley
Who would pay her?
- [122:30]
Gary Stevenson
The customers, you know, you want her.
- [122:33]
Daniel Priestley
To start a business?
- [122:35]
Gary Stevenson
She is a business.
- [122:36]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, yeah.
- [122:36]
Gary Stevenson
And I want people like her to be, to be taxed less so that. What I want is ordinary working people to be taxed less so they have more money in their pocket. Listen, the reason we had the thriving art scene in the 60s is because we had a thriving middle class that could go and buy the new fashions and buy the new records and then that created this thriving art scene. Now we have a middle class which is struggling to pay the bills, so they can't, they can't buy stuff. They, you know, my sister makes theater shows. The only people who go to the theater are rich people now. But back in the day, you know, theater was something that was more accessible. You want, you want the arts? I've got a mate who's a fashion designer, right? Nowadays there's. All of the business is super fast, super cheap, super disposable fashion or unbelievably expensive high end, because that's the economy we've created. I want you go to Japan, which is a less unequal society. The restaurants are good quality restaurants for ordinary people because. Because a good capitalist society will produce things for the people with money.
- [123:27]
Stephen Bartlett
In the case of theatre, where have the theatre consumers moved to? Where are they getting their entertainment now?
- [123:34]
Gary Stevenson
Well, what you have is a very rich group of people who will still go to theatre and they will pay a lot, but then you have a large group of people who are relatively cash scarce and they will try to get their entertainment in cheaper ways, of course, you know what I mean?
- [123:45]
Stephen Bartlett
They're spending their time watching your YouTube channel.
- [123:47]
Gary Stevenson
Well, exactly, my YouTube channel. Which is free, by the way.
- [123:50]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, but you get paid from it. You get the YouTube.
- [123:52]
Gary Stevenson
It's only in the last couple of months that I've started to make any money because I don't do my own editing, so. And you know, I mean, you'll know in the first few years you're paying yourself to do it. You know what I mean? Like, I think people sometimes massively overestimate the amount of money.
- [124:05]
Daniel Priestley
This is entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs go through 2, 3, 4, 5 years worth of struggle to get to the point where they're successful. And it feels pretty horrific that you say, oh, finally when I make it, you take it. And then the advisors to entrepreneurs, just.
- [124:19]
Gary Stevenson
£10 million is quite a lot of money. So, you know, you can be worth £9 million and not be paying anything more.
- [124:25]
Daniel Priestley
But what if I just raise 1 million for investment into my company? But that then like I do, if I'm. If I'm raising money all the way along and my investors are saying, I'm sorry, I don't invest in the UK economy because it's wealth taxes and all that sort of stuff, it's anti wealth and then I just have to move my company overseas.
- [124:42]
Gary Stevenson
Well, I want to create a situation where the UK consumer is so strong that you have to invest in the.
- [124:47]
Daniel Priestley
Uk, you don't have to be here to sell to them.
- [124:50]
Stephen Bartlett
Quick one, I want to talk to you about our sponsor, Whoop, a business I'm also an investor in. And if you follow me on Instagram, you probably noticed that recently I've picked up running, which I'm very much enjoying. And it started out as a challenge, but it's now evolved into something I do almost daily. It is one of those things that's pushing me to be better every single day. But here's the thing. To me, progress isn't just about pushing harder, it's also about training in a smarter way, which is where my whoop comes in. Whoop doesn't just track my workouts, it tells me how ready my body is to take them on before I've even started the workout. A few years ago, we ran a study called Project PR and it found that runners who adjusted their training based on their Recovery scores improved their 5K times by an average of 2 minutes and 40 seconds while reducing injury risk by over 30%. And they did it while training less. So if you're looking for this type of guidance when it comes to your training, head over to join.whoop.com CEO and get a 30 day trial with zero commitment. That's join.whoop.com CEO. Let me know how you get on. So do we all agree on this premise though that Gary's saying, which is the very, the ultra rich, which we can classify as being worth more than you're saying.
- [126:00]
Gary Stevenson
We say 10 million is the line that we campaign for.
- [126:03]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay. We think that they should pay a greater share of the tax. And then if you agree with that premise, the question then becomes yes, but how? And what's the mechanic?
- [126:13]
Daniel Priestley
Well, they already do 1% pay 30%.
- [126:15]
Gary Stevenson
I want to be clear, that's the top 1% of taxpayers, which is not the top 1% of richest people, mind you. It's ridiculous.
- [126:22]
Daniel Priestley
I'm also not necessarily saying what's fair, I'm saying what's practically possible. Right. So like you could come up with the world's most fair on the back of a napkin. This is what's fair. But whether you can implement it is a very difficult thing. The problem is wealth is completely mobile now. It's really, you can live and work from anywhere.
- [126:40]
Gary Stevenson
The houses, Dan.
- [126:42]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, it's land is that mobile?
- [126:44]
Gary Stevenson
You can't rip the country out of the, out of the sea.
- [126:47]
Daniel Priestley
There's very few. I've never met any seriously wealthy people who own a lot of houses.
- [126:51]
Gary Stevenson
You honestly think that the entire housing stock of the UK is not valuable?
- [126:56]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, no, it is.
- [126:57]
Gary Stevenson
But somebody owns it.
- [126:58]
Daniel Priestley
78 is owned by baby boomers. They just own, they've, they've bought a House in 1992, they own the house.
- [127:03]
Gary Stevenson
Personally, I think that that house owner should, especially when you consider mortgages is relatively unequally distributed. That is by the way the most.
- [127:10]
Daniel Priestley
Young people have now had the commercial.
- [127:12]
Gary Stevenson
Property, the land, the natural owned by pension funds. So the viewers own it.
- [127:16]
Daniel Priestley
Do they own by if they own a pension fund? Most of those commercials.
- [127:20]
Gary Stevenson
And what is the distribution of pensions?
- [127:21]
Daniel Priestley
If you have a look at what.
- [127:22]
Gary Stevenson
Is the distribution of pensions, what percentage of pensions is owned by the top 1%?
- [127:26]
Daniel Priestley
I wouldn't know off the top of my head, but with pensions. But I know that obviously wealth concentrates at the top. But here's the one thing keep in mind. Wealthy group are not necessarily a static group. There was A study of the richest people in 1900 and most of those families are poor today or they've gone down in value today. If the richest people in 1900 had have just simply kept their wealth, there'd be 16,000 more billionaires. But they don't. In wealth management, in banks, they have this thing called succession planning. So succession planning is where they try and figure out how not to screw it up across generations. And they're, they're notoriously bad at it. It's very hard to keep wealth in generations down.
- [128:09]
Gary Stevenson
In the 20th century, we had two world wars and a holocaust that redistributed wealth. I would prefer not to have that again.
- [128:19]
Daniel Priestley
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I want an affluent middle class. I really.
- [128:24]
Gary Stevenson
So where's the wealth going to come from? You want to just.
- [128:25]
Daniel Priestley
You're going to create your own entrepreneurs?
- [128:27]
Gary Stevenson
Okay, we'll create it.
- [128:28]
Daniel Priestley
Entrepreneur economies that are friendly towards wealth creation and entrepreneurship.
- [128:32]
Gary Stevenson
When was the last time you had a government that wasn't, let's grow, let's grow, let's grow. It's not working for the people, Daniel.
- [128:39]
Daniel Priestley
The problem is, is that they need to step back. They need to let shrink. Let shrink, shrink.
- [128:44]
Gary Stevenson
Our viewers should keep a close eye on Donald Trump and Elon Musk because they're doing what you're asking.
- [128:48]
Daniel Priestley
It'll be interesting to see what happens. Right. It's too soon to tell.
- [128:51]
Stephen Bartlett
If you were trying to grow the UK economy, would you not take America's approach? Because they seem to be much more successful at growing their economy.
- [128:58]
Gary Stevenson
I think, I mean, of when we talk about slashing of the state, they're going to use these examples like, oh, there's this wasteful government building. Everybody wants to slash government waste. Of course I'm not going to fight against slashing government waste. I'm from the U.K. you know, I saw the austerity years. I've seen what's happened to local services. I've seen what's happened to things like the police, like education, you know, especially things like youth services. You slash the state, you fire a load of people. You know, what does the state. Okay, yeah. If you can get rid of state corruption. Yes, 100%. If you can get rid of. Of state waste, 100%. You know, this is how single moms feed their kids. Stephen, you want to stop that? No, I'm saying that slashing the state, I don't think it's going to work, to be honest. I think tariffs is not an uninteresting discussion, I think. Yeah. Of Course, tax avoidance is something you need to get rid of, really. I would like to take a step back, look at the country and say, what is the state of the country? What, what do people need? You know, we have a country here where the housing stock is falling apart and we're letting it fall apart because those houses are owned by ordinary people who don't have any money. If you want the country to work for ordinary people, you need ordinary people to have money. I'm always reminded of Mr. Beast. He goes to places in Africa and he spends 500 quid and he gives a kid eyesight who would have been blind for the rest of their life for 500 quid. Why are kids in Africa blind who could be given site for 500 quid because they don't have any money? This is what happens when you drain your middle class. This will end up like that, you know. You know, I've got a friend who went to India last week. He said there were people lying on the street outside with rotting limbs. You know, that is what happens when you, when you disempower, when you take the money away from the middle class. You've got to protect the middle class. If the middle class had money, then there would be unbelievable business opportunities for selling goods and services like your business to the middle class.
- [130:53]
Stephen Bartlett
So would you tax Daniel more?
- [130:55]
Gary Stevenson
I don't know if Daniel's worth more than £10 million. It sounds like he is. I mean, I think I want to make it clear, right, you people, you make 5% on your wealth, so if Daniel's worth 100 million, he's making 5 million pounds. We're only trying to tax you 1%. I think if you are worth 100 million, you're making 5 million pound passive income. You can afford to pay a million pound tax a year, you're going to still keep getting rich. The truth is, even if we were to tax these billionaires 1% a year, they would still squeeze the rest out. This is not about morality. This is just cold, hard economic analysis that I have made a lot of money betting on.
- [131:26]
Stephen Bartlett
So, closing arguments then, chaps. I'll start with you, Gary. Based on everything we've discussed today, I'm going to ask you to give me two perspectives, which is, if I'm a young individual in this country right now, what should I do to protect myself and my family and to feed my family? What kind of behaviors, what strategy should I do? Shop there. But also then from a government level, I know we have some politicians that listen because they message me what should politicians be doing to fix the issue that we're all clearly identifying, which is the collapse of the middle class, the collapse of sort of working class people and the increased wealth of the rich?
- [132:00]
Gary Stevenson
I think what I would like young people to understand is that this gets worse. This gets much, much worse. It will get much worse relatively quickly. Poverty will increase relatively quickly. It will become increasingly difficult, almost impossible to make any serious money. Prepare yourself for that. Prepare yourself when you consider your finances, when you consider your plans for having a family. This gets worse. And it's going to be really, really hard. It's going to be a big mental health problem for a lot of young people. So speak to people and understand that. My YouTube videos are there. Gary's Economics for people to understand what's happening after that, that you've got to do all the right things. Yeah. I mean, I don't disagree with you. You've got to work hard, you've got to study the right things. I think it's a great shame we have made subjects like the arts a thing which you're not allowed. If you come from poor background, you cannot work in art. I'm sorry, you can't pay the bills. You can't. So you have to go and study AI and computing and, you know, maybe social media. Although we have to be honest, social media doesn't pay for most people. You have to realize the reality of your situation. It's very, very, very, very bad. But that doesn't mean don't work. That doesn't mean you don't aspire. You work damn hard because you have to. But if you manage to make enough money to even support a family, you should be proud of yourself. That's the number one thing. But recognize this can be changed. This can be changed. Our grandparents, our great grandparents fought for our biggest share of the pie. And they got it. They got healthcare, they got education, they got housing, they got food. Our young people can have that as well. But they won't get it unless they fight for it. So I would encourage people to educate themselves, support my work, get involved politically, but also work hard, support your friends and family, try and make money, because you'll have to. If you don't play politics, I guarantee you the other side will play politics. And that means your kids and your grandkids live in poverty. So you have to do both. With regards to politicians, I've got mixed feelings about a lot of politicians. The truth is, I think a lot of politicians are very rich and ultimately they don't care. They're protected. A crisis of inequality looks fantastic from the top. And I think that's why the three of us can sit here and say things will be fine, because for us, they will be fine. And for our kids, they will be fine. But for our viewers kids, they won't be fine. The politicians are not going to try and save you. You. I'm going to try and make sure they do it, but I don't think they will listen. My plan is not to get concessions from politicians. My plan is to get 5 million followers on the Internet and bully the politicians so that they have to give us what we need. So I would support people to get behind me, get behind my campaign, but also understand what's happening, educate your friends and your family and just crucially to understand this is going to be a long fight. So. So be strong, keep your people around you, but be ready for what's to come.
- [134:53]
Stephen Bartlett
I see hints and some of the things you've said recently of you going into politics yourself at some point.
- [134:59]
Gary Stevenson
Stephen, I'm in politics, but I'm in politics. Listen, I do not want to be an mp. I do not want to be Chancellor. I do not want to be prime minister. If we get to a point where I feel that that is something that is achievable and it is the best way to fix this problem, I will be open to it. This is not Plan A. This is not plan. You know. Would you like to be prime minister? Probably not. Right? I'll be honest. I am quite uncomfortable with even the level of public profile that I have at the moment, which is, you know, it's much less than what you have, but it stresses me out. And it's weird. We spoke about it before. We were shooting. I don't want it. Can you imagine? I don't want to be prime Minister. I don't want to be an mp. But I'm serious about this work that I do. And if we reach a point that I think that is the best way to do it, I will consider it. But I would much rather be able to influence the MPs from the sidelines, to influence the politicians from the sidelines.
- [135:50]
Stephen Bartlett
And for that person you just gave advice to, who should they be voting for?
- [135:52]
Gary Stevenson
Well, we don't have an election for. Listen, politics is not football. Politics is not football, okay? This is not about. I'm Labor, I'm Conservative, I'm Republican, I'm Democrat. You're losing your houses here. You're losing your houses. Your kids will be in poverty and you're going to see both Trump and the Republicans and Keir Starmer and Labour, who are supposed to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum, they will both fail because they will not take action on growing wealth inequality. And I'll be right on that. You know, bring me back in a few years, I'll be right on that. And that shows you it's not about. I think this factionalism is unbelievably damaging to our societies, especially in the US where there's so much hatred behind it, where suddenly I'm on this side, you're on that side. Look, we're going to shake hands after this. I've got nothing wrong. We will, you know, there's no hatred. But if you allow yourself to be divided from half of your country and you allow, we're seeing it growing tensions, racial tensions, gender tensions. If you allow yourself to be divided, they will win. They will win. So you need to vote for whoever is going to protect your houses. And if you want to know who that is, come and check Gary's Economics before the election and I will tell you who it's going to be.
- [136:55]
Stephen Bartlett
Daniel, nice closing arguments, personal and social.
- [136:59]
Daniel Priestley
A few things. I read Gary's book and it's brilliant. And regardless of whether you actually like economics, it's a brilliant story. It's a really good. I read it in about two or three days and it'll, it'll eventually be a good movie as well. I agree with a lot of what Gary's saying. There is a collapse of the middle class and it probably will get worse. And the traditional middle class jobs that came out of the back of the industrial age, mature industrial revolution system, those are collapsing. And it's globalizing. We're seeing technology move opportunities all over the world and wealth inequality, it has a cause. Wealth inequality itself is a scoreboard. And there's a cause for what led up to wealth inequality. And the cause in my mind is technology. Technology is moving those opportunities around and it's changing things. We already have big governments, we have huge amounts of taxes. We're at record levels of taxes. Wealth has never been more mobile. It's not about what's fair. It's about what you can practically get away with. It's about what you can actually implement. And it's going to be very, very, as Gary said, it's going to be very, very, very hard to tax people who have digital businesses who can live and work from anywhere. I know that firsthand, that it's incredibly mobile. With that said, at a micro Level. Oh, sorry. At a macro level, big picture. We do know that, that there is a correlation between economic freedom, where the government gets out of your way, and low poverty rates. And we know that as soon as governments become big, high taxes, high regulations, it actually drops down a category. And we see poverty goes up from 10% to 30%, so it triples. So constricting economic freedom is never a good idea. If you look at the data at a micro level, there's never been a greater opportunity for anyone who's ambitious and entrepreneurial to go and start a company. It's cheaper than ever to start a company. You can do what Gary's done, which is publish content, build a following, figure out how to monetize it. You can create products and services and sell them to anywhere in the world. You're an example of someone who started with nothing and became a millionaire in your 20s and then again in your 30s with a completely different thing. He became a millionaire in his 20s and then again in his 30s, is a best selling author and a content creator. I did it in my 20s, my 30s and now my 40s, starting from scratch. So it's not normal that three guys our age could have done that over and over again. It's because we are living in a time where there is incredible opportunities, but you have to be tapped into those opportunities. You never heard about it at school, you never heard about it at university. You're going to have to learn the skills to get tapped into those opportunities. But there are definitely ways that you can succeed in the world that we're living in.
- [139:44]
Stephen Bartlett
And on that macro point, who should we be voting for? Because some of your thinking and policy suggestions through this conversation align more with Trump. Elon the American mission now, where they're welcoming millionaires, they're trying to create a really entrepreneurship friendly environment, they're doing the doge dismantling of sort of government waste.
- [140:00]
Daniel Priestley
I agree with Gary. It's not football. You don't have a team, you swing. You should be a swing voter. You should vote every single election. You should make them work hard for your vote.
- [140:10]
Stephen Bartlett
Is Trump gonna succeed though?
- [140:11]
Daniel Priestley
You should see, it's too soon to.
- [140:12]
Stephen Bartlett
Tell, but he made a prediction, so I'm inviting you to make a prediction. He said five years time we come back here, we're gonna see that Trump.
- [140:18]
Daniel Priestley
I think a lot of very wealthy people are gonna move to the usa. You're gonna get a lot of people from all over the world. He's playing to win and he wants rich people and entrepreneurs and Investors to come into the US and be based there. He's creating golden visas and open visas.
- [140:32]
Stephen Bartlett
And the success metric here is the middle class get richer and more affluent.
- [140:37]
Daniel Priestley
What I actually think will happen as a result of all of that, you will see rising L standards in the USA and you'll see a detriment to the places where those people leave. It's not a good thing to have the people who pay the majority of the taxes, which is 1% of people paying 30% of taxes. If those people leave, the bills get spread across everybody else.
- [140:58]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, we'll have to do a part two and we shall see. I want to thank you both for the work that you do because I'm a big fan of both of you. I watch Gary's videos all the time. Helps me to understand another perspective on what I'm typically hearing out on the Internet or that I hear on Twitter about what's going on in the world. And I think I really respect and admire people that can do what both of you have done today, which is to exchange and listen to ideas in the pursuit of answers. And that's why I'd highly recommend anybody, regardless of whether you agree with everything or some things or just a little bit, to go and follow gary's channel on YouTube called Gary's Economics because it's a great source of information from someone who has done it, understands the world from another perspective, but also someone who's providing a narrative which I actually think there's, as we kind of talked about before you started, there's a big gap in the market for. There are a lot of people like me and Dan out on the Internet that are talking about entrepreneurship and finance and how to make money. But there aren't enough people talking about wealth inequality from the perspective as Gary sees it and that are providing more sort of collectivist and sort of society wide solutions and answers and sort of explanations as to why that's ultimately happening. I do think, I do think. Cause I know you Dan, I hope I know myself. I do think that we, we all want the UK to survive and I think we all believe that the way that the UK survives isn't necessarily a couple of ultra rich people getting more money. It is sort of social mobility and it's allowing people that are at the very bottom to create opportunities and to succeed. We all agree upon that, even if we agree, disagree, sorry. On the causes and the solutions to that. I'd also highly recommend everybody to go check out the Trading Game because everybody's talking about this book And I think it's what, four weeks at the moment on the Sunday Times Bestseller list?
- [142:42]
Gary Stevenson
Four weeks. Number one.
- [142:42]
Stephen Bartlett
Number one. Four weeks. Number one. Which is an incredible achievement. But it speaks to what's in this book, the way that this story is told, but also the timeliness of this message. So I'd highly recommend everybody go check it out. I'm gonna put a link below so that everybody can go and do it. And if you just look at some of the testimonials for this book, it's profound. I hear people describe it as, like, unforgettable on one end and then sad on the other end because that's the nature of the reality it speaks to. And I highly recommend everybody go check out Daniel Priestley's Entrepreneur Revolution. But also your website has all of your resources and tools on it. So I'll link that on the screen. What's the danielpriestly.ctley.com thank you both for your generosity. Really, really appreciate it.
- [143:20]
Gary Stevenson
Thanks.
- [143:21]
Daniel Priestley
Thanks for bringing us together.
- [143:23]
Stephen Bartlett
No matter where I am in the world, it seems like everyone is drinking Matcha. And there's a good chance that that Matcha you're drinking is made by a company that I've invested more than seven figures in who are a sponsor of this podcast called Perfect Perfect Ted. Because they're the brand used globally by cafes like Blank Street Coffee and Joe and the Juice and many, many more. Not only can you get Perfect Ted Match in cafes, but you can now also make it at home much cheaper in seconds using our flavoured Matcha powders that I have here in front of me. Perfect Ted Matcha is ceremonial grade and sourced from Japan. It is smooth, it is naturally sweet, not like those bitter, grassy Matchas that I tried before for Perfect ted. And if you are one of those people that have told yourself you don't like Matcha, it's probably because you haven't tried our Perfect TED Matcha. And you can find Perfect TED Matcha in the UK and Tesco, Sainsbury's, Holland and Barra and in Waitrose or Albert Hein if you're in the Netherlands and on Amazon in the USA, or get the full range online@perfectted.com you can get 40% off your first order using code DIARY40. I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button. Wherever you're listening to this, I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make this show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps. When you hit that subscribe button, the show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see, and continue to doing this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, and wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time.