Confessions of a millionaire: Should the super-rich pay more tax? | Stories of Our Times
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- Опубліковано 6 бер 2024
- Tax burdens are at the highest in living memory, yet public services are falling apart. That's why the rich should pay more tax, says our guest; economist and millionaire Gary Stevenson, a working-class kid who went from being expelled at school to Citibank’s most successful trader. But would a wealth tax work?
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I'd highly recommend his book. It's fantastic
He makes a good point . The world economy has become a game of monopoly . Why am I paying tax on food, electricity, clothes, petrol to go to work? And these millionaires live on 17 million after tax
Because if you are rich you have mobility and can put your money in places that greedy socialists cant get their hands on. You as a normal employee don't have that luxury.
What to do? There isnt anything you can do about this. If you start taking the Rich's money they WILL leave (or put it in places governments cant get it). Thing about it is is that the Rich aren't just people, they also include corporations and businesses. Whatever rules you apply to some rich guy, you also apply to business in general (because both set up the same way). You might think its reasonable to start taxing some rich billionaire BUT what happens when those rules apply to some company, who employs lots of people?
Oh wait - they start to cut staff.
Or they put up prices.
Or perhaps they just go out of business entirely - or move somewhere else.
Try and implement high taxes and see what happens.
It is never ever good.
If youre tired of paying lots of taxes on everything, I understand that. Why arent you asking what government is doing with our money and how it is being spent?
Gary is easily one of the most important economists out there. It's about time we had a proper listen to him.
Most of them are spoofers, grifters or live in a bubble. Gary isn't one of those.
@@SK-yb7bx He has literally nothing other to say then "tax the rich?"
Something which has been proven to not work, ever.
And you think he isnt a "spoofer?" My God, you're hilarious.
Imagine calling someone who has nothing else to his name than "tax the rich" as "one of the most important economists out there'.
Breathtaking levels of stupidity.
@@keithcommins well, a undergrad from LSE, a masters from Oxford, millions in profits generated as Citibank’s most profitable trader, and a proven track record of being right because he wouldn’t be rich if he weren’t right. Apart from that, yes, tax the rich.
Is this the bit where you say we can’t tax the rich? Someone too busy redecorating their porch to care? 😢
@@WilliamAhlert Quick question Billy - are you aware of the "argument from authority fallacy" when debating? Give it a spin in your favourite search engine of choice, if not.
Because you have just done that. I couldn't care less who many millions someone has made, what letters they may have after their name.
That doesnt make their arguments correct. You know what makes their arguments correct? The actual arguments themselves.
And you have given me ZERO reasons here (apart from your desperate attempt at an argument from authority that someone is automatically correct because they worked for such and such) that yours or his are indeed "correct".
Oh, and some ad hom about "porches" also.
Thats the best you can do.
Nevermind Billy, Im sure it made sense in your head, at the time.
Pity about the execution though.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies is hardly a neutral body to ask about a wealth tax. It's essentially a corporate neoliberal thinktank, the type of dark thinktank that has led to mass inequality.
How pathetic saying it is "administratively difficult" to value assets.
It's a lot easier than keeing inventories and preparing monthly business and tax accounts, and it should be done for proper accounts anyway.
What is the disadvantage of people taking their wealth overseas and being taxed on it? - Taking money out that isn't producing anything anyway? It will put localised assets back into circulation, at realistic prices and get money and wealth circulating again.
if it is raising "very little money", fix the reason for that - increase the tax or prevent evasion. Tax audits can be paid out of the takings.
How do you know its "not circulating?" Are you one of these socialists that think The Rich sit on their money Scrooge McDuck style in their mansions?
You are clueless.
There's no good reason for tax on capital gains and dividends to be less than income tax
Yes if you want to encourage long term investing which is good for market stability. That is why capital gains taxes are progressive. The longer you keep the investment the less you pay once you sell. Perhaps there is argument to extend the time frames. But there is reason behind it.
@@hdaviator9181 : But the low capital gains taxes are both for investing in active assets which the economy needs, and for investing passively in growing the inequality, which we don't need more of.
Not all capital gains are equal.
The reason is pretty simple: it is better for the economy when more money is invested into economy - which helps EVERYONE. My preference would be higher inheritance tax on very large estates £10m+
@@hdaviator9181 Long term investing in housing and dividends is literally non productive and net negative productivity compared to if the working class or govt had it (the real economy) unless the money goes to improvements in the business or property, which is getting rarer and rarer as a proportion
25:50 by that logic, VAT and fuel duty are double taxation, but hey, the poor are hurt most by those double taxes so let's ignore it :)
There's loads of double and triple taxes on the poor, why do poor people pay inheritance tax at all!?
@andy_ppp Poor and very rich people, don't pay inheritance tax.
@@user-hu1yi8ox9z I’m saying having a family home (anywhere in the UK) doesn’t make you rich, it’s just that asset prices are so extremely inflated we have lost perspective on everything.
@@andy_ppp Exactly, so it's the middle class that pays it. Poor people don't own any assets, and the very rich have clever ways of avoiding it.
But would a wealth tax work?
I just don't understand this at all.
Erm, even if it's actually proven to not work, which I strongly doubt, can't we just try it??
Future tenths, once its in place, same as any other tax, politicians can endlessly tinker with it depending which way the wind is blowing.
@22:06 - This is not new thinking. A whole thirty seconds later 1% on wealth over £10m would raise £11,900,000,000.00 per year 🤔. Sorry, but surely this is worth at least trying isn't it? Seems like a total no brainer to me.
Thanks Gary. Much appreciated 👍
Net asset based wealth taxes are used in France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, it’s nothing radical, we are just brainwashed in this country that it’s not possible
No we can’t “try it”. Because ultimately it’s not your money, it’s not the governments, it’s theirs. How about you perhaps hold government account in how they spend our money? Government takes plenty of money from us, more than enough.
@@keithcomminsHey Keith, welcome! Glad you not only found the channel, but also found one of my old comments and decided to offer a rebuttal.
So you are one of ~20,000 mentioned in the clip I take it? I'm happy for you. Unfortunately I'm not. Never will be. Conversely I'm one of the slightly larger ~70,000,000 that's had enough of seeing so many things cut or scaled back. So unfortunately for you I'm happy to "try it" vs watching this slow motion train wreck carry on any more.
Hopefully I don't stand alone.
@@matbowden9156 several countries have net asset based wealth taxes, FR,NL,ES,BE,PT. I hear they are difficult to administrate and prone to loop holes but I lived in nl 13 years and tax returns were easy to do so seemed ok. There is also a professor at Sheffield university Richard Murphy who produced a report with 90 billion of wealth targeted tax increase. I’m definitely in the “let’s give it s try camp”
@@matbowden9156 so you think the answer to cut backs is to shake down the Rich for more money? Ok - what happens when you run of their money (which WHICH happen?) Pray tell - who do you tax then? Like all leftists - you never bother to think any of your ideas through. Final question - seeing as you are so sick of “cut backs”, how much did the British Government waste, oops sorry “spend” on that bug that was going around 2020-2022? Spoiler - it was quite a lot. If you’re so concerned with “cutbacks”, how about you start there rather than trying to shake down the rich for more money (which btw ALWAYS comes with consequences?)
Net asset based wealth taxes are used in France, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, this is not a radical concept, it’s just not discussed in UK but the political / elite / media don’t want us to discuss it. Eg in Spain, if you have 10.6m in assets, you will pay 180k euro tax for having that. I lived in Netherlands for 13 years and did it every year with my tax return, it’s perfectly normal, I don’t accept it’s too difficult to administer. Good discussion.
So you think its just that the government take close to 50% of someone's income?
How much is enough for you greedy socialists?
1:10 Multimillionaire Rishi Sunak paid an overall tax rate of only 23%! The system is designed to tax workers not the wealthy who get most of their income from living off their assets.
I think taxing wealth at source is the important part of this as all of the large assets are brokered by middle men and have ownership registered somewhere. It could potentially work by having any large asset such as a building or business physically in the UK needing to pay a 1% wealth tax by it's owner But UK citizens get a 10 million allowance. So something like VAT, you have a skyscraper in canary warf owned by HSBC, it owes 1% of the wealth tax on it, then it's ownership by shareholders allows a deduction like VAT for UK shareholders who mostly would pay no tax on their shares except big shareholders. This would incentivise people to be a citizen where their assets are to utilize this allowance.
straight up at the beginning, "we are all paying a lot of tax at the moment" - not ALL of us ... that's the point. the very rich can easily escape their tax burden...
23:00 They can move, but they can't move most of their assets with them, ie, property
Correct. Let them move. They’re bad citizens. They won’t. They just don’t want to be as tied to any one place as the typical working class person is by their job. They want to receive all the benefits of citizenship without necessarily living in the country full-time. And if they choose to go anyway? Good riddance. Anyone who makes such threats is NOT A GOOD CITIZEN. Show them the door. And keep the assets, or hit them with a massive exit visa fee based on the value of the wealth, or (the weakest of the punishments for this deplorable anti-social anti-civic behavior … and the one proposed here in the video it would seem) deny them the use of any tax-free wealth exemption threshold or any write-offs tax breaks or benefits of citizenship that apply ONLY to full time residents.
Personally I’m more in favor of the more aggressive options since we’ve indulged the neoliberal capitalist oligarchic class for over four decades now and look what it’s gotten us in ALL THE WORLDS DEMOCRACIES! They are all facing neo-fascist reactionary conservative backlash which is the sure sign of a capitalist system failing a democratic nation. And this has become a global issue because the oligarchy have become a free-moving global elite whose main base of power may be the USA, but it has spread now to polute the citizenship and democracies of every non-socialist open trading society and country around the world, for creating and enforcing huge wealth inequality based social hierarchies has always been the modus operandi of the invading capitalists before, but the method has now seeped back up the pipes into the original colonizers themselves and their healthy and prosperous and politically sleeping middles classes are now being radicalized by the massive historically unprecedented wealth inequality that has poisoned the societies of the democracies back home now. The “fascist gambit” is the oligarchy’s final attempt to use their ownership of media to create a culture war at home rather than risk the socialist economic class war that would surely result in the downfall and the righteous and economically just (and to be honest far more productive and effective) redistribution of the oligarchy’s decades of hoarded wealth.
Don’t engage in the culture war people! It’s just a means of turning neighbor against neighbor, worker against worker, friend against friend, father against son, sister against brother, citizen against citizen. All in a selfish manipulated effort of the super rich to hold onto their wealth and their place at the top of some sick, corrupt hierarchy.
Class war is what the rich engage in against the rest of us; they have been using their control of the economy and the politicians of BOTH MAJOR PARTIES (wherever you live there’s usually only two real choices) to engage in a brutal oppressive class war against the citizenry for their own relentless buildup of wealth. They don’t care about culture at all. They use culture to create divides among the working citizenry. They care only about wealth and power. We working class citizens would do far better to adopt the same strategy and stop fighting each other adopting the terms of the political puppet show they put on in front of us to distract us from the truth behind the scenes; the enactment of laws that protects the relentless buildup of wealth by the top 1% and the payoff of the people that make up the rest of the top 5% to not question the process and help them achieve it.
The working class must develop the same class consciousness and solidarity the rich do and adopt the same class patriotism and strategies to win back control of our economy and political system to build a healthy middle class again. The state of being rich should never be a goal. It should be a rare privilege that occurs but occasionally and the wealth great ideas generate is put back to good use quickly before it becomes a cancerous tumor building up under the control of only one or a handful of people.
A keen interest in achievement for bettering the lives of your community and a willingness to share your wealth when it comes, and a development class consciousness and solidarity among the regular working citizens is the only way to return the country to greatness. Not by following the lead of the selfish cynical greedy rich.
Tax the wealth of the oligarchy. Let bad faith uncivil people leave and leave the wealth behind they generated off the efforts of the working class citizens if they think they’d prefer to live elsewhere. Then go live with these other people and see if they like your selfish exploitation better. Just don’t think you can take the wealth created in one place with you to another.
Tax wealth above ten million incrementally. Increase taxable threshold limit on earnings to allow economic growth in the right sectors.
If we really want to feel sorry for people who can't generate 1% income off a multi-million asset, an option would be to tax wealth above 1 home plus $5 million. Fixes the castle problem, which can be dealt with by existing taxes.
Personally I'd prefer to give relief to low asset people who can't afford tax, to stop shutting them out from building some income and wealth.
High bracket taxpayers by definition have pricing power to increase retail prices paid by everyone, bottom-up. Who really pays?
How do you tax it though. People can't sell assets all at the same time, because there would be no one to buy it .
@@user-hu1yi8ox9z If they've got over $10m of assets and they can't make 1% income off them then they can afford to sell something.
Not a realistic argument.
Of course there needs to be a wealth tax in the UK, but too many vested interests will block it and the msm don't want to talk about it.
It doesn’t make sense to say it’s too difficult when the future of our societies is at stake.. vested interests must be driving the public narrative and government policy; it’s really sad.
It's the biggest con of all time that it has been accepted as the norm to tax income a lot and wealth/assets minimally. Lower rate of long term capital gains tax isn't even telling the full story - if you really know what you are doing you take out an ultra low interest loan (quite available if you have the assets) to fund lifestyle against appreciating assets and pay zero tax.
Can we not as a first step just make capital gains work on a higher set of tapers?
Lets equalise vs passive income before we start taking peoples stuff. Even very rich people.
And lets leave actual pensions alone. No need to tax people twice if youve taxed them properly once.
well, they were not taxed properly, if the taxes were to low.
@@rabenfedersonnenhut yes, that's my point - tax properly in the first place and pensions won't even be a question. They *are* a question cos we're not taxing properly in the first place, so we should pick the least unfair of our options.
I just don't think it's fair to come along with yet another wrecking ball to our old age, we're all going to get there. By definition it's not like we'll be able to go back to work to plug a gap we thought we'd planned for, cos we'll be *old*.
This is about preserving generational fairness, and ensuring our noses are not forced to the grindstone till we drop, I don't care on iota if pension money appears to be there for the taking that's something only a young person (and I'm still under 50 so I'm not *that* old) could convince themselves of.
It's bad enough the govt keeps extending everyone's working life without then finally getting there and having them yank a load of your pension. That's definitely not fair and two wrongs don't make a right. Also I remember Gordon brown doing the pensions raid in the 90s, and truss smashing pension funds to bits a couple of years back, plus the govt, as I say, keeps forcing us to work longer - when I was a lad it was retire at 65 and I thought *that* was too late, its 68 for me now, and likely they will soon bump up my cohort to 70. So they can tax my remaining work pension when I die, since it's likely I'll only get a couple of years to enjoy it anyway.
Nb I'm talking about actual pensions here. Things sold as pensions. Not passive income/ dividends from/sale of non pension investments.
System change! Thats all!
You are forgetting all the money Sunak has offshore which will be be a lot.
so does someone pay 1% on their total assets every year ? or would they just pay the incremental gain ?
so year 1 £10m in assets = £100,000 to pay - If year 2 the assets are now £12m ( do they pay 1% of £2m which is the gain ?? ) Or 1% of £12m = £120,000 to pay ??
👏👏👏
What about an asset tax.
read the a book good read,
"super-rich" as a demographic category did not exist until Reagan-Thatcher which was the explosion of neoliberalism touted by the likes of Hayek, von Mises, Friedman (can't forget Miltie!) and not last but certainly least, Ayn Rand. We have allowed 50 years of exorbitant wealth accumulation at the same time that we've denigrated workers and made it so work does not pay. Humanity has never given up on the concept of slavery. Now, it's just camouflaged by economic sophistry and the sort of empty-headed cant beloved of Truss and Badenoch. At least Sunak is a practitioner of the rip-off that the likes of those other two idiots promote. Absolutely love Gary, and have just finished his book. It is excellent and it's going to be first a movie that's going to rip the scab off our fake neoliberal economics, and secondly a movement that is - hopefully - going to restore some semblance of economic justice to society and end this pernicious erosion of the self-worth of anyone who doesn't happen to be raking in millions per year. It's getting close to Eat The Rich time...
1% on wealth above £10M would raise £11.9B per year and would only effect 20,000 people...JUST DO IT NOW.
11.9 can be used to boost investment, something the uk heavily lacks atm just reeks of austerity
A lot of people would hide gold and art in their houses.
You mean like the church!? 😮
We should start from the pint where we ALL PAY WEALTH TAX
So at the very top we have people with a global wealth above £10m and 200,000 in the £4Bn - £300m range so if they paid 20% of their total wealth for starters.
Below £1M of global wealth you pay less and less.
If your wealth is your pay cheque each month wirh zero savings and you get £2,000 a month you pay nothing. Instead of 30% ish as now.
ISA, Pension, SIPP are all tax free.
Didn't we just print money during covid? We didn't borrow it on markets.
That money flowed through the fingers of people who needed it to spend on essentials to the wealthiest people who own the assets and debts (e.g mortgages). Hence the biggest ever increase in wealth for those in the super rich bracket during COVID. Additionally, the government debt (exacerbated by printing money) is also owned by the richest tier in society.
this programme at some point actually tries to make you feel bad for people who own a £10 million castle
the whole debate is very unsophisticated, at some point the old nonsense about 'double taxation' is posited - which is pointless rhetoric since literally everyone is subject to multiple forms of taxation such as through VAT purchases
In the U.S., New York, Illinois, California and a dozen other states have high taxes. Money is being moved out of those states as if it were coming out of a fire hose. The overall tax base is deteriorating rapidly. With each tax increase more money moves and less tax revenue is collected.
yeah, seize it then. those laws need to be EVERYWHERE. this is not about creating tax havens.
That happens because the states all set different tax rates, trying to steal wealth and investment from other states. All state taxes should be the same, then this would solve this problem. Otherwise it has just become a race to the bottom. There will always be another state trying to under cut another. It just like countries that offer tax havens or very low tax rates, to deliberately try and draw money away from other countries. That to is a race to the bottom.
FACT CHECK: capital gains tax on property is a capital loss tax as it does not allow for inflation. I have no big issue with taxing real capital gains but paying tax on real terms losses is wrong in principle. There are other examples of pernicious "saint taxes" like employers national insurance (a tax on job creation) or insurance premium tax (penalising people for doing the right thing) or VAT on property improvements but not on new builds.
So it’s impractical to administer a wealth tax but it’s perfectly manageable to administer and monitor aggressively welfare benefits paid to the poorest and must vulnerable people in society. Got it.
Didn't Kier Starmer also pay a surprisingly low % of tax?
some random woman got half the run time to sow doubts on wealth tax ... talking from Switzerland ? On an interview of Gary ? Classic establishment mouthpieces
Increasing Inheritance Tax rates on very large estates of £10m+ would be easier to administer than wealth tax - and fairer
The reason why this country is not free, Money and the Money men, That old story of work hard and it will pay, wasting life on a life with no meaning other than money, growth and expand.
What happened to family values, quality of life..........Its a Disaster !!!
I am sad when I think how it has destroyed the true value of existence for everyone on this planet.
In 1998 Venezuela was the richest country in South America. The economy was growing, people had jobs, and their standard of living was rising. Then in 1999 Hugo Chavez seized power, insisted that the rich had too much money, and began confiscating their assets in the name of fairer wealth distribution. Today 95% of the population is living in abject poverty, and millions are literally starving to death.
conveniently leaving out the massive oil collapse in the country, and the sanctions placed on it by the USA. Nobody reasonable is advocating for Hugo Chavez policies anyway in the UK. More red scare nonsense
The situation there and the situation in the UK are two different extremes of the same scale.
That's exactly what the people of Venezuela said in 1998 - we're completely different from the rest of South America. It could never happen here.
We're heading in that direction already. If we continue as we are now, the growth of poverty will accelerate.
@@REP2016RTM Yeah because other oil producing nations haven't had to deal with a collapse in oil prices, ever.
Oh and "muh sanctions", uh huh, yeah bud - totally nothing to do with the government fixing the price of food, seizing farms and supermarkets, Im sure that had absolutely nothing to with Venezuelas economic collapse!
All down to the US and their nasty "sanctions", never their policies.
Isnt it hilarious how socialists always have a convenient scapegoat for the fact their ideas have never worked once, ever, in the history of humanity?
Wealth tax has been abandoned everywhere bar a few remaining countries. Stop reheating old ideas
Yeah, abandoned because the rich lobbied to get it removed. That needs to be reversed. Broad shoulders should bear heavier weights, period.
Just do it!If it doesnt work so what?Case closed!For what all this useless talking?
I think the emphasis on billionaire taxes misses the point. I want billionaires to buy more yachts and fewer politicians. It’s the outsize political influence the rich gain from funding “charitable” NGOs that needs tackling, not their bling lifestyle. All billionaire funded NGOs should initially be banned; each should then have to apply for a specific licence to operate in the UK, and only be permitted if approved by the Home Secretary. Any Member of Parliament receiving any funding from any of these NGOs should be made to come to the Commons wearing a football top featuring the logos of their funders. All new Acts of Parliament should be vetted by anti-plagiarism software, to make sure they haven’t copy-pasted text directly from any documents created by any of these NGOs.
We should tax the super-rich up to the Laffer optimum, but no further. We should break up their business monopolies. But this will be harder to do if we’re dependent on the tax revenue we get from their monopolies.
If we leave the rich alone, will they leave us alone?
You literally haven't understood a word Gary said 😅😅😅😅
super-rich should pay less.