Gary Stevenson is an economist and former trader who’s one of the UK’s leading proponents for wealth taxes. In his latest video via Gary’s Economics, he’s taken apart the “childish” arguments against the UK implementing a wealth tax. He also gives reason to be optimistic about the future.
Gary’s Economics: growing inequality
In the blurb for “Welcome to Gary’s Economics”, he describes himself as follows:
I’m Gary Stevenson. I made millions of pounds working in The City, betting inequality was going to destroy our economy.
On this channel I’m going to explain what is really happening in the economy – what this means for you, and what you can do about it.
Key to his message is that more and more money is held in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and this growing inequality is destabilising the country.
Groups like the Equality Trust have done excellent work highlighting what this inequality looks like, highlighting:
The UK has very high inequality of income compared to other developed countries; the 9th most unequal incomes of 38 OECD countries (OECD, 2022).
The UK’s wealth inequality is much more severe than income inequality, with the top fifth taking 36% of the country’s income and 63% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom fifth have only 8% of the income and only 0.5% of the wealth according to the Office for National Statistics.
The group has also shown that the problem of inequality was getting better for a time until the wealthy managed to regain the upper hand (not that the rich have ever been anything other than on top):
“idiotically simplistic discussions”
Gary’s latest video on Gary’s Economics is titled “How to Build a Wealth Tax“, and it begins with him arguing:
Correct implementation on tax policy is a job of experts and government and and civil service. It is not the job of fucking YouTubers.
For those who come to his channel looking for answers, the opening might confuse them. The video does clarify the point, however, as Gary explains that establishing the finer details of a wealth tax require teams of smart people working on the problem:
Listen, I would be more than happy, more than fucking happy to be involved in making sure this tax policy is designed well, obviously. But the way that you do that is you get the tax experts, you talk to me, you talk to the other guys, you build a team of proper good tax experts. You think about the question of how do we deal with people who leave the country? Can we still tax them on the UK assets like, like we did to Abramovich, like China does? You look at how these issues were dealt with in the past. You look at how wealth inequality was reduced significantly in the 20th century.
You have sensible discussions, but I’m constantly faced with these like idiotically simplistic discussions which are totally bad faith, which is like, “Oh, okay. You’ve recognised that the ship’s going to sink. Well, why don’t you fucking fix the hole your fucking self then, you fucking idiot?” It’s unbelievably childish and it’s unbelievably chaotic. Like, listen, we’re supposed to be adult, grownup, mature countries here.
Gary isn’t the only one working in this space, of course, with groups like Tax Justice UK pushing for:
a new wealth tax: a 2% levy on individuals who own assets worth more than £10 million – it would affect 0.04% of the UK population and would raise £24 billion a year. We’re also campaigning to apply national insurance to investment income, raising up to £10.2 billion a year.
He’s right, though, that there’s only so much independent campaigners and pressure groups can achieve. To genuinely tax wealth, it will require serious people and serious consideration. It may also depend on us getting money out of politics, with the Electoral Reform Society highlighting:
Scandal after scandal reveals an ever-growing arms race when it comes to party funding, with voters often coming second to big donors and spending rules sidestepped. Left to themselves the big parties have failed to find a solution.
A fifth of all major political donations in the two decades between 2001 and 2021 came from just 10 men.
Our politicians urgently need to clean up the way parties raise and spend money.
Good democracy always has a price tag. An open, clean and fair model of funding the parties would give taxpayers far better value for money. It would ensure our politicians don’t have to dance to the tune of trusts, union bosses or City interests.
All the parties have been tainted by party funding. It’s time for action.
British taxes on British assets
One of the examples Gary gives on Gary’s Economics is that of Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and former owner of Chelsea football club. The UK government sanctioned Abramovich following Russia’s invasion, with the “£2.5bn in proceeds” from his sale of Chelsea currently frozen “in a UK bank account”, according to the BBC. In January 2025, a joint investigation from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the BBC, and the Guardian unveiled:
Roman Abramovich may owe as much as a billion pounds in UK tax and potential penalties on profits made through a vast offshore hedge fund operation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal after an analysis of leaked documents.
If HMRC found wrongdoing and levied the maximum penalties available, this would surpass former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s £653m record tax settlement last year.
Between the late 1990s and early 2022, the billionaire – who is now sanctioned in the UK and EU – held as much as $6bn in a global network of hundreds of hedge funds. The sums totalled nearly half his estimated fortune.
These generated huge returns, which were then used to bankroll other parts of his business empire – including his financing of Chelsea Football Club.
The relevance of Abramovich is that:
In simple terms, Abramovich’s companies were registered offshore but were apparently being run from the UK. That would mean they should have been paying UK taxes.
Gary uses the Abramovich example to counter the argument that rich people will just flee the country if we try to tax them:
The truth is, and I’ve always said this, I’ve never tried to hide this, actually raising taxes on the rich is going to be really, really hard for a variety of reasons, right? One of the biggest reasons is obviously they control a lot of the media narrative.
They can sell lot of scare stories. “If you tax us, we’ll leave.” Or they can do a lot of sort of personally attacking of me as an individual. But the truth is there are things they can do and you need to deal with those things. Like the truth is they can leave, right? And I’ve always said, and I constantly believe, you know, look at the Abramovich situation, which shows like here’s a rich man who tried to leave. And we just said, “Okay, well you can leave, but if you’re going to own British assets, we can tax British assets.”
And that’s always been my comeback to that. And that is true, but you need make sure that you have your legal systems in place.
All together
Another interesting point Gary makes is that:
And people sometimes criticise me like, “Oh, that form of wealth tax is not good. We need another form of wealth tax.” I’m here for that. Let’s have those discussions, let’s build a tax policy, you know?
It’s a good attitude to have, as the more people we have arguing for taxes on the wealthy the better. An example of someone with good faith criticism of Gary’s slogan “tax wealth not work” is Richard Murphy who argues that there are plenty of millionaires who work (as opposed to just siphoning money from their assets), and we need to be taxing those people too:
This sort of discussion is good as it expands the case for reducing inequality, and the more people we have making the case the better.
Gary’s Economics: progress
While it’s always enjoyable to see Gary’s Economics take down “idiotically simplistic discussions which are totally bad faith”, the video also provides a welcome dose of optimism. As he notes:
the reason I’m here and I’ve finally done a video on implementation is because we’re winning the debate
If anything, the fact that the arguments against a wealth tax are becoming dumber and dumber is a sign that the arguments for implementing one are winning. The key now is for everyone to keep shouting about it until the case for ending inequality becomes undeniable.
Featured image via Gary’s Economics YouTube Channel
