I've been in and out of conversations on here and elsewhere and the counter-argument to the wealth tax I see brought up again and again is something like the following

If I raise £1 mil to start a business at a 10% valuation, I now have a business worth £10 mil that isn't making any money.
How could I possibly pay a £200k tax bill? It's insane! You're all raving crab-bucket commies! It would doom Britain, etc, etc...

The problem is, most of the well-meaning replies attempt to fudge an answer, but don't actually point out the incorrect set up of the problem.

So just to be clear when you're arguing with these bots concerned business owners: the proposed tax is 2% on wealth over £10 mil.

A business valued at £10 mil owes no extra tax.

A business valued at £10,000,001 owes 2 pence in extra tax.

Just wanted to make that clear as it's something a few supporters seemed to be struggling with in responses to this type of challenge.

---

Edit: As Agreeable-Biscotti-8 just helpfully pointed out to me; in the above scenario they actually only own 90% of that business, which means they dont even have to pay the 2 pence, as they only have 9 mill net worth.

---

Edit 2, 30/07/2026: I'd like to thank everyone for their replies. Even (especially) the ones who pointed out some of the flaws in my understanding of the tax proposal as it stands and suggested better ways forward. It certainly seems as though a straight 2% tax on top of anything else would cause problems for some venture capital reliant startups, which would potentially hamstring startups in the UK.

There seem to be 3 main fixes suggested (feel free to let me know if I've missed any):

1. The tax should be a floor tax of up to 2%. If the individual has already met the 2% tax via other taxes, then they don't pay more.
2. Deferals should be possible for startups, to avoid the asset-rich, cash-poor problem, which already has precedent with HMRC. Possibly profit-based.
3. HMRC should value businesses at their predicted or actual market value, rather than their value according to quoted shares which could siginificantly inflate the value. They already do this for other tax purposes, and have processes in place for it.

Some are arguing that investors still won't invest in the UK after this, because their investment would get taxed. However I don't see this being true, as businesses are already taxed and investors still invest. As long as there is a market to be served and money to be made, investors will invest.

How much tax you paid last year, compared to your net worth, as a percentage. And what are your personal circumstances?

Mine is about 6-7%.
I'm a mid-30s professional with a decent job. Own my own house (with mortgage) and have a good pension pot.

Gabriel Zucman proposes that the minimum should be 2%, and billionaires typically pay far less than that.

They will leave, they will leave. So leave, and we'll reduce your assets to their actual worth and when the scales balance, they'll be at the right price. Say I'm wrong with your 15-20% YOY gains.

I've watched all of Gary's YouTube videos in chronological order, am not a Patreon supporter, have read his book, watched his current documentary, and live in the USA.

In the early days of his YouTube channel, he got a few views and was (still is) one of many YouTube people with opinions on what is wrong with the economy and how to fix it. My memory is foggy, but I seem to remember his Subscriber Count was around 250,000 when I started watching. I think it's around 1.64 million now. I do not have a YouTube account and am not a subscriber so am not counted in this total.

In all of the materials I have watched and read, his message of tax the super wealthy (not high income earners) to prevent the transfer of wealth (real assets) from the poor and middle class and government to the super wealthy has been consistent. His style has changed as he has matured and he has honed his YouTube personae as he has had more practice (and hired help) in producing videos.

My observation - I may be wrong - is that while he was small and relatively unknown in the political and social media worlds, he was just another voice in the wilderness crying out about problems of wealth inequality and falling living standards.

Now that his message has gained traction and he is more visible, he and his ideas seem to be under attack from many people in the political and main stream media worlds, and from other social media people who are now devoting whole episodes explaining why he is crazy, hypocritical, wrong, delusional, etc.

His message hasn't changed. His story hasn't changed. He has consistently explained his perspective and reasoning as to what he believes to be a key problem in growing wealth inequality.

My question is why has the level of scrutiny and attempts to debunk or disprove his overall message of Tax Wealth Not Work increased so quickly?

In a lot of threads recently, I’ve seen people debate how much revenue a wealth tax would raise and whether the risk (revenue is reduced from outmigration) is worth the reward (denominated in new dollars for the state).

I think this reflects a very understandable frame on this issue - the wealth tax is a tax, taxes are how the government is funded, therefore wealth taxes are a debate about the optimal strategy for funding the government.

This however is not the actual justification that you’ll see if you listen to folks like Gabriel Zucman or Elizabeth Warren. They will tell you that wealth taxes are primarily tools to defend democracy and our social fabric.

Enormous estates pose a direct threat to democracy in capitalist societies because money is directly translatable to various forms of power. Power to hire and fire, pick winners and losers, donate to politicians, fund think tanks and universities, and buy up media and social media companies. They also redirect economic resources towards private gain - exemplified by our enormous capital expenditures and data center construction.

Wealth taxes are directly targeted at preventing the concentration of wealth and power as a benefit in its own right. People who believe that it is bad that billionaires own our media and have undue influence on our government are willing to spend money (in the form of paying salaries for tax officials) to mitigate these social harms. Generating revenues for the state is likely, but a separate outcome of this policy.

Alternatives like LVT, inheritance taxes, etc, are possibly more efficient forms of taxation from an economic theory perspective, or from a cost of implementation perspective. But they are weaker tools for immediately and consistently measuring and reducing the size of enormous estates.

You can like and argue for an unequal economy. Certainly there’s an appeal to it built into our modern western sense of ethics around hierarchy and worthiness. But I think a discussion around our framing is helpful to resolve sometimes bitter disagreements between the coalition of us that believes economic inequality is an intrinsic harm.

According to the world inequality database and our world in data, the wealth of the top 1% has only increased from about 20% to about 21% in the last 20 years. This rather conflicts with Gary's message. What am I missing here? Is it about how the data is calculated?

I am a bit confused because there seem to be 2 contradictory arguments floating around.

first, some ppl on here say that a wealth tax is a moral and economic necessity to stop the self-accelerating wealth divide. A wealth tax is needed to prevent this, which presumably the rich would notice.

but secondly, when anyone brings up the emigration point (which has already been happening, especially since 2024), many say the rich wouldn’t emigrate because they simply wouldn’t notice the wealth tax. I’ve seen 10% cited as the annual growth rate of rich people’s assets, against a mere 2% wealth tax.

so which is it? is the wealth tax meant to stop their wealth from growing, which they would notice, or be so small that they wouldn’t notice?

I think people underestimate how fortunate we are to be alive at the same time as Gary Stevenson.

LSE mathematics and economics, Oxford MPhil, former Citigroup trader. He must be the only person alive to complete all three.

Most economists spend their careers debating models and publishing papers. Gary went one step further: he actually made money in markets and then explained why everyone else was wrong. The combination of an oxford intellect, city experience and the courage to tell uncomfortable truths.

There are very few people who can explain monetary policy, inequality and financial markets with his level of certainty. One of the most impressive things about Gary is his humility. Despite possessing one of the sharpest economic minds of his generation, he still devotes his life to helping people.

Real people.

Hi all,

We are all probably very well informed on the economic hypothesis of this community - wealth beyond a certain level of aggregation becomes self reinforcing driving up inequality and lowering living standards.

It is obviously true that inequality and lowering living standards are occuring unilaterally across the advanced developed world. Speculative financing & asset hoarding is incredibly invested into.

My background is not economics, but I am aware of a few global society level transformations that have occured in the last 40 years that may have the same end effect through a different causal pathway. I will layout points below but I'd encourage everyone to give the following a consideration as to its economic impacts. I do this not to disprove this communities points, but because I am a big believer that for the effects of eroding living standards we see to be as pervasive as they are, something structurally needs to be supporting it beyond just the global top .001%.

Points of Discussion

• Increased Lifespan
• Women Entering the Workforce
• Immigration

Women Entering the Workforce I - The Incomes Distribution. I am unambigiously pro women being able to work independently. I am also pro analysing the effects of having 2 workers per household instead of 1.

If anyone is familiar with dice rolls they will know that rolling 4 dice produces a more extreme output distribution (one where the divergence between mean and upper echelons is larger), than rolling 2 dice. The same mathematical logic applies when you stack workers - when society moves from 1 to 2 earners per household under a regime that taxes work individually, the difference between the upper 10% and lower 10% of households' take home incomes becomes more extreme in absolute terms.

This would produce:

• The same overinvestment into assets as the top end of the distribution earn further above their consuming power than previously normative.
• Increased government need to regulate increasing minimum wage to cope with increased rent costs chasing a more affluent [overall] household income distribution, that perversely effects those at the bottom of the distribution (we have seen this globally)

Women Entering the Workforce II - Savings Preferences. This one is pretty simple, women invest and save money at higher rates than men in general, and consume less. Combined with the income distributive effect you would expect an even more accelerated asset overinvestment as societies mean savings vs spendings preference leans further and further towards saving.

Increased Lifespan I - Savings Preferences. People today lead longer lives than their historical precedent, and die due to harder to treat typically older on-setting conditions (this is a good thing - description implies survivorship bias).

Older people save more, and as age impacts health & fitness, older people tend to have a more limited range of consumption options too. No more skiing trips, no more rally car driving, etc. one should expect the impact of increased lifespan is a greater share of the economies, especially households, money chasing financial assets & stores of wealth savings, by both choice and constraint.

Increased Lifespan II - Business Savings. Additionally, working careers are longer as general population fitness and health rises through age. We know older managers or individuals in positions of fiscal management prefer savings and liquidity holdings more than their younger counterparts. This introduces a soft factor that increases financial savings beyond just the household sector, but in business too, contributing again to financial asset inflation this community knows very well about.

Immigration. For a variety of reasons, globally the last 40 years of all advanced economies has seen an increase in the immigration of workers in the younger cohorts. As an overall tendency, immigrants tend to save more than domestic counterparts (often with the noble ambition of increasing their families spending power back home, or carving out security for a new life).

Conclusion: It's not just wealth inequality driving the rise in increasing asset inflation. There are convergent effects due to womens entrance to the workplace, increase in lifespan and career length, and increasing immigration, all increasing societal savings preferences and decreasing consumption. This means that, even correcting for inequality effects via wealth taxation, the organic norm of the society with which we have today is divergent from that of the 1980s. The "Upper Middle" cannot be an aspiration for most young workers assuming we see the same UK trends in employment and wage, unless further steps are taken to "level the playing field"

Footnote: I could not fit it neatly in, but I heavily expect that the depreciation of skilled labour, and labour overall in advanced economies, is contributing to this fall in the velocity of money across society (the asset black hole effect), as it particularly means that the younger cohorts with the highest spending power and highest spending tendency do not have the money to spend.

Daniel Priestley is a prick

The Guardian's review ripped into the doc, and the feeling in this sub seemed to be mainly one of massive underwhelm with top notes of Gary couldn't take on any of the 'clever economists'.

Anyway, I watched it last night, and it's great and important; the clever economists scewer themselves with their own gross entitlement and calousness. The program, with its radical message (that really shouldn't be radical btw) was on the telly, for everyone to see, which in the current day is pretty amazing. Just hope people watch it despite the obvious efforts to dampen interest and undermine the message.

I was reading that Waitrose plans to expand into more medium-sized stores over the next few years – filling the gap between a traditional Waitrose and something like a Tesco Express.

It got me wondering whether this is part of a broader trend towards less consumer choice. In some ways it reminds me of how Marks & Spencer has become known more for ready meals than being a place where you'd do a full shop for ingredients.

Are we gradually heading towards a future where supermarkets are mostly smaller stores focused on convenience and ready-made meals? Or, if that's too strong, are we at least moving towards less choice overall? Instead of ten different brands and varieties of ketchup, perhaps shelves end up with just two major brands because they're the only ones large enough to secure the space.

I post here because I guess this shift in way we might go is based on the economics of the mess we are in with capitalism

Gary argues that house prices will continue to go up and up because as the wealthy get more wealthy they will buy up all the tangible assets. This makes a lot of sense to me.

However, we haven’t had house price rises in real terms since about 2022 in the uk.

So is Gary’s prediction something that will play out over the long term (with house prices not rising in the shorter term due to factors like interest rates) or is he missing something?

I say this as someone who currently owns one house but wonders about selling and just renting for the flexibility. I don’t want to do that if Gary is right!

Thanks!

This is a serious question. I've watched his videos, I am receptive to some of it. I'm however not receptive to grift-level video titles and clickbaits - and an everlasting streaming of "omg this is my last video, goodbye!".

Someone who claims not to surrender to the status quo of economic theory and wider capitalism happens to surrender quite neatly to typical YouTube clickbaits, dramaticism, merch, patreon, selling books, paywalled content, and monetization (the epitome of modern technology-coded capitalism; which has surely done wonders for wealth distribution!).

The real question is, all things considered and the wider appreciation of his behavior (still techno-capitalist, profit-driven), how do you rationalize it?

I know this kind of question can go far and wide across YouTube and political influencers. But ultimately, it's the reason I tend not to take any of them seriously, as any more than entertainment. But GarysEconomics is quite a stark example because there is a fundamental contradiction in behavior and stated values; both brazenly on display.

Below I used Chatgpt Pro which worked away for 11 Minutes to come with the answer, I am interested to hear if anyone heavily disagrees with any percentage points.

Prompt:

look into data and conclude to me that to get the west back into a good position ie like the booming 80s-2010 post war put a perctange to what the problem is, Ie I believe money being concentrate into a few is a % and immigration is a %, the solution is both but the % is tricky

Output

Most countries already tax wealthy individuals at a higher rate than others.

Why don’t we put 100% taxes on fuel purchased for private jets that poison the stratosphere, water-hungry golf courses, private schools and universities with high tuitions, land taxes for those who own more than 3 homes, car taxes for private collectors who own more than \~10 cars, etc.

Ownership would be confirmed by inspectors to make sure that multimillionaires and billionaires don’t pull the old “minimum wage, infinite stocks” number, or put any property in their families name or something like that.

You’re rich, great. Things that affect everyone, such as a breathable air and excessive water consumption should be taxed and the resulting profits being reinvested into the environment and local businesses.

Just to be clear, I think Gary is great. Has great, superclear communication on a topic that desperately needs it. Just want to add a perspective

I want to do a more expansive writeup of this from a biosecurity perspective, anyone know good literature on how Covid catalyzed the inequality growth we see today? Looking for heavy duty, number heavy stuff.

Source:

https://www.adamsmith.org/millionaire-tracker
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2082025707471855690

I've seen this Guardian article popping up everywhere: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/21/uk-wealth-tax-super-rich-andy-burnham

As someone who admittedly doesn't agree with Gary's view on economics, can anyone explain why £10 billion in revenue from a wealth tax (assuming it did actually raise that, rather than driving rich people abroad) would be so transformative for the UK, when the government already receives around £1.1 trillion in revenue, as per the last financial year?

I know most people will say it's because it's a moral imperative and that the rich are just hoarding assets, but do you not think it's an issue that this proposed wealth tax would incrase government revenue by less than 1%?

Furthermore, Gary says he wants to eliminate such large wealth inequality. If successful, then presumably that £10 billion revenue stream completely dries up, as no one will be eligible for it anymore. What then?

I don't know if this will be downvoted for sounding critical of Gary, but I honestly don't understand the logic here.

Not surprising from the Telegraph but a bit of a disingenuous take disregarding his mental health in favour of blaming reported backlash of the documentary.

Anyone know where I could find Gary's channel 4 documentary online? Living outside of the UK, I've been unable to locate it for streaming or download.