Gabriel Zucman

All taxes included, roughly 40, 50% of their income in VAT, in payroll taxes, in property taxes, income tax, all included, 40, 50%.

And then the billionaires, they pay like 20, 25% of their income, only half as much as the rest of the population.

We didn't know that five years ago.

Now that's established fact.

So that's the first kind of...

And the book is really about that.

It's about first, you know, telling people about this new international research effort and what we've learned from that.

And then it comes in addition, to answer your question, to kind of the gigantic increase in wealth inequality and especially in the wealth of the super rich, including in the UK.

Let me just mention the numbers for the UK because I don't think that people necessarily have that well in mind.

If you look at the Sunday Times Rich List, it exists since 1989.

In 1989, the top 0.01% of the wealth distribution, so that's roughly the 200 wealthiest families, they owned in wealth the equivalent of 5% of the UK's GDP.

Meaning if they spent all their wealth

They could buy, they could have bought the equivalent of 5% of all the goods and services that are produced in a given year in the entire country.

Recently, they just released their latest

numbers, their latest ranking, and now that same group of the population owns the equivalent of 25% of GDP in wealth, meaning you have 200 families.

If they spent all their wealth, they could buy a quarter of everything that's produced in a given year in this country.

Well, when you look at those numbers, you know, it's pretty difficult to claim that it's not rising.

But then, you know, people sometimes argue, no, inequality is not increasing a lot because they look at other parts of the population.

If you look at the top 10% as a whole.

But here we're talking about the super rich.