Gary Stevenson

The second thing is I think you need to stop associating high asset prices with a strong economy.

This idea has been in the public consciousness for a long time, but I think it should be by now incredibly clear from the last 20 years

that weak economies can, and in fact very often do, create incredibly expensive assets.

And I think in particular, we need to be able to start recognising a particular form of economic crisis, which I think is becoming the most common and normal form of economic crisis, which is an economic crisis which is primarily being driven by an increase in inequality.

And when you have this increase in inequality, you see this combination of things, which is weakening living standards, increasing asset prices, increasing inequality.

You need to start recognising that these increasing asset prices are a symptom of the economic weakening.

because you have this situation at the moment where you see Donald Trump says it explicitly, he says, oh, you know, but look, the stock market is doing well.

I think you need to recognise that high house prices, high asset prices, high stock prices, high gold prices are a direct consequence of the kind of extreme inequality that is driving you and your family and ordinary families like yours into poverty.

Expensive assets are a consequence

of your falling living standards the third thing that i want to say which i think is actually really worth sitting and thinking about and i think is really really interesting which if you look at crises like 2008 if you look at crises like covid and the iran war is maybe like slightly different if an economic crisis can be resolved

by governments running a massive deficit and giving that deficit to the rich and using that money to protect the living standards of poor and ordinary people, then that crisis could only ever have been a crisis of distribution.

I think this is a really, really important thing to understand, right?

If the government is able to stop your living standards from being hit by borrowing from the rich people and getting the assets back from the rich people, then that means the assets themselves have never disappeared.

If production had really fallen in these situations and productive capacity had really fallen, then we wouldn't have been able to protect your living standards by borrowing from the rich.

All borrowing from the rich ever does is change the distribution.

so if your living standards can be protected by governments managing the distribution then the crisis could only ever have been a crisis of distribution and I think once you start to recognise that problems can be resolved by governments agreeing to go into debt to the rich then you should also be able to recognise that these living standard problems were being imposed by the rich

The government goes to the rich and says, listen, don't crush living standards.

We will agree to go into debt to you.

And the rich says, okay, we won't crush living standards.

And living standards don't get crushed.