Gary Stevenson

And I think there is a...

There's actually like a uniqueness about the UK here, which I think is quite interesting, which is,

You know, the UK is generally considered to be sort of a more like American style economy within the context of Europe, where we're more comfortable with high levels of inequality.

But if you look historically, you know, the UK was the first country to bring in the progressive income tax.

And Gabriel Zucman spoke about that last week.

But, you know, whatever you say about the UK values, the fact is Western governments at the moment across the world, because they're in this context of rapidly growing inequality,

They are faced when they come in, this is true in the UK and in every other country with four options.

Either you figure out how to tax the rich seriously, you build that institutional capacity for taxing the rich, you raise taxes on high earning workers, you shut down the welfare state,

or you borrow money and go into government debt.

And I think it is really clear if you look at the last, you know, not just the last 5, 10, 20 years that borrowing money and going into debt is just by far the politically easiest of those options.

It's not easy to tax the rich because they're incredibly powerful and they like fund like the newspapers and the politicians.

Hiring workers are already quite highly taxed and they're very resistant to paying higher tax, especially in the context of the rich not paying tax.

Shutting down the welfare state is like obviously bad and unpopular for like obvious reasons, which I probably don't need to go into.

So because of that, governments have repeatedly just chosen that fourth option of just borrow, go into debt, borrow, go into debt, borrow, go into debt.

And the UK, because it has the highest borrowing costs of any major Western nation, is basically starting to hit that wall where financial markets will not lend it more money.

And now it is

the first and every other country will hit this at some point it is the first country that has basically been forced to choose one of those three options you whoever is the new prime minister in the uk you must and i you not just must you will just like islama do one of these three things

You will either work with me to build institutional capacity work with Zucman to build institutional capacity to tax the rich, or raise taxes on high earning workers, or continue to dismantle the welfare state.

Those are your only three options.

And I think because borrowing has gone off of the table for the UK, we have the chance to be world leaders on this.