Gary Stevenson

speaker

5,834 appearances 16 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 26 Jul

Gary Stevenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 16 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

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Garys Economics · Why does The Economist hate wealth taxes? · 14 Jun 2026 podcast

is not going to go to their kids because their wealth is going to go up and by the time they die it's going to reach down towards close to zero again but for very wealthy people who are the only kinds of people that we're trying to tax with the wealth tax every single penny they own today they will leave to their kids because they'll be richer next year than this year they'll be richer the year after that then next year their wealth only ever goes up so everything they have now will definitely go to their kids

So what this means is from the perspective of very wealthy people who are the only people we are trying to target with the wealth tax, the wealth tax and the inheritance tax are the same thing.

So this is why I simply cannot understand.

I was really quite amazed to see the economists go with this, right?

So if you as the economist are saying, listen, wealth tax is terrible, you know, they're going to, what is it they say, they're going to deter innovation, they're going to take money from the...

Seizing the assets of economies most productive people.

And there's absolutely no logical consistency here.

And I was fascinated.

And when this came up in the two meetings that I had, I think they were both the back end of last year, I remember thinking maybe this is such a phenomenally stupid argument.

I assumed that these two people must have got it from each other.

And now to see the economist

magazines say it it's it's honestly this is one of the most interesting things i've seen because i think it really reveals what is going on in the heads of i guess sort of polite society in in when they oppose

wealth taxes because if you oppose wealth taxes and you support inheritance taxes every single argument that you make against wealth taxes also applies to inheritance taxes and also in many cases income taxes so again there's not a lot of real clear arguments in this week's economist against wealth taxes but the one which they really go with the one the only one which they really develop even though it's you know two two full pages on this

that it deters innovation so let's dig into this idea right which is that a wealth tax of 2% on wealth above 10 million pounds is going to deter innovation imagine you're in this situation okay they're saying that if we tax very wealthy people at just 2% on their wealth of above 10 million pounds so you don't pay anything unless you are worth more than 10 million pounds

Some, you know, young bright spark is going to be like, you know, they've just come out of university and they're thinking, you know what, I've got this amazing idea.

And I think if I put this into a business plan, then I might become worth more than 10 million pounds.

You won't be paying even 1% unless you're worth more than 20 million pounds.

So maybe you're thinking, oh my God, like,

I've got this great idea and it's going to make me worth 20 million pounds.

You know, one of the, you know, in the richest, you know, 0.1% more than that of society, I'm going to live a life incredible luxury.

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