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 · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 16 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.
Appearances
So motivated reasoning is when your approach to a problem is not to try to figure out the truth of the problem but to create an argument
that rationalises the answer you want to give.
So you have a motivation, which is basically, I don't want to pay tax.
So I want to reach an answer, which is going to say, don't charge me tax.
And that is, if the public desperately want wealth taxes, I'm going to say, Oh, no, no, no.
Well, taxes is never going to work.
What you want is, and then I'm going to throw out another tax, which I know is completely politically unachievable.
And, you know, it really reminds me of this kind of Oxford debating style vibe, which is they have this, you know, a big debating community and they produce a lot of lawyers.
And the vibe is you walk in, they give you an argument on a piece of paper and you have to make an argument supporting that regardless of whether you believe it or not.
And I think this is essentially what is going on in the heads of these people, which is I am going to make any argument I can to say that we don't need to do wealth taxes.
And for them, it's quite a smart argument, you know, because wealth tax is popular.
And if you can say, oh, you know, wealth tax is never going to work.
What you need is inheritance taxes.
Well, inheritance taxes are unpopular.
And then the public's going to say, oh, actually, I thought I wanted a wealth tax, but if it's an inheritance tax, I definitely don't want it.
And ultimately, it's just distraction.
It's the same as my Jeff Bezos video from two weeks ago, where he says, oh, no, no, no, don't tax me.
How about I give you a thousand pounds a month instead?
And if I'm totally honest,
It also reminds me of a lot of the immigration narrative.
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