Decoding the Gurus - Gary Stevenson: The People's Economist

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

In this episode, Matt and Chris take a look at one of the UK’s most compelling economic crusaders: Gary Stevenson, aka Gary’s Economics. A millionaire trader turned YouTube firebrand, Gary’s message is simple and potent: wealth inequality is spiralling, the ultra-rich are hoarding everything, and economists and politicians are either complicit or clueless.Gary’s story has all the trappings of a mythic arc: from humble East London roots to Citibank’s trading floor, where he made millions betting against the poor during the financial crisis. Now he claims the system is so broken that only someone like him, working class and mathematically gifted, someone who entered the high-power world of financial trading and took on the system, could see it. As Gary puts it, a sort of economic Copernicus, who brought a revolutionary message that was dismissed by a stultifying orthodoxy.With his righteous critique comes a hefty dose of swagger, whether it is in considering himself like a Usain Bolt of trading or in the frequent laments about how exhausting it is to be a lone voice of truth facing bad-faith hit pieces. Gary straddles an odd tension: self-effacing underdog one moment, saviour-on-a-soapbox the next. He rails against academia, dismisses journalists as clickbait merchants, and urges people not to heed critics, due to their ulterior motives.Our hosts explore the contradictions of a millionaire revolutionary who's not even bothered but also a bit miffed the phone isn’t ringing; a tireless advocate for the poor but also someone who seems to frequently drop in his elite credentials and just how rich he is.So strap in for a deep dive into charisma, critique, and class warfare economics. Is Gary the economic truth-teller we need, or a populist guru-in-the-making with revolutionary zeal and a finely tuned YouTube brand?SourcesGary's Economics- Understand the Economy Part 3: Why is Inequality Ignored?Gary's Economics- Signing off: How close are we to winning higher taxes on the rich?Novara Media- Everything They Tell You About the Economy is WRONG | Aaron Meets Gary StevensonGary Stevenson (2024). The Trading Game: A ConfessionFinancial Times: Gary Stevenson claims to have been the best trader in the world. His old colleagues disagreeFinancial Times: He made millions betting against economic recovery. Now he wants to fix thingsThe Daily Mail's hit piece on GaryReddit thread discussing Gary's ThesisPlain Bagel - The Canadian Housing Crisis ExplainedPatrick Boyle on the Pandemic Real Estate BubbleAsianometry on an...

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Matt Brown, the psychologist from Australia. With me is Chris Kavanagh, the anthropologist from Japan, formerly Northern Ireland. And we're going to decode a potential guru today. Hey, Chris. That's always what we do, Matt. That's nothing new. That's what we exist to do. We service the discourse by producing a podcast where we decode people who may or may not fit the secular guru template.

Is that not what we're here for? That's what we're here for. That's what we signed up for. Yeah, yeah, we do other things. We do other things. We, we, we might, well, actually we don't. We, we monitor the gurus we've already decoded in the discourse. That doesn't sound great. Um, you know, know, I did see that someone on our Patreon, they were bored and they used a like analytical tool for videos to quantify the amount of movement in it. And they compared my amount of movement with your amount of movement for some random segment of video. And I believe the analytics proved that you moved 75% more than me. Or it was something like that. It was a ridiculous amount more.

So quantifiable proof now, Matt, that you cannot sit still. I see. I see. OK, so it's been quantified. Yeah, that's it. You can't be at numbers. Yeah, that's it. You can't beat numbers. I'm sorry, Chris. I add to this people who are making these metrics.

I plead guilty. I'm sorry. I move. I move sometimes. That's the crime I'm guilty of. I just want to apologize to you, the listeners, everyone for being human. For being human. I can do no other.

Well, while we're on the subject, Matt, now you remember there was a... Here I squeak, Chris. I could do no other. Yeah. Well, on that subject, Matt, yes, that's what I was going to read. So, the listeners had an intervention. Old Squeaky was out, put out the pasture, dig into the back, which then like put down. But increasingly, people have noticed, I've noticed, that old squeaky has been making its way back in on your lovely new chair. You know, the fantastic chair that you bought to stop things from squeaking. It's completely gone.

They're like the chair you're sitting in now is not old squeaky, nor is it the new chair. It's a third unknown chair. Yeah, yeah. Look, you will not silence squeaky. You cannot do it. You cannot. He's too comfortable. He's too comfortable. He moves in exactly the same. He's got one crime.

He's not perfect. He does squeak. But yes, I shuffle chairs. I change chairs. I don't know what happened to the chair that I bought. The extremely expensive chair that doesn't squeak, but has no other things to commend it. So I think one of the children have taken it, which is probably

for the best. Okay. All right. Well, that just speaks to the high level of Tiest. But as long as you have this kind of third variable chair, that's all right. It seems to be doing the job. Naimat, this week, we are not in right wing topia guru space. We have been there recently with Michael Schellenberger, Chris Langan, people like that. But this week we're venturing into lefty waters, in particular, waters that will inevitably lead to very passionate feedback, I predict, amongst Reddit and on Patreon and whatnot. It already has when we announced we're doing that.

Because we're covering Gary's economics, Gary Stevenson. Yeah. Yeah. So. Well, you know, we, people don't like it when we do left-wing gurus. Some people don't like it. Some people do like it. So that's it.

I think the general criteria is, are you a leftist? Then you might not enjoy it when we cover left-wing people. That seems to be the determining factor. Because if you look at the people that we cover, right, whenever we cover Yuval Noah Harari or someone like that, we don't really get very strong feedback. If people say, don't be so mean to Yuval. Right. Nobody cares.

Nobody really cares. But. Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Zizek, right? There's a connecting tissue to the people that often generate the most passionate response. Who was the first person, the anti-racist lady? What was her name again? Robin D'Angelo. Robin D'Angelo. I think she was the first left person that we covered. She didn't generate that much feedback though, because at that time, I feel like she was

already at that stage, kind of beat up by everyone. Well, that's what I was going to say. We expected some blowback, but I think she'd already jumped the shark in terms of going a little bit too far and getting up even progressive people's noses. So by the time we covered her, it was okay. You're allowed to criticize her. As for Gary, well, and for some of the others, we're ahead of the curve, Chris. We're a little bit ahead of the curve. Sometimes people come around later on.

We'll see. Well, let's see, Matt. Don't you jump the shark or the what? Does it jump the horse? I don't know. Like, who says that we will have anything critical to say about Gary? Maybe we'll agree with everything that he's saying. But yes, in any case, it is fair to say that he's rather popular at the minute.

I've seen him crop up on various shows. He's, he's hot right now. That's what the kids would say. And what he is, for those people who aren't familiar, is that he has a YouTube channel called Gary's Economics. He also has a popular trade book, which came out last year called The Trading Game with Penguin Books. And that book documents his time as a FX trader or some variety of foreign exchange trader in the city, in London. He was in the beating heart of the financial district and he had a career. he made a whole bunch of money and then he left it. And now he's kind of talking about wealth inequality, rich people hoarding money and the problems it caused and whatnot.

So it's a little bit like a whistleblower. But another important feature is that as Gary likes to highlight, he is from a working class background. But as Gary likes to highlight, he is from a working class background, right? And he very much, his presentation is highlighting that. He makes his videos in a kitchen with Jaffa cakes, wearing a hoodie and speaks with a distinctive London twang, which you'll hear in the clips. I recognize this from living in London. You may not know it, Matt, but I myself am someone with a non standard accent in the UK.

So, you know, an outsider in the leadest institutions, I understand. Maybe I understand better than most Matt, this presentation. Okay. Well, I've been listening to Gary's economics for a while now. I listened to a few episodes long before we even had any thought of covering him in Decoding the Gurus. It was recommended to me by a colleague who likes the cut of his jib or did. And I also noticed the accent, Chris.

I know my English accents. Um, and, uh, yeah, look, I think it's fair to say, as it says on the tin, Gary's economics, he is kind of explaining economics to the lay person explaining how it works, but, uh, yeah, it's fair to say the general theme is that it's kind of rigged against you rigged against the little guy. that it's kind of rigged against you, rigged against the little guy. If I want to send one message, it is that the game is set up in a way that

you are being robbed of your wealth and there's very little you can do as an individual to stop that. But no matter how much they rob you of your wealth, they can't rob you of your dignity. And it's not your fault that you live in increasingly in poverty. The game is being set up such that the majority of this country increasingly will live in poverty. But you can realise that that's not failing on you as an individual. That is the result

of a rotten system. It is the result of a rotten system. I think people can deal with poverty. I know poverty is not easy, but you know, I grew up in poverty and it was hard. But what affected me in many ways more than the poverty was the judgement. So don't judge yourself harshly and don't judge other people harshly because it's a system that's broken. You should be proud of the work that you do and you should be proud of what you do to support yourself and to support your family and to support the people around you. Because I think once we manage to shake off this judgment and this idea that it's our fault, then we can start being proud of ourselves and each other and seeing the game for what it really is, which is a broken game that we have to fix together. And the theme is that the inexorable trends of the system will lead to the rich getting

richer and the rest of us struggling. Yes, that's right. And the kind of aesthetic of it, if you look at his little profile picture on YouTube, he's got like a beanie on with like fingerless gloves. He looks like a kind of modern day vegan. Right. Like, you know, kind of man of the street, tell you like it is. And these elite fat cats, he went into the the dragons then. And he played the game better than the, you know, the ones that were born with the silver spoon in my mouth.

And he's going to tell you the things that they don't want you to know. That's a little bit the kind of framing of things. So the titles of popular videos that I see, What does Elon Musk want? How to get rich? The week Trump nearly crashed the world economy. Why aren't we all getting rich from compound interest? Why labor and Trump will both feel the future of house prices, this kind of thing. So it's, you know, like a political and cultural commentary, but with an economic spin to it.

Now, what we looked at were a couple of sources. One was why is inequality ignored? This is part of a Understand the Economy series, part three. And this is a theme that he touches on quite a lot. So this seemed worth covering as illustrative of the kind of output. I also clipped from an interview he did with Novara Media. Everything they tell you about the economy is wrong. Aaron Bastani meets Gary's economics. And lastly, his last video, signing off, How Close Are We to Winning Higher Taxes on the Rich? So he's taking a bit of a hiatus. So he made a little video

to say, where are we with the channel? What's going on? So that's the sources I've merely cut from and a couple of other things. I don't think we're going to have much of a problem with the idea that the content we're covering isn't representative because I've listened to a bunch of episodes and yeah, I think it's better to say the same messages, the same points tend to come up repeatedly. Indeed, the same references to his own abilities and backgrounds, they tend to get repeated as well. So yeah, I think we've got no trouble

with the representation of the content. Okay, that's right. And just to note, Matt, since you mentioned that, I think it's worth probably telling people I didn't have to do this. So it's not something I've got to do all the time. All right? But I listened to the entire audio book

of the treating game. So I inevitably have colored for that for good and bad in terms of background knowledge. But I could tell you Gary's background quite well from that book is that he presents it as that he came from a very working class background in Milford. And when I say working class, it includes things that he didn't have a shower, had to like connect the hose pipe to meet the shower work, didn't have a shower, had to like connect the hose pipe to meet the shower work, didn't have a table to study on, had to use a plank of wood.

Right. There are issues of this which seem to be somewhat self apologizing because, you know, like I'm not from a stunningly well off background in Belfast and I find few people that I knew in my network that did not have access to tables. But nevertheless, set that aside. But then he basically is very good at maths and this kind of thing and then gets into LSE, this prestigious economic elite university.

And there he's also like top of the class in certain respects, doing maths fantastically. And he wins this game, like this kind of trading game organized by Citibank. He beats everybody in the game and then gets offered a job as a trader. And then the book is detailing his life as a trader and how he becomes like super successful, a millionaire, and then eventually ends up leaving the bank, getting in a war with the bank about getting a payout and whatnot. And at the end, he's leaving the bank to go work for a charity, having kind of beat the system in a way, not in general, just for himself.

Like, you know, so that's the kind of deal that it that it weaves. Yeah. And in his podcast material, he makes a bunch of points, but there are two ones that are recurrent that at least came up an awful lot in all of the ones that I listened to. One of them is advocating for a wealth tax on the rich, an annual 1% wealth tax on people that have. And the threshold varies, but he's mentioned 10 million pounds and 20 million pounds, I think, as the wealth threshold to trigger that wealth tax. So that's one thing he advocates for. The second thing he tends to focus on is house prices and housing affordability.

And he's pretty consistent in blaming housing affordability on the very rich, buying up all the assets and driving up the cost of assets. So there might be other ones that you've noticed, Chris, but those are the two big ones that I recall. Yeah. Yeah. I just remembered as well, Matt, that there was one thing I wanted to say before we started, because I think this is important to flash up at the beginning. Right. So if you take Gary's overall message to be wealth inequality is bad, we should try to make the ultra rich pay more taxes, give them less ways to avoid ferreting their tax off the tax havens or putting it into properties or whatever the case might be.

Close the loopholes. I think there are very few people, especially of the left-wing persuasion, who will have any issue with that general premise. But I certainly don't. Inequality is a problem, completely agree. And the wealthy finding ways to stop them avoiding engaging in tax evasion, great. I'm totally on board with that.

So this is one thing that I want to mention. It's like, people often seem to make this mistake of assuming that if someone is talking about a genuine issue and they are saying this is a problem, right? It could be addiction. It could be gambling, could be political polarization, whatever it is. That if you look critically at them or you have like things to say, that that means you're dismissing that the problem they're discussing is real and you're trying to attack that idea. And just to be clear, no, those two things are separate. The problem can be very real.

Even the solution can be correct or viable or whatnot, but that does not mean that the person doing it that if you're critical of them, that therefore you are attacking that basic idea. That's important because people like Russell Brand in the past, various other people, Brad Weinstein does it, but all of our gurus essentially try to wrap themselves in this cloak that they are doing things for, you know, very good motives. They're talking about important issues. And like, I think people get it with Russell Brand, for example, because he's an extreme example, but like Russell Brand, he is also talking about, you know, wealth inequality or addiction or whatever.

But if you're critical of Russell Brand, it doesn't mean that you are dismissing that there's anything to be talked about with corruption or wealth inequality or so on. Okay. I just want to flag that up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I could put it in slightly different terms actually. So first of all, just to sign on that kind of putting your prize or biases on the table, I'm the same as you. I think the distribution of wealth is much too skewed at the moment. I think that the wages have been stagnating for decades

relative to other forms of income. And that is a serious problem. So I'm in favor of reducing wealth inequality across the board. I'd probably go further than Gary actually, because he tends to focus on like the top 1%. And I think actually you can look at the distribution and the curves and you'll see that there's an awful lot of wealth inequality where the meaty part of it is actually in the top 10 or 15%, not just like, it's easy to pick to sort of pick on a very small out group and nobody likes billionaires. Come on, at least of all us,

right? But actually it's a bit more uncomfortable when you start talking about, you know, more the upper middle class. Yeah. Yeah. Now the other thing too is housing affordability. I also think is a major problem. Again, almost everyone agrees with this, right? These are normal things. But that is not to say that the arguments for the diagnosis of the problem, as in what's causing it, or the arguments in favor of certain actions to remedy the problem, are necessarily good. Right? Think about a student writing an essay saying that democracy is good. Right? They could still write a very, very bad essay, putting a bunch of bad

arguments to support that thesis. So yeah, it's just an important distinction for people to wrap their heads around. Yeah. Yeah. Two separate things, two separate things, but often not, it appears. And in general, the last thing I'll say is that, you know, I'm not an economist, Matt. I don't play one on TV. I don't claim to have much knowledge of economics. I do, however, know stuff about like guru rhetoric and academia and discrimination towards people with non-standard accents and this kind of thing, elitism and academia. So that stuff I can speak to, but you know, the specific economic stuff, I'll leave more to you or other people, because you're someone with an interest in those topics, right? Yeah, I have an amateur's interest in economics,

just like I have an amateur's interest in history, just like I have an amateur's interest in history. And, you know, we're not talking extremely technical arguments here, as we'll see. Let's see. Okay. Well, all right. So first clip, this is a refrain that you hear a lot in Gary's content, and it's about economists and what they don't talk about, okay, what they're missing. Okay, so the first reason

economists don't talk about inequality is because of the way economics is taught at universities. So for those who don't know, I studied maths and economics at the London School of Economics for three years my undergrad and then I did a two-year Masters in Economics at Oxford So I've spent five years at elite economics departments learning economics and I think it's important to understand the way that economics is taught at universities nowadays So the first thing to say is and I think this will surprise a lot of people in economics departments We don't talk about the housing crisis. We don't talk about why housing is unaffordable. We don't talk about falling living standards. We don't talk about why

wages are falling, why it's hard to get a good job, why big cities are expensive, why things like energy and food are increasingly expensive. These kind of big economic problems of our time are basically not discussed at university. So he's been to the elite school. LSE Ant Oxford. Yep, yep and he gets he's gotten very good grades there as he's mentioned many times and they never ever talk about inequality, housing, affordability, that kind of thing. Yeah. So just to say, Matt, this surprised me

when I heard this claim, because although I'm not at the cut of this, I did go to university that had people studying economics, so was where that was topics that were covered on economics courses. And amongst the Patreon responses, we had some people that have studied economics in different institutions. And they were quick to point out that they also had studied these topics. And just doing a quick cursory look around economics courses, you can find these kind of topics being covered. So his claim is quite a broad one. It's saying that economists aren't interested,

essentially they're not interested in things like inequality, housing crisis, all these kind of, you know, the things that actually matter to people in their lives. So that's quite a claim to MIIC. Well, it is a surprising claim because the London School of Economics has a center for the analysis of social exclusion. And it also has the International

Inequalities Institute. So it has a couple of research institutes specifically dedicated to that topic. And again, you can do a little bit of a look around like I did and find that not only is the whole sub-disciplines of economics that are specifically focused on inequality, both within nations and across nations and all kinds of stuff, but some of the very influential, like paradigm shifting economists who focus on inequality are actually at the LSE. So now that doesn't mean of course that an undergraduate who's doing a thing that may probably with a focus on trading, you know,

foreign exchange markets and things like that, they might not take those units. But it is a sweeping claim that is making and that is not true. If you think we're, you know, reading too much into an all-fans comment, he goes on. So while economists don't care about inequality, housing crisis, what kind of thing are they doing at university then? So what do we do at university? The main thing is we do maths. So economics nowadays is a very, very heavily mathematical subject. So economics nowadays is a very very heavily

Mathematized subject if you don't have a very good maths a level You basically can't even get into university to do it and then when you get into the university It's just very very very heavily mathematical and once you go into postgrad, especially It's extremely phenomenally mathematical and it's not easy maths You're doing kind of a lot of algebra, a lot of simultaneous equations, but basically it's a math subject at this point and it's important to say that the maths is not easy. So I had a maths and economics undergrad and I was very good at maths as a kid, but then when I went to do my post-grad at Oxford, even though I was very good at maths, I found the maths quite difficult and if you want to succeed, if you want to get good grades, you really, really

have to spend a lot of time memorising the maths basically. You have to do a lot of maths and it's very, very tricky maths. Okay, there's a lot of maths there at the post-grad level, more advanced maths. I do know that this is often what economists like to say as well about the level of their mathematical competence. But in any case, he is endorsing the internal claim of the economics discipline, which is, we do maths and modeling in a better way than most of the other social sciences. Sorry, not in a better way, in a more advanced way. But obviously there's a critique in it, which is that he's pointing out that they might be getting a bit caught up in their models.

And he'll spell this out in more detail in the next clip. And the context for this maths is they basically build a model, like a model economy, and everything affects everything else. So if we cut the interest rate a bit, what does that do to GDP, for example, or if people suddenly start spending less money trying to save more, what does that do to inflation,

this kind of thing. If the government suddenly raises taxes, how does that affect the economy? And you build this kind of mathematical model, it's like a kind of like a toy model, like a kind of game in a way. We raise this a little bit, that falls, this thing rises. And that's the kind of model that is basically used in modern economics. But of course when you build a model, you can't include absolutely everything that exists in the

economy. You have to make some simplifications, some things will be included, some things will not be included and the models which we study at universities nowadays, one of the big simplifications is that there is no inequality in the model. In fact it's more than just that there is no inequality in the model, there is only one person in the model. So these models are what they call representative agent models. So rather than looking at six or seven billion people in the world or like 66 million people in the UK, or 300 million people in the US,

they say to make the world simpler, we are just gonna look at one representative person. So the average person in the whole economy. So all you care about is averages, right? You're just looking at one average person. And of course, if we change the distribution, if I take some wealth from you and give it to Bill Gates or if I take some wealth from Rishi Sunak and give it to you that changes the distribution but doesn't

change the average. So basically once you build this model which only looks at the representative agent which is the average which is the aggregate it's not only that there is no inequality in the model, there is not even any possibility for inequality in the model. These are models of averages, these are models of aggregates. Well, once again, Chris, it's very easy to fact check this. Look, of course, there's a huge variety of models that could use in economics, just like in any discipline. You might have more. No, there's only one type, Matt.

For judging from this, this sounds very bad. This sounds like a big problem. If economists are only using a model that can only have a single agent in it, and they only care about averages, so they can't even look at interactions, right? This is, what the hell are you talking about? This is a huge hell you're talking about.

This is a huge problem for the discipline. Now, like, I know that there are models that don't involve agents at all, right? That just are about interest rates and, you know, macroeconomic things, right? So that could be true. There might be some simplified ones that involve homogeneity. And I think he's referring to representative agent models. This is based on my Googling and stuff. So this can be useful for certain kinds of things, but he's ignoring the fact that there are heterogeneous agent models, there are

microeconomic models, and there are all kinds of complex models that are used. Well, what? This is shocking. Are you telling me there's overlapping generations models that can study intergenerational transfers and wealth accumulation, or that there's human capital and skill-based models that look at skill-based technological change? And you said you weren't confident with the economics, Chris. Look at you. You sound like you know so much. Post-Kingsian and Clarkian models, Goodwin cycles back.

People are concerned about this. The ones that I knew about before I went down this rabbit hole of looking at all these different models was behavioral economics. That whole field to to my understanding, was challenging. What economists often said was like beating up a straw man that nobody agrees with, the homo economicus rational agent model, right? Where people are just profit maximizing machines.

Because what behavioral economics tends to show is like people are irrational. They do things like they engage in costly punishment, giving themselves economic disadvantage to punish people that aren't behaving well and whatnot. But the thing is, when I looked at this, it wasn't hard to find tons of information about models which are very different than what he talks about and which explicitly do model inequality and are like responses to the limitations and they're not like super advanced models that nobody talks about.

No. They're really common. Well, even without Googling it, I straight away smelt a rat because I knew that they do modeling on the effects of particular kinds of tax adjustments, Right? Because all tax is stratified, right? There's incremental tax brackets and things like that. There are things like consumption taxes, which applied to everyone equally, but actually turned out to be regressive taxes because poorer people spend more of their income on consumption. Right?

So the very basic stuff, like which comes up every election cycle in Australia, where they're always fiddling with the various taxes, both parties are proposing different options. They absolutely do income based heterogeneous modeling to take into account the differential patterns of saving and spending and all kinds of stuff across the spectrum of income and wealth. So it is just obviously the case that they do. Yeah. There's an entire, like there's also a set of economists that are collected. I mean, there's Marxist economists as well, right? But there are also a group of economists who tend to be very critical of the kind of neoliberal like market economic perspective. And they are go by the title heterodox, right? It's kind of funny

because you know, like heterodox broadcasters, but the heterodox economists, there's a lot of them. And it also includes figures that I'd come across like a long time ago, right? Joseph Stiglitz, the guy that used to be World Bank man, right? He is in that category. So is Thomas Piketty, right? There's a huge amount of them that are critical of models that don't include various things or critical of various interventions that are favored in certain economic schools.

So it's just that presentation that there aren't, you know, there isn't the beat and the vision in the field when like economics to me is just a field like anyone there's, there's tons of the beats. Well, one of the things that makes our ears prick up as decoders is, is when a figure is making a sweeping claim about academic or institutional orthodoxy, that they're all basically the same, that they don't care at all about X, right? about academic or institutional orthodoxy, that they're all basically the same, that they don't care at all about X, right?

And they're all fixated on Y. It's something we hear a lot. And I think that is what Gary is doing there. And one of my particular interests is actually modern monetary theory, which is one of those sort of heterodox, not quite mainstream alternative views about things. And it absolutely does focus on the effects of macroeconomic policy on heterogeneous groups, particularly labor.

And yeah, like these people exist. Like it is a diverse field with a lot of different perspectives. Yeah. So there's a different version of this critique, which says there's a mainstream academic orthodoxy in economics, which relies too much on representative agent modeling. And this is drummed into undergraduates more strongly than alternative models. That's a different critique. And that's one that you could say, all right, that's a reason. But that is not what this level of rhetoric sounds like. What this sounds like is they are brainwashing you into this model and they don't even want to address those issues. And again, I've got another clip that will highlight the degree to which this has been presented as the kind

of complicity of the economics field in this endeavor. Which is why when modern economists who've been to these elite universities think about the economy, they tend to think about them in terms of averages or aggregates. So that they're obsessed with the big aggregate measurements of the economy. For example, GDP is of course the classic one. Unemployment, inflation, central bank interest rates, level of government spending, level of government taxation. These are things which you can measure on an aggregate economy but they're nothing to do with how is one person effective versus another person. As soon

as you take a model and you make it representative agent, a model of the average person, this model can't say it representative agent, a model of the average person, this model can't say anything about distribution, it can't say anything about this group of people is winning, this group of people is losing, we can't say anything like that in these models. So I think this is really interesting, right? Because when you,

if you want to be like an influential economist in the world of policy or academia you are gonna have to have a PhD right so you're gonna have to have three years undergrad one year I did two years master you're gonna be doing PhD for like three four five years in the US a PhD is like seven years you're gonna have to do like some postdoc work and then you're gonna if you're lucky become a junior professor. So by the time you reach a point that you are like influential in economic policy terms you've been studying these models for like 15 years like something like that and the fact that these models don't include any distribution don't include any inequality

That doesn't explicitly say we don't think Inequality is important. But what does it do to a person? Who has devoted most of their life to the study of economics? that That study has consisted of 10 15 years of very difficult consisted of 10, 15 years of very difficult mathematical analysis, mathematical manipulation of very difficult, very complicated mathematical models with no inequality in them. So again, just want to repeat, those ultra-homogenous representative agent models are absolutely

just a subclass of economic models. The second point too, of course, is that you can have measures, aggregate measures, like the Gini coefficient of income inequality or wealth inequality, which describe the degree of inequality as a whole, just like the unemployment rate is of interest to people who care about equality. And I think it is a real furphy to imply that because you are studying something in the aggregate, then you don't care about inequality. And also that it's not telling you anything about the individuals involved. In fact, that made me think Chris of an old episode that we did on the health

influences that were talking about gut health and biomes and things like that. And they were telling us that science, medical science, it just has the same treatment for everyone. Right? Yes, yes, it does. But they do all of this science and they have all their experiments and stuff. But all it's telling us is about people in general. Really, it's not telling us anything about you personally and your own personal problems. That's exactly the same argument he's making here.

Yes, Dr. K. Dr. K said clinical trials are all about finding out things that work for a population, but they don't apply to necessarily you as an individual. There's a lot of individuality that enters medicine. The funny thing is that our system of medicine doesn't sort of factor that in. We don't really factor in individuality in terms of our clinical trials and the gold standard of our information. So Ayurveda is fundamentally different because Ayurveda like treats a person. It presumes that all human beings are different and that in order

to like help someone you have to understand like individually how they function. So if you look at our western system of medicine the idea is that a disease process is independent of an individual and has a treatment. So our whole the whole point of an RCT is let's remove all of the individuality, all of the specificity from an individual patient because if we take an individual patient, we treat cholesterol in this individual patient. We have no idea how that's going to apply to the other 9,000 people we treat because this person is an individual. So let's remove individuality from the equation.

Let's look at high blood pressure and let's try to isolate this disease process. Then we run into a problem in Western medicine because you can isolate this disease process in a laboratory, but the moment that you have a real person in front of you, things get complicated. Also, Gwyneth Paltrow in the interview. I think it happens a lot in the health influences space. And it's the kind of thing that sounds good, right? It's just, it's like, it's like people hate vaccines And it's the kind of thing that sounds good, right? It's just, it's like people hate vaccines

because it's the one size fits all. Joe Rogan's got his bloody bespoke tailored treatment. So it's just for him. That's the kind of thing that's quite appealing, right? That this broad sweeping discipline doesn't care about people as individuals. Yeah, but again, you know, we're gonna, and this is the contradiction that comes up

because there are people, for example, might criticize the Gini coefficient as not capturing all elements of inequality, which is true. But there is also the key is that when we get into it a bit later, Gary's going to be suggesting wealth tax targeted at a specific band. But that's a general aggregate thing, right? It's not like each individual person is treated as a, like you would be setting up a tax that applies to people that fit into this category. So like, it's like kind of having your cake and eating it. And all of this rests on the presumption, like we've highlighted, that if you do a PhD in economics,

you're not allowed to focus on inequality. You're not allowed to do modeling that has anything to say about distribution of wealth and inequality. And that's, it's just so wrong. Like you can very easily find a whole bunch of seminars, a whole bunch of like workshops, conferences, publications, articles, specifically talking about this, including from elite institutions and what not.

And you can argue about, well, are they achieving what they set out? They talk about this a lot and this kind of thing. But he's saying here they don't even talk about it? They're not able to cover it because it's not in their models. Well, there is the Journal of Public Economics, published by Elsevier. The Journal of Economic... Elsevier. I'm going to say it my way, as always. The Journal... Non-standard dialects. The Journal of Economic Inequality, published by Springer. Did I pronounce Springer right? Is that all right?

Springer. Yes, good job. Springer. Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Labor Economics. Now, if it was true that you just, economists don't study, you're not allowed to study it. They've been brainwashed from the beginning, never to even think of inequality. I presume these journals are struggling to find papers to publish. Also, what about all the economics professors at SOS?

Because they seem to have spent quite a lot of time that like SOS is a very lefty university, right? So they are generally the dominant economics perspective. There is more towards the heterodox side. So, you know, once again, it's about differentiating claims. The way he frames it is extremely sweeping. It does apply to all economists everywhere. Maybe his claim is about the LSE specifically, maybe our friend Liam Bright. He's in the philosophy department admittedly, he's clearly a communist and he said LSE, but putting him aside,

maybe it's true that the LSE does have this kind of hyper-liberal money-making attitude because people like Gary who were very keen to become traders would tend to study there. Absolutely. So I went to university in London, I'll mention this. So the reputation of LSE, in particular, you know, you can study lots of things at LSE, you don't have to study economics, you know, you can study lots of things at LSE. You don't have to study economics. You can go to study philosophy with Liam and he's probably not going to make you do agent based representational models or whatever. But the economics department there is broadly seen as being associated with the city and with a more conventional mainstream economics thing.

Now, as you pointed out, Matt, there's plenty of people in the economics department that won't fit that stereotype. But I knew as somebody in University of London that the LSE economics students were known that they would sometimes wear suits to lectures or whatever. So yes, the LSE has a particular reputation for the people that are very fixated on money. So it wouldn't surprise me if that was more common in LSE and there was more of an emphasis on that, but that's a very different claim than all economics across the UK or all of economics across the world, the entire discipline of economics.

The LSC undergraduate syllabus is not the economics field full stop. We will see maybe in further clips, but certainly in the material that I heard that this framing that economists don't understand how the economy really works because they're actually not as good at predicting the future and trading as real practitioners like Gary was, that they've got a blind spot when it comes to inequality and through their privilege, basically, I don't care about poor people. It is a framing which is designed to aggrandize Gary himself as being the one understander you can trust. Well that's gonna be a recurrent theme but let me play another clip which is

like building on the kind of themes that we've been talking about. Like I think this is actually, this is a very effective way to subconsciously convince almost subconsciously brainwash a person into believing that inequality doesn't matter. See you never come out and explicitly say like inequality doesn't matter. See, you never come out and explicitly say like, inequality doesn't matter. But you say like, here's a really, really complicated game, here's a really, really complicated mathematical model that you are gonna have to spend 15, 20 years of your life

understanding in absolute fine detail. And you never even explicitly mention it, but the model doesn't have inequality in it, doesn't have any distribution, doesn't have any space for that. So imagine you're that kid, you went in 18 years old and then you spent 15 years of your life paying, you know, locked in libraries, doing really difficult maths with no inequality, no inequality, no inequality. And then first

of all, whenever you think about what's wrong with the economy, you're gonna go back to this stuff you studied, right? And you're going to be like, maybe the problem is the interest rate is too high, or government spending is too low, or government taxation is too high. You know, you're going to focus on these things that were in the model, you know, you spent 20 years studying that model, of course, you're going to want to provide answers that are from the model that you told them what you've been spending, you've been spending 20 years of your life studying. But if somebody comes to you and says, hey, maybe the problem is inequality.

Maybe the problem is distribution. How's that gonna affect you emotionally? What's your emotional response to that kind of thing? I think you're gonna get like a gut instinct, which is like, no, of course it's not. It's not that because if it was that, why the fuck have I spent 20 years studying something that's not even in the model? And also you kind of have a bit of professional skin in this game, right?

Because if this person is right with what they're saying, that the reason the economy gets worse and worse is because of growing inequality, then you have spent 20 years of your life studying something that has nothing to say about the biggest economic issue of our time. I guess that brainwashing didn't work on Thomas Piketty, who wrote a couple of books about capital and is a very famous modern advocate and economist. He survived the brainwashing Chris. And he's quite a famous advocate for taxing wealth. But Matt, can we not, I agree, of course, but let me play devil's advocate here. Isn't Thomas Piketty an outlier? Wasn't he someone that raised a number of critiques about the dominant

narratives in the field? And that's why he got attention for his book. Maybe. I think he's not the only one. I think it's a pretty common thing. Economists, I think, are always talking about taxation. And progressive taxation is standard. Wealth taxes exist. I think that they're pretty well studied.

That's the point I'm making. Well, you know, the point that comes up here that, like, I think people should notice in our audience is when you present that, like, first of all, he's doing the Lex thing of, like, if some guy comes up and says inequality, you're going to, like, disagree with that guy. That guy is Gary, right? That guy is Gary. That guy is Gary. So Gary is saying when there's some renegade like him, who's coming up breaking all your fancy models with his insights, of course, you're going to get emotional. Of course, you're going to say, he's lying because you've wasted your life in these libraries, pouring over these dusty, you know, mathematical equations and what

not that mean nothing. And that is a convenient frame because like what the general critique that I've seen of Gary is not like what we can't believe he's talking about inequality. It's that he's really simplifying things and he isn't dealing with the complexity. So it's the opposite of what he says. He says people aren't willing to think about models that have multiple things in that. But the response that I predominantly see is that his solutions are too simplistic because they're not including a whole bunch of other factors.

And so I think it's less about people being triggered by the suggestion that inequality should be mentioned and more that it's a very heavy-handed rhetoric. And it's kind of presenting anybody that disagrees, they're just the stultifying orthodoxy who's been brainwashed by not thinking critically about things. And like, obviously that's extremely self-serving, but you've heard all the gurus that we cover. This is how they always present themselves. If Jordan Peterson is talking about climate change and saying the models don't model the real world, they've just got all these models

where they're predicting things, but the actual climate is too complex for their models, right? And they've invested now like 20 or 30 years working on these models, doing IPCC reports and all that kind of thing. You think they can say that their models don't work? That one. That's because there's no such thing as climate, right? Climate and everything are the same word. And that's what bothers me about the climate change types. It's like This is something that bothers me about it. Technically. It's like a climate is about everything

It's okay But your models aren't based on everything your models are based on a set number of variables Yeah, so that means you've reduced the variables which are everything to that set Well, how did you decide which set of variables to include in the equation if it's about everything? And that's not just a criticism. That's like if it's about everything your models aren't right Mmm, cuz your models do not and cannot model everything like when Jordan Peterson does it people cannot model everything. Like when Jordan Peterson does it, people, well, not everyone, but like left leaning people often are like, right now that's bullshit.

People do recognize that models are imperfect. So like they notice the heavy handed rhetoric, but I think economists are a lot less sympathetic than climate change scientists. So I think more people are okay with like saying, what shit is, what economists are, right? Like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Less popular than climate scientists, I suppose.

But yeah, look, the fundamental point is, is that this is not a brand new idea that does not exist before. In fact, it's a idea that is written about a lot, advocated for a lot, and analyzed a lot by professionals with a great deal of nuance and complexity. And there are complexities and difficulties involved. For instance, one of the problems, of course, with wealthy people is that they have very good accountants and they can have very complicated tax

arrangements and they can change their domicile of registered residents in order to avoid tax and taxation avoidance is always an issue when you are thinking about any kind of tax. So I think to be contributing something useful you have to do a little more than just say inequality is bad, tax the rich. If you're just going to be an activist and paint a slogan on a board, then that's fine. But if you're actually offering some kind of intellectual contribution, given the pretty complex and nuanced nature of the subject, you need to be offering a little bit more. I haven't heard Gary ever address issues like that.

Maybe he has somewhere. But I think the implementation issues are complex. Well, Matt, I do have a response. So maybe this is a good time to play that. So here's a response I think he might offer to this. And I think when you see how like these attacks are constantly attacks on things that I've never said, I think it kind of makes it clear what is really happening here, which is you basically have a lot of rich people who are just trying to find any way to argue against the idea that they should pay more tax.

It's a lot of rich people who control a lot of media, fund a lot of media, they don't want to pay tax. The last thing was this constant attack that I get which is, well, taxing the rich is hard and if you want to tax the rich so much, can you please show me your completely designed tax plan? I think it should be clear at this point that I am by far the biggest and most recognised public campaigner for the need to stop growing inequality and that there's quite a lot of pressure and work

on just me to push this campaign. I think we've had massive, massive amount of success but even just driving the sort of public education campaign is really really knackering for me and it's been a ton of work. It should be obvious that I am not going to be able to do that and simultaneously by myself design a complete tax plan for the country and this is what I mean when I say we need more people we need more people you know I'm gonna call out like the think tanks the left wing think tanks like where are you we need we need

you guys to make these tax plans I can't be the guy that wins the public support for this and gets attacked by the Daily Mail every day and writes the whole plan by myself like we need to have more people behind this, more people behind this. So if there's any economists watching this, people in government, people in civil service, people in the think tanks, help us draw up these detailed tax proposals because I'm knackered and I can't do it by myself. We need help. We need help. Yes, well there you go. He's too knackered from doing the podcast. You know, he can't be expected to fill in the details. But I think the issue is, is that people are like dealing with

the details. Like, I think the issue is in Gary frames himself as the understander of economics, far better than anyone in academia, all of these eggheads and stuff who say they understand it. None of them are focusing on inequality and none of them understand it as well as he does. This is the recurrent theme. But then when it comes to any kind of details apart from tax the extremely rich more. Uh, this is the response. And there are people who have written books like Tony Atkinson has written a book called inequality, what can be done? A very, a very detailed treatment considering things like wealth taxes. So, you know, Gary doesn't necessarily have to figure it out himself.

He could maybe read those books and maybe have to talk to those people and maybe get them to tell him and then he could do his activism with their help. Yeah, the claim that he is the most recognized public campaigner on inequality as well, like, I don't know that just, I mean. I'm not saying he hasn't been successful in growing his YouTube channel and getting attention on UK media, but there's a lot of people who have had entire careers dedicated to highlighting wealth inequality. It does remind me a little bit that Russell Brown, when he was on his left wing revolution, she is, right?

Many people want a revolution, but I'm asking you what it will be like. Well I think what it won't be like is a huge disparity between rich and poor, where 300 Americans have the same amount of wealth as the 85 million poorest Americans, where there is an exploited and underserved underclass that are being continually ignored where welfare is slashed while Cameron and Osborne go to court to defend the rights of bankers to continue receiving their bonuses. That's all I'm saying. What's the scheme? That's all I'm asking. What's the scheme? You talk vaguely about revolution. What is it?

I think a socialist egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth, heavy taxation of corporations and massive responsibility for energy companies and any companies that exploit the environment, I think they should be... I think the very concept of profit should be hugely reduced. David Cameron says, profit isn't a dirty word. I say profit is a filthy word because wherever there is profit, there is also deficit. And this system currently doesn't address these ideas. And so why would anyone vote for it? Why would anyone be interested in it?

Who would levy these taxes? I think we do need to like, there needs to be a centralised administrative system but built on... A government? Yes sir, but... There needs to be a government. Well, maybe call it something else. Call them like the admin bods so they don't get ahead of themselves.

And how would they be chosen? Jeremy, don't ask me to sit here in an interview with you in a bloody hotel room and devise a global utopian system. I'm merely pointing out that the current... You're calling for revolution. Yeah, absolutely. I'm calling for change. I'm calling for genuine alternatives. He would constantly make this claim that like, we're starting a movement, we're going to get politics back, so that it's actually taking care of the little people that, you know, these elites. So the rhetoric is very similar, but at least in this case, like Gary isn't leaning into

right wing populism stuff, at least not yet. But it's just, yeah, that notion that nobody else is doing. I can't do it all on my own. And you're like, but just like you're ignoring all of the economists that do focus on inequality, there's a lot of other people that have been running campaigns and promoting this topic for a long time. And I think if you're going to be an effective activator, like an effective activist for a particular policy, it really helps to be specific about the policy that you hope to implement,

and to be specific about how it's going to get done and how the problems will get sorted. And I know this from working with and talking to groups in Australia who are activating for policy change on gambling reform. And it's not enough to just say gambling's bad, the gambling companies suck, they're ripping everyone off. That's all true. But to be an effective activist, you actually have to map out a specific plan. Like what specifically are you banning?

What specifically, what measures are you looking to bring in? How are they practical? And that involves, in this context of economics, you looking to bring in? How are they practical? And that involves in this context of economics, you have to do modeling. For instance, if you're proposing a 1% wealth tax on the richest people, you need to figure out first of all, what is your threshold? That's step one, right? And Gary's threshold bounces around a bit. And then what you do is you do some economic modeling and you say,

okay, well, what are the increased government taxation receipts? What are they going to be from implementing that? What is the slippage in terms of increased tax avoidance and so on going on? What measures are you going to put in place to prevent that? And then figuring out whether or not it's actually going to make a big difference to the things that you care about, like housing affordability. And when you do those types of analyses, and I have had a bit of a play around myself,

but I'm hesitant to reveal my half-assed attempts on the podcast, but the point is, I'm not an economist, but if this was my thing, if this was literally my one job, and especially if I got such brilliant grades at the LSE and I was a superstar economics understander, I could maybe do a little bit and present some of the details there. Yeah. Okay. Well, Naima, on this issue about public campaigning and stuff, because it's very clear that Gary is kind of viewing himself as an activist, you know, promoting a particular political message, right? He wants a wealth tax and he wants some reforms to housing or whatever. The specific details might not be that clear, but this is part of what he said taking a break is for.

This was always like the plan for the political project, but it's been quite a lot for me personally and it's been knackering and yeah I worry a little bit about how this channel is going to work for me like long term from a mental health perspective especially if it keeps growing and I think politically you know if we want to win I need to make the channel keep growing but I need to find ways to make sure like we find that balance where the channel is growing, but I'm not going insane, basically. That brings me on to my next point, which I've got written down here, which is, how can we win?

So obviously I'm going away for a couple of months, and I want to talk a little bit about... When I go away, it's always... I've taken breaks the last few years. This one will be a little bit about, when I go away, it's always, I've taken breaks the last two years, this one will be a little bit shorter. There's always two reasons I go away, which is one, to stop me from going insane, and two, because the channel has been going really quickly

for about two years now, and every time the channel grows, I need to kind of take a step back, re-look at, like, reassess the situation politically, and be like, okay, well, what are we gonna need to be effective politically in the next couple of years? The channel is much bigger now than it was even three or four months ago. So what are we going to need now in order to win? The point that I note there, Matt, right, apart from the thing about the mental health issue, which fair enough, you know, like if you're somebody that's prone to getting anxiety from overworking or whatever, right? Comes up perfectly legitimate to take breaks. No shade for that reason. But there is this conflation of the growth of the channel with the success of the politics. And I know that people will argue, well, look, if you have a huge

audience, you're able to better influence things. But again, there's plenty of YouTube channels with multiple millions of subscribers that have particular political points of view or whatever, and they're not dominating policy discussions. So Gary's YouTube channel is now like over a million subscribers, but if he gets the three million, is that really going to supercharge the policy agenda? I think there's a potential issue though, and it also means that the audience is being asked to invest in the channel as a sign of a political engagement. Yeah. And look, as someone who produces podcast episodes with you, Chris, and we do a fair

bit of research per episode, but not an extraordinary amount compared to some. Gary's economics, I think, gives the impression of one in which relatively little preparation is done per episode. I mean, I think that's fair to say because he does repeat himself a lot and it's not tightly scripted. If you watch other economics podcasts, you'll find that there is a density of information, a lot of citations, a lot of videographics and statistics and analyses done. Clearly it would take a lot of time to do. Now, this factor is obviously not unique to Canada. We've seen similar asset price inflation in the US thanks to its low interest rates.

But given how long it's been since Canada has experienced a real estate correction, prices were already starting off with a relatively high base. With Canada's particularly resilient reputation, investors flooded in. In 2020, it was estimated that one-fifth of all homes in British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were investor owned, with this percentage being as high as 42% in some subdivisions of Vancouver with higher student populations. It is worth highlighting that this investor demand

has primarily been domestic so far. While non-resident ownership is as high as 14.9% in the student-centric subdivisions of Vancouver, across the province of British Columbia, the rate is much lower at 7% of condominium apartments and 2.5% of houses. And while units not occupied by their usual residents sits at roughly 7% for both Toronto and Vancouver, some of which may be vacant, this figure can also include certain types

of student housing, or other forms of housing which by definition are not occupied by usual residents, with there being mixed figures and debate on how many properties in Canada are truly left vacant by investors and the like. So while foreign investors have had an influence on pocket regions of Canada, instead it's truly the combination of all these variables, the policies encouraging high demand and speculation without a subsequent follow-up in supply. And as Canadians have tried to keep pace, something else has crept up to pretty concerning levels. As prices have outpaced savings, buyers have borrowed the difference, contributing to record levels of debt in the country. Gary is more sitting at his kitchen, sort of talking off the top of his head and kind

of reiterating some of the same points again and again, as well as that, his YouTube channel is monetized, I believe. And with 2.2 million views per episode, that represents quite a significant amount of income. Yes, it does. And also having, you know, a bestselling number one paper-tread book, I think, you know, books in general, not that profitable. But if you are a super popular book, you can get- To forestall the little guy from jumping out of the well, let me reiterate- Hey, get back in there.

Let us reiterate, there's nothing wrong with a content creator making money. But when you combine that with a self-aggrandizing narrative that centers the figure themselves 100%, completely ignores and disparages any other sources of information, and also points to that kind of wounded bird grievance thing about people attacking him and he's just so tired from the arduous efforts to create these episodes. It's, it does smell a little bit off. Yes. So the point that I would make there is basically every channel that I know off in the heterodox world makes the same appeal, like Russell Brandt has 6.8

million subscribers on YouTube. He's constantly telling his audience, you know, you're helping to get the message out, take part in this. We can push back against it. Trigonometry are saying, you know, if you subscribe and support us, you're contributing to free speech, you know. So all these different YouTube channels are saying, make our channel bigger and we'll be able to influence the change, you know, the direction of the country and like, will they know in Gary's defense, I do have a clip that speaks to this.

So you mentioned about it's all around his persona and brands. Now he does make a point to say he doesn't want that to be the case. The obvious, like the really, really obvious weakness at the moment is that at the moment this idea and these like slogans is just like way too tied to My personal brand if you want to call it that like my like media identity And you can see that in the way that like the right-wing press has, especially in the last like month or so, just like really aggressively tried to attack me as a person. Like they're not really engaging with the ideas. It's just like, can we somehow attack Gary Stevenson?

Can we take him out? And that is because they can see that at the moment, the idea, the economic ideas are really solid, but they are so attached to me as a person that if you can take me out, you can kind of like kill the movement. So I think what that shows us is that we absolutely need, in the long run, more people doing it. We need more diversity of voice.

I think in particular, we need what I'm thinking of as academic cover, which is economists, people at think tanks, people with these kind of academic credentials. I have got two economic degrees from two top universities, but because I am a YouTuber now and because I look and sound the working class, it's very, very important that we have

this academic cover. So I think think we really really need more support from these think tanks especially the left-wing think tanks like the New Economics Foundation like IPPR, like the Resolution Foundation, they really need to be coming in and doing work on this. I would love to see more economists from from academia writing papers on this, speaking publicly on this, like looking into things like the squeezing out of wealth of the middle class, where's the wealth going? You know, what would the dynamics of that be? How does that affect living standards? We need more academic cover, but we don't need just academics.

Yes. Yes. We need more people involved. Yeah. So it's not about him, Matt. It's about the general thing. So there was the issue there that he, you know, there's a Lex Friedman like the slings and arrows. They're coming for me, right? They're trying to take me down. And this is in reference to some critical coverage in the Financial Times and the Daily Mail.

And they're just a bit curious about that. he said, you know, they're not really dealing with my core message, but the Financial Times is taking issue with claims that he made about being like the most successful trader in city and that sometimes in other... The best trader in the world. He does have a tendency towards aggrandizing statements. Like even in that one there, you'll notice he slipped in the fact that he's got these degrees from the elite. Who? Elites? I swear to God, I have not listened to a single episode of Gary's economics without him mentioning...

Dropping two or three of these in either. He went to elite universities, he got the best grades, he was the best trader in the world. He works it into pretty much every bit of content he creates. Yeah, it does come up. But the Financial Times, they actually did a fairly in-depth critical evaluation of the claims, right? And it's a Financial Times.

So in part, they have a focus where they're interested in claims made around trading and whatnot. So they point out, they interviewed eight of his colleagues, including other people that like him, people that didn't like him so much or whatever. But the consistent thing from all of them was that his claims were hyperbolic and exaggerated. They weren't saying he didn't earn money and he didn't earn money that compared to ordinary people would be considered extremely high. But just that he was not the best trader.

He wouldn't have the means to know that. So they were just saying that's inaccurate. And Gary responded that by kind of saying, yeah, all those guys, like they're just interested in money and whatnot. But actually the article is talking about this pon penchant he has for hyperbolic claims. And it isn't just the hippies because there's this story in the book, which comes up and often in his content as well, where the way that he got his internship initially was he won this card game organized by Citi to identify promising people that might be good at trading. He won it because he had some knowledge about the structure of the game in advance.

It turned out like one of the claims was in the last round, they gave him the worst card where he couldn't win to just see how he would do. The Financial Times said, actually, this story checked out. When we looked into it, all the people verified it. He presents that as, oh, this story checked out. Like when we looked into it, other people verified it. But so he presents that as, oh, this is just a hit piece trying to turn me down. But it's more saying actually, this person has a tendency to over exaggerate certain things like a self mythologizing. And also the Daily Meal piece, which he is also hinting at there, was pointing out that his

mom on social media, when his book came out, like in the book he talks about not having a table, washing himself with a hose connected for a shower head and all this kind of thing. And his mom says, actually, our jobs were fine. Gary was very well loved. I paid for his university. you know, in the book. He didn't mention that, that I, so she, she paid for his tuition at the LLC, but wouldn't buy him a table. What a terrible woman.

Well, that's, you know, who knows, right? Who knows? So the Dealing Meal are focusing on this because they see it as, Oh, this guy is, you know, like a lefty inequality guy, but look at him being hoisted by his own petard. But like, again, the criticism in there is self-mythologizing and exaggerating things. And there's nothing that would be lost by saying, I was a successful trader. I made millions and I come from a working class background.

You know, we weren't super poor, but I wasn't super wealthy. You know, my parents helped pay for my university or this. It's not like working class parents don't ever try to contribute to their children's education. That's a very normal thing to do, right? So it's just that there's a kind of Dickensian presentation in a way, you know, like he has to be mathematically the best person at LSE. He has to be the greatest trader. Yes, it goes down to one year at Citi, but it's, it's never just a middle

of the road person who did quite well. It's always the Gary is kind of the main character in a way, and that the other people are NPCs kind of. Yeah. So we have to take that main character thing into account when he before is talking about the need for it not to be all about him and his brand, and we need to bring more diverse voices into it. I mean, I'm a little bit suspicious

and it just cannot be emphasized enough if you listen to economics podcasts like I have, that Gary's economics is different. It's different from Asianometry, it's different from the plain bagel, it's different from economics explained. There's probably a dozen others because in none of them do they center themselves and their own

narrative and special expertise the presentation is much more dispassionate and has far more information in it. But as property prices have risen in the country, incomes have not kept pace, leaving Canadian households to become some of the most indebted in the world, as homebuyers have made up the difference between their incomes and house prices using debt. Now, interest rates are on the rise, home prices are down 12% from their peak, and people are starting to wonder if Canada's housing market is in a soon-to-pop bubble. So, as your resident Canadian finance YouTuber, I wanted to make this video to help answer the question, how bad is it really?

And to be clear, it's impossible to predict where things will go from here and to try and time a crash. And I'll try to explain the important variables that will influence the outcome one way or another without making a grand statement about how now is the time to short Canadian housing. But many Canadian households are currently experiencing significant financial strain. And while there are some unique advantages Canada has when compared to the US in the real estate space,

there are also some pretty depressing, unique features to Canadian real estate that makes the area harder to manage than an asbestos-laden popcorn ceiling. So let's talk about real estate in Canada. Buckle up, it's going to be a ride. On today's Plain Bagel. That's not to say that Gary never includes any good information or that all his analyses

are wrong. I've seen a bunch of his videos and some of his analyses, I think are fine. And I think he makes valid points about the compounding nature of wealth, wage stagnation, all those points have been made by other people many times, but he's not wrong to point them out. Well, a bit more about the type of political campaigning that he's envisioning, because, you know, he was talking there about academics need to step up. You know, presumably this is academics that have broken out of their model obsession or

whatever. But so I guess they do exist, but it's not just academics, right? We need something else. So what other things do we need? We just need way more diversity of voice in general. So one thing that I've seen which I've really liked, it's been very meaningful to me personally, is when like different kinds of communicators and artists come in. So there was a clip of me on the Rizzle Kicks album, Jordan Stevens, who I know a little bit, they put me on their album. Somebody sent us a cartoon they'd be making based on the

educational series, Learning the Economy, which is on this channel. That stuff is really powerful as well. I think I would love to see more communicators. I think when we get loads and loads of messages, like tons of messages of people like, we love what you're doing. How can we help? Can I come and work for you? How can we help? And it's impossible really for me

to even read all these messages, never even reply to these messages. So what I wanna do is tell you, don't come to me, just do it, just do it, just understand the messages and just do it, just go make the thing. This guy is making the cartoon, making the music, whatever you wanna do, you wanna print stickers, you want to make merch. I'm not going to sue anybody for making any merch using our name or making any art using our ideas

or make any music like taking clips. Just go make it, do the thing. I want to see more influencers coming through talking about these ideas. I want to see economists talking about these ideas. I want to see artists making art. I want to see musicians making music, you know, stickering campaigns. I would never, ever encourage anyone to do a graffiti campaign or a stickering campaign or a postering campaign. Just do the thing. Do the thing that you want to do. Do the thing. Use your skill. And if that means just like make a little community group, talking to your community. And the thing which I always encourage just, just go and do it, share the message. To me, there's the charitable way to read that, which is like, so he's saying, you know, you don't need him. You go out, you know,

just like if you agree with the messages, you know, find your thing and channel it into whatever kind of activism that suits you. Fine. I think that's a good message. But there's also this side of it, which is like, people are taking me, they're putting me in the rap song, they're making cartoons out of my content. If you want to make stickers of like, you know, use the channel, that's fine. That's all good. And I'm kind of like, okay, so that sounds a bit more like, you know,

homegrown fan content, right? Like, organic stuff that kind of promotes the channel and the brand. But those were the examples he provided. But like you said, maybe those were just the examples that sprang to mind. Maybe he was thinking of other stuff too, that doesn't involve him. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there was one thing I wanted to mention, not related to this, but it's that, you know, we've covered a lot of roller nefarious people, right? You know, we've got, you've got your Scott Adams. You recently had Michael Schellenberger, Jordan Peterson, Chris Langan, the Red Scourges, whatever. Like people that I think are doing serious harm to the world for serving as

propagandists or like, you know, just promoting rather hateful ideologies. Right. Like there's a lot of people that we've covered that fall into that. And I would say probably the majority of it are in the right-wing reactionary spears within it, like Risa stuff and all that kind of thing. And so Gary, just to be clear here, we are going to look critically at his content and whatnot, but it should be borne in mind that for all our critiques, his primary focus is wealth, inequality, and perhaps a wealth tax. Right?

So like even if we are highlighting things that he's, you know, doing that we consider like gruish that does make a difference that like his agendas such as it's presented as content isn't really the kind of thing where you're going to have people dragged off the immigration, internment camps and whatnot. So yeah, I just wanted to make that clear to people that like we're analyzing the rhetoric and we put different people into the grometer and whatnot, but it doesn't mean that we're saying their overall effect is the same, right? Like even if they do display gurish tendencies. It did, yeah. Don't think I can add to that really. That sounds right to me.

That's nice. Well, anyway, back to what we were talking about. You know, well, this is a very minor point, but you know, the Democrats and all that kind of thing, they got criticized, right, for their campaign focused on cozying up to celebrities or, you know, whatever, getting Oprah to endorse. But is that not what that sounds a little bit like as well? You know, and I think this aligns with the fact that when Gary is talking about things, he's talking about like the power of political slogans. And that is kind of his vision

of how you make the change. So he has a slogan in mind as well. So I think the first thing to say is I think what the last four months have proven is that the very basic strategy has a lot of potential, which is I think there is like a massive demand amongst the public for like a very clear, simple economic, political message, which is the reason we are getting poorer is because of this massive growth in inequality. And we're not gonna fix that unless we stop that inequality from growing, that inequality of wealth from growing.

I think that that is powerful for a number of reasons. One, because it's true, I think that is the biggest thing. Two, because it's simple. Three, it doesn't muddy itself by trying to deal with loads of issues at once. It just aggressively deals with this one issue of worsening living standards and worsening inequality. So I think that horse is running.

That can work, that will work, and I would encourage other people to look at that and say this is a message that can win politically. The second thing is I think this, I think the slogan tax wealth not work has a lot of, has a lot of legs in it. You know, I know I don't really love condensing things into slogans, but the truth is, you know, I think you do need to do that if you want to win. So I think the first thing is like, I think this is a winning strategy. I think if enough people get behind this, if enough people support this, we can win power on this and we can change policy on this. Just a very clean,

simple economic message. The reason living standards are falling is because wealth inequality is growing, the rich are making enormously more money, the middle class, the working class are getting squeezed out. The only way to fix it is to stop growing inequality, to tax wealth, not work. I honestly think that can win. I honestly think that can win. Like I have some quibbles there in terms of accuracy. Like I don't think wealth inequality is the only reason why say the UK economy has not done incredibly well since World War II really. It's had its ups and downs, but it hasn't been doing incredibly well. Inequality may well be part of that mix, but I think it's not the only reason.

On the other hand, I mean, like he is right, there's an air bite slogans. Yeah, I think that's what I was going to say. I mean, I've been looking through the lens of he purports to have an economics podcast where he's going to explain to you how economics works. And I think on those grounds, he scores pretty low just in terms of just the amount of good information per minute is really quite low compared to other podcasts. He does make some nuanced points. Like for instance, I did appreciate the point that he made about quantitative easing and

its effects on inequality, the various stimulus packages and stuff that they use, the way they respond to legitimate crises often is by injecting a bunch of money into the economy, which tends to flow into assets very quickly, which then tends to basically increase wealth inequality. But generally speaking, it's pretty superficial and inaccurate. On the other hand, if you evaluate him as an activist, let's forget about the monetization of the personal brand and so on, but for the moment, I'll return to that, but yes, if you think of him as purely activating for increased public attention on wealth inequality and measures to reduce it, housing affordability, slogan type stuff, then well, that's fine, right? I mean, that's a different bar to clear. And

it's not really what we look at in terms of quality. But in terms of those guru aspects, I am seeing a few of them. Well, before we move on to like another aspect of it, just because I have a couple of clips that relate to this, you know, we flagged up this tendency amongst YouTubers and Gary is no exception in this regard about completing views with something actually happening, right? Inequality will get worse and worse. Living standards for ordinary people will fall and these people are not going to stop it. So the responsibility has to fall upon ordinary people themselves to stop it. When I first started talking about

these things publicly in 2020 I was writing articles for newspapers, I wrote an article for The Guardian and those articles are mainly being read by quite posh, quite privileged, quite rich people. And I was convinced that we were not gonna get positive change by talking to the group of people who benefit from the growth inequality. So I made consciously the switch to YouTube to try to convince ordinary people

they need to do something. And that's what we're doing this channel. So I would encourage people to support, keep watching these videos. Yep, keep watching the videos. Yes. Keep watching the videos. Um, yes. So the Guardian, the audience there is part of the problem. So you need to speak to the YouTube audience if you want to get like actual success. Okay. Okay. That's, that's possible. But, um, you know, so Gary's economics, what have they been doing this past while? What

have they achieved on that channel reaching out? Okay, so what have we done this season on Gary's Economics? We've only been back about four months. In that time, I think we have been one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing YouTube channels in the entire country. We've successfully pissed off a big chunk of the most annoying people and newspapers in the entire country. We have effectively driven wealth taxes and the idea that we need to tax wealth not work really aggressively into the public conversation. We're starting to achieve the things which I've wanted to achieve for a long time and that's basically thanks to you guys. Last time I put the channel

on pause was last year we shot I think at the beginning of July or the end of June and it was just after the general election had been called and I was quite knackered then probably not as knackered as I am now but I got quite emotional in that video I watched it back and the reason I got emotional was because I said in that video it's I worked really hard last year we had the channel running for most of the first like two thirds of the year and then when the election got called the channel grew massively but when the election got called, the channel grew massively, but when the election got called a little bit earlier than I was expecting, it was just really clear

to me that we weren't going to be able, I wasn't going to be able to influence the election. It was really clear that Labour were going to win, but it was really clear we weren't going to be able to influence their pitches, their policies. And I think I said at the time of the video, it's difficult when you've worked so hard to look at how much work you've done and how far you've come, and then to look up and realize how much further you have to go. Yeah, so it's achieved a lot,

but the concrete terms is mainly growing. Channel growth. Growing the channel. It's kind of ironic if people ironic if the main people who are watching are not millionaires like Eric because he does like to emphasize how he's made millions of dollars trading and also made a lot of money from a bestselling book and making a fair bit of money from YouTube now. Maybe he's making $6,000 or $15,000 per video.

Then actually by watching his videos, you're actually contributing to wealth inequality there. Well, yeah, that's it. But, you know, he has, well, he's part of the, there's a group of wealthy people that are asking for higher tax rates. Yeah. So he's one of the good guys. We know he's one of the guys. That's fine. There's that. Okay. Okay. So he's one of the good guys. We know he's one of the guys. That's fine. There's that. Okay.

Okay. So there was the election called and that was a little bit of a shame because we weren't going to be able to influence policies in enough time because Labour were obviously going to win. Okay. Okay. But now filming this 17th of April, this time we're putting the channel on pause. It looks realistically, and I'm not just saying this, it looks like something that eventually we could maybe win.

The speed of the growth of this channel and this message in this last season, the last four months, has been just unbelievably big. It was for periods the fastest growing YouTube channel in the country, which is insane for a channel which is essentially talking about redistributive politics and economics. Every newspaper in the country has been speaking about it. During this season we had the spring statement, which is kind of like a mini budget here in the UK for those who don't know and during the coverage of that budget I think the single most prominent criticism of the government's economic policies during that period was why are you not taxing the rich more? You know, that's not just us and that's not just this channel that's that's pushed that message, but I think a big part of it has been us and I

Have said before on this channel and I've thought for a while I've been very confident for a long time that the economy would get worse because of this worsening wealth inequality and that would move the economic and political conversation into a space where people demanded something new. Yep. Okay. So more stuff, he's very pleased with the channel's growth, Chris, very pleased. Yeah, that's what you're getting from this, right?

But like, you know, the thing to note here is that we hear this. Right. But like, you know, the thing, the note here is that we hear this. Focus consistently, like Gary's not the only person we cover that is very focused on growing their channel. And it's not because they themselves are, you know, wanting extra money or whatever, it's because they want to help their audience or they want to improve society, or they want to solve the help their audience or they want to improve society or they want to solve the meaning crisis or they want to address the what the what.

So this is not an unusual thing where people integrate their channel's growth with whatever it is that they want to promote. And I think you should be, like if you're somebody that agrees with Gary, you should be a little bit skeptical. Is that a reasonable thing to do? Because yes, it is true that as somebody becomes more prominent and they start cropping up across media, politicians have to respond to questions and the prime minister's question time or whatever about these. But like, Prime Minister's question time or whatever about these. But like, you know, people have been talking about wealth inequality before Gary's channel ever started.

And I think it's just worth keeping the kind of potential overlap of interests in mind here. Yeah, I mean, it's just a common pattern we see with pretty much everyone we cover. They generally purport to have a grand mission, right? Something for the audience to sort of virtually join in on. If it's Dr. K, he's trying to do what area of effects, mental healing, right? If it's Huberman, he's trying to, you know,

solve health and well-being young men. Other people are reaching out to, you know, meaning crisis in young men or something like that. You know, trigonometry is like got a political kind of anti-woke thing, but they all have a grand mission. And by subscribing and liking and watching, you are contributing to the grand mission. So if you believe in it, you will feel right. And they never have any other motivations. And they do talk about that a lot. And that is just something that is different, just pointing out that it's different from more run of the mill content,

history content, economics content, what have you, that is more dispassionate and doesn't pretend to have a grand mission and don't sort of encourage people to conflate their increased prominence with accomplishing these grand designs. Yes, yes. Now, two last clips, Matt, just on this topic, then we'll move on to something a bit different, right? But this time in off the channel success last clips, Matt, just on this topic, then we'll move on to something a bit different, right? But

this tying in of the channel success with the political mission, right? The listener and Gary, right? They're on the same team, albeit one of them is the one that is financially rewarded from the subscriptions growing so much. But in any case, listen to this. We've obviously not won the Labour Party over yet, which are the party in government, not won the government over yet. Uh, but I never expected to win them now. I think I've said very clearly on the channel, my plan was to make this something that we can hopefully force Labour to do coming to the next election. And the unbelievable growth in this channel, the unbelievable growth in this message in the last four months,

makes me, really for the first time in the history of doing this channel, makes me feel this is genuinely something that we can achieve, generally something that we can win and... and that is something that I am very proud of and it's something you can be very proud of because ultimately this is a YouTube channel, it is increasingly a political movement which bases entirely its power on its popularity with the public, its popularity with you, its growth comes from people like you telling your friends, telling your families, telling your mum like I always say, it's working you know. The reason that think tanks lobby the politicians instead of speaking to the public is because they don't think it works.

They don't think you guys are powerful. They don't think you guys have power. They don't think there's any point talking to you. They don't think there's any point basing movement on you and educating you and you and we are proving them wrong. And that's something we should all be very proud of. Yes indeed. Should be proud. So building that movement, building that sense of the in-group with the virtuous cause and, you know, look at the out-group. You have politicians that don't care. Even the Labour Party doesn't care. Academics are out of touch and privileged. Nobody really cares, but... Gary cares. Gary cares. Yeah, yeah. You can't, I mean, come on. Like, you know, pair this with the notion about the appeals to we want to get economists,

we want to get left wing think tanks and whatnot evolve. But didn't you just tell people that think tanks don't care? They don't care about the little people. Like they don't even have the models, Chris, to encompass the fact that there are poor people. Yeah. And okay, the last clip, I think I'm really hammerish. You are. We get it, we get it, mate. But come on, one more, last one. Just give me one last one, okay? What really matters here? This is, by the way, directly follows on from that last one. When I think back to this season, I always think the video I did with Aaron Bastani at Navara, right at the beginning of this press campaign, and the first question he asked me was,

were you surprised by how well the hardback did? So the hardback came out last year, and it was number one for two weeks. And I always ask these guys not to send me the questions before, because I like to sort of be kind of actually answering them in the moment rather than trying to like remember my rehearsed answer. But I said to him,

I was disappointed that the book didn't do better because I thought, I thought the book got like mischaracterized as a kindised as a finance book and I thought that it was actually a really good story and I thought it had the capacity to be much more than number one for two weeks. And maybe people thought that was quite arrogant at the time but it's been number one for 11 weeks and I'll be honest I didn't expect it to do that much. And I think that kind of encapsulates how I feel about this whole season, which was... The YouTube grew six times, sub-numbers last year.

And I didn't think we could possibly keep growing at that rate. But then we've grown like two and a half times in the last three months. Basically everything this season was way bigger than I expected. The books sold way better, the growth in the subscriber numbers and the views was like dramatically more than I expected. The increase in like public recognition that I get and like public sort of critique and increasing that recognition on the streets has all been just like crazy.

It has been absolutely crazy for me. Yeah, he seems interested in... This is just all from the same episode. Yeah. Imagine how many times... You didn't go searching this stuff out. No, it was just there in the one episode. Subscriber numbers are up. The book is sold more.

And he referenced, by the way, Matt did an interview with Novara Media. And he said that he was disappointed with the book. I listened to that interview and he talks about how successful the book is. And one of the things that he says actually in that interview, and it's a good way to pivot a little bit to some of the other things that I want to cover is that he's talking there about the added recognition from the book, from the YouTube channel, the numbers, Matt. The numbers are blowing through the roof, right? The fastest growing channel, blah, blah, blah.

But he mentioned this in the interview with Aaron Bustani, this interaction. So like, the book is good in my opinion. If it sells, that's great. What I feel pressure about is the political work and the political situation because, you know, things are growing really quickly now. Like my socials are growing really quickly now.

Like my socials are growing really quickly and they're big now. All right, and I get stopped in the street and people say to me, you know, we're counting on you. Some old lady stopped me the other day. She said, you're Gary, aren't you? This is gonna sound like I'm just like being a dick.

This is what she said. And I was like, yeah. And she goes, you're gonna save us, aren't you? That's what she said. And it's a lot, right? That's what she said and um it's a lot right it's a lot like it's a big it's a big weight to carry um but some a big weird a big weird nine years there like you know doing the the self-deprecating thing of you know like he goes on to say and like it is hard because because his, his overall prediction is people are still going to be fucked. Right. There isn't a thing where people are saving a butt, but it is still mentioning, you know, that people are walking up to him in the street and are

saying, you know, Gary, you're, you're going to save us. Right. Well, yeah, there was, there was another source where he was very proud. He was, he was describing how, how he was maybe the most successful public economist or something like that. Do you maybe recall? There was an interviewer in the Financial Times where he mentioned that he was one of the most well-paid economists. One of the most well-paid economists. So, yeah, it feels like there's two wolves inside, Gary.

They're a little bit in contrast. Like one wolf, it's a bit like Jordan Peterson. One wolf wants to be the one who's carrying the burden, he's got the grand mission to save the rest of the people, and it's a terrible weight. It's very stressful. It's so tiring. It's so hard to do it. But the other wolf can't resist, frankly, bragging about just how amazingly successful and amazing he is. So sometimes these incongruities do crop up. Yes, on a couple of occasions.

So like Matt, you've heard of the Galileo gambit, right? I have heard. That does ring a bell, Chris. You're familiar with that. So that's when people compare themselves to Galileo because you know, Brett Weinstein has done it Jordan Peterson has done it basically all of the gurus I can't believe it is actually a gambit like with that's called the Galileo gambit and they keep doing and they actually know Explicitly they don't pick someone else but go on well, well

Yeah, that's a good funny you should mention that, but because, you know, Copernicus, he was a guy, right, that also revolutionized our understanding. Gary just has a thing to say about Copernicus. But the end result is, you know, most of these discussions are just, you know, 10 people with elite university degrees talking to each other. So it's not that they even have to really deny somebody like me who says inequality is the problem. It's just never in the discussion. It's never, never in the discussion. It's a little bit like, you know, who Copernicus is. Copernicus is this scientist who

discovered that the earth travels around the sun and the earth is just one of many planets traveling around the Sun. And everybody accepts now that this is right. But before him, everybody thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system, I guess it probably wasn't called the solar system at that time, but everything traveled around, including the Sun.

And they had developed these really complicated mathematical systems of making that work. And the way that works is that this all the other planets They have to do like loop the loops and spinning around That's the only way that it works to make sense so all of these guys spent like their whole lives working out these complicated mathematical models of how everything goes around the earth and Then a glycans actually things don't go on and he was you know, he was massively massively attacked Nobody wanted to accept it because

you have all these prestigious academics who have spent their whole life developing models of how things travel around the earth. I think that's kind of basically where we are now and if I was right in saying that these guys are just missing the big thing, what would you expect? You would expect basically that their models wouldn't work in the sense that they would constantly generate incorrect predictions and that is exactly what happens. Okay so he is explicitly comparing himself with the Copernicus. At least it's not Galileo. No it's not Galileo. Oh my god there are so many problems with the comparison, apart from

the obvious self-aggrandizing nature of it. Like Copernicus had a model, like a mathematical model, right? An alternative model, which was shown to be in accordance with the evidence. I mean, put aside a whole bunch of other facts, like people have known that it goes around the sun in different places a long time before. But you know, he doesn't have a model, right? He's got a slogan. That's different.

And he's not the only one. Like, there's just so many problems with that, which makes the self-aggrandizing nature of it particularly offensive. Well, well, no, Matt. Okay. So, you know, look. All right. So he might have compared himself to Copernicus, which, you know, that's not a, it's not a

great sign, right? Some might call that slightly self-aggrandizing, but, you know, our gurus, like people like Eric Weinstein, they're complaining, you know, they're not being called up by the government. The people are not like respecting them when they've got all these insights about the field. Gary's not doing that. So I made a lot of money in my early 20s, basically, because I was able to show that I was good. So if you're good, go into trading.

And I made a lot of money in trading. My biggest year I made more than $2 million. So you So you're talking about something and pay 10,000 a week basically for because they're good. And, you know, I probably could have gone on to make a lot more if I would have stayed in it. I left trading and I went to do my socks with T and masters. I'm like my first macroeconomics lecture. There's a guy there talking about interest rates. I was an interest rate trader and I was one of the best paid interest rates traders

in the world, right? And I said to him, why do you think we've been so wrong on interest rates for so long? And he was like, I know you always knew rates would be zero, right? Totally, totally unaware that that had even happened. I sent him the data, you know,

look, you guys actually been wrong for like 10 years. I wasn't even interested. I wasn't even interested. And I've been floating around this public media space for a long time. Right. And I'm starting to get some attention now. And like, since the book came out, this kind of thing, you've got somebody floating around the space was one of the best paid traders in the world. Very strong track record for correct prediction comes out, puts a video out, the beginning of COVID, basically correctly predicts everything that happens during COVID. And very, very little interest. So is that true? I mean, you've got a Sunday Times bestseller. You know, I was a little intrigued. Your book was nominated for one of the Financial Times book of the year.

This is a good point. Right. Who's interested? Penguin. Why are Penguin interested? Because they can sell a lot of fucking books and make a lot of fucking money. Who's not interested? The fucking government. This is the point I'm trying to make. Who's not interested? Oxford University. So the thing is, so banks look at me and say, this kid, predictions are right, give him in, how much do you want, whatever, million pound a year, you know. I asked for a kid to sit next to me and read the newspaper and I got someone, they hired someone to sit next to me, read the fucking news. Because they're like, if Gary needs a kid to read the newspaper, get him a kid to read the fucking newspaper, right? So many issues there. The self-aggrandizing is so strong. Like he works it into pretty

much everything he says. I made two2,010,000 a week. I predicted everything right. Yeah, whatever Gary wants, he can have. That is inconsistent, by the way, with the pretty reliable reporting we saw on the Financial Times, which he was a pretty standard kind of trader. He wasn't the wunderkind that was revolutionizing trading. But that aside, that little anecdote about confronting the lecturer with amazing ideas and the lecturer just couldn't handle the high level ideas that were coming at him and just had to go.

That's precisely the stories that we heard from Chris Langan. Yeah. Yeah. Now, finally, I thought what I was having a hard time with this. There were certain things that I didn't quite understand how he was, why he was doing them the way he was. So I kept on trying to track him down to his office. He was never in his office. I would wait in the hall for hours and hours for this guy. I never showed up.

Finally, I caught him in his office. And I said, hi, Professor Weissnering, can I come in? Well, I'm really kind of busy right now. And I, well, I just wanted to ask you one question. You know, how, why do you do this? Why are you taking a set theoretic approach to the calculus like this? You know, I mean, they don't seem to be compatible.

You know, on the one hand, you know, the calculus deals with change, whereas sets are static things. Why are you taking this particular approach to it? And he looks at me and he's, you know, Asperger's victim, right? And he looks at me, he looks down his thing. He says, well, you know, some people just don't have

the mental firepower to be mathematicians. Well, what was I supposed to do? Hit the guy? I to be mathematicians. Well, what was I supposed to do? Hit the guy? I wanted to hit him. Right, right. But he says something that's sort of pathetic almost to say. It is pathetic, but it basically told me a lot about how he sees the world, how he sees other people. I don't want to take a course from a guy like that. That's right, Matt. So, you know, I said, I like the phone not calling. And yes, he's complaining that academia aren't paying attention, right? Like the places that value, you know, like efficiency and success, they notice, right? Banks,

they'll give Gary a million to get them, whatever. Penguin, they're throwing money at him. He's booked, by the way, best seller during Greer. That's also by the way, very Jordan Peterson-esque, just to note, Jordan Peterson is often saying government is inefficient and whatnot, but industry, industry is like the shark, it cuts out all the fat, it won't be getting things wrong like that. So, it's nice to see a point where they agree there.

But I mentioned the phone isn't ringing and to be fair, that didn't come up in that clip there. So I have to retract that. And the phone isn't ringing and to be fair, that didn't come up in that clip there. So I have to retract that. Support this guy, support this guy, pay this guy whatever he needs. Turn up a penguin, you know, 10, 20,000 words. This guy, he can write a great story, give him what he wants, give him a load of money, get him in, right?

By the way, you got one of the biggest advances for nonfiction first title. It was a decent advance. So he's not exaggerating. Um, the private sector that's trying to make money is interested, but the government is not interested. That's a fucking problem. I would, I would work for government for free. I would support, I would advise government for free, but they don't call me.

Phone's not ringing, Chris. They don't call. They don't call. They don't call Eric the sort I'd call vaid or October 7th. I'll be entirely honest. One of the most off putting things I ever heard in my life is that when you look at people who've been fighting the war longer than you are, and then you say, well, you know, you didn't endorse. Did you ever call? Did anyone ever call? Never.

Not a single phone call. Nobody cared about my endorsement. Eric, I have to tell you, you know, you don't get any apologies or... Me? Yeah. Well, you don't get any someone coming around and saying, oh, I should have done this. No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. So if you were, if you got a call and they said, hey... How can I help?

Well, if they got a call and they said, what can you do to help? Let's reverse that. I have the paper that tried to figure out how we get American business the best and the brightest without hurting American capital, how it gets the best and brightest without hurting labor. I have the history of what H1B came from and the conspiracy between the National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences. They don't know that they've got a huge problem that the CPI was directly broken by the Boskin

Commission and it uses a modified Lespares index called a Lowe's index. And it's supposed to be using a seasonal path dependent index because an error in the CPI affects all tax brackets and entitlements. So the error in the CPI was supposed to be the fourth largest program after like defense, Medicare and social security. The error in the CPI. You know, so it's like, do you guys know how this thing works or runs?

Do you care? Do you just wanna move fast and break? Do you tell me? If you wanna move fast and break things and you wanna map of where things are, I don't need to be, I don't need a job. I don't need to be in the administration or anything. I'm just like, do you want to win? They're not calling, you know, the COVID dissidents who know how to sort things out. Here, they've got somebody who, you know, made a lot of money. He was a trader in the city, man. He

made millions. All right. He was a trader in the city, man. He made millions. All right. He made bets. Why isn't the government calling him to sort out inequality? It's a mystery. He got one of the biggest advances in the nonfiction book. And these thunderheads at Oxford and the government are just ignoring what that signals. So, you know, I'm just saying there are some telltale signs that we've seen here before. And another thing, Matt. Another thing.

There's more? How much more, Chris? There's a little bit more. There's a little bit more. But they, you know, we've talked about the wounded bird pose. We heard a little bit of it. It came up with the I'm being attacked and the I'm so tired. They want to take him down. They want to take him down. I mean, it's clear why they want to take him down. Yeah.

So there's a little bit discussion about this. And this is actually one of the things that you should be interested in is how do people frame the criticism that they receive? And how do they respond to it? Because this often does separate the gurus from the boys. So when I saw a section in one of the videos that we looked at was response to critics, that's where I'm like, OK, let me see

what you're going to say here. So OK, let's start that. like, okay, let me see what you're gonna say here. So, okay, let's start that. Just f*** basically. I don't know if you've ever played The Sims. You play The Sims and you try to get your Sim to do some studying. And he's so knackered that he just says, no, I refuse it. This is what my own brain is doing to me at this point. I'm properly exhausted.

But I wanted to do a couple of videos covering just a couple of the common critiques that we've had in the last couple of months and I'm not going to do that video so I'm just gonna include them very quickly in this one. One of the big criticisms we've had is that raising tax on wealth is like it's pulling up the ladder you're preventing people from being able to get rich now you are rich. And this is just like totally insane basically. The whole thing I'm trying to do is lower taxes on working people and raise taxes on hoarded wealth so that very, very wealthy people have to sell assets

and those assets go back into the economy and ordinary working people get higher wages and pay lower taxes and can afford to buy assets. Like the whole thing I'm doing here is trying to make it so that ordinary working people, young working people who want to produce good things, who want to do good work, can get rich and buy assets. The other attack which I get is that just like I want to increase taxes and increase the state, which is mad because I've always made it totally, totally clear that I'm not

trying to increase taxes. I'm trying to change who pays taxes. I want to move the tax burden away from working people and towards the super rich. So, you know, Matt, there, one of the things I want to point out is that you've got, you know, the highest motives, right? It's like Lex Friedman. Look, I'm doing a hell of a lot of stuff. And all I'm trying to do is get a good thing, right? Wealth and equality and higher taxes. And I'm doing a hell of a lot of stuff and all I'm trying to do is get a good thing, right? Wealth inequality and higher taxes. And I'm not even suggesting we tax working people, right? It's the ultra, which, by the way, I am thinking like, well, that's sort of convenient because you're like, so you're not, he's not suggesting, for example, that we should tax Treaters, right would they be the ultra well, well, well, that's the thing

I've avoided sort of trying to make a rejoinder to some of his stuff or pick holes and the thing But I I have noticed that the framing and it's a very populous framing is always about the ultra rich like the mega rich Right, like the 1% right right? Like the one percent. Right. So so everyone is Jeff Bezos kind of people. Yeah. So everyone who's in the 99 percent can be on board with that. Right. So it is by definition like a populist message. I mean, but if you dig into the numbers a bit and you look at, for instance,

who owns all the property in the UK. If you look into where a great deal of the wealth is held and where the sources of wealth inequality are coming from, it's not just the mega rich. It's dentists, it's professionals, it's traders, it's sometimes people's parents, it's a bunch of stuff like that. And I'm not saying this as a, like, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't tax them more, right? I think we should. But it's a less easy pill message to swallow. Yeah. Yeah. So he's actually arguing a message which is easier to promote, right? Which is like, essentially, none of I'm not talking to anybody in my audience, really, I'm talking about the mega wealthy, right? The people that have

hoarded wealth over generations. So like, who likes them? Like, like the really, the really difficult thing. I mean, look, I don't want to get into house prices and what's driving them and stuff. But there's a bunch of drivers, but there's a lot of similarities between Australia and the UK and other places where they're high. And it's got to do with some stuff that he accurately identifies, like the financialization of these sorts of assets. But one of the things that is a difficult pill to swallow is that there is a lot of tax incentives, tax breaks given to everyone who owns property, basically.

So you can buy a house and rent it out and there's like, you know, there's breaks on capital gains tax, there's negative gearing in Australia. There's a bunch of tax benefits, right? And you could make property much more affordable and bring house prices down, but it's a very difficult political pill to swallow. And neither of the current Australian mainstream parties can consider it because everyone who owns property in this, they hate the idea because they all enjoy seeing their house prices going up. Now, I'm pointing this out not to get into a debate, you know, an economics debate about house price and stuff. I'm just pointing out that often the solutions to problems are a bit unpalatable. And I do notice that if you want to take a populist approach to things, then you definitely don't go down

those roads because, you know, they're not as appealing as pointing the finger at George Soros or some aristocrat in a castle who's worth 100 million pounds. Yeah. And I feel people, people sometimes act like nobody wants to say that message. Like Nobody wants to hear this. And that is extremely eternally... Like nobody wants to say the rich are out of touch and take too much money. Like, I've been here and that might be a different...

Everybody wants to hear that message, right? The messages about negative gearing and actually bringing house prices down. A lot of people who own houses don't want to hear that message. I'm telling you. No, no. Like, so okay. Now, in regards to negative media coverage a bit more. So, you know, highest motivations, he's a bit tired from things that are going on, but he's just, you know, he's trying to do good and whatnot. So what about those other kind of attacks on him? The last thing I've got here is the personal attacks on me. I don't really like doing these lists, but I'm so knackered. This is kind of all I've got left really. Loads and loads of personal

attacks on me, which to be honest, often are the funniest part of my day. The one thing I want to say about this is, you know, I'm in a very a very very fortunate situation here I don't need to win this I'm a rich guy if we lose I'll continue to be a rich guy I'll get richer and richer I don't need to win so the Daily Mail can attack me will they want when the Daily Mail attack me what they're trying to do is make sure that you pay higher taxes and your family falls into poverty and their billionaire owners don't have to pay tax. So really in a way if the public can be convinced that I'm a dickhead well I can finally go on holiday but it's your family's finances on the line.

That's yeah so there you go an attack on Gary is basically an attack on poor people. Exactly. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny, makes me question, is there another agenda at play? Particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan, when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn't approve of and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world using the same language. I'm aware that you guys have been saying

in the comments for a while, watch out Russell, they're coming for you, you're getting too close to the truth, Russell Brand did not kill himself. I know that a year ago there was a spate of articles, Russell Brand's a conspiracy theorist, Russell Brand's right-wing. I'm aware of news media making phone calls, sending letters to people I know for ages and ages. It's been clear to me, or at least it feels to me like there's a serious and concerted agenda to control these kinds of spaces and these kinds of voices. And I mean my voice along with your voice. And anyway, you know, there's a, this to me is a little bit of a more clever way than the Eric version of, you know, look, if the attacks are too much, I might have to kick myself out of this discourse.

But there is a hint of that there, which is like, look, if you guys, you know, believe this crap about me or whatever, like I'm rich, I can just bugger off and. But again, the inconsistencies, like at many times he talks about how tired he is, how buggered he is, you know, dealing with the, you know, being targeted and stuff like that. But just there is a throwaway line. But he just mentioned, oh, you know, it's just the funniest part of my day to read the to read the criticisms. I know. But that's not even bothered. Yeah, water off a duck's back. I mean, it's just I see this contrast, these two wolves, right? One side wants to go, you know, I don't care.

I'm fantastic. I'm doing amazing. And it's a bit inconsistent with the sort of winded bird thing. Can I just say, can I just say, would you allow me to say that if you take Gary's account at face value, right? You know, he worked his way up. He worked hard at school and, you know, he's a very, very, very,'s account at face value, right? You know, he worked his way up. He worked hard at school and, you know, studied, you know, was quite bright and then won this

game. He got straight A's Chris. He got really good grades. I know. I've heard that any time. Don't leave that out. Well, he was also, but he was expelled for selling drugs before that. Right.

So he came over that adversity and for his own graph and whatnot. But I'm saying take it for granted the way that he describes, you know, he worked his way up and he went to university and he did very well there and then he got, you know, this position and he did very well at the financial company that he worked for. So well, he became a millionaire. And then he had a fight with the company about getting his own ends because he, he wanted to leave the And then he had a fight with the company about getting his own ends because he, he wanted to leave the company because he realized inequality is an issue. And he didn't like that's right.

Yes. His mental health. So he battles them. He details it in the book and he gets a payout, right? He gets this thing, which many people have been denied where the companies are holding some of the bonuses or that they are paying you. These are deferred stock options, aren't they? Right. Yes, that's a time for it. Sorry, deferred stock options. So it's a payout that you get over

the course of your career with the intention of keeping you. And if you leave the company early, you're not entitled to them is the general thing. But there are ways that people have been able to get them. Gary tried to get them by saying that he was going into charity and he had to go through various arbitration for about a year, but he got them in the end. And it was like, I think he says one to $2 million. I can't remember how much it is, but it's a substantial amount. So he got a payout. He earned all this money. Now he has a best-selling New York Times, whatever, Sunday Times best-selling book, which has been top of the charts for 11 weeks. He's got a YouTube channel with a million subscribers,

with tons and tons of views, and he's got a Patreon going now. So he's doing perfectly fine, like monetarily. Like this is not the most suffering person in the world. Like many people would be very happy for that life, but it's constantly presented like Lex Friedman that there is a massive burden and it's, you know, taking a toll and there's lessons that have been learned and you know, everything. I mean, I guess it's just kind of like, it feels a bit like being lectured by someone who was in the Ku Klux Klan about how not to be racist. Right.

And of course, like somebody with that experience, they do have things to say about being reassessed and the traps and those kinds of things that apply. But like, not everybody was in the Ku Klux Klan, right? Like, my image of traitors and life in the city and whatnot was similar to what Gary ends up having revelations about, but I already knew that and it didn't appeal. I already know that wealth inequality was an issue.

It was something that people were talking about in the university I was at. So like, I don't know. It's just like having somebody who is frequently reminding you that they're a millionaire, that they went to LSE and they are this super mathematical genius. And then they kind of understood that the economy was in trouble and all this kind of thing. And the trading could make you wealthy, but like it wasn't going to do anything like, I don't know, just none of that is news to me and also I never saw the appeal of being a trader. And it's not because I'm an uber rich elite person or that I don't think anybody

can ever speak about inequality and wealth taxes. Like, that's fine. Go ahead. So I don't know. That's just like a, a presumptions aspect through, you know, Gary is kind of telling us, but it, but it's like, I didn't go into the city and earn millions. No, I, I went to, you know, I was in elite education, you know, in terms of like universities or whatever.

I saw people who prioritized earning money and went to work in the city. And so he went and prioritized, you know, earning money, trading FX derivatives or whatever, but it's like he does that. You know, earning money, trading FX derivatives or whatever. But it's like he does that. And then also gets to claim the credit. For being a campaigner for justice and good and all of these things.

But says I can go away and be super rich because of how successful and smart I was. So even if none of this works out, it doesn't damage me. But that's somehow like a good thing. Yeah, I know. And I just don't feel like it's, it isn't such a burden. Like he produces about one podcast episode a week. And like one of them is, should I speak to Labour? So we talked 15 minutes about Labour wants to come on Gary's economics. Should I let them? And you know, he rambles on for 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour, once a week.

Now you and I, Chris have a podcast. We, we produce a fair amount of content. We do this as well as our day jobs. It's not, it's not that hard. Right. And we do a lot more than Gary. Just in terms of, in terms of content that you produce, right? You will not hear either of us going on about the great cross we have to bear for the very

important mission of the coding of gurus and making sure people are not being hoodwinked by various influences. No, it's just not that hard. And I don't think you can have your cake and eat it too. I don't judge people that prioritize making a lot of money. Yeah, it's fine. I worked for a little while. I gave it a go myself, working for a while in construction. In the end, I decided I'm not that kind of guy. I'd much prefer to take it easy

as an academic and do stuff that I enjoy. I don't judge people that make those decisions, but it does seem like Gary's had his cake and eaten it too. But it does seem like Gary's had his cake and eaten it too. Yeah. And you know, Matt, so just that I think I'll play here. So Gary talked there about, you know, the success, his level of wealth, you know, like at the end of the day, he could just seal off in the sunset, right? If it gets a bit too much. At another point, he was talking about the Patreon. On that note, I wanted to really thank everyone who subscribed to the Patreon. Last year we were funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and this year they didn't renew our funding, which meant we came into this year basically, the only way that we could

have funded it was basically me paying for it. We opened the Patreon and the Patreon guys have, they basically made it that I can have a manager, none of the money ever goes to me, I don't even see the money, there's a separate bank account, someone else managed it, and it means that I can totally focus on the creative work, the political work, and I haven't had to focus on the financial work. And also, it's just been really meaningful to me

to see people willing to step in and support it with their money, which makes it feel like it's not just me doing it. And that means I can use that money to think about things like getting an assistant, getting a PA. I think we are probably going to need somebody to do outreach work where they can... I get tons of messages, so many messages from including politicians, journalists, celebrities, influencers, people like these think tanks. And it's impossible for me to even keep on top of it. So we might be able to hire somebody to do that. And we're only able to do that because of the guys who

support the Patreon. So I want to thank you specifically everyone who's on the Patreon. So you know, the the incongruity to me there, first of all, is like, he was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity that is focused on research or activism that helps to solve poverty in the UK. So his channel was funded by a charity. That's already somewhat surprising. But after they've lost the fund, so they started the Patreon. But he says, the other option is I was going to have to pay for it. And that's kind of like presented as, you know, but like, hasn't he just been saying he's a billionaire, he's going to be fine. Like he knows how to bet on all the trades. He knows

all the things. So like, he's got no concern with money. But then why is this Patreon like, because then he's saying, look, I can hire a personal assistant. We can get people to respond to their emails. But this is the kind of thing that's like, it's just. There are other sources of income, right? Like the YouTube monetization. The book.

Well, the book and the YouTube. His primary activity is YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. And that generates an awful lot of income. I didn't mention that. I mean, I presume Yeah, he keeps that but yeah, so anyway, it's not again It's not to say you're not allowed to make money being a content creator it's that his presentation of it is that he needs more support because Yeah, you know, it's just, where's the, he's not mentioning the other sources of income there.

You know, he's, he wouldn't, I don't think he would have to dip into his, you know, he wouldn't have to pay for it himself because he makes more than enough money from YouTube to pay to make a 40 minute casual video from his kitchen. Right. I mean, we can afford to make videos, right? Like we we've managed to swing it and we are not millionaires. But like the so there's there's an incongruity there. And I mean, like you said, it's perfectly fine. He says that the patron, he doesn't take any money for it.

It all goes back into the channel. Fine. You know, fine and dandy. Let's let's accept that. But you're such a financial whiz that you can essentially beat the market almost constantly, right? Like there's, I'm going to play some other clips where he's talking about his ability to predict markets. So like, why wouldn't you just, you know, do some of those bets that you are saying that you can constantly, what, you can, do some of those bets that you are saying that you know, you can constantly what you can't do that? Well, well, okay. Yeah.

Well, that is, that is a good question. Um, so of course, when he was working for a big company, he's obviously trading with other people's money on particular markets and stuff, like the facilities, both financial and technical. Um, and you know, there's actually a pretty strong argument that was made by the people who the Financial Times spoke to, which said that actually he had quite a lucrative. Yes, he mentions that in the book as well.

Yeah, he was assigned a lucrative spot. So that's very different from trading on a personal level. But you're quite right, too, that Chris, that with a fund like a piggy bank're quite right to that Chris, that with a fund, like a piggy bank of 10 million bucks, say, and being the best trader in the world, like, you know, understanding everything, it wouldn't be hard to generate an income of say $200,000 per annum. That'd be pretty straightforward. Surely that's, that's pocket change for people that are good at trading.

Well, that's the thing. You can do it extremely conservatively and not have to think about it very much. So anyway, whatever. Okay, well, but he talks about at one point, Matt, like advising all the people. This is part of the reason I was thinking about this because he has a video about how to get wealthy. And he kind of says, you know, like he doesn't give financial advice, right. Because there's well, different kinds. Yeah, I heard two reasons. One is you one, you shouldn't try it because the systems are good against you. But two, you can't do it like he does because he's trying to.

He's tried advising his friends, but they have all the wrong intuition. Oh, exactly. I have the clip for this. So listen to this. And I said, well, you know, it's gone up 20% and it's down 5% so you still have a lot of money like just don't do anything just sit wait you know if you want you can buy a little bit more on this dip and they both said you know you know you don't understand like I'm out like I'm wiped out like I've lost all my money and I was confused like how could you have lost money and it's up 15% since I told you to buy it

and they both did basically the same thing, which was they didn't do anything when I said buy it, because at the time it looked terrible because the price was really low. It went up 5% and they thought, oh damn, I should have bought it. It went up another 5% and they thought, oh man, I really should have bought it,

I'm gonna buy it now. So straight away they missed the first 10%. Goes up another 5% and they make a little bit more and they're like, okay great, I made some money, they buy a little bit more. Goes up another 5% and they make a little bit more and they're like okay great I made some money they buy a little bit more goes up another 5% and then they both just basically went totally insane and it didn't say anything to me they bought a ton more gold they bought silver they bought platinum they bought palladium they bought Bitcoin they're buying Tesla not telling me any of this stuff basically because they'd made a little bit money trading

on my recommendation they basically became sort of convinced that they themselves are really good traders and they did a load of stuff which I didn't tell them to do and they bought loads basically and then it came down and they lost a ton of money. So this is why I don't try and teach people to trade basically. The few times I've given friends trading recommendations, most of the time they managed to lose a ton of money because it's trading hard and you know I make money as a trader and I every now and again I do say my positions on the channel but I was a professional trader for six years and I've been looking at the economy for 20 years and you know I have an extremely good track record as a professional trader and extremely good track record as a personal trader I don't think this

is a thing which I can teach you to do you know I mean you know it's a bit like going and asking your same bolt how can I win the Olympics you know like maybe train for 20 years yeah I just don't think that it's um, I don't think it'd be responsible I think it'd be super dangerous, you know, yeah Gary is not only Copernicus but also the Hussein. Hussein Bolt. Hussein Bolt of trading. Yeah, most of his anecdotes do tend to have a Theme which is that Gary knows everything Gary's fucking brilliant, other people don't know anything. That is a common theme. Yeah. But this is, I play this cut mark because like, you know, as I say, I am not a financial

whiz kid, right? I know people might be surprised, but like, if you're the Usain both of traders Right the the world Olympic champion at treating Presumably you're pretty good at that right and you're just describing Something where you got a 20% return or maybe a 15% return right like on an investment if you followed his advice That's just one of us. Yeah treats right that is if his friends that he did so like again I'm naive person that I am. I'm kind of like, why would you want the Patreon with like a couple of thousand people in it?

When you could donate all the money yourself, you can make the Patreon, but just give it to everyone for free. Give all the content for free. They can like, you know, join up and they can join the movement, but you're funding it all with the money that you've set aside. Just put a five million or whatever into a pot.

Don't get any further down this road, Chris. There's a man in a well. He's ready to jump out. You're just asking for a heap of trouble. Look, the bit that I'm getting at is you have to be like, I think a little bit skeptical about the degree to which somebody presents themselves as being unconcerned about money or personal wealth or whatever. I don't like that Gary's a billionaire. I think this is a pretty well documented thing. A trader having a six year career. I think it's the case that everyone who is actively trading equities and things is concerned

about making more money. Right, right. But then when your argument is like, I have no interest, money means nothing to me because I have too much of it already. But you're awfully concerned about Patriots or subscriber numbers or bookseals. It's just like there's a kind of disconnect there. And I find that a lot of Gary's fans seem to be maybe even

more defensive about that point than Gary, where they're like ascribing that he's got absolutely no personal investment in this or whatever. I'm seeing indications that there is personal investment, but I'm not saying he needs to fund it all himself. That's perfectly fine for him not to do it, but I'm just saying for me like for me, there's a gap in the rhetoric around the level of wealth and comfort. And then the kind of notion like what we can do with the channel if we can just get a couple more donations for the Patreon. Like Gary can't hire a PA. Yeah, that's fair. That's right. So just to be super clear, the critique is not, it doesn't have anything to do with Gary or anybody making a lot of money, continuing to make money, being interested in making more money.

The critique is on the disconnect, right? And inconsistency with that and the purported, like, primary focus. Lack of interest. Yeah. Like so supposedly he doesn't care about that at all. Now he's got enough money. He's made his money, right? Like he could just put his money in some boring, buy some bonds, you know, buy some treasury stocks or whatever. Forget about it. Right. You can tell me whatever there are safe investments, Chris, right? With someone who's got a lot of money can just invest in that same thing. Never think about it again. Right. That's what someone would do who had a lot of money and wasn't interested in getting more money. Likewise, you wouldn't perhaps be so focused on having the best-selling book,

having all these increasing subscriber numbers and views, and talking so much about how amazing he is at making money and being demonstrably very proud. There's a disconnect between that and the presentation of being someone who's not interested in money but merely has a crusade to help the poorest among us. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, on that topic, I do have, as you might imagine Matt, some clips that we might want to listen to. So yeah, let's see where this takes us. I worked as a trader from 2008 till 2014. I made a lot of money, especially in 2011, but also a couple of years around that. If you can get a job as a professional trader it's an extremely

well-paid job and and you will become a relatively rich person. Basically nobody not from a rich background becomes a trader nowadays. It's almost impossible to get that job and I got that job partially because I was a very good student you know I was a very talented maths student I got that job partially because I was a very good student, you know, I was a very talented maths student. I got very good grades, I got into a very good university and I got very good grades at the university. But even on top of that, I needed to win like a national card game to get that job. And I think that shows you, you know, this story is in my book, if you want, you can

read my book and it tells you about this. It's almost impossible for ordinary people to get that job nowadays so unless you are like a kind of like a extremely unbelievably talented mathematician in which case you know go and study maths economics at Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and try and get a job as a trader this is just not a route that is open to you. The trading floor has almost nobody from a poor ordinary background, almost everybody is from a rich background. So if you come to me

from an ordinary background and say how do I get rich? I can't really say to you do what I did because it's almost impossible for you to do that. So then you might say okay well you know maybe I can't get a job as a trader, but you know, you still trade personally and I do still trade personally and I've got a very good track record trading person. I have made quite a lot of money trading personally since I quit trading. So this leads to the point about, you know, many people can try, but you know, the thing that got me in this as well, this is a clip that is ostensibly

talking about that the system is rigged, right? Like, you know, if you're a working class person, you're not going to get the opportunities, you know. And just to be clear, this isn't like a new take, right? This is something that people have talked about for centuries, let alone decades, about you don't have the habitus, as Bordeaux would put it, however he writes his name. But there is slipped in there. Of course, you can't do it. Basically, no one can do it unless you're an extremely, unbelievably talented mathematician and you go and study places like the LSE or Oxford. These are like, is there anybody that we know?

Even when he said, nobody can do this, this is not like a pop that's open. The underlying message is like, unless you're me, right? Unless you're me, then you could do it. That's why I could do it. But in his defense, Chris, he did become a trader, one of the few people from the small percentage, from a less privileged background. So, you know, he is a little bit special. Well, is he? I mean, just because like how many people from Northern Ireland were in the anthropology department from my background when I like did my PhD. I can tell you, man. Zero. Am I, am I? You should actually show this. My general message is just like, I'm not saying, actually,

the kind of point about there are obstacles put in people's ways, right? And if you have, you come from a family that is well off, if you have access to resources, of course you're in a better position. You have connections. You're able to get internships. You're able to work for non-paid internship positions, all these kinds of things.

These things are talked about and I agree with all of that. But there is always this kind of underlying thing, unless you're a special Runderkate like me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I'm just going on stereotypes here. But what like traders in the kind of new rich, like down in London, sort of in the 80s and stuff like that, like what they kind of looked down upon because they, at least some of them, more many of them, did come from a less coot background and were kind of flashy and showy. And they weren't always all toss. I don't know. I've just got to I've got to. Well, like my you might have heard of this movie called Wall Street.

Right. Like in the 80s, it had the Charlie Sheen. Yeah. Both of them, actually. Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen. Right. He was playing the dad in it. But like that is also a story where there's like a, you know, somebody not from that wealthy world who becomes attracted to it. And then, you know, it works the way up and then they lose their morals as they go on, right, like his dad, Gordon Gekko, greed is good.

Look at all this wealth. And then I think they buy out his dad's company or they like do a hostile takeover at something at the end, like a vaguely. But I just mean this kind of notion that like, you know, there's a small amount of people who get into these and are able to claw their way up. The Wolf of Wall Street is kind of the same, right? Like the guy learns a way to do these kind of high pressure seals and then is able to exploit a whole bunch of people. So I

just, I just think that. And on top of that, I think I'm right about that being like a bit of a prominent stereotype in the 1980s and 90s of the London financial traders. They were like, yeah, like new rich, you know, they bought sports cars and very loud and flashy with their money and they were new money, right? It wasn't old money. So, you know, I think, I think at least a fair swagger did come from not fancy backgrounds because all I cared about was like in terms of hiring, you know, this is where yuppies came from. Yeah. Uplively mobile, young, up with the mobile type things. Anyway, it is just a stereotype, but it's just a, it's just a vague memory. Like the thing that we're not questioning is that like, if you look at finance professions or like,

or elite university enrollments and whatnot, you're going to see, you're going to see an overrepresentation of people from wealthy backgrounds. Obviously that's the case because... Yeah, I'm just saying it's not unknown. It's not like there is a fair amount of social mobility there. And look, in fairness to him, he's telling the story about the kinds of people who tend to become traders, at least in London. And I think he's exaggerating a bit, but he does work in into that story, a lot of examples of how he's a pretty special boy, especially in many, many ways.

And I guess I'm primed to this because I have heard him mention these exact same things again and again and again. And again. Yeah. Well, okay. So let's, let's go on the bed because he's got some issues with, you know, the elites in the rivalry towards academics and fact, right? Cause like the traders actually in general, even though, you know, he's arguing that they

are profiting off things, it's generally that they are just, you know, they're using the system, which is put in place for them to profit from, but they didn't create the system, right? So they're not actually the issue really. They're kind of like a symptom. Whereas academics or economists in Gary's presentation, they are like the defenders of the system. So they don't want anything to change. So they are the ones that are like kind of getting things wrong, right? And here's an example of that. So, you know, I know when I come out and say inequality is the big thing and you

live in a world full of economists that say, oh, the problem is things to do with the interest rate, things to do with levels of government spending, things to do with level of taxation. I can sound like a bit of a quack basically. Why is this guy saying the problem is one thing when all of these prestigious elite economists aren't mentioning it? Well, they are an educational system which never talks about it, and their predictions are constantly wrong. Whereas if you look at my predictions and you know I correctly predicted interest rates

after 2008 crisis but I've also correctly predicted things on this channel. If you go back and look at the first video on this channel which will link in the description, I predicted in the beginning of COVID there would be an inflationary crisis, cost of living crisis, a huge spike in the stock price, the gold price, house prices, and huge increase in inequality. All of these things have happened. So I know it's easy to dismiss somebody, especially somebody who doesn't come from a rich, privileged background saying the elites are wrong on this, but the elites are continually generating incorrect predictions. And I'm generating correct predictions here. So again, I think there's a kernel of truth in what he's saying, which is that economics, not academics in general, but economics.

No, economists. Economists rather, do have a tendency to be a bit come from a more well off background than the rest of us. That's fine. But I think it would be a great exaggeration to say that it is completely dominated by ultra wealthy types. And I think a lot of people who go into academia are interested in not necessarily trying to max out the amount of money that they make in their lifetime. I know Gary would say that it's because they come from a family that's so rich that I don't need to care about money.

But that's not true of academics in general. That's not true of you or me. I would say that, like, you know, there is that thing as well. The built into this, I just I just noticed these kind of techniques. There's the built in thing that like, oh, people are going to, you know, you might call me a crank because of my accent, because I'm working class. And it's like, that's not like, I haven't heard people saying, don't listen to Gary because he's working class and he doesn't know what he's talking about. But he frames it that that's why his position will be dismissed. And granted, he may have a better track record for predictions, but I will say

that this is something we constantly hear everybody self-declare. Brett Weinstein says that he has, you know, a fantastic record of predictions. He's never got things wrong. Eric says that he predicted the financial collapse. I think Scott Adams claims he predicted it as well. So it's like, uh, Nassim Taleb. Oh, Taleb. predicted it as well. So it's like Nassim Taleb. Oh, Taleb. Yeah, as well.

And yeah, so, you know, at least in Gary's case, I think he has some financial bets that illustrate that, you know, he has taken positions and benefited from it. But yeah, just again, like the pinch of salt thing comes in where like everything I say is right. Like a recent prediction that Gary has said is that in the next five years, housing prices in the UK will double. Okay. Now that is a clear prediction of a timeframe. And like it's what Daniel Lekens would refer to as a risky prediction, because it doesn't just say increase, but it says the magnitude of the increase. Let's return in five years and see if that prediction holds up,

because that is presented as a very strong prediction that he's making. So we'll be here in five years, Matt. We can come and check if that one, Panda, I presume UK house prices, by the way. Just to make clear. So let's put a flag in there. OK, see you in 2040, Mark. OK. Yeah, and just to reiterate, I think

the entire premise is wrong. His premise is that nobody else is talking about inequality in academia. Academic economists, theoretical economists, don't care, don't even have the models with which to understand it. And that's why everyone else is ignoring it. And as we established, that's simply not true. So yeah. Yeah. And you've, Matt, you know, this narrative that we often hear that like academia is taking out all of the renegade insightful fingers. Like it wants to indoctrinate

people into an ideology. And if you dare go against that, you're going to be kicked out. So, you know, that is the position of pretty much all of the people that we cover. So I think that what we have at the moment is essentially a broken education system in economics. But there's more to it than that. And the second reason why we don't speak about inequality in economics enough is because we have a system which aggressively takes

anybody who is good at predictions out of the conversation. And to explain this, I want you to put yourself in the mind of a young 20 21 year old economic student loves economics love the maths studying at Lowe's at elite University you you know you graduate whatever it is Mugna Cum Laude or whatever you're top of your class and then you have to decide what you want to do with your life so if you want to be in this conversation if you want to be an academic or if you want to be advisor to government or if you want to work in public policy, you have to stay in academia. You can't just do an undergrad. You're going to have to do a masters. It's going to cost you a lot of money. You're going to do a PhD. You're going to

have to work, spend money, locked in libraries. If you're lucky you might start making money in your like mid-30s or you can go into the sea. Not only does it pay you way way way more but it gives you the opportunity to prove that I'm good because I can make predictions and academia doesn't really care if you can make good predictions. So one thing which was really clear to me in my time in the city and my time in academia is if you're really, really good, you want to be in the city because if you're making good predictions, you will be recognised, you'll be paid and everybody will know that

is the guy over there who is right because they're really aggressively analysing who is the guy who is making good predictions. They're tracking that and they're paying that. So there you go. Academics, I don't really understand economics because the system is basically you can make a lot of money if you become a trader. So all this, everyone wants to make a lot of money, obviously. So that's the highest priority of everyone. Unless you come from like an elite background, Right. That's the thing. Oh yes. Yes.

If you come from an elite background. And so all the smart people who are studying economics don't do PhDs and write books and journal. They'll be stuck in the library. That's why. And who wants to be stuck in a library, Chris? No, they want to go and trade and make mega bucks like him. Like, cause, cause they're super predictors. They can, they can predict, you know, they can make trades and, uh, you know, make, make like, you know, good trades more often than bad trades that make money.

So yeah. Okay. So that's why basically academic, academic is useless. This is why nobody understands economics like Gary. Yeah. Nice. Now the thing to me, the amount that jumps out is like, aren't these two different things?

He's completing all of economics, like ability to predict the whole model of the economy, which is a complicated thing with the ability to trade successfully in a commodity or foreign exchange currencies or whatever. And that seems to me like those are two different things. Like, yes, one involves the economy, but it is not the whole of the economy. So I feel like, yes, there is validity to the point that the nature of like working as a trader will optimize for people who are making good at making profits, right? From trades. But being good at making profits from trades, is that the same thing as, you know, understanding the economic model in general?

No, it isn't. It isn't. Look, I mean, it obviously isn't. Like, a clinical psychologist might be better at treating people and making them better than an academic psychologist like me. That doesn't mean that they understand everything in psychology better. Likewise, like he said, like a typical trader is, is specialized in a very particular thing, right?

They might've spent the last five years doing nothing, but, but trading. I don't know, rubles and you know, foreign exchange. Yeah, that's right. And they're, and they'll be focused on a particular timeframe. So a bit like a clinical psychologist, they'll amass these kind of practical skills for having like an edge just over the percentage, just over random chance. And so obviously, that doesn't necessarily mean that you understand the economy better than someone who's been spending a lot of time in the library,

who's running simulations, who's testing. He's saying that academics never care about predictions, never care about making predictions. Good economics is pretty scientific and I think they do care about their models making predictions that fit in with reality and they have a much broader scope than individual traders. So it is kind of, I mean, I hate to sound like, like, like we are the academia defenders, right? But come on, it is a brash and, and absurd, absurd claim and self-serving claim. I think we've got,

but the thing is like, I don't care if economist professors are bad at making predictions about the market or whatever, that's fine. I'm sure they are. I wouldn't assume that they're good at it, but I think the inference that traders who make money are better at understanding the economic market in general. That is not a logical inference because the goal of an individual is to make Money right like a goal of an individual trader is to make money It's not like develop certain industries or this kind of thing, right? Well, yeah, what would I say make predictions? I don't mean trading predictions. I mean you have a model just like scientists make predictions Chris so, you know modeling for instance the effect of

So, you know, modeling, for instance, the effect of changing tax rates or modeling the effect of implementing a 1% wealth tax that Gary keeps talking about. That is that is what other economists do, not traders. They don't do that in their day to day job. Exactly. Exactly. Now, Matt, we heard this story a bit earlier, but I'm just going to play it from like another angle, OK, because this is the challenging the professor at Oxford story, which which fits in with this theme. All right. So let's hear that retold for the second time.

Whereas when I went back to academia in 2017, I had my first lecture at Oxford and it was about interest rates. And I thought, you know, this is really interesting, right? You know, this is the thing which we've predicted really badly for 10-15 years. This is a specific area I worked in. This is the area I'm an expert on. Like it's really interesting, right? like if you are at elite university and you're studying something really important and We've been wrong about it for 10 at that time. was 10 years now it's more like 15 years this interesting right this is like a kind of like an unsolved problem like it there's a thing that we're really bad at you know we can work out why we're bad at it so I went to the professor I said why do you think

we've been wrong about interest rates for 10 years and he said no no we always knew interest rates would stay zero which is you know categorically wrong and I went back and I showed him the data, and I said, look, you've actually been wrong for 10 years. And he said, oh, that's interesting. It never went anywhere. So what this shows is, if you're good at predicting, which means you're good at working out

why other people are wrong, the city will pay you. Academia won't even notice. It won't even notice. So what does this tell you about academia's ability to improve? Like if these guys are able to be wrong year after year after year after year for 10 years and not even notice, they're not going to improve. They're not going to improve basically. So what you have is a situation where anyone who is good and wants to make money is aggressively paid to leave. And if you're good and you stay, even if you are able to correctly identify an area where everyone is consistently wrong,

they don't really care and they're not going to listen. There you go. I think his logic is rock solid there, Chris. What's wrong? What's wrong with the logic? Why do you have a problem with that? What's wrong? What's wrong with the logic? Why? Why do you have a problem with that? Well, come on. I mean, it's quite similar to Chris Langan's story there. He's got his little stories about he confronts teachers in class and it's like, hey, what about this thing? And the teachers would just be befuddled because he'd just blown their mind. And he went, well, these people have nothing to teach me. It's all very self-serving, isn't it? I mean, me. It's all very self-serving, isn't it? I mean, if you believe this narrative, that any academic

who is in economics, only the stupid ones, are not trading. All the smart ones go into trading. The traders really understand everything about the economy. Of all the traders, Gary is the best trader. So he understands everything better than most. And even when you tell an academic that they're wrong, they're just not interested because they've got their textbooks and they read them out because it doesn't matter if they're wrong. Like if you believe that self-serving narrative, then I'm sorry. I got a Bridgette Bookland to sell you. Yeah. Well, there was somebody in the subreddit who was interested in like, you know, studies economics and went and read Gary's thesis, which is back from when he did this master's at Oxford. And he is looking at the topic of

inequality and housing a little bit. But they kind of make the point that one, his paper is proposing this model, but it's not actually based on testing it out with data. It's a theoretical mathematical model, exactly the thing that he's kind of complaining about. And then they make out that the very topic that he's talking about is a very hot topic. And there's a lot of aspects that his model just doesn't take care of. It doesn't show any interest in them, whatever. And they said, you know, their position was, look, this is a perfectly reasonable model for like a master's thesis.

It's an interesting topic, but it's the kind of thing that would get like incredibly critiqued, you know, if you were to present it as like an academic paper or whatnot. But Gary seems to have viewed it, you know, a little bit like other gurus that he was able to see for a problem that other people haven't and he's kind of worked it out, but he's not really getting recognition for it, right? Like people are treating it just like he's an older master's student when actually he had all these insights. And the other thing too is in order to write a master's thesis, even though it was not published and didn't lead to publications, he would have had to read

the other research on inequality and he would have had to cite it in his introductions, I presume, Chris, which, you know, does make me wonder because he keeps saying that nobody else studies this at all. And he must know that they do because he must have cited at least some of that literature. I can't imagine it passing without him doing a literature review. Yeah, yeah, well, I guess, I mean, I haven't read it, right. So I'm going by a second hand thing, but yes, I would assume so. And, you know, people are pointing out, like, when you look at the connection that he posits between inequality and house pricing, it doesn't hold. There's lots of countries where it doesn't hold. So that would be counter to the model, right? Like you would have to deal

with that kind of data if you were like- Are you saying his model makes predictions that don't fit about Chris? My goodness. Yeah. Well, but that's the kind of thing, right? So, you know, this is a very specific complete, but it's just like, you know, it kind of means that there's a prescription about what everyone else is doing wrong. But when people critically evaluate what Gary's doing, they don't find him doing things that are as revolutionary. And most of the gurus that we cover, they have this story that they have these revolutionary theories that aren't recognized by the discipline.

And if they were taking seriously, things would, you know, dramatically change. So Gary doesn't have a theory of everything, but he's certainly saying here, academics are just like egregiously wrong. Well yeah, and he's certainly saying that his amazing theories about this are not being taken seriously because the institutions are fundamentally corrupt, right? Or broken. And that, and you know, even when you hold the proof, the evidence right under their noses, they won't even pay attention to it. Again, this is identical to the narratives we hear from someone like Brett Weinstein and many other gurus.

Yeah. So just to put a pin on this point about academics and economists and what they're doing. So what kind of person stays in academia when they know that if they're good, they will do much better and get paid much better leaving academia and going into finance? Basically people from rich families. It doesn't make sense to do that if you're not from a rich family. Like if you have the option, you know, I made millions of pounds in the city and that is what paid for this flat and my brother needed to buy a house, I helped him, my sister's trying to buy a house, I'm helping her.

Like people from ordinary families cannot afford to make that choice if they're good. So the kind of people who stay in academia, you need to be either not good enough to get into finance from a rich family or basically a little bit mad Like and this is what happens and we so you have this system which kind of brainwashes people into saying Inequality doesn't exist. It doesn't matter. I said my which are you incompetent or mad Yeah, again, I have to take offense to this because in his framing.

Okay. So the rest of us academics, we don't even just to be fair though, he is mostly completed by the economists, but I know, I know, but that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Um, because most of us academics, we don't even have the chance to, it doesn't matter how good we are at psychology or anthropology. We don't have a chance to be traders anyway. We can't even have the chance to, it doesn't matter how good we are at psychology or anthropology. We don't have a chance to. We can never be traders anyway.

We can't be traders anyway. So maybe in our fields, the smart people do stay in academia because we just don't have a better option. Not according to the Weinsteins though, but yes. Or we come from, we all come from incredibly rich families so that we just, you know, we're just wallowing in money so we just can spend our lives doing frivolous things in academia. Not true also, but I just dispute that. I don't think everyone is like Gary.

And I don't think everyone, even if they don't come from an incredibly wealthy background, would necessarily turn their noses up at an academic career, which is relatively well paid. Yes, I know it's not trade of money, but it's relatively well paid. And I think a lot of people, even economists, sometimes prioritize things that they're passionate about and the things that they believe in rather than just chasing the option which pays the most money like Gary did.

And I have to say, I've got a little mention of my own little thing here. I don't want to make a big deal about it. Okay. I have to say, I mean, I am one of those people because I did for a short time leave CSIRO, work in commercial construction. And my dad did want me to continue running the business with my uncle. In the end, I realized I didn't want to because I'd much prefer to have a nice relaxed academic job, have a tree change in the countryside. Rather than do that, the business did go on to make many millions of dollars.

Whatever my uncle, quite rich. no regrets, no regrets at all. And I don't think I'm unusual. Lots of people. In fact, I've met so many people that they did have the talent. They did have the opportunities. They could have taken a path where they were just trying to maximize the amount of money that they were making in life. And they chose not to walk that path.

Um, so I just don't, I don't accept Gary's narrative there. That Matt, look, you know, we've got a sample of two academics here. I just mentioned, as I've said throughout this episode, I'm not from this elite. You know, my accent might give the impression that I'm from an elite family with a silver spoon in my mouth, but that is not the case. I made a choice whenever I was selecting university subjects between studying law, something which at least in general leads to wealthy positions later in life, or doing study of religions with Tibetan language. or doing study of religions with Tibetan language. And I, I, I,

that's a little bit less well remunerated, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I was aware of that. It wasn't like I was completely delusional. I also wasn't like I had a huge stock of, you know, money that I was able to go back on. But like, so yeah, it's just, I'm not saying that makes me what are you don't want an amazing person. I'm just saying, no, it's normal. It's like it's just it's normal. Don't decide everything based on like earning potential, even when you're not from a super mega rich. Like I'm not super.

I did. I did medical trials. I worked in part time jobs,, not even part-time. I worked in jobs throughout my whole university career. So I got a hardship fund. So our point here is that Gary's narratives often depend on some pretty broad assumptions about academics or about human nature and so on, which if you just think about it for a moment, don't bear fruit. On the other hand, those narratives that he's telling are very self-serving in a

guru-esque kind of way because they do act to undermine and delegitimize basically institutions and they do serve to aggrandize the special knowledge of the person in question. We're just saying. Yeah, yeah well I think I've hammered this into the ground but I'm just gonna play this clip. So the third reason economists don't talk about inequality is that pretty much all powerful influential economists are quite rich. They're quite rich, they're generally from rich families, if they weren't from rich families they probably wouldn't have stayed in academia. Economics has the worst social representation of like different social classes of any subject

in the big American universities. So you have rich people who've gone into study this subject, they probably don't need money otherwise they would have gone into finance and then they get paid to work for a think tank or work for a newspaper and they themselves are quite rich and comfortable, the people who pay them are probably quite rich. They're heavily incentivized not to talk about inequality, right, in a quite obvious way which is when somebody is rich and comfortable they want to keep things the way they are. You know, when you talk about a crisis of inequality it hurts most people quite badly because the world tends to concentrate at the very top. But there's a sort of, you know,

the top 1%, especially the top 0.1% does really, really well, but there's like 5 or 6% at the very top but there's a sort of you know the top 1% especially top 0.1% does really really well but there's like 5 or 6% at the top that benefit from that and these guys include basically any economist with a voice so economists are wealthy they don't talk about inequality they've got a massive amount of skin in the game saying that inequality doesn't matter 20 years 30 years of education studying something which has nothing to say about inequality. They need this to not be a problem. Right. So we hear this reiterated that all economists come from wealthy backgrounds, at least the vast majority of them. Otherwise, they wouldn't be an academic economist or what's working in a think tank or

whatever. Otherwise, they'd obviously become a trader because there's no way they could afford to go to university, get a PhD like you did, Chris. And like we said at the beginning, it is true that economics sort of veers all disciplines. They do these studies, right? And they look at the characteristics of the practitioners. For instance, most academics tend to be left-wing, but some disciplines tend to be more right-wing. I'm sure economics would tend to be more right-wing than psychology. And the same would be true in terms of how many of them

come from, say, parents with no bachelor's degree. What percentage of academics in these different fields? Now, happily, I have the figures right here in front of me, Chris. And we can, let's take psychology, since that's me as a comparison point. So in psychology, we have 29%, this is across the world, 29% of academics in psychology have parents who don't have a

bachelor's degree, right? So this is a proxy for being less well-off, right? Not being middle class. In economics, it's lower. It's 24%, Chris. 24% versus 29%. So while it's true that there are these differences between the disciplines in terms of you know class and politics and all that stuff, it's not massive. It's not massive. So the premise that he bases that little speech on about this is the reason why people working in economics just simply don't care about wealth and equality, which we already established is not true. The premise for his rationale for why that's the case is also incredibly weak.

It's yes, there's a slightly fewer people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds going into big study economics, or get PhDs in economics, but it's not huge relative to a field like psychology, which is kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe not as dramatic as Clem is what that would suggest. I'm sure all our data is available, Matt.

Yeah, it could be. I mean, I didn't get, I just, I looked, I picked up the first paper that talked about this. This is from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2023, the economics profession, socioeconomic diversity problem. Well, in any case, we're dealing with a rigged system. We've heard that Gary was good at dealing with the thing individually, but the problem is that we need to unfuck the system. Right. And we've heard through all the clips that we've paid that he kind of views what he's doing on his YouTube channel as like making a genuine contribution to that. Right. Like building, building a movement that is going to put inequality

front and center. And then however it's dealt with, like a top 1% wealth tax or whatever, those are details that will be sorted. But the notion is that we need to change the world, right? And we need people that are willing to envision that. So Gary does have that kind of visionary drive, as you can see from this clip. There's a little scene towards the end of my book where when I used to be a trader, I was speaking to my junior, an Australian guy in the book, he's called Arthur Gopowski, where I said to him, do you think we should try and do something about the collapsing economy? And he just didn't understand and he just sort of laughed and he was like, you know, there's nothing you can do There's no way you can stop it. And then the truth is that when I quit banking, I think in my heart of hearts

I believe that he was probably right That it was kind of a fool's errand that I was doing walking away from a lot of money To try to stop a bad thing from happening which in reality I would probably never be powerful enough to to stop or even influence stopping And I probably really did believe that until up to about a year ago but I don't believe that anymore I think we can maybe do this. So let's keep building. Let's keep building. So that is the correct message if you want to kind of motivate people to do stuff, right? Because we said, look, it's very unlikely anything is going to happen. But there is

like a different process here where, you know, like I said, I've read the book, so I know the scene he's talking about, right? And he basically, he has a breakdown when he's in Tokyo. He gives various reasons for why it is, right? But there's a part in it where he's talking to someone one day, he's like, you know, like, isn't the economy fucked? Like, should we do something about it? And the way that the person responds is like, what do you talk, like, what do you mean? What are you talking about? But he casts it as like, they can't really get, they can't even see what he's talking about. But I do think it's more the case of like, if I was to come to you one day, Matt, and be like, Matt, should we fix the economy? Like, should we just do it? Like, most people's response would be like, what are you talking about? Like, do you

want to be... I'm a bond trader. So Gary presents, as you know, like maybe that guy wasn't thinking big enough. But I do think this is something that we see that like the gurus often imagine like Covid thing isn't being done right, but maybe I could do it better. Like I could do it. It's a very personified view of like saving the world. But you know, on the other hand, Matt, this is how I think a lot of people who have led a lot of movements also see themselves. Right. You know, that that is the revolutionary

deal, I guess, is the point of it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You have to be a little bit crazy, don't you? To want to change, change the world. And, you know, I don't deduct any marks from him for, you know, being an activist and wanting to accomplish something. That's perfectly fine. But I do understand that if you just,

at nine o'clock in the morning at the trading desk in Tokyo, you're like, mate, the world's fucked. Let's try to fix it. He's gonna go, what? And so I think with these stories, it's very easy to kind of editorialize them in a way that, you know. Yeah, this is a, I mean, I know we're not analyzing the book, but a recurring thing that I got through the book was like, you

know, and it's kind of the nature of a memoir or whatever that things will be like this, but on the other hand, it does create a little bit like everyone in the story is essentially like an MPC in some way. They might be there to help Gary. He might regard them as more of a nice person or less, but like they're not well rounded characters in general. You know, like they're villains or they're good guys. And Gary presents it that he's giving awards in all that kind, but like in almost every single anecdote, he is the person that is, you know, kind of thinking more about the issues than other people. He's the one that's not really enjoying being at the strip club, you know, the other

people are all into these kinds of things and he's, he's kind of like gliding above it and then interacting with people who are just like kind of caricatures, you know, for some particular purpose. And it's, it does kind of great because it ends up like that. The world revolves around Gary. So like there's scenes in the book where, you know, he leaves his job and everybody is like clapping as he's leaving the, you know, the trading floor. There goes the legend of, of Gary and he doesn't look back because, you know, the trading floor, there goes the legend of, of Gary. And he doesn't look back because, you know, he's, he's a shark. He's moving on to the next thing.

And you're just like, yeah, what's it like that? Or is this like a little bit, you know, more in your imagination? Did you tell me there was actually a scene where he dropped some bombshell or something, cause then the whole room collapsed and he just kept walking. Oh, it's more like on his last day when he leaves the like training place he's been at for, you know, a couple of years, like he is known as the golden boy. And like the whole training floor, you know, stands up, kind of like erupts in applause and and he walks out, but he doesn't look back as he goes.

And like, maybe, maybe it was like that. Maybe if it just like that. Yeah, maybe. But you know, those interviews in the Financial Times tell a slightly different story. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, now just to like finish that little bit off, the Financial Times stuff, there were people questioning his story or disagreeing, but he kind of presents, well, they would, because of course they can't say he's right because they're, you know, like the academics can't say he's right because they're, you know, incompetent or they're too invested to protect their profits. The traders also can't say he's right. Doesn't listen to people who are right and have ways to, who are demonstrably better in their predictions and aggressively takes everybody who's half good

out of the conversation. And if you do go into finance, obviously then once you're in finance, you can make a lot of money making your predictions, but you're not allowed to speak publicly. So when I was a trader, I was making a lot of money betting that inequality would devastate living standards and keep interest rates low and push house prices up

and push stock prices up and push inequality up further. But I wasn't allowed to say anything about these things. Yeah. So you're not allowed, right? He was not allowed to say what he knew was happening because, you know, that's how the bank was making money and stuff. Right. So there's like an incentive not to endorse it. And that means, Matt, that his ex colleagues cannot endorse his narrative. So, you know, it's a shame I've upset some of my ex colleagues because they're not all bad people. They're complicated guys. But look, these are rich, powerful men that are not used to having someone else control their narrative, tell their story. And it must be weird for them to have some kid that used to work with them write a book. Yeah, I've not experienced it.

And I really tried in my book. In my book, I didn't want there to be any total bad guys, total good guys. I want all the bad guys to do something good and all the good guys to do something bad because I wanted to show that it's actually like quite a moral gray area that rather than like being full of evil people, it's full of ordinary people in a kind of fucked up system. And I think this story just kind of reflects that, you know, it kind of reflects that, you know, these guys, for me, what they remember of me is this little cockney kid that turned up, you know, and we have to remember, right, I was only the top trader in one year and I quit the job

the year after. What they remember is Gary the intern buying burgers, you know what I mean? You know, they don't really remember. 2011, where I blew it up. This is like, why do they contradict his story, right? Because they imagine him as like this cockney intern. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, so as we hear from Gary, there are good reasons why you can't really trust academics. You can't really trust the people that disagree with the story.

Pretty much the one person you can trust is Gary. Right? And it is remarkable Chris, like just how often he mentions how much money he made. And like, I know there's one of these clips you've got, one of the recordings you've got is like an interview about that. But I've listened to quite a few of them. And the one that I sent you was one where he was explaining inequality. But it is remarkable how much, or rather how little there is about economics in it and how much there is about Gary and how much money Gary has made and how fucking amazing Gary is.

I'm just telling you, it occupies a large percentage of pretty much every podcast of his that I've listened to. And yeah, his ability to make a lot of money gets mentioned every episode. I've listened to probably about a dozen and I think I've've heard it in every episode at least once, usually more. I mean, it is worth noting and all this stuff of like, you know, these guys are used to, you know, setting the narrative about themselves and all this kind of stuff that like, I mean, Gary is the one with the like million subscriber YouTube channel, he's the one being interviewed on this podcast, he's the one with the like million subscriber YouTube channel. He's the one being interviewed on this podcast

He's the one with the best selling Yeah, and This so their narrative that like Gary didn't make as much money as he cleared them was like a bit hyperbolic like it's like like their narrative would never have seen the light of day if Like, their narrative would never have seen the light of day if the journalists from the Financial Times hadn't sought them out and asked them for comment, right? Yeah, and that's a whole bunch of them. That's the thing you journalists are supposed to do, you know, triangulate sources. So yeah, it's just, you know, and then Aaron Bustani acts a little bit more, you know,

but why would a newspaper, why would they investigate the claims that anybody made in a popular book? Like, is that something, you know, what's the agenda there? And you're like, okay, okay, but listen to this. But why do you think they ran it? Because that's a huge commitment to get a journalist to work on a piece that's 4,700 words. That's that's kind of cost them a lot of money. And it wasn't that conclusive, right? Basically, 95% of this guy's backstory, which, by the way, is just an incredible backstory. It's hard to believe. Right. Yeah.

Ninety five percent confirmed school, LSC, how he got into city all confirmed. Yeah. But these several people don't think he's the world's top trader. Yeah. I think where's the where where's what's driven that then? So you know, obviously, it would be easy for me to come and say, you know what, the establishment is coming to me. What does it have to tell you always cause in the matrix? Yeah, the matrix is going to be but to be honest, so you know, this one guy, he sort of he really wanted to get this piece running. There was a basically similar piece running Daily Mail, similar piece running like a kind of finance gossip website and I think he's called up the FT. To be completely honest, I think the FT have just seen like, so obviously the books hold really, really, really, really well

and the book kind of pissed off a lot of people in finance. Put a target on your back. Well, and I think to be honest, I think all it is is some guy calls up Beaks with journalists the FT Gary's a liar The guy's literally thought fuck me Gary's allies gonna get a lot of clicks, isn't it? I think he's honestly I think he's honestly his thing because it will obviously it will right like you get a kid like me Comes out speaking like me drops a bit of shit on the banking system out speaking like me, drops a bit of shit on the banking system, calls the global head of

trading the slug because he looks like a slug. You're going to get people who are going to support it, right? But it's going to get clicks. It's going to get clicks. And I think it's really, there's not much more to it than easy clicks, to be honest. Really, there's not much more to it than easy clicks, to be honest. Well, there you go. That's the scary explanation for why people are saying what he was saying is not true. I mean, it didn't have the sound of a hit piece to me and sounded reasonably fair when I read it. But there you go. You can't trust the academics.

You can't trust other traders. Now, journalists too, Chris. Just click via just click via click Pieces yeah, that's you know, you do hear this from like Jordan Peterson from brad Weinstein from Lex Friedman, you know, they're constantly they're just journalists are just running hit pieces They're all concerned with the click beer yeah, the thing you speak of is very important to me because I admire great journalism. And unfortunately, in modern day, a lot of journalists

seek clickbait headlines, make accusations, because they operate under incentive, because they want the headline, the cheap shot. I think there is room and desire and hunger for great journalists and that requires deep understanding. It saddens me how often one of the reasons, I don't think I'm very good at this, but one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you is

because I don't see enough high effort, deep dive research. I don't know how many books I've read. I've read a lot in preparing just to experience, just to try to understand. It requires a lot of preparation, a lot of work, and I would love to see great journalists do that more. And from that place, you can criticize. From that place, you can really investigate

the complexity of a situation of people in power, their strengths, their flaws, the mistakes they've made, but that requires great, great, great preparation. So this, I wish there was more of that, of great journalism. You know, Gary's narrative that there is an elite, you know, they don't have your best interests at heart.

It's a system that's rigged against you. Nobody, the academics are lying. The journalists are, you know, hiding the truth. The traitors are incentivized not to do it. Is that not something that is particularly an appealing story in an era of populism? Like that doesn't seem to come up as a possible insight. So like three-word slogans as solutions to problems. Yeah, Mariette, it's a little, you

might turn the mirror around and say that what Gary's doing is a little bit click-baity too. Yeah, well, no, we're almost done, Matt. We're right in the corner. We're approaching the end. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. But you know, when we covered Russell Brand and we noted that he, he found the rhetoric of what's his face, Steve Bannon. He did this thing where he listened to Steve Bannon and he found that like, you know, a bit like what Ryan Grim said, 90% of what Steve Bannon was saying was right. It was just, you know, at the end, he kind of,

and we know what happened to Russell Brand, right? He ended up going down into the right wing rabbit hole. Now, Gary doesn't do the same thing as Russell Brand. He's not, you know, arguing that Andrew Tate gets everything right or that kind of thing. He does say he understands the appeal of Andrew Tate. I lived in Japan for a couple of years where you have this concept of the hikikomori just stays inside. It doesn't try to date, doesn't try to get a job, just gets involved in computer games and anime. And then obviously in the US, you've got the incels in here, you've got people who support Andrew Tate. I've got no hate for people who support Andrew Tate because I see what we've put on the menu for them

You know I mean we put I grew up poor I grew up poor in London. It's shit being poor People fucking look down on you people think you're fucking stupid people think you're lazy You know I remember when we we all turned like 16 and my mates all got cars I remember some girl saying I'll be seeing Raj's new car. He must be doing really well for himself. I was fucking 16. You know what I mean? I mean, because the mainstream are not giving working class men anything to aim for. So he gets why there would be an appeal for Andrew T. But listen to this clip. Right. And it does frustrate me that we don't think about that. If you're not

offering people a sense of the future, well of course they're going to look at the past. Of course they are. I think we need to have something to offer. We need to have something to offer and I look at what's happening now, of course with Donald Trump, with Elon Musk, but also with reformer Nigel Farage and AFD in Germany. For me, you know, I think I would have said exactly the same thing last time I came on. These guys will continue to be successful. And it was easy to predict that at that time because it's really clearly the way things are going.

But I think it's very, very, the reason it's easy to predict is because it's easy to understand, right? The existing status quo is obviously failing. It is increasingly obviously failing to more and more people. You know people will vote for sensible change once, twice, three times. It is obviously 20 years now of worsening living standards. The mainstream media, mainstream politicians keep saying this is a recession, it's going to be one week

year, two week years, it's 20 week years now. And it is increasingly obvious to everybody, it's broken and it's gonna get worse, it's gonna get worse and it's gonna get worse. And people just want something new. People just want something different. And that by the way, is correct. That they are correct in wanting that

because they are correct in the assessment that if we don't change anything, we're going to be fucked and our kids are going to be fucked and our grandkids are going to be fucked. That is totally, totally correct. I mean, this is, I think it's quite similar to, well, you know, it's not unusual, right? If you're, if you're Russell Brand back in the day was saying what we need is the revolution. Exact same thing. Yeah. It's the exact same. I'm not saying that the apathy doesn't come from us, the people. The apathy comes from the politicians.

They are apathetic to our needs. They're only interested in servicing the needs of corporations. Look at what, I hear the Tories going to court and taking the EU to court because they're trying to cartel bank bonuses. Is that what's happening at the moment in our country? It is, isn't it? Yeah, there is. So what am I going to tune in for that?

You don't believe in democracy. You want a revolution, don't you? The planet is being destroyed. We are creating an underclass. We are exploiting poor people all over the world and the genuine legitimate problems of the people are not being addressed by our political class. All of those things may be true. They are true. You know, the whole system is fucked. Everything is going terribly. You can't make incremental improvements. Reforms aren't gonna do it. You gotta be attacking the system. You gotta be saying everyone is wrong.

The elites are the problem, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's an interesting point of difference, I think, because while they have those similarities, right, and that they very broad populist kind of, um, sloganeering thing, like that's what they have in common with Russell Brand. He was very vague in terms of his prescriptions, right? It was just, we need it. We need a revolution. A revolution, spiritual revolution. Yeah. Yeah. Transform ourselves or whatever. Um, with Gary, he does have a couple

of concrete suggestions, but they're certainly not very revolutionary. Like the 1% wealth tax isn't crazy revolutionary saying we ought to tax the rich more is, is vague. Like it's, he's not calling for a revolution, but at the same time. Well, the rhetoric, well, that's right. That's right. The reticence revolutionary.

So I guess they fundamentally are quite similar, I think in that it's more about the vibe, right? It's more tapping into that. And what may well be a very legitimate feeling of discontent. It's not so much about having a concrete policy plan. When anybody asked him for those sorts of details, he says, that's not my job. I'm too I'm too knackered to deal with that. Someone else, I'm just here, you know, speaking my truth. So, yeah, it's similar. It's similar. Yeah. You could refer to a soaring rhetoric, but obviously we're cynical people. Right. But like, it's just we hear a lot of this

from a lot of people of different political persuasions. Right. And I'm very often, people that are partial to this kind of rhetoric are capable of sliding to different sides eventually. So I'm not saying I think that will happen in Gary's case. I hope not. And I don't see the same clear admiration that Russell Brand and whatever mentioned, but it's it's just that Yeah, I just have a little warning flag there whenever people are talking, you know that essentially the populist narrative is exactly right It's completely right. It's just like the prescription that's wrong and you're like is the populist narrative Completely, right?

Well, the thing is the populist narratives like this always point to some perceived problems, right? So the UK, you know, yeah, which really like the UK's economic growth So I've lost 50 years could have been better, right? It hasn't been zero, right? But it could have been I don't know. I'll take your word for it. Yeah I mean, but yeah, you have the same popular, the same things motivate populist movements all over the world, right? In the United States, they've got their problems, right? But the thing about the rhetoric is

that what they all have in common is they tend to simplify things. You tend to point the finger at one cause and go, this is why everything is bad right now. And in the case of Trump, we know the kinds of things. It's immigrants. It's immigrants. In the case of Gary or Russell Brand back in the day, it's the rich people. And while wealth inequality may well be an issue, it may well be a serious issue, it's certainly not the only reason. And I think far from the main reason why

reason, and I think far from the main reason why the UK might not be doing as well as it might be, right? There are dozens of reasons. And likewise, if you're looking at the causes of housing in affordability, which is a problem in many different places, not so much in Japan where you are, where they're still with it. Every place. Yeah, you have a fair bit of wealth inequality over there, but not so much the housing affordability. There's a lot of drivers of it. I get very suspicious when people claim that it's due to this one simple thing and we just need to get those people or do some simple thing,

or whether it's a vague thing that is to be done because then it's more about just tapping into grievance rather than an actual practical policy agenda. Well, I've only got two clips left, Matt. One of them is kind of building on this. It's showing the kind of presentation, the populist presentation, and it actually does the other thing that you hear in the Groove Sphere where people link to history or some like little story. Jordan Peterson is fond of doing this, but listen to Gary and maybe you'll see what I mean. I wanted to do a video.

This is so random. I wanted to do a video talking about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. The reason I wanted to do that video is because a lot of people don't know this but the Aztec Empire which was in what is now Mexico was a massive empire with they think something like 12, 13, 14 million people and the group of Spanish people who eventually conquered the entire Aztec Empire was less than 3,000 people. And how was it that 3,000 people were able to conquer and destroy and take all of the

wealth and the land of an empire which was more than 10 million people. What they did was, they landed, they worked out the kind of political groupings, and they allied with the larger group, and they used that group to destroy the smaller group, and then they split the larger group into smaller groups, and they did the same thing again. They used the larger group to split into smaller groups.

And through that repeated plan 3,000 people were able to to totally dominate and take all of the wealth and all of the land of an empire of you know 30 40 50 million people and more than 10 million Aztecs died at the hands of just 3,000 people. This is what can happen if ordinary people in society allow themselves to be driven against each other and to hate one another. That can allow a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people to take all of your wealth, to take all of your assets,

and to totally destroy your civilization and your quality of life and everything that you care about. This is the direction that we can go in if ordinary people are unwilling or unable to look to the people that live either side of them and stand with them to protect themselves from the rich and the powerful. Small group of malevolently intentioned people,

can completely screw over millions of people. Just a little bit on the nose. And like you hinted at with the other stuff, if you know the history there, what Gary is saying is correct about like Cortez and whatnot, you know, exploiting the rivalries and alliances, but it's also that he was able to exploit the dissatisfaction with the ruling classes over there and their mistreatment of the peasants. And there was an outbreak of smallpox, which the peasants and there was an outbreak of smallpox which killed estimated 30 to 50 percent of the population. These kinds of things matter. So it's just like the story's not as simple as that narrative would suggest. That's right. It's not quite that simple. There was a matter of

technology and stuff as well. Again, many factors, right? But real economics or real history, Again, many factors, right? But, you know, like real economics or real history, just like real economics is complicated and kind of boring. What you really want for soaring rhetoric and activating people is a simple narrative, a clear cut enemy. A villain. Yeah. Yeah. And and like like a simple call to action that will make everything better again or get rid of the bad people. That is just a common thing with politics. It's not even a dig against Gary.

It's just how you do rhetoric as opposed to information. Well, we'll finish with a little bit of soaring rhetoric. This is the last clip, Matt, that covers that kind of thing. So this is talking about, you know, what's next. It's from the video about like stepping away for the next couple of thing. So this is talking about, you know, what's next. It's from the video about like stepping away for the next couple of months. So let's see what's next. But the last few months,

when I've seen so many people across the country willing to take time out of their day, take effort to try and support a movement that they don't gain anything from personally, because they know it's what the society needs to protect each other have made me believe that maybe maybe we can win this maybe we can stop wealth and flooding away from ordinary families towards the rich maybe we we can get that back and maybe we can win. But it's not gonna be just me who wins it. And it's not gonna depend really on me or what I do.

It's gonna depend on you and how many of you are willing and able to spread that message. And I'm going away for a couple of months. I'm gonna be in Japan, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and mainly promote my book. But when I come back I want to see more people making cool things. If they're going to grind down the ordinary people in this country, I want to at least see you make some cool stuff on the way down. That's what's going to help us win. You guys, ordinary people,

get in behind the simple idea that if you don't stop growing wealth inequality, it will destroy living standards for ordinary families, for your kids and your grandkids. I've said that before, I'll say it again, we're not going to win this today, we're not going to win this tomorrow. So be calm, be patient, before I say it again we're not going to win this today we're not going to win this tomorrow so

be calm be patient be there for each other god knows you're going to need each other but keep building if you keep building we can win this good luck find words find words it's a movement. Mighty wind is blowing. Gary's doing his part. Yes, his part is that he's going to go and promote his book now for a couple of months. But when he comes back, he wants to see that everyone has been making things. As we heard earlier, he's not going to be seeing anyone if they're making badges or pins based on his stuff. So you could do that. You could do other things, right? Like he's not saying that's all it has to be, but yeah.

Well, he'll be back putting his shoulders to the wheel, releasing on YouTube, monetize YouTube, a 30 to 45 minute talk from his kitchen each week. He'll be doing the work and it's kind of, it's a beautiful feeling to feel so many other people getting on board as well, spreading the word, building the channel, building the brand. But the other thing, we're too cynical. A little bit. I think some people would say we're too cynical.

A little bit cynical. It's a job, Chris. The job makes us cynical. It's like being, It's like being a detective in New York City. You know what I mean? Let's shut it down. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, you know, we could be wrong.

We could be wrong. And like, if it turns out that this movement is more than a YouTube and Facebook shares and that it does lead to political change in a way that Russell Brand and whatnot were never able to, at least not in any of the ways that they presented. I mean, he's done pretty well for the Trump campaign, but if it does, then fair enough, right? Then fair enough. And it is the case that like, as we've said throughout this, the political activism, it is a little bit like, you know, communication in public health arenas where, as far as I know, people are like, you have to simplify,

you have to, you know, encourage people, motivate them, give them a crusade. This all sounds like that. But we are not political campaigners, right? We are looking critically at the content and the rhetoric. And there's so many things that light up from other people that we've covered. And it's just hard not to notice that. I mean, that's right. So like when I started reviewing Gary's economics for the podcast I was assuming it was like an educational podcast like this is you know, or like Jordan Peterson like he's gonna teach you about psychology He's going to you know, help you person Gary you're well purportedly, right and

Right, but then and same with Gary right Gary's economics and the titles of the things were all about, this will help you understand economics. But what I found is that there is very little economics talk in it. And, you know, while there are a couple of ideas that I think were good, and I mean, you know, there's certainly a lot of things he said that were true. Generally, his analysis compared to other economics podcasts I've listened to, was just incredibly simplistic. Like, it's just incredibly simplistic.

It's quite representative, the kinds of broad sweeping simplistic things that we heard in this episode. That's reflective of the other content that I've heard. And I'd really encourage people to go listen to some other economics podcasts just to hear the difference. There is a big difference. So you won't hear much economics in Gary's economics, but you hear a lot about Gary. You'll hear a lot about. You'll hear a lot about. I'm not going to say no, we're too cynical. Look, that's not even a criticism.

I'm just stating facts here, Chris. You do hear a lot about Gary. Well, if you're entitled Gary's economics, you know. Yeah, emphasis on the Gary. You'll hear about his accomplishments and his special knowledge, how great he is. Yeah, I'm not going to say no, but I'm going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no.

I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to say no. If you're entitled Gary's economics, you know. Yeah. Emphasis, emphasis on the Gary. Um, you'll hear about his accomplishments and his, his special knowledge, how great he is, you'll hear about how all the other experts and institutions either don't, either don't understand the issue or don't care. We heard just then at the end, how the message that we've got a sacred

mission to accomplish, he doesn't want people to support him or his channel for himself, not at all, no, no, it's to, it's to accomplish our He doesn't want people to support him or his channel for himself. Not at all. No, no, it's to, it's to accomplish our shared crusade. You've got to grow the channel to achieve that grand goal. You know, he's tired, right? He's stressed. It's taking a lot out of him. He's suffering slings and arrows.

His mental health is suffering. A lot of gurus are. That's right. The people questioning him just want to take him down. We'll be added to that list. I mean, all of this stuff is very, very familiar. So I guess I've got two issues with Gary. One issue that I don't have is campaigning for a wealth tax or campaigning to reduce wealth inequality. I'm all for that. That bit I'm fine

with. I have an issue just in terms of the content being quite facile and thin as educational content about economics. And, you know, it's it seems more like it's it's rather the groundwork for rhetoric, simplistic rhetoric rather than actual informative stuff. And I've got to say he lights up the grometer like a fucking Christmas tree. That's just also a fact. It is it is a factor. And, you know, I'll say, Matt, because of course we will be added to the list of hitters. People will take issue with this because he's quite a popular figure.

But I want to make just a couple of points for people at the end here. Right. So, yes, Matt and I are academics. Right. So one argument will be you guys are just defending the academic system. Just to be clear, I'm not an economist. I don't give a crap about economists in general. What I don't like is presentations that are just not accurate, that present a field as an entire monolith and whatever.

And I studied at SOAS. So unlike Gary, I went to SOAS, which is known as like a lefty university in the UK, right? I made the choice to choose a subject where I knew there wasn't much financial gain in it, right? Like there was a lot of people that were, you know, thinking of studying Tibetan to make a big buck, but I wasn't one of them.

I'm also from a typical non-elite background. Many of my parents went to university. I'm from Belfast. I have an accent, which isn't typical in the elite institutions in the UK, where I went to do a you know, like a PhD. So the usual critique that it's the reason that people are reacting is because they don't like hearing a working class person talking about inequality and because they are making so much money

and they want to defend it or they're jealous or this kind of thing. Like none of that actually lands here, given, you know, who Matt and I are. Because like, like we said, we're basically on board with the policy goals and the general thing that wealth inequality is a serious issue and that like, it will be good if we can reduce that. I have wealth tax, fine. Like Gary's wealth tax, fine. So the argument is not that we think, he's gotta be stopped because he's daring to talk about inequality. Our argument is lots of people have been talking

about inequality and he is presenting things in this very gurish package, which is what we cover here on the podcast. So that's the critique, right? The critique is not the inequality is a problem message or we need to take some measures to address that, whatever they may be. OK, I just want to make that clear because it's definitely going to come up. I know it won't matter, but, you know,

Going to come up. I know it won't matter but you know, I think you should just Consider the usual objectives and how? Closely, Matt and I resemble people that are really invested in like defending bankers at Citibank or LSE Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think if you're someone who cares a lot about wealth and equality, housing, affordability, things like that, in the course of fact checking Gary, I came across some books that looked quite good. And some I think there are some very interesting ideas and economics, none of which I heard on Gary's economics, stuff related to modern monetary theory, for instance, like a different way of thinking about the economy,

which is more geared towards the rest of us rather than just, you know, neoliberal type stuff or austerity, that kind of thinking. I think there's a lot of interesting ideas around. So, you know, I just encourage people to read those books, educate yourself a bit more widely. And then when you come back to Gary's economics, you might find the ideas are a little bit thin. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there we go, Matt. That's our roundup. I think it's fair to say that we're not

huge fans of the content, but as I said, I read the whole book. So how many how many people listening? Right. I do want to say one nice thing, though, which is that in a in some of his videos, he says things that are fine and true. You know what I mean? He does make some points. You know, he does.

It's not totally boasting. There is supposed to be wavered into it, but there is like interspersed is not particularly deep information, but I think you could still get something out of listening. Well, where he's more educational videos. I probably should have said this earlier, but I would say Matt, that my level of economic understanding that you would come across quite a lot in his videos that, you know, you wouldn't have heard of before or thought that much about. But that's part of the problem because he kind of suggests that there's there's nobody that is actually talking about these things when that's not true. Right. Like, but but I think in him talking about, you know, interest rates or derivatives or whatever the heck

he's talking about, a lot of people haven't come across that before. A lot of people haven't even studied basic economic theory. So he is giving information like that, but he's kind of tying it into, you know, there's no point to actually study economics because it's all elitist talking nonsense. But on this channel, I'm going to give you the real stuff and you don't need to tie that. But I do think there is information there and maybe for some people it's not that thin if you haven't even got a basic knowledge about like economic terms and whatnot. Yeah.

That reminds me a little bit of Sabine Ostenfelder who, when she was doing straight ahead science education, she did a very well, I think for, pitched at that particular level for people who'd be coming across things for the first time, and it was only when again, that theme of just weaving in this, you know, it's all corrupt, you know, they're all wasting their time over there at the universities, but I'm here, I'm giving it to you straight. It's only then that Sabine tends to get very irritating. So, you know, just like with a lot of content, there's, there's good mixed in with the bad. a lot of content. There's, there's good mixed in with the bad.

Yeah, that makes sense. Um, well, no, Matt, we're done. No, our next, um, guru that we're going to look at, we're going to go into different waters, right? We're going to have a look at the all in podcast, which is a, a bunch of elite billionaires, tech billionaires talking their ideas. I want to, they probably got a're probably going to get a different perspective about the economy and the importance of economic inequality, right? Yeah.

So if you thought that we are overly sympathetic to the rich elites, let's wait till we hear from the rich elites and see how sympathetic we are. The people that aren't well, they might be rich elites. I don't know. We don't have a means testing for the people that support us. Who may or may not be rich elites. Would you object to be giving them a little shout out to end here, giving them some credit? Why all means? But sir.

Okay. Okay. a shout out to end here, you know, giving them some credit. Why all means good, sir. OK, OK. And I'm actually going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to give a shout out to people who have been with us a long time, the OGs, OK? Oh, yeah. Because I probably missed them, to be fair. I've only missed a series of them, but I can I can organize things, you know, by time. So I'm going to give a bunch of people a shout out. And first, conspiracy hypothesizers.

Here we have anonymous emphasis, not a serial killer, just asking questions. Chris Clark, Paul Taylor, Tim Nguyen, Potato Wire, me, Gretchen Cock, Joe Percy, Tom Allison, Christopher McLaughlin, Eason Jostad, Michael John, Theo V, could be Theo Vaughan, could be, Jim Murray, Alicia Wilson, Trent Leinstein, Brian Bader, Amar Patel, Shane Gronholz, Joe Barbosa, Joe Barbosa. Sorry, Mr. Barbosa, James O'Donnell, Gavin Boyter, Dylan Selterman, Helen Moffat and Andy Seaton. OK, those are conspiracy hypothesizers that deserve a shout out. They've they've endured our content for too long.

God bless them all. And I know some of those names, too. So they really are from back in the day. Thank you for still sticking around. Appreciate it. Yeah. Let me just check, by the way, today. Yeah, they may or may not still be around. Appreciate it. Yeah. Let me just check by the way that I, yeah, they may or may not still be around, but yes, we thank them. Okay. We thank them. I don't know if I've filtered out my current tone-up. So anyway, if they're gone, they deserve recognition.

Thank you for sponsoring us for like a month, a couple of years ago. I appreciate that. Yeah. I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions and they've all circulated this list of correct answers. I wasn't at this conference. This kind of shit makes me think, man.

It's almost like someone is being paid. Like when, when you hear these George Soros stories, well, it's almost like someone is being paid. Like when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. It just struck me as so funny that when Joe Rogan is hearing these stories that George Soros is trying to destroy the country from within.

His reaction isn't, is that maybe just a bit overheated? No, he's like, what? George Soros is trying to destroy the country from within. He's paying him. Yeah. I know. I know that's the Rogan for you. So revolutionary geniuses, Mark. And I've, I find a little button to make sure that these are the current.

OK, so all of these guys, they're still around, probably, probably. Unless they've just forgot the council. But Carolyn Reeves, Paul Hahn, Adam Session, good old Adam. Oh, yeah. David Love. Juanita Kustans. That's my cousin. I know that. I know that she's getting cheated out again, and she deserves it.

So she's still on board. She's still kicking in. She's still on board, yeah. Thank you. Oh my god. Unless I've not clicked the button right. Maybe she forgot. Kim Young-Pun, Frazier, Alex A, Yellow Dreams, Adrian Barrett, Brendan H, Bullshido

Media Foundation, good old Frost, Patrick Dunlop, Sean Veltman, Mike Nelson, Juha Vatamaki, Samuel Rivas, Ali Shogunesi, God, I should be able to pronounce that. But I didn't. Daniel Reed Miller, Dexter King Williams, are you cool? No. Jessa, Louise Price and Rebecca L. Shana Wani. Oh, and Kyle, Kyle. So, yes, Kyle as well.

So thank you, Kyle as well. So thank you, Revolutionary Geniuses. I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time. And it is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm. I'm someone who's a true polymath, I'm all over the place. But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.

Now that's just a guess and it could easily be wrong, but it also could not be wrong. The fact that it's even plausible is stunning. Now Chris, that first guy, what's his name? The sense maker. What's his name again? Jordan Hall. Jordan Hall. Did you see, I saw a clip where he was recently talking to Jordan Peterson. Did you? Yes. Yes. Yes. I've seen that. Yes. Do you ever get tempted, Chris? Do you ever get tempted to revisit? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, are you talking about the fact that he began sense making at the age of six, I think, or four? That's right. I wonder how many paradigms he had running simultaneously in his head then.

He probably not 30 or 40. At four, it would have had to been five or six paradigms. A bit less. Maybe 40 or so. Like, don't go too busy by then. Jordan, even Jordan did seem surprised that he'd begun sense making at that, you know, early age. Jordan did seem surprised. That's right. Yeah. So now people that Jordan would not be surprised to hear they started sense making at such an early age include our galaxy brain gurus map, the, the long timers who we have here.

Nazar Zobba, Chris Spanos, Chrissy, Kaj, Max Plan, Maxie, Josh Dutman. I feel like I should do this for everyone else. I've got to stop so I don't have to keep doing it. Chris-o! that's for everyone. I'm going to stop so I don't have to keep saying that. Chris-o! Yeah, Nazar, Nazar, Nazar, Leslie Garofli, Matthew Brown, but he's gone now, David Jones, Maytree, Jay, Benjamin Ashcraft, David Small, Danlev151, Steve Dondley, The Soil Will Save Us, Thank you, one and all. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We tried to warn people. Yeah. Like what was coming, how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and

in everything. Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense. I have no tribe. I'm in exile. Think again, sunshine. Yeah. They have no tribe, Matt, but they do have Patreon subscriptions. So we thank them for that. Yeah. So look, Matt and me, right, we're, God, we're so not good, right? We're very, very tired. We're not good. We're going to be taking the bite for six months or so off. We're just in those six months though. If you want to make badges, pins, you know, take our content promoted around spread the word. We're on a we're on a sacred mission here to take down every last one of these motherfuckers. The gurus, I mean, and you know, it's you know, it's a movement. It's not about us.

It's not about us. It's not about us, man. It's not about us. It's really about you and the people that are trying to screw your fucking family. You know, your grandmother, those buggers, they want to they want to say after you, your friends, they look down on you. They think that you are, you know, just a little person that and all those rich fat cats smoking their cigars, looking down at you.

They're laughing at you. They wouldn't like, they wouldn't. And the thing that would really annoy them is if you promoted our podcast. I fucking hate that. That's a lot. They are shaking in their boots right now. They're really worried. Yeah. They hear people with Belfast accents. That just sends them right off. So, um, yeah, like we're just having a little bit of fun.

It's just a little bit of fun, but, um, we'll be back with the All In podcast. We're not, we are tired, but we're not that tired. So we'll be back in a week That's right, unlike Gary we don't get to take this We'll be back next week because that's how much we care. That's how much we care. Thank you Chris Thank you everyone for listening Yeah, yeah adios See ya! You