Transcription
This is going to be a little bit of a controversial one, 'cause I'm going to be talking about Gary Stevenson. You probably know him as Gary Economics. There's a reason why I used to get paid £2 million a year to do this because I'm damn good at this. Working as hard as you can, getting a job doesn't offer you enough money to buy a house and support a family. My friends can't feed their kids. If it was as simple as going out and being an entrepreneur, I can bet you they would do it. People know the ship is sinking and people want something new. If you didn't make it, you picked the wrong dad. Pick again.
I first came across him about a year ago and he wrote a book called The Trading Game, which I read last year. In this video, I'm going to talk about what do I think about Gary Stevenson? What do I think about his views? Is he right? Is he wrong? You may disagree with me. I want to know your comments in the comment box as well.
My thoughts on Gary Stevenson. Firstly, I think he's absolutely bang on the money in just about 90% of what he says. He's a very smart, sophisticated economist. He's done a lot of good things. I've read his book and based on what he said, he's made a lot of money from predicting what's going to happen in the future of the economy. I'm not even going to try and pretend I'm as good as him when it comes to economics. I consider myself pretty decent. I can predict what's going to happen, certainly in the property market, but he is very, very smart. He's got a mathematical brain. Also, interestingly, most people that work as a trader at City Bank tend to be people that are very elitist, born into a very rich family. He's not. He's a working-class guy. You can tell that by hearing his accent. So, it's very interesting getting his perspective because he, he generally speaking, he's for the people. He's for the working-class people and the middle class. And he's absolutely bang on the money when he says about the rich and poor divide. So, I really rate Gary, actually. I've watched a lot of his content and I wouldn't say I'm a fan, but we're going to get to that later, but I would say he's bang on the money on many of his points.
A lot of Gary's videos are talking about economics and he's explaining how tough it is for the normal, average working-class person in the UK right now and across the Western world generally. And of course, he's right on that point. He also talks about how it's happened, how we've got to this point, which is interesting for some people, but I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to be able to see that we're in a little bit of a mess. I mean, he was born in the 80s. In 1980, the average salary was £6,000 a year. So, just before Gary was born, 1980, six grand was an average salary. Compare that to today, 2025. Now, the average salary in the United Kingdom is £36,000. So, that means salaries have increased by 5.7 times over the last 45 years. However, if you look at that compared to house prices, rents, in 1980, the average rent was £100 a month. So, you're making £6 grand, but your rent's £100. Whereas today, the average rent is £1,300. In London, considerably more, which means that salaries have increased by 5.7 times, but rent has increased by 13 times. House prices, the average house in 1980 was £24,000, whereas the average house now in the UK is £285,000. That's 11.9, almost 12 times as expensive. So, while salaries have gone up a bit, house prices and rents and everything else, food, energy, travel, petrol, everything has gone up astronomically. And this is what Gary points out. He points out how difficult it is, how unfair it is that this has happened.
Gary's heart, I believe, is is in a really good place because it pisses him off. And it pisses me off when people say, "Work harder." Oh, when in my day, I worked harder. I'm sorry. If you only want to work 4 hours, it's going to be harder for you to get a house. We busted our behinds. We had to bust our behinds because we didn't have the option of going housing crisis. But listen, we had all kinds of stuff. I'm sorry, but if you want to compare apples with apples, if things were the same as they were in 1980, rent right now with salaries at £34 grand, rent should be about £500. And I think if people's rent was £500 a month, I think people would be pretty happy. House prices would have to be £90,000 across the UK in order for it to be the same as it was 1980. So, when people say, "Oh, well, what I did in my day was I just worked hard and saved up money and put it in the bank." No, no. We're in a very different time. And what's happening is people are beginning to get depressed and have mental health issues because the older generation who are from the '60s, '70s, '80s, maybe even '90s are saying, "When I was your age, oh, I had a house and had this and had this because I just worked hard and saved up and I paid off my mortgage." It's not difficult to pay off your mortgage. When you bought a house for 24 grand and your salary is six grand, you can pay off the mortgage. When your salary is 36 grand and the house is 285 grand, it's a completely different story. Today, we have to work three or four times harder to get the same results. Which means if you take advice from some of these old school people that shouted about how you don't work hard enough, work harder. We have to work three or four times as hard to have the same lifestyle as they had. So, on that point, I fully agree with what Gary Stevenson says. He's smart. His heart is in the right place.
Where I don't agree with what Gary says is where he talks about the solution. Now, he's very misqued about his solution. His solution is not just to put taxes up. He doesn't want to do that. So, people get really angry at Gary saying he wants to put taxes up. No, he doesn't. What Gary wants to do is he wants the government to introduce a wealth tax. And he wants to do this to people that are worth more than £10 million or more. Yeah. Let's change it. Let's change it. Let's tax working people less, your viewers less, and let's tax the billionaires more. Now, listen, my net worth is substantially higher than £10 million. Let me talk about what Gary's plan is. So, at the moment, there's many taxes, but you only get taxed on profit. So, for example, if I sell you something and you pay me, I have to pay tax, VAT tax, corporation tax, and if I want to take the money out of the company, I pay income tax. And taxes are relatively high in the UK. Not stupidly high, relatively high. I'm quite happy with how the taxes are. However, my portfolio, I've got a very large property portfolio. As that portfolio increases, if my property portfolio doubles, I don't pay any tax because if I'm sitting on properties and they go up, my wealth, my net worth has increased. But you only pay tax on profit. And it's not seen as profit unless you sell. So, I'm not going to pay tax unless I sell the properties. But if I sit on the properties and continue renting them out, maybe I even, as my wealth goes up, refinance the properties and get tax-free money to then buy more properties and my net worth is growing, growing, growing, but actually I'm not being taxed. He's against that. He thinks that you should be taxed on the wealth. In other words, if my property portfolio increases, it should be valued. And a bit like when you own a trust, if you have a trust, you have to pay tax on the wealth of the trust as it goes up as opposed to capital gains tax. It's a little different. So, that's what he wants to do.
My opinion is number one, I don't really think that's going to do massive difference to the country. I don't think if the government brought in a wealth tax, it's going to actually make enough of a difference to the everyday person. I also, my biggest problem with it is I don't think it's ever going to happen because ultimately the people that make the rules are the people that are rich. So, why would the rich people that make the rules introduce a wealth tax? Gary also doesn't really think it's likely to ever happen. He's very smart. I will agree 100%. It is difficult to tax rich people. It is very, very, very difficult to tax rich people. I don't, I don't come here saying I want to tax rich people because it's easy. I know it's hard. I know probably I'm going to lose.
What he does think is going to happen though is he thinks that property prices are going to double over the next five or six years. I wouldn't be surprised if house prices doubled in the next five or six years. You know what? My prediction was 8 to nine years. Maybe he's right. I think property prices are going to go up. He also thinks that the rich and poor divide is going to get more and more and more and more drawn apart. The rich are growing their wealth very rapidly and it's acting like a black hole in society. It's sucking the wealth away from the middle class, from the working class. So, my rationale is rather than fighting the wealthy and trying to protest for a wealth tax, what I'm doing is I'm getting wealthy myself, being a generous capitalist, sharing my money, sharing my knowledge with other people, and also trying to get other people to become wealthy too through their knowledge. Not from working harder, not from beating people up to be a hustler, but from showing people what the rich know about strategically investing in assets and having cash flow and finding the tax loopholes and basically joining the wealthy. I'd love to sit and have a conversation with Gary. I think we'd agree on most things. I don't know what he'd think of my solution, which is just to get rich.
One of the things that he says a lot is that it's not your fault if you're poor. Unless you have a rich dad, it's near impossible to ever be rich. The best strategy, have a rich dad. You didn't have a rich dad, try again. Not only do I strongly disagree with this because from my personal experience, that's not been the case. I've also been able to help and enable thousands of people to become wealthy. But I also don't think it's a particularly empowering thing to say to somebody. Somebody's financially struggling to say, "It's not your fault. Your dad's not rich. Don't worry about it. You're never going to be rich. You may as well just protest that the rich people will have a wealth tax which might be able to potentially get passed to you at some point." I don't think that's very helpful. I don't think it's very practical. I do understand that making people feel guilty because they're poor could potentially give people a downward spiral of mental health problems because they start beating themselves up. But I genuinely believe that the answer is to take personal responsibility and to say, actually, there's so many opportunities in business right now. Genuinely, I believe this from the bottom of my heart that right now is the easiest time to be an entrepreneur with the internet, with AI, the opportunities, the networks, how easy it is to get around with travel and transport. And I think it's the easiest time also to be an entrepreneur in 2025. It used to be very difficult when you were young. There was all these stuffy clubs and red tape. Now there's so many opportunities and networking events and programs and mentors. I think it's a really, really good time. I'm not saying this because I have a course that I'm trying to sell. I'm saying this because I believe it. It's my firsthand experience and because I want to empower people.
So, I think Gary's heart is absolutely in the right place. I think he's extremely smart, but I don't think bringing in a wealth tax is going to happen. And if it did happen, I don't think it's going to solve the problem. So, that's my thoughts. I'd love to know what your thoughts are. And whoever you are and wherever you are, know that I'm rooting for your success. And anything you ever need from me personally, send me a message on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and I endeavor to respond to every single message that I get. Thanks for watching.