Are our millionaires taxed enough?

Tax the rich! This is a slogan heard often in political discourse. However, there is much debate about whether increasing taxation on society's wealthiest is firstly, fair, and secondly, conducive to reducing economic inequality.

Moderated by IEA Head of Political Economy, Kristian Niemietz, Mark Littlewood, IEA Director General, debates the subject with Gary Stevenson of Patriotic Millionaires.

Gary Stevenson is an economist and former interest rate trader in London and Tokyo. In 2011 he became Citibank’s most profitable trader globally by correctly predicting that the aftereffects of the 2008 crisis would lead to a long term stagnation in interest rates and a rapid rise in asset values. In 2014 he retired, at 27, to study economics and inequality at Oxford University. He is currently working on economic models of inequality, wages and asset prices.

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[Patrick-jjnh]

IEA getting schooled for an hour straight by hero millionaire trader on inequality crisis... epic

[lololop]

What’s chilling is Gary’s comments about 1/2 of the UKs population is going to have problems paying for their utilities/gas bills to stay warm. 9 months since this video and here we are…. Still getting poorer.

[sedgieroobets]

Credit to IEA for hosting this debate. It is brave (and genuinely worthy) to pitch yourself against someone who is clearly more knowledgeable and insightful than you are and to try to marshall your arguments (mostly unsuccessfully) against them. More of these sorts of honest, detailed discussions please.

[Pixiedust]

Gary is basically Cassandra, the power to predict the future but nobody wants to believe what he's saying because it's so dire.

[thegrimmer]

23:00 You know we're all fucked when Gary has to explain to two wide-eyed adults with educations the taxation problem where billionaires pay less than the working class. The other guest probably spends more time on that hair than thinking about the single largest source of modern wealth inequality. Why? He has been trained by a system to know the bounds of the debate. Oddly, the billionaires own that system. Weird. Thankfully, Gary is here to bring the reality.

[chrisdunderdale]

I’m staggered by the extent to which Mark really hasn’t thought about this stuff, and still in some way, thinks this is an ideological argument. Really does expose the thinking in these think tanks. They are as tired as this current government. There really is only one answer left, and it is the one Gary is advocating.

[DonaldMark-nese]

The utilization of after-tax money and tax-free growth makes opening a Roth IRA very advantageous. Through a careful guidance of my FA, I did not pay taxes on my withdrawals of $2.86 million when I retired.

[PhantasmalBlast]

I really liked how even though the presenter asked Gary to say something nice about capitalism to close on, he just stuck to his guns and concluded with another dire warning.

[fearlessknits]

Thumbs up for Gary. No thumbs for Mark.

[marcconaghan]

Wot I heard, my takeaway;
Gary, "Tax the assets of the rich."
iea, "The rich are mobile, waffle on for ages about irrelevant BS, blame Lewis Hamilton."
Gary, "You can't move assets, look at Abramovich, he couldn't move Chelsea FC, tax the assets, they can't be moved, tax at source for usage/rent. Hamilton don't count he earns his money from working, he's not the problem, The Duke of Westminster got £9 billion tax free"
iea, "gov is too big, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, etc "
Gary, "There's going to be an economic catastrophe, (it's like the Monopoly board game), the (idle) rich will buy ALL the assets (houses and businesses, rentier style) cos they've got too much money and there's no growth to invest in. The reason there's no growth is cos there's no investment cos the productive people (ordinary workers like Gary's dad) have no money left after paying rent and bills.

[oldstatueface]

I'd just like to congratulate the IEA, and similarly aligned think tanks, on their recent success with the mini-budget. It's been almost as successful as when your man Art Laffer took control of Kansas's fiscal policy.

[hariowen]

That Mark Littlewood is very skilful at talking non-stop for ever and ever without actually saying absolutely anything at all whatsoever.

[osman]

22:34 When Gary points out that the Top 1% of taxable income earners are not the same as the richest Top 1%, there's a very telling moment of delayed comprehension. It reads like they've never thought of that distinction in this context before. They've been trained to not think about that segment of people, or their influence on our economy and institutions.

[Miks]

Gary is spot on that this will eventually lead to Govt going bankrupt. Ordinary people are now probably not even paid enough. To pay the amount of tax to cover the cost of state provisions. Education, health care, transport infrastructure. If these were privatised and paid for directly by the consumer. Most people would not earn enough to afford them. At least that way the private providers would go bust if they did not or could not adjust prices. In the current system a lot of those private entities get subsidised by government borrowing. We don't live in a free market and never will, it can't see how it could exist. All we ended up with is cronyism.

[neilstanley]

Only one of these people actually sound like a credible economist, the other sounds like he’s being paid to defend the indefensible with regurgitated prepared lines.

[chrishowells]

So frustrating that it’s guys like the IEA running the country (into the ground), who just don’t have the imagination to grasp the scale of the problem.
They’re just not getting it.
Gary gets it 100%, because he can clearly see both sides.

[toucan]

Gary is on the ball, we DID have a good stable life for all people in the 60s and 70s and we need to re-nationalise the energy companies.

[alkhemiegypt]

Get rid of more regulations?! As if Grenfell wasn't bad enough?! And he thinks fracking is a good idea?! So it's profit at any cost then, clearly. 🤦‍♀ I watched this because I think Gary Stevenson is brilliant, but it was fascinating and horrifying to see the world through the eyes of someone who thinks Hong Kong and Singapore is the way forward. Thanks for being the voice of intelligence, sanity and compassion, Gary.

[benwilliamstv]

Thank you for laying yourself bare, iea. I assume it was hubris and a total lack of self awareness that led you to publish this, but thank you all the same. Your arguments were circular, nonsensical and a great example of motivated reasoning, very instructional. The system is fundamentally unbalanced and that imbalance will continue to accelerate without government intervention to correct. This will in all liklihood not happen.

[nikul]

hahaha the IEA just had someone say they would be ok with a land tax. Fucking hell, well done Gary.