The Guardian runs a piece by a Gary Stevenson which insists upon an emergency wealth tax. To, well, something but it’s very important. Gary is billed as:
I made millions out of the last debt crisis. Now the wealthy stand to win again
Gary Stevenson
We urgently need a fairer tax system so that rich people like me help solve the fallout from coronavirus, not just profit from it• Gary Stevenson is an economist and former interest rate trader
Hmm. Actually, he seems to be about as much an economist as I am. Which is to say he ain’t. In fact, last year he was an M. Phil student and even gaining one of those doesn’t make you an economist. And as an M. Phil student he gave us this piece of economic analysis:
Who are the winners and losers here? Working people receive their incomes from the government, although they lose out a bit as their incomes are not fully subsidised. The rich also end up with the money they would have received anyway via rents, interest and corporate incomes. Crucially, however, the spending of the rich has decreased massively. This means that the rich end up profiting as their income has stayed the same but their outgoings have fallen.
Umm, yes Gary. So, what you’re telling us is that the consumption of the rich has fallen and it is this fall in consumption which is making them better off?
Man’s less of an economist than I am then. Which is pretty bad given that I start at zero.
And guess what! There’s a whole website dedicated to Gary’s theory. Super!
More to follow on this but this doesn’t look good from the introduction:
Jobs are difficult to find and low paid in much of the world.
Here in the Anglo Saxon and capitalist parts of the world we were, before disease so rudely interrupted, celebrating generational lows in unemployment rates….
Have you seen that Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest (formerly known as RBS), HSBC, Shell and BT have cancelled their dividends? So the mass affluent and any rich people who have diversified portfolios are worse off. Many businesses and individuals have stopped paying rent and HMG has banned evictions for non-payment during lockdown so the rich are NOT GETTING THE SAME INCOME FROM RENTS. All public sector employees are fully paid and fully subsidised, but any self-employed people earning over £50k (or with other income that exceeds their self-employed earnings) are excluded from the government subsidy. That doesn’t look as if favours… Read more »
Who needs bits of paper?
Seems to have got things more right and earned more money than you.
I think that tells us all we need to know.
John77’s answer to the question is definitely stupid. Gary Stevenson happened to be in the right place at the right time. Becoming a millionaire does not necessarily mean you are intelligent and worldly, as one ex US president is beginning to realise.
More r/wing rubbish from a tory dog and somebody who ‘hasn’t a clue’ but ‘knows’ that somebody with two Economics degrees from LSE and one from Oxford doesn’t understand Economics.