'Tax the rich' or 'immigrants are the problem'? Which wolf wins? The one the billionaires feed.

Gary Stevenson, a British economist, financial trader, and YouTuber, says that in UK politics (and in other western economies) there are essentially 2 leading voices in what we need to do to solve our economic problems. His group that wants to tax the rich more, and the much louder group led by Nigel Farage (supported by people like Elon Musk) and others (Labour and the Tories appeasing the far right) that say immigrants are the cause of our problems. He says Nigel Farage is currently winning because billionaires and other rich people do not want to be taxed more.

Gary's ideas are very similar to that of French economist Thomas Piketty's and are based around inequality and capital. Piketty says that over the long term, capital grows at a greater pace than most countries' economies, resulting in those who currently own capital (e.g. assets like companies, property, shares, gold, etc.) increasingly getting richer and richer over time, while those without as much capital (the working and middle classes) cannot keep up, getting poorer and poorer, unless governments are prepared to tax the wealth (focused more on taxing the assets, but also the income).

During the middle of last century, inequality was controlled by governments taxing wealth but after that period as neo-liberal economics began to gain greater traction and trade union influence was undermined (below), wealth was taxed less resulting in a widening of the inequality gap.

When we try to address this inequality gap, those who own more of the capital, and therefore the media and social media, also shape the narratives that result in our focus being shifted from taxing the wealth to almost any other thing, and usually immigrants are targetted as the scape goats.

The billionaires are currently feeding the 'immigrant' wolf. We need to feed the 'tax the rich' wolf. They have more money, but we have many more hands...

You can hear more from Gary here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0quhLtBXijM

You can find Gary's book here https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-trading-game-9781802062731

You can find more about Thomas Piketty's book here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century