I’m retired,my experience during my working life was continuously doing more for less,so it’s not productivity,it’s not even inequality anymore,it’s corporate theft.

The old contract about being "productive" has been broken. Kids don't believe that working hard = a house, a car, a summer holiday, a decent life and they are right. They live in a world where billionaires and grifters are the "smart" people to be emulated. Again, they are right. Those are the people getting paid. Not people who do a 9 to 5.

In 1990 when you wanted to register for something you had to telephone or get the form yourself. Fill out the form with a pen. Put that form in an envelope and go to the post office. Buy a stamp and post the letter. Someone would then drive that letter (with others) for perhaps hundreds of miles. Then it would arrive, and go into the in-tray of the person processing. They would open the letter and process it, then they would write you a letter back. Now it's all on a computer / email in the blink of an eye. But productivity is the problem.

Thankyou Gary! I've been saying this for YEARS...we've always been told "you need to do more (work faster/harder/longer/later) then we can give you a decent pay rise". The pay rise part of that never really happens. The money goes to shareholders or company assets. And perhaps that's why people don't want to work in this country. We're fed up with being rinsed. "more productivity leads to growth that pays for public services and pensions"....BULLSHIT. We're one of the richest countries on the face of the earth with a poor population, awful public services & one of the crappiest state pensions in the developed world. We need a transfer of wealth back to the people not more productivity.

Imagine telling an nhs working couple with a kid, doing overtime, that has seen their disposable / real terms income erode over the last 10-15 years struggling to live comfortably - that they aren't productive enough?!!

Same argument made in Australia saying our problem is we need to raise productivity, without real analysis of what is really happening, just vaguely implying that the plebs are slacking

I like this bloke he talks my language. I'm 63 and still working. I work in FE education. In comparison with what teachers did back in the late 80's and early 90's the work we do is off the chart. We do so much and we're so effective with so little resources and support staff. Pay has just collapsed at the same time and I'm sure this has happened across most sectors.

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work - the most you will make is 5 dollars.❤

“growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Britain swapped a manufacturing economy for a financial services one. It benifted the few not the many

It's refresing to hear an economist saying the exact things me and my best mate have been saying to each other and anyone else who will listen for the last 15 years. Keep up the good work.

I've been saying this for years, that our economy will eventually eat itself. The business owners want more business but want to pay poverty wages - who do they think is spending? Similarly shareholders are milking privatised public services and suddenly none of the infrastructure they rely on to operate works any more. It's so short-sighted I can't imagine any of them didn't see it coming, but they just didn't care because they were raking it in. And here we are, with a country bled dry, we already had a government in 2015 claiming austerity was to reduce the national debt and they tripled it. You just cannot trust anyone any more to make this better.

Striving for infinite growth in a finite system is what cancers do, it is impossible without killing the host..

I’ve long thought the obsession with GDP growth is over baked. One of the best analogies I heard was that if me and my neighbour mow each other’s lawns, it adds nothing to GDP. But if both of us pay the other £10 to mow our respective lawns, it adds £20 to GDP without any meaningful difference. Same with the productivity obsession- the easiest way to improve productivity is to replace most of your workforce with robots, but that clearly has a massive problem with social impacts. The reality is that economic and social cannot be divorced from each other as some think.

When I was enrolled in economics at the university a decade ago, I was shocked to learn that everything was based on fixed models such as the one saying if we increase interest rates, inflation and jobs will fall. I'm surely not as smart as you but I couldn't stop thinking "life and society is much more complicated than this, you can't tell me that simple model is 100% fact". I dropped after a year. Still have a lot of interest on the subject but only when I think from the common people's point of view, which is how you talk. Thanks for all these videos. They don't give me hope for the future, but at least, now I know I'm not crazy in how I see the world moving forward right now.

As the education system fails, the economy will follow. UK does not have sufficient graduate careers for those who go to universities. Empirical studies show that Govt investment leads to more R&D & better living standards. US in the 1950s was the most affluent period in history, then came space exploration. 1970s was the catalyst for decline in the UK & industrial output began to fall, eg, ripple effect, global competition. Manufacturing only represents 8% of the UK economy. Lack of investment in infrastructures, eg, schools, hospitals, roads, train stations, ultimately leads to acute skill shortages & higher wages & lower productivity because projects take longer to complete. Govt cost cutting has an impact on productivity & sustainability. Private equity & Govt contracts means more national supply chains rather than regional & local supply chains, resulting in longer waiting times & in some cases, lower quality. Universal Credit only provides 70% of essentials, which means less spending power &, lower demand. UK benefit system including pensions & disability is the worst in Europe. Business rents & rates are the highest in Europe which is why many shops are vacant. This also means consumers either go online or travel to better shopping areas. Costs are 3x higher than Europe & this will have an impact on businesses & employment opportunities. EU countries invest in free childcare for its working population. UK doesn't. Low pay in many deprived areas means only one parent works. UK is one of the worst run economies. Growth by GDP includes profiteering, excessive pay/bonuses(not performance related), failed contracts & projects, fraud, corruption, & unnecessary waste. Executive spending(tax relief) runs into £billions every year, eg, hospitality, private jets, gifts. London is the global capital for fraud & corruption.

Reliance on growth is one of the defining characteristics of a ponzi scheme. And we all know what happens to ponzi schemes when they run out of new mugs.

Cue Rishi Sunak on Thursday or Friday making a conference speech about more stringent changes to welfare to the sick & disabled making it even harder for them to claim it, accusing them of being workshy malingerers whilst his govt has drastically cut local and NHS mental health services. Unless I'm mistaken, didn't govts use public money to bail out banks after the financial crisis they created in 2008? Did the public cause the economy to crash in 2022 or Liz Truss's budget announcement? So why is it the public are made to pay for their crimes instead of being compensated? The govt just keeps doing this: taking more away from us to pay the corporations bail-outs subsidies and tax breaks, I've heard it called "Privatising the profits and socialising the losses": it's just not on.

One of the best videos of this already bright youtube channel. It would have been nice to hear about the quality of work and about how growth is often inversely proportional to it, still, the main point is loud and clear. Once again, thank you Gary!

My advice to everyone is this : if you want to grow big this year especially in your finances. Be willing to make investments. Saving is great but investing puts you on a pedestal where you wouldnt have to worry about savings as you do now. Thanks to larysa Caba, my portolio is doing really great and im proud of the decisions i made last year.

"It's the inequality, stupid". - I'll make up some t-shirts.

If my landlord jacks up the rent, does that mean the landlord has become more productive?

The more unequal society becomes the less productive it will be, as people working 9-5 simply do not see the returns anymore - the social contract being ‘you work hard and you can live a good life’ is completely broken. Short sighted pooling of wealth by the ultra rich - so short sighted.

Hi Gary, love your videos. I think this issue about growth is more smoke and mirrors from the ruling class. For me the main issue is about how people understand/react to "standard of living". What i mean is this; we are a country living in debt. People in my parents generation started off their adult lives scrimping and saving because credit wasn't something you automatically turn to (picture an old grey episode of Coronation street from the sixties). Then Thatcher/Reagan opened the floodgates and deregulated the banks encouraging them to lend more and to pass out credit cards like confetti. People these days think we have a much higher standrd of living now than the 50/60's. We don't. WE ARE IN DEBT. You owe the bank for your house mortgage, your car finance, your credit card is maxxed out and the biggest one, perhaps, is the Student Loan; a "forever" debt! Added to this is the government debt which is now over £2 trillion. So, who is this debt owed to. The Ruling Class. So, for me, any talk about growth/interest rates/inflation is just bollocks, a distraction, dead cat(ism) The Ruling class is robbing us blind as usual aided and abetted by compliant politicians and media tycoons.

Every time I hear Rachel Reeves go on and on about growth as the solution to everything, it just makes it clearer and clearer to me that Westminster won't be any help in improving the fortunes of UK citizens.

Productivity has been growing since the twenties but wages have not. If productivity meant anything to workers, we would be on a 3 day working week by now… Who benefits from productivity?

Great video. You really hit on an important truth here. Britain's low productivity can, however, be explained by low net fixed capital formation ( now 3%, was 8% in 70s). This can in turn be explained by govt providing endless low risk shelters for those with capital to invest. E.g. housing markets, tax efficient investments or finance. The part of the economy run by the middle/working class is therefore starved of investment so the population find themselves in a state of what Adam Smith called "Static Capital". He predicted this would lead to living standards falling to a bare minimum, which is what we see happening. To create growth and raise living standards you need to pressure people with capital ,to invest in the real economy.

I am a business student and have had several economic courses throughout uni. For the last couple of years I have been wondering how come that so many people seem to get poorer and are for example not able to afford buying a home, yet things such as houses and stocks are not going down in price. I tried to connect it to what I had learned in school and it just did not make sense to me - I was truly wondering what was going on. Glad that I found your channel. With your explanations the whole situation makes so much more sense. Finally I am getting answers.

I stay in the West of Scotland but we were down in London last week staying at my son's flat in Battersea as he was away on holiday. We went to see "Enemy of the People" at The Duke of York with Matt Smith. The play is about corruption in local politics (could easily transfer to national) and moral choices that had to be made by a number of the characters. It was good and at the end of the play there was some audience participation with roving microphones for people to give their thoughts on the state of our economy/society/politics. I feel very strongly about the grim state we are in and took the opportunity to recommend that people should read/listen to your book and also listen to your podcasts. However, as much as I admire your conviction to fight the gross inequality in our country and the need to tax both the very rich and, in my view, many large corporations, I do think there has to be a strategy to get real political change and power if that's to happen. I'm sure you'll have listened to interviews with Owen Jones after he left the Labour Party having been a life long supporter. Although, understandably, it was Gaza that tipped Owen over the edge I also think that he feels very strongly that the likely new Labour government that we will get later this year aren't going to do anything about taxing the very rich and therefore are part of the problem and not part the solution. The elephant in the room for both, you, Owen Jones and most thoughtful people in our country is that it's effectively a two party system with little to choose between them. Surely we need a strategy to get some political power and effect change and I think the only viable way to do that is to start a very strong movement/protests that builds enormous pressure on Labour to introduce PR at the next election (one after this year) assuming they get into power this time. It needs a big campaign although as they said they were going to do PR before and bottled out when they got into power. I'd appreciate hearing your and others thoughts on this.

I think one of the problems is that some of the older generations (certainly my parents anyway) actually believe in 'trickle down economics'. There's only one thing tricking down - and it sure ain't wealth! Trying to convince my ol folks of this is like nailing water to a tree 🤦‍♂️ Great videos and book (about halfway thru now) Gary! Keep up the good work mate👍

Recently found the channel, great content! Super refreshing to hear someone who is educated and experienced in matters, who know what they are talking about, delivering Economics in layman's terms devoid of bias. Everyone in the UK and Europe should be following you. Bravo, keep it coming!

Thank you Gary! Growth worries me - we need money doing useful things like investing in research into making greener energy (not more tax-subsidised solar panels on farmland that should be feeding us), and improving conditions for ordinary people. I’m reading Thomas Piketty, who has spent years crunching data to come to similar conclusions on inequality to what you, Gary, figured out faster looking at your trading screens. Next on my list, your book on order from library, then doughnut economics - trying to live within the earth’s limits. Tax the wealthiest and put that money to doing positive, needful things. Keep these videos coming, thank you again.

Start a political party Gary - talk sense in high places.

We need as a group to bring down neoliberal politics. People need to be educated on how the economy is not synonymous with exports and big global business. We need to press for tougher laws that makes politics more honest and independent from big business financing.

Been sayin that for ages , growth is fine in business I guess , but that's just not life , politics is bout life , not fuckin makin money , you articulate it much better my bro , go on Gazman . ✊🏽 . Keep going .

You make so much sense, you articulate the point perfectly and this current subject is the main reason why I left my job in finance. Keep up the great work your voice will grow louder and louder 👍

If you Google U.K. productivity graph you will see a dramatic change happened around 2008. Britain’s economy hasn’t recovered from the banking crisis.

The concept of growth and the metric GDP only really started as a thing in the 1950s but western countries talk as if Growth has been around for 500 years as if its some immovable constant law of Gravity.When and how will we break out of this GDP growth doom Loop?

Hey garry I discovered your content and it opened my mind to a slave collar around my neck I couldn't see but always felt. Yesterday I saw your book in the bookstore around 30 /40 euro I went in to get the cheapest notepad I could find to write down a to do list so I don't have a mental breakdown. I cycled 12km to town cause I cant afford to keep my car on the road and don't have a job because I live in the back arse of a dead village. The funny thing is I can't afford a simple book. If you feel generous please send me out one and I'll give a 5 star review. 30 living with parents no job because I can't afford to keep my car on the road STRUGGLING TO SEE HOPE!!! Ps thanks for opening my eyes to the lies.

Totally agree on productivity and inequality. But I wish you would highlight the problems of infinite growth on a finite planet. Linking the need for economic reform because of unjust inequality and the need to reform because of the fundamental unsustainability of ongoing growth would make the message much more powerful, and we need to link these conversations.

Brilliant. I will email, once again, my MP who just spouts the narratives of the government. He simply thinks I'm troublesome and sending him emails has become a bit annoying for him. I'll still do it though.

We are genuinely experiencing ECONOMIC FACISM ie the pursuit of GROWTH, PRODUCTIVITY must be the guiding principle of our society NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES ARE.

I am retired, I worked in the construction industry. And for me. It always been a boom and bust , industry the worst for me was after the 2008 financial failure. The government bailed out the banks . And for us in the construction industry our wages were frozen four years. At the same time the company owners and directors. We being well rewarded.

"It's easy for the powerful to dispossess the powerless" - I'm with you Gary, I'll get in touch.

I think part of the problem is social mobility and the class system, particularly in the UK. I've met a number of people who had very expensive, very good educations. It means that they, initially, come across as being very intelligent. But as you spend more time with them and debate issues, it's all a vaneer, a gloss. Boris Johnson is a famous example of this. He can speak Latin and Greek and quote (partially) from ancient texts. So, he appears to be intelligent. But he's not. Most of them have no particular talent but, due to rich parents, have had a leg up and, through contacts, obtained positions of power. It's like Gary said in his book, most of the traders now are rich kids dropped into the role by their rich parents. And many of them are two short planks. These are the people running our economy, running our country, making the big decisions. But they don't understand any of it because they're not bright enough to.

For a in depth argument why eternal growth is a fundamental problem please read "Less is more" by Jason Hickel. Local growth for a limited time is natural, but that is not the fundament of our current economy. The growthism is the reason we currently are in a climate crises, an inequality crisis, a biodiversity crisis and a mental health crisis.

It is very hard to see project which can be used in real life like AMS89K 🥳🥳🥳

Absolutely so glad that this channel exists and Gary Richardson has embarked on this project!

Part of the problem is we monetise necessities. I don’t mean air and water, I mean societal necessities, like buses, healthcare, prisons and schools. If they cost X for the state to run, then they cost Y + P (profit) for a company to run. Granted Y might be lower than X, but it’s not guaranteed. If it is lower, it’s because some previously essential part of the service is cut. State gets a worse service, stock market gets P. The difference is what we the people have lost.

here here Gary. Smart kind man you are. Keep talking.

I’m astonished that no one (that I’ve noticed anyway) is discussing the effects of manufacturing and freight costs on every single product we purchase, from cat food to office equipment and building supplies. Since the start of the pandemic & then the invasion of Ukraine, those have skyrocketed. Insurance rates have also gone up due to covering losses to forest fires & catastrophic flooding (both of which also affect the supply chain, depending on where they occur). I work in distribution (office equipment). The entire supply chain was affected when the factories shut down. When they reopened, the demand for delayed items was so high we had to pay something like 4 times what we used to pay just to reserve a spot on the boat. (Our little pallet kept getting bumped back onto the dock by companies with deeper pockets.) Air and ground delivery costs rise with fuel prices. All those costs are passed on to the end user customers. I have to explain this to my customers daily when they ask why their new order costs them so much more than their last order of the same equipment. And I know why it costs me three times more to feed my cats than it did five years ago. I’m no economist. I don’t know how this affects the Rich-Are-Getting-Richer big picture. (The rich have to pay freight costs too.) I DO know it is definitely part of why the paycheques of people like me don’t stretch as far anymore & it is definitely making people in my situation (older, divorced/single/, renting) immensely more vulnerable.

I am so relieved to hear the concept of growth addressed! I’ve been puzzled by the idea of constant growth since I first heard about it in about 1968-9. Before growth, don’t we at least need sustainability?! But what we have with current and unsustainable economies is economies that are rotten to the core under a tissue paper thin gold leaf veneer.

There’s no such thing as the middle class, Gary. There’s the working class and the capitalist/owner class. That’s it.

I work in the public sector and haven’t had a pay rise (accounting for inflation) since I qualified, 12 years ago. Dead economy

Keep it going Gary, our important voices are getting muted or psyched out. But you are completely right about who's ruling us 👍

Another thing worth considering is the divide in wealth between the elderly and youngest in the UK society. The vast majority of wealthy and assets are held by retirees, so no wonder there is no growth. Young people tend to spend wealth, do up a home, have kids, travel, build stuff etc. elderly people just hoard as they have no future left to grow / develop for.

If in theory we used a deflationary currency and everything got cheaper every year, real growth would likely skyrocket as the middle class grew for the first time since 1971

In Northamptonshire the shoe industry moved to India,In Bedford the Texas Instruments semiconductor production moved to Italy I think. Again in Bedford the Britannia Iron and Steel works have gone. I don't know much about the rest of the country. How can people produce when there's no jobs. All along the countryside there are huge logistics centres which are not full of people producing but a few people who are moving other countries goods. I am not very clever about financial matters but do look at this and ask questions. Thank you for your videos Gary. I find them interesting.

Good for you Gary. Your educational videos are a gift to humanity. You’re describing an old and persistent ideology= a set of ideas that serves and promotes interests of the rich and powerful. This is the core of capitalism…. “Tax the rich and feed the poor.”

Many politicians and civil servants bought into Lovelock and behind closed doors know this economic model will not work for much longer. UK blew past peak oil discovery and unlike the US, shale didn’t bring back a temporary respite from hydrocarbon dependence. Climate crisis modelling suggests that once Gulfstream stops UK will have less reliable agricultural output and EU will struggle too. The push for productivity has one significant advantage - distraction - while regular folk are running harder and harder on the treadmill (work harder and you too can be a millionaire), there’s less time to organise or at least get your bearings. It’s distracting from a real grim scenario that if we continue burning through resources we have around 50 years left.

Canada had a sensible government in the late 90s. It didn’t deregulate banking. As a result, it’s economy wasn’t as devastated as others in 2008. Mark Carey’s good fortune as governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008 is that he got the credit for decisions that had nothing to do with him, made a decade earlier.

Farming, fishing, quarrying at all time low. Manufacturing down again. Construction quantity down. Bonds up.

Growth is the defunct group think dogma of our times. You are 100% correct.

Hiya Gary, Another good video and some great points made. A few ideas would be: -Increase the tax of major companies by a small amount -Ensure fair and flexible tax for SME’s - Reduce tax or even cut it on overtime pay to incentivise workers while not impacting businesses bottom line. This extra money would help grow the economy and help people feel better as they would have money to spend. - Generate a large first time buyers project where houses are built and owned by the government, with low rent. These properties cannot be purchased and there is a limited time that you can stay in them. The purpose is to allow you to build a line of credit and save money to purchase a house. In addition, houses are also build by the government which can then be purchased at a low rate by only the people who come through the house savings system. These properties cannot be purchased by banks or businesses. We need to tax the very rich just like you say but help SME’s and workers, motivate people and give people an opportunity to build a life and a home. Hope to hear your thoughts. Thanks, Dan

Great subject. Interesting points. So much to say about this. Including about the environmental impacts of economic growth, which are right now in the process of destroying the economy long term. A great place to start in this giant issue is Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. You guys should do a colab 😃

Thank you!! Finally, seeing this in a thumbnail gives me hope.

This ”just grow = stupidity” analysis is 100% correct. Glad someone is saying it

Clear and concise as always Your words amplify the call for change which must come to our unequal and antiquated so called democracy

You, Gary, are part of the anti-growth coalition. Grow the pie 😀. But seriously, keep up the good work and messaging about growing inequality

Another great video. At my work this very week the message from the Executive team was that we need to do more with less. As we have looked for efficiencies for a number of years now, I made the comment “maybe we can ask staff to work 12 hours a day (but with no change in pay)”. This was obviously a belligerent comment, but there was a genuine pause of consideration! If the message is for higher productivity with no plan of how to achieve this, can “stupid” please leave the call.

I'm glad so many people are seeing this.

This is my favourite video so far. It's the tone towards the end. It's tinged with an exasperation I find very familiar having been talking about these issues for a few years myself. It's hard for me sometimes to keep a level head hearing the same stupid arguments again and again. I don't know if I'm reading stuff into this, but by the end of the video I was feeling it. It's inequality stupid.

in the USA & UK at least, the shareholder class has been gifted all the profits we've earned from our continual increases in productivity since the mid to late 70's. in other words; our pay increases over that period have been diverted away from us into the pockets of the rich...and the rate of that diversion is only speeding up.

There is no inconsistency between exploding asset prices and slowdown in productivity. Increasing asset prices reflect increasing rents extracted by the very wealthy, which is perfectly consistent with slowdowns in productivity growth. Take housing. In the UK we've not built any housing so house prices have increased massively. Homeowners have extracted larger and larger rents over time. At the same time, excessive housing costs slow down productivity growth by limiting the geographic movement of workers. Fewer and fewer people can afford to move to London limiting its growth. Since there are gains from agglomeration there are lost productivity gains from high house prices. Similarly, take UK's railway, water, electricity systems. All are designed for the extraction of rents by their owners, whilst underinvesting in the service they provide UK consumers. This limits our productivity whilst enriching very few. High asset prices and rents are exactly what I'd expect in an unproductive economy. You are of course correct inequality is an underlying concern which is partly driving a slowdown in productivity.

Thank you for this video as for once I don't feel crazy! I studied economics at university and I always struggled to see those Economist "facts" about productivity and growth when explaining UK wage stagnation as on their own they never seemed to explain the full story about wage growth or at least I was never convinced. I also do see the idea of a wage price spiral which works very well in theory, but it's a weak argument to assume that people will be spending a lot more on consumption when many people struggle to even pay their bills and live paycheck to paycheck.

As somebody both living in North America and Europe I may say that in my humble opinion a big issue is even the misperception we usually have of certain words and related meanings. I.e. many people call themselves “middle class”, without considering that nowadays in many realities it’s a very (to say the least) vague term: it includes people scoring some of the lowest possible income around with some pretty conspicuous wages. One of the metric I keep listening over and over is anywhere between 40k and 150k, but some have even more extreme values going anywhere between 25-30k up to 250k. So, with governments and media using such terms with such a high level of certainty make feel many people as all sailing into the same boat, without even keeping into account that a million dollar house owner by modern definition may fall into the same category of a renter barely capable of making a living. This deception and misperception generates confusion, with a perceived gap that is indeed feudal: poor/lords, without anything in the middle, and without considering the enormous differences of prices and ta actions in different areas/regions/countries. I may dare say as an unemployed for some pretty long time that I could honestly see more pungent and clear the gap between me and my neighbour scoring 200k a year with a so called “middle class” job, that seeing any wish to comparing my situation with a multi millionaire of sort. All of that meaning that when I see news and media keeps stating how “family/people’ standard of living” is decreasing I may dare say, which ones? Mine and many millions of others for sure, but I can equally see how many other jobs, even many supposedly being “low level/low wage” kind of employment are raising, and not few individuals were capable of increasing their “standard of living” of a more than conspicuous and visible amount (without arguing on what they are going to spend nor what they may consider a decent standard of living). It looks like to me as it’s becoming a problem of semantics and a generic spread ignorance, nurtured with great commitment by propaganda, since it generate fertile soil for any sort of negative feeling of sort (that notoriously being the best environment to allow rumours and specific narrative to grow and develop solid roots). Big words, big claims, everybody apparently put into the same boat, but at the same time everybody treated “slightly” differently: not an expert of economy but being a mediocre scholar of history, that’s a great way to keep alive a continuous sense of unease, discontent, and social injustice: everybody with the same problems, but somebody capable of coping with them better than others. Instead of focusing on growth, productivity and metric that are outdated and obsolete for the time we are living in, it would be maybe more beneficial to start using words with a certain degree of logic and common sense, noticing more how the reciprocal indifference drive to unconscious exploitation while granting at the same time for such system to exist and thrive. Just my two bits worth on the matter. First time on the channel, interesting videos, bravo :)

6:59 one of the key indicators for me is what happens when the commuting vehicle breaks - in the '80s i would just go buy another one giving time for the original one to be fixed properly, now you're walking to work unless you can get a lift & the expense of fixing your vehicle means you're missing meals for quite a while.

I keep thinking a couple of things. For someone who's explicitly in the Piketty / non-Marxist camp, Gary has an uncanny ability to say things that jibe with Marx; particularly about the need of investment capital to grow. I suspect if we got a couple of drinks in him, he'd be talking about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, but I've been wrong before. I say we try it and see what happens. The other thing is that I'd like to see Richard Wolff talk to Gary. Wolff has made a full court press of popularizing left economics from a Marxist perspective without getting too technical for a general audience. I think that between those two, a genuinely substantive discussion could happen without locking out everybody who doesn't have an economics degree. And finally, greetings here from the US. Things are going to shit here, too. One big difference between us is that we're way the hell too big for anyone to have any kind of a coherent thought. It's one big room of 350 million people, nobody can hear anything above the roar of the crowd, nobody's listening anyway, and half of these idiots are armed to the teeth. Either you guys are gonna figure some of this stuff out or we're all screwed.

Very much enjoyed your book. Brilliant points here too - thank you!!

I wonder why productivity is dropping when wages have stagnated for 4 decades...

Short, but sweet Gary 👍 You did allude to it, but I think there's another layer to the message of our supposed lack of productivity. Yes, with lower standards of living, lower disposable income, we can't as individuals just go out and lift our local economies by spending our way out of it. So, what's the other solution the wealthy want to plant in our minds? It's simply that we don't physically work hard enough. We don't produce as much as we should, for the level of pay we receive. We need to work longer, harder, for relatively less pay, and things would be so much better. It's easy to see how that makes little sense to the working population. But, it doesn't stop them planting that seed. Or hiding behind that excuse. If wealth inequality is addressed, citizens would have the disposable income to boost their local and national economy. However, that relies on the mega rich sharing what they have, which brings us back to the real problem. We can't allow them to fool us into thinking it's our fault, and we just need work harder, for less. PS. Always look forward to your weekly updates 👍🙂

Hi Gary, I agree with most of what you say in this video. The only bit that worries me is that your work seems to have a blind spot on the link between economics/growth and biophysical limits/planetary boundaries. Without this it is acontextual. If you could put your work in this context it would be perfect :)

I totally agree with Gary's view on this, thanks as always for breaking things down so clearly. My own take on the question of productivity comes from my perspective as a manual worker in the construction sector: I see a lot of work done by people without good training - this means that the work is often poor quality and very inefficient (that usually mean slow and expensive for whoever is paying for it). If we want greater productivity (and better quality housing) then training for manual work must be taken as seriously by governments as academeic subjects like economics 😉

Don't forget about the chairman of NatWest saying that it's not that hard currently to get on the property ladder whilst being paid a base salary of £750k.... In their own little worlds

You made clear and explicit what many of us sense with our intuition. Thank you. 🙏

Gary, I respect your massive knowledge , but I can’t help thinking: yes UK ‘s GDP is always (barely) growing , but what about GDP per capita? It seems to be stagnating since the early 2000s. Not to say that inequality is not a problem. Just saying that productivity may ALSO be a problem.

If productivity is a problem, there is only one sector that can address this. That's manufacturing. Service industries can't deliver significant productivity growth, as they are essentially labour based industries. Manufacturing can deliver productivity by growths of automation, scale, innovation. Oh, but we offshored most of this a while ago. Better get it back then. But I think the immediate problem right now is something else, we are now so highly taxed that ordinary people can't save up the money to start small businesses. And without a significant amount of your own money then you have to borrow at a high rate, and then you had better be really good at a) picking your new business sector and b) managing to run your business well so you can survive on a small margin and c) avoid making significant mistakes, because you won't have any financial buffer. So much business innovation and national growth happens as small businesses scale to medium sized businesses. So if you unwittingly place burdens on that business formation and growth phase, by making it really hard for people to save the money to start their business, and hard for people to keep their money during the growth phase ... well then, it's not hard to see that things won't end up well. And why are we so highly taxed ? Well there's a whole bucket load of things there. One I might highlight is that we have made many people ill in many diverse ways by allowing the processed food industries to dominate, and make a large number of us metabolically unwell. Live with that for a couple of decades and you will be operating sub-par in a number of ways without knowing it, and then we nationally spend a fortune on medical services that don't solve the problem, but consume bucket loads of tax, which have to be taken off those that could otherwise save up and start businesses....

Hi, I'm from a similar background to Gary but currently a commodities trader so see things a bit differently. Mark Carney isnt wrong when he says UK has a productivity problem - its just true. The UK is rapidly falling behind the other major economies of the world and esp younger economies like Poland. I also agree with Gary that growing inequality is a huge part of the global problem, but also something we need to think about is resource contraints. Growth is happening in the luxury sector because we have no resource contraints in producing those things. Food and energy are different - the reason the European gas price went from 7 eur/mwh to 365 eur/mwh is because there simply isn't enough gas in existence to satify demand, which is a similar story across other commodities.

Measuring growth productivity nominal income wealth in fiat is the problem. Fiat inflation leads to loss for those of us In the group that doesn't have assets

Hi Gary. One of the main issues about poor productivity is that MPs and those in powerful positions put it in terms of people not working hard enough, implying people are lazy. A lot of the UK’s productivity “problems” are due to underinvestment in technologies and companies instead preferring cheap labour.

Thank you Gary! Keep on fighting the good fight.

can you say something about the link between morbidity and mortality and GDP please? I've been thinking about the effects of the 2008 crash, the ~300,000 excess deaths from 2010+ austerity, the disproportionate impact of COVID on the mental and physical health of the working class, the huge waiting lists for mental health support if you can't afford to go private, Sunak's speech last week about cutting benefits again. The increasing use of AI and robotics instead of workers, the likelihood of private insurance schemes replacing the NHS (existing conditions) the continuing transfer of wealth upwards It's making my head spin

Just a couple of words to promote this video

The UKs GDP was 2.247 trillion last year. The government collected 788 billion in taxes. The UK is not a poor country, the distribution of the wealth is what makes us all poor. Asset owners are getting richer by the day while workers remain on low wages that are outstripped by inflation. You work harder for less.

Hi Gary - I love your channel and what you stand for. I also loved the book - well done! The fundamental part of what you do that I thnk is missing is understand HOW we make the change you call for (and that I agree with). I think it would be very helpful for you (and maybe in collaboration with your supporters) to think about that question - how do we elicit change? Is it protesting on the streets Is it at the ballot box? Is it by writing letters to our MP's If I am honest, all of the above feel a little useless and wont get us anywhere (along with lots of other people doing the same for other causes) Im very interested what you think and what others think is a way to address this obviously growing inequality. Answers on a postcard please.....

You need to be on Joe Rogan!! Get this message out there!

Your channel has proven to be such a great education for me, Gary. Thank you for waking me up!

Thank you for the videos, great point about the stock markets high etc, I'm a bit OCD, would it be possible to put the cap on the fairy liquid bottle please.

Great video as always Gary thanks! I have my theories about all this, but in order for things to change, at least with our current style of politics, then people need to get involved and informed. At the moment I see far too much apathy - in which case nothing will fundamentally change. I lived in the US for a while and that experience really opened my eyes to politics and much of what happens there is exported to the UK. Don’t get me started :)

Gary, I think it would be very useful (essential, perhaps) to start a series (or commission it) on "The Core Principles of Economics" / "Economics Explained" aimed at the common people, so that the man in the street can get a grasp of what's going on. And the problem over the years will shift; so understanding the whole picture, not just one issue - inequality is today's issue - but next year? All the best! :)