TRIGGERnometry - July 14, 2026


Finally, Gary Stevenson Has Been Found Out - Konstantin Kisin


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

176.08

Word count

2,387

Sentence count

173

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The power of atomizing technology has transformed the public debate into a public shouting match. Before the age of YouTube and social media, opponents didn t have to sit across from each other in TV green rooms, and then sit together in one room and at least pretend to be talking to each other.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:40.420 The rise and fall of Gary's economics.
00:01:46.800 Anyone who knows me will tell you
00:01:48.440 that I do not believe in making politics personal.
00:01:51.280 I believe that the failure to treat our political opponents
00:01:54.160 as human first and wrong second is one of the great challenges of our time.
00:01:59.240 The power of atomizing technology
00:02:01.120 has transformed the public debate into a public shouting match.
00:02:04.840 Why? It's not just that the Internet has given everyone a voice.
00:02:08.960 It's that it has given a voice to people who never have to sit in the same room.
00:02:13.000 Before the age of YouTube and social media, political and media opponents
00:02:17.240 didn't have the option of shit-talking each other from the safety of their podcast studios.
00:02:21.880 They had to sit across from each other in TV green rooms and then sit together in one room 0.94
00:02:27.240 and at least pretend to be talking to each other. Having done a fair bit of media in my time,
00:02:33.700 I can tell you that meeting the people you're about to debate in the green room beforehand
00:02:37.260 is an important part of the process. It might be that the extent of what you can discuss without
00:02:42.660 an argument erupting is limited to the weather because it's 2026 and we can't seem to agree on
00:02:48.020 what a woman is. But still, you're forced to be civil. The effect of this you know from your own
00:02:53.640 experience. The way you react to someone accidentally cutting you up in traffic is far less restrained
00:02:59.640 than your response to someone accidentally bumping into you on the street. The action is the same,
00:03:04.880 but the level of offense both taken and expressed is not. Why? Reassured by the physical distance
00:03:11.180 and feeling of safety it provides,
00:03:13.100 we feel comfortable to engage
00:03:14.520 in more confrontational behavior.
00:03:16.400 This difference has been recorded in study after study.
00:03:20.340 Not that you need a study to understand this.
00:03:22.840 The great American philosopher
00:03:23.940 and former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson
00:03:26.400 said it best when he said,
00:03:28.400 social media has made you all too comfortable
00:03:30.380 with disrespecting people
00:03:31.720 and not getting punched in the face.
00:03:33.960 This is why whenever I've had disagreements
00:03:36.160 with other people,
00:03:37.200 I've always tried to engage with them in person.
00:03:39.420 We did this with Jimmy the Giant, a New Left content creator who made a video calling me a grifter and eventually apologized and took it down after we had a rather robust discussion in our studio.
00:03:50.260 We did this with Dave Smith over Israel, with Peter Hitchens over Ukraine.
00:03:54.460 We just did it in a blockbuster upcoming interview with Tony Blair's spokesman, Alistair Campbell.
00:03:59.640 I always try to criticize people's ideas, not them personally, because I know that physical separation is corrosive to public debate.
00:04:07.100 Not only do we feel safe and far from the people with whom we disagree,
00:04:11.200 but there is now a giant audience which is not in the room who are watching all the drama.
00:04:15.760 Drama, remember, is above all a performance.
00:04:18.900 And in today's world, you don't have to play to the audience.
00:04:22.160 You just have to play to your audience.
00:04:24.680 And your audience doesn't want you to self-moderate.
00:04:27.260 They want you to ramp it up to 11.
00:04:29.280 A significant portion of the content creator space has realized this,
00:04:33.000 which is why we're living in the age of the character.
00:04:35.080 Andrew Tate is the heel, a well-known character in combat sports from which he hails.
00:04:40.580 Candace Owens is the entertaining conspiracy loon character.
00:04:44.340 And Gary Stevenson is the articulate and courageous champion of the downtrodden character.
00:04:49.820 It's important not to confuse actual articulate and courageous champions of the downtrodden
00:04:55.420 with the character.
00:04:56.780 You can help poor people and you can want to help poor people. 0.81
00:05:00.420 They're not the same.
00:05:01.440 The problem with Gary Stevenson is not him as a person.
00:05:04.160 I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy.
00:05:06.580 It's just that he doesn't understand basic economic concepts.
00:05:10.200 Daniel Priestley once spent several minutes trying and failing
00:05:13.900 to get Gary to understand the difference between assets and income.
00:05:17.740 This clip is really worth listening to in full,
00:05:20.080 even though it feels dry and technical.
00:05:22.420 Just watch Gary's brain short circuit repeatedly
00:05:25.120 as he ironically complains about how much tax he paid
00:05:28.320 when he was making millions as a Citigroup trader. 1.00
00:05:31.620 Listen, I want my tits off 0.99
00:05:33.080 and I paid, it was 50% top-rated tax. 0.99
00:05:35.880 50% top-rated tax plus national insurance, 60%.
00:05:38.340 So a million a year.
00:05:38.960 To bring my family out of poverty.
00:05:40.680 At the same time, the Duke of Westminster
00:05:42.600 inherited £10 billion and paid nothing.
00:05:45.200 Do you think that's fair?
00:05:45.940 That's not true.
00:05:47.320 Okay, why is it not true?
00:05:48.440 Because the Duke of Westminster
00:05:49.820 is one of the highest taxpayers in the country.
00:05:51.800 So they pay 0.6% a year.
00:05:53.440 So I paid 60% and this guy pays 0.6%.
00:05:56.480 Apples with apples.
00:05:57.520 Inheritance tax is 40% across the course of your life.
00:06:00.400 if a trust is, if a person lives who owns a trust for 70 years,
00:06:06.100 then 6% times 7 would be 42.
00:06:09.060 So they actually pay more.
00:06:10.480 So he pays 0.6% a year.
00:06:13.380 Pro-righted.
00:06:13.820 You're telling me 0.6% a year.
00:06:14.840 But that would be the same as...
00:06:15.720 What percent did I pay per year?
00:06:17.020 No, no, no.
00:06:17.580 60%.
00:06:18.340 Hold up.
00:06:18.740 So you're saying I pay, what's 60 over 0.6?
00:06:21.240 No, no, no.
00:06:21.900 100 times the tax rate is what I pay.
00:06:23.240 You're not comparing apples with apples.
00:06:24.920 You're not, you're talking about income versus the transfer of an estate.
00:06:29.160 So why is it that the Duke of Westminster can be worth £10 billion?
00:06:32.800 You're comparing your income versus the amount he inherited, which is not a fair thing.
00:06:38.160 Because that's his income.
00:06:40.020 Inheritance is not income.
00:06:41.640 So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:06:42.960 So if I get given £10 billion, I don't pay any tax.
00:06:46.340 But if I work for £10 billion, I pay 60%.
00:06:48.720 If this is the tax system that you want, you will end up in a system where the kids of the rich were on everything.
00:06:54.700 That's what I'm saying.
00:06:55.680 Winston Churchill famously described his political opponents as modest men with much to be modest
00:07:01.640 about. Gary has no such problem. What he lacks in expertise, he more than makes up in the complete
00:07:07.080 absence of modesty. He was, after all, the best trader in the world, according to one Gary
00:07:13.060 Stevenson. A recent article in AFT suggests that, to put it mildly, some of his colleagues didn't
00:07:18.940 quite see it that way. Gary has now moved on from his success in the world of finance to being
00:07:23.740 one of the world's leading experts on inequality, a title given to him by, well, himself. He appears
00:07:31.320 to have confused his online fame with knowing things, but Gary is a political campaigner,
00:07:36.260 not an expert. He's the Greta Thunberg of tax. There's no denying he has built up a large audience.
00:07:42.240 That makes him an expert in one thing and one thing only, building up a large audience. And
00:07:47.320 it's true, you can build up a large audience by making good arguments about important issues
00:07:52.800 and offering genuine insight.
00:07:54.780 But you can also do it by pandering to people's anger
00:07:57.480 and economic illiteracy.
00:07:59.220 In the words of the great American economist Thomas Sowell,
00:08:02.180 when you want to help people, you tell them the truth.
00:08:04.920 When you want to help yourself,
00:08:06.280 you tell them what they want to hear.
00:08:08.180 Gary has done fantastically well out of advocating policies
00:08:11.360 that would make this country poorer
00:08:12.860 on the basis of false claims about the source of the problem
00:08:15.900 he so passionately wants to address.
00:08:18.240 This was described in extensive detail
00:08:20.200 in a well-referenced post by tax expert Dan Needle,
00:08:23.340 who appeared in Gary's recent documentary.
00:08:25.860 Needle sums up his breakdown by saying,
00:08:28.400 Gary Stevenson clearly cares deeply about inequality
00:08:31.500 and passionately wants a wealth tax,
00:08:34.220 but he's uninterested in the detail
00:08:36.000 of either the problem or his solution.
00:08:38.480 He exaggerates his expertise and his research is sloppy.
00:08:42.320 Given the size of his audience, that's a shame.
00:08:44.760 Even The Guardian agrees publishing
00:08:46.360 a scathing review of the documentary.
00:08:48.240 It's the Guardian, so they still think a wealth tax is a brilliant idea.
00:08:52.080 But even they are shocked by how unpersuasive his arguments are when challenged properly
00:08:57.140 and how lost he appears when he comes up against the most basic counter-arguments to his well-rehearsed talking points.
00:09:04.580 Gary thinks he's Robin Hood, the man who took from the rich and gave to the poor.
00:09:08.820 There's only one problem with all of this.
00:09:10.780 Robin Hood didn't take from the rich.
00:09:12.400 he took from the sheriff of Nottingham,
00:09:14.680 who was, pay attention now,
00:09:16.520 a tax collector and debt enforcer,
00:09:19.180 taxing ordinary citizens to within an inch of their lives.
00:09:22.340 Robin Hood is not a story about taking from the rich
00:09:25.320 and giving to the poor.
00:09:26.600 It's a story about resisting a tax regime
00:09:28.760 that is starting to take the piss.
00:09:30.520 The weird thing is,
00:09:31.760 Gary knows what Britain's actual problem is.
00:09:34.560 In fact, he summed it up very well
00:09:37.180 in that clip we played you with Daniel Priestley
00:09:39.420 when he kept complaining
00:09:40.760 about having to pay 50 and 60% of tax on his earnings.
00:09:44.300 Our problem is not that the rich are doing well,
00:09:46.640 it's that the country is doing badly.
00:09:48.620 We have the highest industrial electricity prices
00:09:51.600 in the developed world,
00:09:53.100 thanks to the lunacy of net zero,
00:09:55.000 which has both destroyed our manufacturing
00:09:57.400 and made us uncompetitive in the world of AI,
00:10:00.220 where most future growth is going to come from.
00:10:03.060 We've made hiring people expensive
00:10:04.740 by raising national insurance
00:10:06.460 and a huge risk by introducing
00:10:08.620 the employment rights bill's day one sick pay provision.
00:10:12.220 And we've chased out both successful innovators
00:10:14.860 like the founder of Revolut, Nick Stronsky,
00:10:17.620 and the young talent that could replace him in the future
00:10:20.240 by making Britain a terrible place to run a business.
00:10:23.960 Instead of generating enough wealth
00:10:25.680 for everyone to do better, we keep raising taxes.
00:10:29.360 The tax burden is now the highest on record
00:10:31.420 in an attempt to maintain the illusion
00:10:34.120 that we're still a wealthy country.
00:10:36.180 We're not.
00:10:36.600 We're currently somewhere between 25th and 29th in GDP per capita in the world and are projected
00:10:43.420 to be overtaken on living standards by Poland. That's not my claim. It's Keir Starmer's. Look,
00:10:49.720 I'm not a billionaire. I don't oppose wealth taxes because I'm going to have to pay them.
00:10:54.520 It's just a terrible idea that isn't about helping anyone. It's about envy. I was born in the Soviet
00:11:01.180 Union. I've seen what happens when feeding the green-eyed monster becomes the basis of government 0.99
00:11:06.060 policy. And so, wishing Gary no ill will, I have to confess a profound sense of relief at the
00:11:12.740 complete implosion of his credibility. Not because I enjoy watching anyone fail, but because bad ideas
00:11:18.440 are dangerous precisely because they are appealing to our worst instinct. Those of us who comment on
00:11:24.200 these things in public have a duty to tell the truth, not pander to them. If you enjoy these
00:11:30.000 videos, remember that they're released as articles on my substack days, weeks, sometimes months ahead
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