TRIGGERnometry - Finally, Gary Stevenson Has Been Found Out - Konstantin Kisin

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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

00:11:36.040 of time. So head on over to www.constantinkission.com right now and subscribe. That's

00:11:42.660 constantinkission.com and go ahead and subscribe right now. The news doesn't just tell you what's

00:11:48.940 happening. It often tells you what to think is happening. And these days, the biggest red flag

00:11:53.760 isn't what's said, it's what gets left out. That's why I use Ground News. It's the only app that

00:11:59.420 compares how the same story is covered across the political spectrum and show you what whole

00:12:03.980 audiences are not being told. The blind spot feed is one of my favorite features. Every day,

00:12:09.000 it flags upwards of 20 stories that are being ignored either by the left or the right. Follow

00:12:13.420 along at ground.news slash trigonometry. Like this, a new study from UC San Diego found that

00:12:19.080 climate change cost almost twice as much as we thought because earlier estimates left out damage

00:12:24.040 to the oceans. That's a pretty big update and yet no coverage, literally zero, came from right

00:12:28.580 leaning outlets. Or this, a recent Gallup poll found trust in the media has hit a record low

00:12:33.400 with just 28% of Americans saying they trust newspapers, radio, and TV to report the news

00:12:38.980 accurately and fairly. That's a staggering result, but if you only read left-leaning news, you likely

00:12:44.080 never saw it at all. Go to ground.news slash trigonometry to get 40% off their unlimited

00:12:49.340 vantage plan, the same one we use, and stop being managed by the media.

00:13:03.400 Thank you.

TRIGGERnometry - July 14, 2026

Finally, Gary Stevenson Has Been Found Out - Konstantin Kisin

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