Comment on Gary Stevenson: 'Tax wealth or we'll return to the feudal age'

• gtrcoi@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Their point isn’t about the stats, it’s about how Gary is a grifter that tailors his message to attract simpletons who like shiney words and empty rhetoric. That he can’t even engage with a chart that might support his message because actual data isn’t a part of the equation for him, only rhetoric and whatever cherry picked headlines he can find to support it.

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  • hark@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You claim it’s not about stats and yet their issue is that he didn’t want to get dragged into a pointless argument over the minutia of some chart. If these hosts agree that wealth inequality is a problem, then it’s an established point that doesn’t need to be rehashed through arguments over a chart. Gary knows this, his audience knows this, the hosts know this, and we know this, and many are living through this. What purpose does arguing over a chart do other than to try to distract from the message? If you want a strong message that resonates with people, you have to keep it simple and straightforward.

    Whether he’s a grifter or not is a matter of opinion. Dismissing his message by calling him a grifter is a textbook example of ad hominem. His message is simple:

    • There is massive wealth inequality.
    • Wealth inequality tends to get worse since the more assets one owns, the more they can use that as leverage to obtain even more assets.
    • A wealth tax addresses the heart of the problem by taxing wealth directly.

    What is your issue with these key points? That he hasn’t spent enough time in the chart mines? That you think he’s a grifter? Clearly his method of communication has been effective in drawing attention on the issue while offering a solution and I think that’s a great thing.

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    • gtrcoi@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s great for Gary because the 4th bullet point you forgot to add is “involve Gary in economic policy making cause he’s so smart and the academics in their ivory tower are all useless”. He sounds just like the Eric Weinstein complaining that the Trump admin didn’t call the intellectual darkweb for help.

      Everything is downstream from that with these people, because they rely on simplifications of complex issues to dupe laymen into thinking they are the only ones with the answers.

      Here is a OECD paper looking at the pros and cons of a wealth tax oecd.org/…/the-role-and-design-of-net-wealth-taxe… it won’t go viral because it isn’t written by slopulist clout goblins like Gary. I doubt he’s read it because it contains a LOT of graphs, but that’s just the kind of thing you need if you’re going to start advocating for tax reform. Showing a graph or two might have helped him if this article is to be believed.

      Gary is a flashy spiv with boring, half-baked ideas and he will never provide information in this much detail. He needs to keep it simple for the clicks, inevitably pushing his audience up mount stupid so they can walk into the ballot box with confidence and vote for economic arsonists with shiney slogans like his. People like Nigel Farage who also benefit from Gary’s bipartisan message of broken institutions and elite corruption.

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      • hark@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The report won’t go viral because it’s a 100+ page report. Everyone plays a different role, Gary’s role is to raise awareness of the solution of wealth tax and push for an implementation. He’s done a great job at that. I have watched the documentary written about in that article and I agree it wasn’t good, he didn’t push back enough most of the time. His skill was limited in that respect, but his skill at getting clicks is still good to give traction and momentum to the idea of a wealth tax where others can pick up the torch and carry it to the goal.

        Farage does not advocate for a wealth tax and Gary has talked about Farage multiple times on his channel, pointing out that he is taking advantage of the situation where institutions and the elites are indeed corrupt, but will not implement a solution to fix it and will actually do the opposite. I don’t see how that messaging benefits Farage. If you make a wealth tax a partisan issue, then you’re cutting along party lines rather than class lines and that will mean people in poorer classes not supporting a wealth tax simply because of allegiance to their party of choice.

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