I'm always tearing and Sharing my thoughts but this week has seen some amount of yin and Yang. It's been some fortnightly review.
Tuesday's session of reiki and reflexology had me swimming in a tsunami of supreme well being while the afternoon at the oncologist smashed me up against the rocks.
Thursday saw my equilibrium restored as another session of supreme well being left me feeling good about taking custodial duties seriously. I feel absolutely superb now.
We even took in the Hollywood gloss of the Dylan biopic at the cameo picture house. It's got a good bar and is the perfect distance for walking to. I won't review it but it was a great video for MTV and probably missed an opportunity. It was mostly music with the odd bit of story to create a back drop. I'd go further and say they over played the russian stuff and under played the civil rights and dust bowl issues that were central in the struggling USA, but maybe that is how they did it back in the 60's too. Hence, I wouldn't know so won't comment. It had been sold to me as a musical or a biopic. I went expecting a film a la "the Way", the Camino film Hollywood had to cartoon up. So if someone tells me it's not a true representation I'll nod sagely and mumble, "after seeing it, I guessed it wouldn't be, but it had a lot of music and I like a good song or 30."
I did get to walk home again and after a pint in black ivy it got my steps to 15,000 and my pints to 3.
Friday brought news of the Pet scan on Thursday 13th and consultant result 25/2. I've got myself psyched up for the op following a week or two later so I'll try and present the body in a decent condition so drinking less starts Tuesday.
I've been watching a lot of Gary Stevenson on YouTube this week. His channel is Garyseconomics, a booming you tuber heading for 1m followers and I've really enjoyed his contrarian content as it's what I've been banging on about, but he's a lot younger and more qualified. He reminds us regularly about the growing inequality as the richest get richer chasing every asset they can. They can't spend it anywhere else. They lend it to governments to build hospitals and school and make even more money.
I think he must be about 40. He stopped making millions for Citibank about 30, long before the age when Carnegie's U-turn has that auld relic as some magnanimous fella.
Gary didn't need to work long before he knew austerity was the new poll tax. Blame the poor people.
He bet the economy would crumble and asset prices would rise. He continued for a few years, spotted the rapidly closing doors as the poor were left behind while working and stopped. Carnegie needed to get near death to suddenly spot the flaw in a broken society so I really liked Gary instantly. He saw, he acted.
Like the big short this is a guy who understands how the money moves and where it's all going. Why the markets continue to rise despite higher interest rates. He also helped me understand why house prices universally but particularly in certain places continue to rise despite higher interest rates.
I've been banging on about the asset stripping going on about the world and Gary's sufficiently smart to know a Frenchman who wrote this stuff back in 2015 showing the UK has indeed sold the silver, the gold and don't own their house. If there's a saving grace it helps explain why taxes rise and things get worse. For the poor they've known their wage goes up but they still can't buy a house as it goes up a lot more than inflation. Oh, that's right, house prices aren't part of inflation.
Like the Big Short the biggest mental problems I have are when I'm in full contrarian mode and I can't explain to people in an articulate way. It's like I'm speaking to my dad and he says "NUTS", while I repeat "nurse", "N-U-T-S" he replies spitting the letters at me as if English is not my first language and I smile softly spelling "n-u-r-s-e" back. He sees me saying 5 letters and realising changes to "nurse." I am just so inarticulate even my Dad struggles with the words never mind the content I try and communicate.
I wanted to talk about Jimmy Carter's funeral and how the speeches would remind him of a time when America was great, unlike the 45 years since when they restored the good old days. The times when a car bumping into a person was the pedestrians fault. The times when big steel, oil and coal ran the show while the dust bowl was created out of the mid west. The times when buffalo would feed a nation until the de-population of the locals. The times when you could just push someone out of bed because you wanted the mattress and had bullets to kill them dead. The times before Roosevelt brought the anti trust laws in to break the monopoly of the mega rich. The times before the wall street crash finally said, the economy can't take anymore. People can't buy a new iPhone so, sorry guys, no point in producing them.
what a brilliant day walking and lunching with Stu and Simon.
It's nice to get a break from writing my drivel.
It's even nicer taking in the air.
As ever I feel compelled to write the stuff in my head and are we really heading for a repeat of the 1930's.
Well folks, we are fast approaching 50 years since we had a democracy here with any kind of social mobility. You're born rich or poor and that's pretty much how you'll stay. For the generations born from the peak of the 50's onwards the decline on opportunities has increased every decade.
More generally, the final straw in my tax paying camel, came with covid. For those who did manage to make a little bit of money and are looking at handing it on to the next generation the concept of taxation was a given when I was growing up. We believed in the state and the state believed in us. Never again, was the cry about wars, we would never be led by donkeys and we'd keep fascists away. Well, we did for a while and we created a start on our way to a utopian state which gave birth to the Beatles, even the Sex Pistols. We paid our inheritance tax and you could form a band and get £1000 to put a single out from the government scheme. You got unemployment benefits if you were unemployed, including between school and university. Essentially like a student, a musician could be unemployed while learning their craft. The same for many of the arts. It's pretty easy to call that waste but it's what keeps economic activity up. I'm 62 and if asked I would vote for kids receiving unemployment benefit while they were unemployed whether they were looking for a job or just bumming around busking. Whether they were training part time with a football club hoping to get a contract or running around a track trying to join the olympic programme. Let them grow up is what I'd say. Let them keep priming the economy as they'll spend every penny.
Of course we do the opposite and teach them to acquire debt.
Back then I'd talk about how income tax takes a chunk but your still left with a pretty big chunk. The same if an old person with a house dies. I'd talk about paying tax all the time. After inheritance tax the kids will get a decent wedge. Not my advice now Sherlock. Not if Michelle Mone has got her money off to the isle of man, not if the Cayman islands are full of tax Dodgers while Hunt buys his property while Clarkson and the growing army of millionaires hide their money in farming assets, ironically one of the few doors labour tried to close.
I confess I have, I really have changed my tune. I now believe and have since 2009 when I stopped working that the Thatcher Tories of the 80's have won. I'm now repeating myself as I only want to pay tax if everyone else does. In the 1980's I argued in my economic tutorials that I wanted to pay £1m in tax. I kept arguing a society that allowed me to win £2m working, a society who had given me my stake in the game by keeping me healthy and educated for 20 years, deserved a decent cut. If the society also allowed me and my business ideas to prosper I would give them a cut, aka, paying even more tax. If I built a nursery or ran an old folks home, paid it off until I was left with a £3m property, I'd split it with the government for encouraging me to do so. I argued until I was blue in the face that if I could pay £25m I'd be over the moon.
In the end I stopped working in 2009. I was 46 and I was still the only one who seemed to think like me. I was in the wrong room. My last Stocktrade bonus was regarded as fairly small and I laughed. If staff thought Directors should take more then we definitely had taken the right amount. I consistently argued that as Directors we picked up a decent salary so the largest lump should go to the staff.
Additionally I would argue that we would get taxed more on it and giving it to the staff would have a bigger impact for them. It did, plus it meant they liked working with us because they knew we were sharing the bonus. Those arguments resonance, disappointingly disappeared when I moved to Newcastle to help another part of the Group. The EO brokers directors would finally take all the bonus for themselves and stop the ludicrous policy of handing staff 20/30/40/50%.
By 2009 I realised I wasn't going to pay £1m in income tax but I took comfort from knowing if I added my tobacco and drink duties I'd exceeded the £1m in 2008 so I retired. I'd forgotten I'd get to pay more on my pension as I drew it down so feel quite content now the wee 17 year old student will deliver on the £1m income tax promise.
I don't however believe the social contract only applies to the uninitiated. My Dad sold their home to pay for my mum's care. It was his choice and I applauded the public spiritedness. Like John leaving his council house at the foot of the royal mile and handing the keys back to the council on Tuesday so Edinburgh could profit from selling it. These small good deeds put money into the pot that Edinburgh council will splurge as they choose. I just hope it goes into housing. I've long argued you can't supply any service if you don't have cash. Golfers witness it daily at their golf clubs. They talk about it while spending £300 on a driver that slices out of bounds at least twice a round but it never gets mentioned when they shout down a £20 increase in subs.
Looking back at the history of things we're reminded how often we reinforce our memories. How often we choose to say things were better back then. It's that whole nostalgic way the current bunch of day time drinkers discuss daily.
In my case I look back at my eggy bread and compare the photos with today's. I may have even improved my standards but sadly the opportunity for our children is a recurring nightmare.
On the decline of opportunity for children born from the 1950's onwards it is real.
When the average 75 year old was buying their first house they'd been to a school that probably had a nurse and a dentist. They had increasing access to college and university, with grants based on income. The price of that first house would be between 2-4 times their income while the queue for a council house was under a month. The price of that house or flat now will be 30-40 times what it cost 50 years ago when they were 25. I'm pretty sure their salary never moved as fast, but luckily their pension was largely tied to it for the majority of their life.
I'll probably research 62 year olds because that's me. I'll add in the double camel hump distribution (binomial?) if appropriate. I also like the mean the median and the mode as the easiest way to understand how "wealth diverse" our society is becoming. Media is trying to make you think diversity is something to divide us. It is, which is why it's so important we take the contrarian view and unite on the growing wealth diversity.
The voices on other diversity issues are purely distractive voices and the cunning conversations of a conjurer. Tommy Cooper's bottle /glass trick reminding us all that political satire was alive and kicking in every trick he did. It's why I have enjoyed Eddie Izzard's comedy as it comes through the prism of what else are you telling me here. We have always had things we disagree over but surely number one in our society is making sure we're preventing poverty. It can not be that providing more food banks gets our focus. Being lectured about growth in the economy when it's really the growth of the disparity between the asset owning and the no chance of ever owning, is annoying.
Economics suggests to me the poverty of our generations got worse, in fact, increasingly worse, so there's an accelerator at play here too. It's like inflation, the effect on the wealth diversity is still growing. It is still getting even bigger. I still regard "don't go to university, get a job that will pay for your training" as one of my top 10 best pieces of fat Al chat from the Stocktrade slavering in the 1990's and early 2000's. Navigation for 16-45 year olds must be so tough as they try to work out what they want to do as well as how to get there. If you're a woman as I mentioned years back, going to university and having a family just meant you would be in debt for life.
I bought and sold a few houses in my time from the mid 80's. I look back now at the madness of lawyers bills and stamp duty but it was a consequence of living. Today's generation don't even have that luxury. They will never be able to buy in the centre of towns and cities again unless their parents do a chunk for them.
I laugh as had I known how short a marriage or a job would last I may have taken a different view but I was as ever all in. Edinburgh property like most cities has it's peculiarities with the city's universities largely being property companies now, they don't build council houses but instead build hotels as they've done with Pollock Halls. I would love to have a look at how the institution's run because the £50m they pick up during the festival probably competes favourably with the course fees, although the annual (10month) accomodation will probably be double that.
I will get distracted with it, as Edinburgh peculiarities go, we have long been a city where house prices rise as students come to town and rich parents will buy a property because it's a one way bet. We all know it and many locals move further out of town to huge schemes or estates the same as all over the UK.
It's Tuesday and I'm in my wee box so apologies. I've had the tracer injection so I'm now radioactive. I'll continue this diatribe but it does make me chuckle when I look at that graph.
I'm on a hospital very grateful to the staff for treating me. In order for us to have a scanner we had to sell the Royal infirmary in town and build a new royal on the edge of town. The new hospital is rented and the money from the old one has since been spent.
People putting the case forward for getting funds from PFI say it wouldn't happen without it. I say we forgot to tax the rich.
I try not to get mad but get even. I talk about it, this growing inequality but at the same time I have to back it in the stock market as those are the shares that are going up as they are one way bets. It's like when Caitlin was paying a fortune to rent and so I bought shares in Unite. They went up because inflation is part of the deal and students are easy targets to say just borrow more. Student property is also the easiest to get planning for, judging by the projects that go ahead. Their consultants might disagree but Edinburgh is full of these buildings both completed and in construction. Someone will tell me we need them, I won't disagree. I will merely point out it is a factor in wealth diversity and keep asking why we can't have council house being built at the same rate. I would also argue that the reason why the university increasingly talks about cuts and getting experts in, is they're rewarded too well in the boardroom.
Buying a house in 2000 in Edinburgh was still pretty affordable. As we were selling Carrick knowe and moving to Orrok park, we were selling for £55k-£60k and happy to spend £130-160k. We sold to a colleague and it was probably 3 times his wages. That's one person, in his 20's, not a couple. We looked at all the places within walking distance of Swanys. From Prestonfield sweeping around to Morningside. Wanted a garden and we went for the brookside style cul de sac by the inch park. I think if you were investing you'd have bought a flat in Montpelier or the one in hermitage terrace we put an offer in for, the bungalow at craiglockart, the many in the Rankins or Relugas but we were buying a family home to live in not an investment only about selling. If that was the case we'd buy in the popular catchment of Gillespie's and Boroughmuir to ensure we could sell it with save on school fees and socialist credentials.
My curiousity can't resist seeing how a home compares to an investment. This is how the asset rich economy always operates. Kahneman and many others have talked about scarcity driving this wealth diversity.
As soon as you own enough assets that your income continues to exceed your requirements, you can only buy more assets. This drives stock markets and more relevant to us, house prices. The asset rich will continue to try to maximise the growth of their assets. As much as anything they want to preserve what they have. It's like a failsafe brake in a lift. As you get up to the 21st floor, it will not drop below an inch below where it is. Preserving is everything if you are asset rich so therefore, exploitation is the best the asset poor can hope for. Higher personal tax and lower standards of living. It's why I've always shouted tax the rich, especially when I was one.
We are repeatedly told there is a housing shortage and we should encourage more private landlords. This is partially true but it is private landlords with the many properties that are the scourge. Jeremy Hunt buying 7 properties that year he introduced the new tax dodges summed it up. We don't want more private landlords pushing up asset prices turning homes into investments. We need more homes at council house rents.
When Thatcher handed out all our council houses at knock down prices I truly believe she thought that she had given these people the first step on the ladder. Nowadays those are the council houses that countless 20-40 year olds live in paying 3 times the current council rent. You can't blame the asset rich owners for maximising their rent but you can applaud the few owners who don't raise it.
I mentioned a few years back the figure for student debt, in England alone, being equal to the national debt of Ireland. From a macro and micro perspective it's just wrong. The budget last year and the levels of debt the UK has had now confirms it won't get better soon. We keep taxing the nurses. We keep asking the poor in our society to pay a larger amount of their income, while encouraging the richest with more wealth protection schemes. You can scramble towards the life rafts but this ship is going down. At a time like this it's best we work together.
I've talked often about being an economic migrant when I go on the Camino. Soon I'll be able to go to places more local and my money will be worth twice it is by jumping a bus 30 miles. Simon and I are going to practice by going to villages and towns in Scotland that have lowest house prices and report back on the price of a pint.
Hooray, the scan is done and I survived to tell another tale, or is it the same one. I said thanks to the radiographer and said I hope they get a pay rise soon to move them off minimum wage. Of course I didn't say the last bit but I thought it.
I've been banging on about scarcity for a while. Whether you talk about Edinburgh streets in the dean village or houses in and off north or south street in st Andrews it's clear to see the scarcity value. Dornoch has long known that some overaeas billionaires have two properties with the smaller one near the course which they use as a locker room.
The billionaires drive up these asset prices as they try to out muscle the local population. That was easy, if Tiger Woods wants to buy a cinema in st Andrews, he buys it, though it does lead to some fun and games. In Dornoch, Gullane, St Andrews wherever, they might argue that they love the town and the locals but through their actions they do everything to ensure the local workers have to be bussed in from another parish.
The changing shape of many properties on the southside as I take my daily air walking to the meadows or bruntsfield let's me see close up how empty many huge properties are. It won't be long until burglary becomes worthwhile again as some of these houses are lived in during the festival and that's about it. Although squatting would probably be even more lucrative. I think we all know celebrities who have flats on the Royal Mile, that's why I chuckle about John's council house still being publicly owned. It proves what could have happened had the asset stripping not taken place.
Many financial people from Edinburgh who return after 10-20 years in London have often found they've gone from a flat in balcarres street to a huge house and have change left over. There's no doubt if you spent well paying off your mortgage as you lived and worked in the city of London you could come back with a handsome amount of cash. They're now asset rich and will doubtless provide a deposit or buy a flat for their children. They'll find a LISA, so the tax payer can help them.
Preserving wealth when we have the diversity of wealth is immoral. Increasing the burden of tax on the poorest is not sustainable.
What many people watching Garyseconomics probably want to know is the answer to the question, will it always be this bad. The answer is of course that it will get worse unless we have a revolution and I think the 60+ group I'm part of, have got enough to see them by so they'll just want the younger ones to suck it up, pay the increased burden of tax that labour liberals and Tories have lumped on us. Oh and work for nothing in the NHS please.
When the Christmas winter fuel payment was axed you would've thought labour might have cut tax free schemes like ISAs. They could crack down on the aforementioned Lisa's which gives the under 40's of rich people £1000 a year. They didn't. They made a choice that said the rich deserve more hiding places for their money. Not only do they not pursue taxing wealth they encourage it to stay with the wealthy causing an increasingly fragmented society. Soon life long friends will become detached on their 40th birthday parties or their Hen and Stags, as the organiser plans a £1000 jolly and half the crowd can't go. Worse still, choose a venue where transport links mean staying over and a £500 one off, when the heating hasn't been on all winter.
When the big furlough handout was done more people than ever had £50,000 to spend on funding Lisa's than ever before let me guess, did the take up go up?
How much went into planning a bigger and grander wedding. How much went into the annual golfing trip which now involved £200 becoming £1000.
When platitudes were being played on the doorsteps of the nation for the NHS and essential workers we were being asked to bang a drum. We weren't being told that these exhausted staff members reward for risking the life by going to work during lockdown and not getting pissed in the park with handouts, would be a wage freeze or even worse a wage cut with inflation.
We weren't told these essential workers would have the tax free earnings limit frozen at £12,000 for 5 years so that over those 5 years they could pay £3000 more in tax to the government who had paid all their pals so much dough.
I remember when Stu told me Farage had stolen my policy tip for labour of making the public sector more attractive by offering those workers a £20,000 tax free limit before they had to start PAYE. I was disgusted that old dodgy garage was stealing my well argued policy. I wanted to offer all workers a house as well but I never saw that policy being snaffled.
I'm nearly home now so just another 5 hours before I'm not radioactive and can go to the pub you'll all be delighted to hear, if you've made it this far.
What Gary does in his many videos is explain facts faster. His clarity doesn't need another 30 minutes. What will be interesting is seeing how soon he builds the bridge that lets him into the room. Personally if I was a betting man I'd suggest his life expectancy may not be too good. He really has raised his head that far above the parapet. This is like watching the real time version of Le Mis. Someone will lose their head and I just hope it's a metaphorical one.
He clearly wants to be part of the conversation and this is his route. He's using his social media to get there and frankly the issue will be that nobody else in the room will understand him.
The politicians will therefore be terrified quite quickly. This will cause them to, at first fail to keep up then depending on their egos shut him down or accept him at face value and act.
The problem with our meritocracy is it needs to be paid for. It's like our judiciary.
What happens now is you need money to go to university.
You need money to sustain you after university while you serve that internship.
Finally if you survive that, it's merit.
So in modern parlance there's a paywall to progress.
Luckily Gary doesn't need to earn the money, but he banks it nonetheless as the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer is a one way bet he's done for 14 years. He's a trader, he's a smart guy, he knows how to place that bet. Don't try to copy him, 99.99% will fail.
Remember he was the anomaly that broke through the paywall.
I get my results on Tuesday 25th I think and I'm sure I'll write plenty more nonsense before then.
Thanks if you did read to the end, I applaud your endeavour.
I'm now about to write some of the music for our 21st century Robin Hood.
