Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Fringe Festival Panel Day 2: Jim Mellon, Richard Wilson, Paul Johnson and Simon Evans

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Fringe Festival Panel Day 2: Jim Mellon, Richard Wilson, Paul Johnson and Simon Evans · Merryn Talks Money

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to Marren Talks Money, the podcast in which people
0:04
Speaker 1: who know the markets explain the markets. I'm Merrin Sumset
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Speaker 1: Web double feature this week and here is the second
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Speaker 1: day of my panel The Butcher, the Brewer, the Baker
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Speaker 1: and Maren Sumset Web. Again. This was held at Pameo House,
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Speaker 1: the only surviving Edinburgh residents of Adam Smith. This conversation
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Speaker 1: was taped on the twenty seventh of August as part
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Speaker 1: of the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. And again a reminder
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Speaker 1: of the quote from which the show is based. It
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Speaker 1: is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer
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Speaker 1: or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from
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Speaker 1: their regard to their own interest, one of Smith's most
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Speaker 1: famous quotes. On to my guests, you heard about them briefly.
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Speaker 1: But on the far side, I have Simon Evans, who
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Speaker 1: is on with us off for nearly a ree. Have
0:50
Speaker 1: you missed a year yet, Simon?
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Speaker 2: Not that you haven't. No, I don't think true.
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Speaker 1: Well, we'd missed COVID didn't. We didn't want to do
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Speaker 1: this online comedian, commentator, broadcaster and general. I was going
1:00
Speaker 1: to say curmudgeon, but I'm not going to say that
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Speaker 1: because you're particularly curmudgeonly, a little bit curmudgeonally. On my
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Speaker 1: author my right Jim Mellon, investor guru, author, most recently
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Speaker 1: author of a children's book, Juno's Arc, which by the way,
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Speaker 1: is excellent if you have children, do get it? Any
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Speaker 1: copies with you? No?
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Speaker 3: No?
1:17
Speaker 1: No, okay, well all good bookshops. On my left Richard Wilson,
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Speaker 1: not written a book yet, but you will, won't you,
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Speaker 1: I promise, okay, chief executive of one of the UK's
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Speaker 1: largest investment platforms, Interactive Investor. And on my far left
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Speaker 1: Paul Johnson, Director of the IFS and the only person
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Speaker 1: who has a book here today, Follow the Money, which
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Speaker 1: is absolutely excellent. Under Laura's put a quote on the front.
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Speaker 1: Read it, absorb it and understand how the country works.
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Speaker 1: And if I'd been asked to do a quote, I
1:46
Speaker 1: would have said something very similar to that.
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Speaker 4: Absolutely excellent time said by read it and weep.
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Speaker 1: Okay, right, Yesterday's On that note, I'm just going to
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Speaker 1: say before we move on, that yesterday's show was quite
2:01
Speaker 1: miserable and I kept trying to inject bits of optimism
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Speaker 1: into it, and I really I did my best I
2:06
Speaker 1: told all my best jokes, but it was still a
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Speaker 1: fairly downbeat occasion. We ended with not much optimism. Today
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Speaker 1: I am after optimism. This is the challenge to the panel.
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Speaker 1: I don't want to hear anything downbeat, nothing miserable, and
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Speaker 1: nothing anti brexit. Just speak little first quote. First quote
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Speaker 1: comes from Jim.
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Speaker 3: It's a very long quote, which means I don't have
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Speaker 3: to talk very much after.
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Speaker 1: It, and they still have to talk.
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Speaker 3: Oh I do I okay, all right? So this is
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Speaker 3: an Adam Smith quote, obviously, and he's there looking at us,
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Speaker 3: and apparently he had no vices whatsoever, including drinking. But
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Speaker 3: this is a quote about the evil drink. And it says,
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Speaker 3: by means of glasses, hotbeds and hot walls, very good
2:47
Speaker 3: grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine
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Speaker 3: too can be made from them at about thirty times
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Speaker 3: the expense for which at least equally good can be
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Speaker 3: brought from foreign or bought from foreign countries. Would it
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Speaker 3: be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all
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Speaker 3: foreign wines merely to encourage the making of claret and
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Speaker 3: burgundy in Scotland. Yesterday we went to our cafe Saint
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Speaker 3: honore here in Edinburgh. It's a lovely place, by the way,
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Speaker 3: and we were regaled with a lecture on risk weighted
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Speaker 3: assets by my very long standing friend Bob McDonald, and
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Speaker 3: the lecture went on for an hour and a half,
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Speaker 3: which thankfully we won't be subjected to today. And I
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Speaker 3: plied him with glasses of mulbeck, which were ten pounds
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Speaker 3: of glass. And I can tell you that if I'd
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Speaker 3: had to pay three hundred pounds a glass, which would
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Speaker 3: have been the equivalent of Adam Smith's quote, the lecture
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Speaker 3: would have been even more impenetrable and unfortunate than it was.
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Speaker 3: But I want to make two optimistic points. One is
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Speaker 3: that this country, which has got multiple problems but great opportunity,
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Speaker 3: should should have no barriers to trade at all. I mean,
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Speaker 3: I don't think we should have any barriers to trade
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Speaker 3: at all, in the same way that Adam Smith is
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Speaker 3: proponing here or propositioning here, that we should have no
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Speaker 3: tariffs on foreign wines or anything for which there's a
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Speaker 3: comparative advantage elsewhere. And the second point I want to
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Speaker 3: make is that the only reason this country is doing
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Speaker 3: better than expected and continues to do better than expected
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Speaker 3: against all the odds not. The only reason we're I'm
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Speaker 3: sorry is because we are bringing in six hundred thousand
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Speaker 3: net people a year, which I basically I'm in favor.
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Speaker 3: Of those six hundred thousand people who come here. Most
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Speaker 3: of them are not allowed to work. Many of them
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Speaker 3: are not not allowed to work, and it's crazy that
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Speaker 3: they shouldn't be working. So my two optimistic points are
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Speaker 3: number one, no trade barriers at all for the UK,
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Speaker 3: open to everyone around the world. And number two, let
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Speaker 3: immigrants work from the day that they arrive. If they
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Speaker 3: want to work, I think that's really important. If they
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Speaker 3: don't have skill sets that are relevant to the country,
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Speaker 3: teach them the skill sets. Because Adam Smith was a
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Speaker 3: great proponent that labour is the most valuable asset of
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Speaker 3: any country, and I completely agree with that. So those
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Speaker 3: are my two optimistic points based on this wine quote.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so absolutely no trade barriers none, we'll come back
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Speaker 1: to that. And absolutely no borders to people either.
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Speaker 3: No, I didn't say that. I said that if when
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Speaker 3: people come here, and if they arrive illegally, they manage
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Speaker 3: to get through our system for stopping people from coming in,
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Speaker 3: then we should allow them to work. That's why I'm saying, basically,
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Speaker 3: we probably still have to have borders of some type.
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Speaker 3: Otherwise we'd have ten million people a year, and obviously
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Speaker 3: this country can't cope with that. But I think six
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Speaker 3: hundred thousand is a reasonable number to absorb on an
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Speaker 3: annual basis. It's less than one per cent of the population,
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Speaker 3: and we need people coming in. We're facing a demographic crisis.
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Speaker 3: I don't know if you know how serious that demographic
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Speaker 3: crisis is, but by the year twenty seventy, half of
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Speaker 3: the G seven, the richest countries in the world, including
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Speaker 3: ours at the moment, population will be over sixty five
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Speaker 3: years old. That means a lot of old people being
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Speaker 3: looked after a very small number of younger people. We
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Speaker 3: will be desperate for immigrants in twenty years time. We
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Speaker 3: need them today. We need to preempt that. We need
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Speaker 3: to be welcoming to immigrants.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I agree with you on the demographic crisis,
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Speaker 1: and I think it's really interesting that people are not
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Speaker 1: taking enough account of our falling fertility rates and not
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Speaker 1: taking enough account of the empty planet discussion that we
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Speaker 1: quite often have. Absolutely, but at some point we will
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Speaker 1: have to confront this. We can import other people's young
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Speaker 1: people for only a certain amount of time. At some
6:29
Speaker 1: point that you know, the crisis continues, we get to
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Speaker 1: the point where the pyramid is this way around globally
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Speaker 1: and we can't be importing other people's young people forever.
6:36
Speaker 1: There's an immorality in there as well. So what happens
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Speaker 1: would we just delay the day when we have to
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Speaker 1: deal with the fact that our dependency ratio is the
6:43
Speaker 1: wrong way around.
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Speaker 3: Well, when the facts change, you change, you change your policies.
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Speaker 3: But at the moment, we do need immigrants, and we
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Speaker 3: should anticipate the demographic crisis carrying on because there is
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Speaker 3: no way that people are going to have suddenly have
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Speaker 3: lots of children in this country. That's just not going
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Speaker 3: to happen. And this crisis is the biggest crisis that
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Speaker 3: we face, even bigger in my opinion, in the climate crisis,
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Speaker 3: because what's the point of, you know, having a lower
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Speaker 3: temperature around the world, which is going to be difficult
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Speaker 3: to achieve. By the way, if basically we're all dribbling
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Speaker 3: in nursing homes and there isn't there aren't sufficient people
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Speaker 3: to look after us, that's what's going to happen.
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Speaker 1: Who are you saving this. Now, what's going to be
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Speaker 1: dribbling not if your drugs are not going to be that?
7:22
Speaker 5: Should we not just make people live work longer?
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Speaker 3: Is that not why I don't have to work longer?
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Speaker 1: Not longer?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, but they have to be healthy and robust health.
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Speaker 3: Then you health span has to be increased, which is
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Speaker 3: another discussion which I'm obviously involved in through our bioactivities.
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Speaker 3: But that's not going to happen for the next ten
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Speaker 3: or twenty years, I think on a wide dispersing basis.
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Speaker 3: So for the moment, let's be kind as Adam Smith
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Speaker 3: would have been referring to his first book, and let
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Speaker 3: immigrants who come to this country work. Don't put them
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Speaker 3: in hostels sitting there doing nothing for you know the
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Speaker 3: first three or four years ago.
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Speaker 2: You've extrapolated quite a lot from a quote about the
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Speaker 2: baby establish viable vineyards.
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Speaker 3: I've seen your quote and it's about one line long. Sorry,
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Speaker 3: I'm interested to see well anyway.
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Speaker 1: But this is this is how it works.
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Speaker 3: People.
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Speaker 1: People shallhorn their opinions onto anything that Adam Smith might
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Speaker 1: or might not have said.
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Speaker 2: That's well aware we're facing a demographic crisis, which is
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Speaker 2: why I argued we should have let COVID rip, which
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Speaker 2: would have solved so many problems in this country and
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Speaker 2: around the world.
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Speaker 1: But that's the kind of thing into a book. That's
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Speaker 1: why we do the editing. Can I bring you in
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Speaker 1: on this on the demographic crisis. I'm sure I haven't
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Speaker 1: read all of this book, but I'm pretty sure there'll
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Speaker 1: be something in there on the on the dependency ratio
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Speaker 1: not working in the right direction.
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Speaker 4: I'm shocked, Mary that you're not read at all.
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Speaker 1: You can see how much i've.
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Speaker 4: There is there is indeed, so so yes. I mean,
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Speaker 4: the population is growing older, which is good. In we
8:53
Speaker 4: we're all living a lot longer. I mean, when I
8:55
Speaker 4: was born, I think the the longevity expectation was about
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Speaker 4: seventy and now it's over eighty. So there's a huge,
9:03
Speaker 4: huge increase over a relatively short period of time. Now
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Speaker 4: that's had some negative effects, which is partly the sort
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Speaker 4: of generation slightly older than me is scoop the pole
9:12
Speaker 4: pull in terms of occupational pensions and housing and just
9:15
Speaker 4: about everything else. But there are some real problems coming up.
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Speaker 4: So some of them we can deal with, but we're
9:22
Speaker 4: gonna have to deal with them by, for example, accepting
9:24
Speaker 4: that if we're gonna have a health service and a
9:26
Speaker 4: pension system and a social care system that we've got
9:28
Speaker 4: used to, we're going to have to have higher taxes
9:30
Speaker 4: over the next several decades. I don't see anyway out
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Speaker 4: of that. I mean, the immigration. I think you're right
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Speaker 4: there and it helps, but you have to keep you know,
9:41
Speaker 4: you have to keep running to stay still if that's
9:44
Speaker 4: if that's what you if that's what you base it on,
9:47
Speaker 4: and yourso obviously have to take account of the political
9:49
Speaker 4: acceptability or otherwise of very high levels of immigration. But
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Speaker 4: that is one of the things that's keeping us going
9:56
Speaker 4: at the moment, not just the immigration, but also the
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Speaker 4: fact that immigrants you have more kids actually the native
10:03
Speaker 4: born Brits and that makes a big difference to the population.
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Speaker 4: But it's something you also have to get used to.
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Speaker 4: We're moving from a world in which twenty or thirty
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Speaker 4: years ago, and I can't remember the exact numbers, something
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Speaker 4: like five percent of the population was from an ethnic minority.
10:17
Speaker 4: In thirty years time it will be something like twenty
10:19
Speaker 4: five percent of the population. These are very big changes. See.
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Speaker 4: One of the things that's odd about Scotland is that
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Speaker 4: not having some of the best universities gets much less
10:27
Speaker 4: inward migration from the rest of the world than England,
10:30
Speaker 4: and it's very unlike bits of England that have those
10:33
Speaker 4: those universities. It's an interesting difference between north and south
10:37
Speaker 4: of the border.
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Speaker 1: Why do you think that is the aout a lot
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Speaker 1: of Scotland?
10:40
Speaker 2: Why is that?
10:41
Speaker 1: Why is that immigrants don't want to come to Scotland.
10:43
Speaker 1: I mean, I could give you a couple of answers,
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Speaker 1: but men.
10:46
Speaker 4: Well, I mean there's obviously a big draw to London.
10:49
Speaker 4: I don't know whether it's the weather or the language
10:51
Speaker 4: or any of those things, but I think it is something.
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Speaker 4: But it's it's been an issue for Scotland for a
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Speaker 4: very long time that the population of Scotland has essentially
11:01
Speaker 4: changed very little, whilst the population of the rest of
11:05
Speaker 4: the UK and particularly of England, has grown over a
11:07
Speaker 4: long period. The benefit to Scotland is the mad Barnet formula,
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Speaker 4: which means you get piles and piles of money from
11:13
Speaker 4: the English because because in per person, because there aren't
11:16
Speaker 4: very many of you, Well.
11:17
Speaker 1: We're going to edit that bit out too sensitive stuff. Yes,
11:22
Speaker 1: there is a sense of stuff.
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Speaker 2: Right in thinking that part of The reason that Scottish
11:27
Speaker 2: people were keener to remain in the EU was because
11:31
Speaker 2: within the EU, Scotland could conceivably be a net beneficiary
11:35
Speaker 2: of migration, of what you might call the what's the
11:39
Speaker 2: opposite of a brain brain of an influx. Within the
11:42
Speaker 2: UK there's a drained southwards. But within the wider EU,
11:47
Speaker 2: people might come from Bulgaria to Edinburgh or whatever, and
11:51
Speaker 2: they more sort of situated mid table. Was a lady
11:53
Speaker 2: there nodding, which encourages me because I had I think
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Speaker 2: I heard an but in Bulgaria speak a few years
12:02
Speaker 2: ago about and they've lost like something like a third
12:04
Speaker 2: of their population since joining you is it's horrific. If
12:07
Speaker 2: you are you know, a parent, you know who just
12:09
Speaker 2: likes the idea of your family staying together, they've just
12:11
Speaker 2: all left.
12:12
Speaker 1: It slightly brings us back to the thing I was
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Speaker 1: saying about and putting other countries young people. There's there's
12:17
Speaker 1: a moral conversation to have around it's not as well, Yeah, right,
12:20
Speaker 1: we should move on. Next is hang on? I forgotten
12:25
Speaker 1: the order we were going to go.
12:25
Speaker 5: And riches right, yeah, and it minds a very short quote.
12:28
Speaker 5: I lost to put my glasses on, so and it's
12:32
Speaker 5: linked to the title of the session. Obviously Butcher in it,
12:35
Speaker 5: So I've got to find a Butcher's dog. So nobody
12:38
Speaker 5: ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange
12:41
Speaker 5: of one bone for another with another dog?
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Speaker 4: Is the is the.
12:44
Speaker 5: Clote big topical the assertion that Smith didn't drink well,
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Speaker 5: and the abster drinking gives advice itself clearly exactly. So
12:55
Speaker 5: the apart from the connection with the title of the session,
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Speaker 5: the the optimistic point is that we're faced with all
13:03
Speaker 5: this threat or fear of a wave of AI taking
13:09
Speaker 5: over humanity and displacing us all. And the optimistic note
13:15
Speaker 5: is that in fact, the challenges facing the human being
13:19
Speaker 5: and our ability to innovate and compete and exchange value
13:23
Speaker 5: is something which was as relevant three hundred years ago
13:26
Speaker 5: as it is today. And as long as we support
13:29
Speaker 5: education and commit to investing in the right industries with irrevocable,
13:38
Speaker 5: substantial resources, we will prevail. So the ask for me
13:44
Speaker 5: would be to increase the compensation of teachers, because we
13:48
Speaker 5: pay them peanuts and it's a disgraces right, Well, that's
13:55
Speaker 5: only it's only a calculation based upon a denominator. I
13:58
Speaker 5: think if I'm not mistaken. In the every salary of
14:01
Speaker 5: a senior lecture is forty five pounds. I have a
14:05
Speaker 5: supervisors at a core center who earned more than that.
14:08
Speaker 5: So just as in terms of what matters for the future,
14:12
Speaker 5: which is keep paddling up the skills stream and make
14:16
Speaker 5: sure we stay relevant. When there's going to be a
14:18
Speaker 5: big wave of stuff getting automated, you need to teach
14:22
Speaker 5: the teachers and pay the teachers to teach others.
14:24
Speaker 1: It's interesting and that quote is also it's one of
14:27
Speaker 1: the things I think. I said this yesterday as well.
14:28
Speaker 1: One of the things that people say when they talk
14:30
Speaker 1: about Adam Smith is that he's a father of economics,
14:32
Speaker 1: father of capitalism, and because he didn't eventually thinks he
14:35
Speaker 1: simply described human nature. And so this is the way
14:37
Speaker 1: that we behave.
14:38
Speaker 5: What I like about it, this is the very visceral,
14:40
Speaker 5: practical reality of commerce. It's the exchange of value and goods.
14:44
Speaker 5: It's the promotion of specialization, it's the mobilization of capital.
14:49
Speaker 5: And that's a constant where technology moves on and today
14:54
Speaker 5: what we I think we can process today on one
14:58
Speaker 5: chip all of the the Ledger writers works around the
15:02
Speaker 5: world in a millisecond. So what used to be a
15:05
Speaker 5: very valued task one hundred years ago is now something
15:09
Speaker 5: which is just a pointless widget. We don't cry about
15:13
Speaker 5: that today. Some of the stuff I did today that
15:16
Speaker 5: will be a pointless bridget in a simple say, is
15:18
Speaker 5: already But what will be relevant what has changed. So
15:22
Speaker 5: our job is to invest hard in skills so we
15:24
Speaker 5: can stay in relevant. When I grew up in a
15:26
Speaker 5: little village in clock Manager, which is not one thousand
15:31
Speaker 5: miles with thirty five miles from here. In the seventies,
15:34
Speaker 5: after the demise of opencast mining, the textiles had just
15:38
Speaker 5: left there. Still works are just about departed, and you
15:42
Speaker 5: had a multi generational unemployment in the area. The people
15:48
Speaker 5: were still as smart as they were before and after.
15:51
Speaker 5: What matters is injecting investment in skills aggressively so you
15:55
Speaker 5: can stay relevant.
15:56
Speaker 2: So there you go.
15:58
Speaker 1: And this is we had someone that yesterday gave us
16:00
Speaker 1: a quote about the extent to which the natural state
16:04
Speaker 1: of human creativity, bartering, trading, etc. Means that private industry
16:09
Speaker 1: can survive to a very large degree despite what the
16:12
Speaker 1: government does to it.
16:14
Speaker 5: In The worry for me is that I mean I
16:16
Speaker 5: invest actively in India invest in schools there and that
16:21
Speaker 5: you go to a school in near Mumbai that has
16:24
Speaker 5: four thousand pupils and they're absolutely thrilled to be there.
16:29
Speaker 5: They treat their opportunity to be in school to be
16:33
Speaker 5: the opportunity of a lifetime. And I don't get the
16:35
Speaker 5: same sense from some of the schools that I visit here,
16:38
Speaker 5: where the school gets in the way of their social
16:40
Speaker 5: life and the sense of entitlement and the need to
16:44
Speaker 5: fight to survive is gone. So, whether it's a fable
16:47
Speaker 5: of the bees or not, there's the need to make
16:50
Speaker 5: sure that we can inject that the need to compete
16:52
Speaker 5: and win, otherwise we won't.
16:56
Speaker 1: Jim, you're a big at TAG investor, right, and Richards
16:58
Speaker 1: been mentioning AI in the channel and that brings to
17:01
Speaker 1: the future workplace. Where are your views there?
17:04
Speaker 3: I think it's any tech is good. I mean, obviously, look,
17:08
Speaker 3: we talked about no prohibition on trade, or I did
17:11
Speaker 3: at the beginning, and there've got to be some sort
17:14
Speaker 3: of national security elements. We can't import sort of Chinese
17:17
Speaker 3: stuff that's going to be spying on us, or Russian
17:19
Speaker 3: stuff that's going to do you know, sort of serious
17:22
Speaker 3: harm to us. But with the exception of that, all
17:25
Speaker 3: technology is good. And one of the reasons why we've
17:29
Speaker 3: done well in biotech in the last twenty years is
17:32
Speaker 3: because of the Internet, the collaborative effect of scientists around
17:35
Speaker 3: the world being able to instantly exchange information, to be
17:37
Speaker 3: able to reference stuff so they know, for instance, that
17:40
Speaker 3: trial X won't work because it's been tried in three
17:42
Speaker 3: different countries, which otherwise they wouldn't have known about thirty
17:45
Speaker 3: years ago. Saves so much money and accelerates the process
17:49
Speaker 3: of our innovation. And you know, I just want to
17:54
Speaker 3: say something about innovation that everyone here will be familiar with.
17:57
Speaker 3: The new drugs, which are the weight loss dr wega
18:00
Speaker 3: V and OZMPK and all that sort of stuff, Nova
18:03
Speaker 3: nor Disk and Eli Lilly. At the moment, the biggest
18:06
Speaker 3: selling drag in history until about two years ago was Humeira,
18:10
Speaker 3: which is used for autoimmune disease, particularly rheumatoid arthritis, and
18:16
Speaker 3: it sold fourteen billion dollars a year at its peak.
18:19
Speaker 3: It's about to go off patent. These drugs next year
18:21
Speaker 3: will sell more than one hundred billion dollars between the
18:24
Speaker 3: two companies. That's unbelievable. And they're having these positive effects
18:28
Speaker 3: that are radiating so much so that probably everyone in
18:31
Speaker 3: this country over the age of forty should be taking them.
18:33
Speaker 3: They reduce heart risk, they reduce obesity, they reduce diabetes,
18:37
Speaker 3: they reduce all the things that are costing the NHS
18:40
Speaker 3: so much money. So you want another optimistic thing, it's
18:43
Speaker 3: that we have the potential in the next ten or
18:46
Speaker 3: twenty years, using some drugs that are here and now,
18:49
Speaker 3: to take the strain off the NHS to not have
18:53
Speaker 3: people waiting in the corridors in the NHS because they
18:55
Speaker 3: won't be obese, they won't have cardio disease, they won't
18:59
Speaker 3: have the cancers associated with obesity, etc. This is an
19:02
Speaker 3: amazing technology and we should embrace all of them, every
19:06
Speaker 3: single one of them. And by the way, this country
19:07
Speaker 3: is really good at technology. Where the leader world leader
19:10
Speaker 3: in quantum which is going to be I think much
19:13
Speaker 3: more important in some ways than AI over the next
19:16
Speaker 3: twenty years, where the world leader and nuclear technology, and
19:19
Speaker 3: my next book will be about nuclear fusion, which I'm
19:23
Speaker 3: trying to get my head around at the moment. So
19:25
Speaker 3: we have some serious silos of excellence in this country
19:29
Speaker 3: that we should be super optimistic about. And we shouldn't
19:32
Speaker 3: think like the Americans. So let's throw five hundred billion
19:35
Speaker 3: dollars at these companies because we don't know which ones
19:37
Speaker 3: are going to be successful. But we should have been
19:40
Speaker 3: encouraging the research at the university level, encouraging researchers and
19:44
Speaker 3: using prizes to make homegrown companies more successful. The prizes
19:49
Speaker 3: work so much better than direct grants.
19:51
Speaker 1: This is so interesting. I mean, the weight loss drugs
19:54
Speaker 1: could in themselves save the NHS, right when there was
19:57
Speaker 1: a lot of articles in the paper recently about how
19:59
Speaker 1: diabetes take except twenty of the NHS budget one way
20:03
Speaker 1: or another. And that's type two diabetes, which of course
20:05
Speaker 1: is linked to obest etc. So if that disappears, NHS
20:10
Speaker 1: is saved, right, Paul, that's it just done. Well, you
20:12
Speaker 1: might take on the drugs for everybody.
20:15
Speaker 4: When the NHS was founded, it was treating large numbers
20:19
Speaker 4: of people with infectious diseases, which covid apart is no
20:23
Speaker 4: longer a big part of the issue. People are surviving
20:26
Speaker 4: those as friving older. Actually, heart diseases down a lot,
20:30
Speaker 4: but we're treating a lot more people with cancer and dementia,
20:33
Speaker 4: and so problem with health is you save them from
20:35
Speaker 4: this stuff, the buggers go and get something else later on,
20:38
Speaker 4: and often it can be even more expensive. If someone
20:40
Speaker 4: dies at forty, it cheap, whereas you know if they
20:44
Speaker 4: lived to ninety, then they're going to be expensive. So
20:46
Speaker 4: I'm actually less optimistic about I mean about the long
20:50
Speaker 4: run effects on the NHS of this, because you know, people.
20:54
Speaker 3: Disagree with you on that. Actually I completely disagree with
20:56
Speaker 3: you here.
20:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm never going to win an optimism prize.
21:00
Speaker 3: Because almost every single major category of disease which kills people,
21:04
Speaker 3: and there are seventy seventy percent of people are killed
21:07
Speaker 3: by six major diseases, and dementia is not one of them,
21:10
Speaker 3: by the way, And the proliferation of dementia is going
21:14
Speaker 3: down because less and less people are getting dementia. But dementia,
21:17
Speaker 3: as an example, is linked to obesity. It's linked to
21:21
Speaker 3: no social engagement, sitting on your eating crap all day
21:24
Speaker 3: long and sitting on your couch watching television. And if
21:27
Speaker 3: you are not obese and you get out and about
21:29
Speaker 3: you've become more active because of these drugs, then you're
21:32
Speaker 3: less likely to get dementia. So I think for every
21:35
Speaker 3: single category of the principal killers there is only good
21:39
Speaker 3: news to be had, so I actually believe the NHS
21:43
Speaker 3: will be relieved of a lot of its responsibilities in
21:46
Speaker 3: the next twenty years.
21:47
Speaker 4: I'm willing to bet if we're still around in twenty
21:50
Speaker 4: years time, I will be more on we're spending more
21:54
Speaker 4: on the NHS in twenty years time than we are.
21:56
Speaker 3: To because inflation has an effect in.
22:00
Speaker 4: A fraction of national incud. So that's a very general.
22:02
Speaker 1: Howl to bet a fiver a meal, dinner at the witchery.
22:12
Speaker 3: Dinner at the witchery, definitely, I choose the wine.
22:18
Speaker 2: How much more can I make it? Just a very
22:22
Speaker 2: quick observation about the lecture. Who gets forty five k
22:25
Speaker 2: and what a disaster is? And we should invest more
22:27
Speaker 2: in education. I think everyone would like to see people
22:31
Speaker 2: trained in the skills that Jim describes in nuclear fusion
22:35
Speaker 2: and biotech. But there has been an eruption in the
22:37
Speaker 2: last few years of worthless degrees of people accruing student debt,
22:41
Speaker 2: coming out into the real world finding that nobody cares
22:44
Speaker 2: about gender studies.
22:45
Speaker 1: And I think I find a lot of people for
22:48
Speaker 1: the next.
22:48
Speaker 2: Ten years as they try and pay off debt and
22:51
Speaker 2: they have a burning souring sense of entitlement and resentment
22:56
Speaker 2: towards the state that duped them into this. You get
22:58
Speaker 2: elite over production if you don't get the typing rebellion,
23:01
Speaker 2: at the very least you get you know, identity politics
23:05
Speaker 2: and all this crap. And I really got to try
23:08
Speaker 2: and refocus on what are the skills we actually want
23:10
Speaker 2: to teach people? And then I think you might find
23:12
Speaker 2: the lecturer's wages naturally rise.
23:14
Speaker 1: If they're teaching things that make their students earn well afterwards.
23:18
Speaker 2: Absolutely their value.
23:19
Speaker 1: Again, we can prove their whole.
23:21
Speaker 2: Blair system and his his a macstasticization of the tertiary education.
23:27
Speaker 1: Well, I do think I'm the most shocking thing about
23:29
Speaker 1: the student loan, the student loan debucle that we're living
23:31
Speaker 1: through at the moment is he's got kids at university.
23:35
Speaker 1: Have they got learans? You're not using that to find
23:38
Speaker 1: benefit pension properly to say why when they come out
23:44
Speaker 1: of university if they if they go into a reasonably
23:46
Speaker 1: well paying job, their marginal tax rate will instantly be
23:50
Speaker 1: forty one percent and it won't fall for decades. So
23:53
Speaker 1: they're going to come out of university paying forty one
23:55
Speaker 1: pm every pound they earn over to their dabty payment,
23:59
Speaker 1: and that's absolutely shocking. And this burden stays with them
24:02
Speaker 1: for decades, in decades, in decades. I don't understand why
24:04
Speaker 1: your student children an't out on street protesting about this.
24:07
Speaker 1: It's absolutely appalling. And I'm going to think optimistic to
24:10
Speaker 1: say about that, because I just broke my own rule.
24:13
Speaker 4: I think I disagree with the wise everything as you said.
24:19
Speaker 4: Look so, I mean, actually it relates to the quote
24:22
Speaker 4: I'm going to talk about sent part of it.
24:26
Speaker 3: Okay, let me do my quote quote and then tell
24:28
Speaker 3: us that.
24:29
Speaker 4: The man of system, this is quite a long one, sorry.
24:30
Speaker 4: The man of system is often so enamored with the
24:32
Speaker 4: supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government. They
24:35
Speaker 4: seems to imagine he can raise different members of a
24:37
Speaker 4: great society with as much ease as the hand that
24:39
Speaker 4: arranges the different pieces upon a chess board. He does
24:42
Speaker 4: not consider that in the great chess board of human society,
24:45
Speaker 4: every single piece has a principle of motion of its own,
24:48
Speaker 4: altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to
24:51
Speaker 4: impress upon it. Which is another way of saying it's
24:53
Speaker 4: really quite difficult to be a government and to get
24:55
Speaker 4: things that happen in the way that you want. And
24:58
Speaker 4: the reason I said that that relates to the discussion
25:00
Speaker 4: we've just had, is this this issue about well, the
25:03
Speaker 4: government knows what's going to be worthwhile to teach people,
25:06
Speaker 4: so the government can say everyone new physics and everything
25:08
Speaker 4: will be fine. Well, actually the government doesn't have bloody clue.
25:12
Speaker 4: And you know what we have at the moment, lots
25:16
Speaker 4: of issues. But I think actually the fact that there's
25:19
Speaker 4: a degree of free choice among it is fine. There's
25:21
Speaker 4: another Adam Smith quote actually, which goes something like I
25:25
Speaker 4: can't use his language, of course, but something like it's
25:28
Speaker 4: unreasonable to our society to pay for stuff which is
25:31
Speaker 4: purely for the benefit of the individual who gains. And
25:33
Speaker 4: I think that's sort of what underlies the idea of
25:36
Speaker 4: having a student loan system. So it is a relatively
25:38
Speaker 4: privileged group of people who go to university, they on
25:42
Speaker 4: average earn more than other people. Is it not reasonable
25:44
Speaker 4: for them to pay that back in a way that
25:46
Speaker 4: is not a debt, It is an additional tax in
25:49
Speaker 4: the way you've described.
25:50
Speaker 1: Bad on average, I don't expect you to be bad
25:53
Speaker 1: on averages. There are you know, there are some subjects
25:56
Speaker 1: where you earn massively more in average subjects where it's
25:58
Speaker 1: significantly less than you can be work which divided up,
26:02
Speaker 1: but yes, you can divide it up by subject. Some
26:05
Speaker 1: subjects offer salary value. Some subjects simply don't.
26:08
Speaker 4: And so that matter. So there's an issue there, which
26:11
Speaker 4: is that actually you can make the reasonable argument that
26:15
Speaker 4: actually what the state is subsidizing are the ones that
26:18
Speaker 4: don't pay very much because the student never actually pays
26:21
Speaker 4: it back under the system. As of a year ago,
26:24
Speaker 4: about seventy or eighty percent of students would never pay
26:26
Speaker 4: it back onto the system. I don't think people understand
26:28
Speaker 4: the system has changed fundamentally this year such that now
26:32
Speaker 4: the majority will pay it all back. It's moved from
26:34
Speaker 4: much more of a tax to rather more of a
26:37
Speaker 4: loan system. But in terms of the sort of broader
26:39
Speaker 4: point that I wanted to make with this, and it's
26:41
Speaker 4: you get governments all the time coming in and saying
26:44
Speaker 4: if we will grow the economy, or we will make
26:46
Speaker 4: sure every fifty percent of kids go to university, or
26:49
Speaker 4: we will ensure that everyone's cured of cancer, or what
26:53
Speaker 4: have you. It's really really hard to do all of
26:56
Speaker 4: this stuff. Social science is really hard, as well as
27:00
Speaker 4: physical science, because you're dealing with the millions of people
27:05
Speaker 4: in a society, and the way that people respond is
27:09
Speaker 4: not the way that you, necessarily as a government expect
27:11
Speaker 4: them to respond. Every SEXUI at state for health, every
27:14
Speaker 4: sexual estate for education comes in, goes in thinking they
27:17
Speaker 4: can make big changes, and come out thinking across what
27:20
Speaker 4: will the leavers? I've actually got to make changes across
27:25
Speaker 4: across even the education system or the health system, or
27:28
Speaker 4: let alone society as a whole. And then prime ministers
27:31
Speaker 4: who are there too long often think I can change
27:33
Speaker 4: the whole moral structure of the nation, which is clearly
27:36
Speaker 4: way beyond what they're peopable of doing.
27:39
Speaker 1: Ex Prime ministers are the most disappointed group of people
27:41
Speaker 1: in the world, and that they awry. They walk through
27:45
Speaker 1: the door of number ten going yes, finally I can
27:47
Speaker 1: implement my ideas and I'm going to do this, and
27:49
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this,
27:50
Speaker 1: and then they look around and realize that actually they
27:52
Speaker 1: can't really do any of those things. It's not the
27:54
Speaker 1: power is not really with them them in the way
27:56
Speaker 1: they thought it did.
27:57
Speaker 3: Had a few weeks to.
27:58
Speaker 4: Do it, to be fair, yes, I mean I don't
28:02
Speaker 4: know whether that Prime minister is the most disappointed or
28:04
Speaker 4: the rest of us the most disappointed about that. But
28:08
Speaker 4: I think this if you read Tony Blair's memoirs, and
28:11
Speaker 4: one of the things he's disappointed about, I think he
28:13
Speaker 4: wasn't there for much longer because he kind of feels
28:15
Speaker 4: he learned on the job and could do more. And
28:17
Speaker 4: I think we probably all feel about after we've left
28:19
Speaker 4: a job. The other thing I suppose I think is yes,
28:23
Speaker 4: you can't. It is quite difficult, but I do have
28:26
Speaker 4: I do think governments can make a difference over a
28:29
Speaker 4: long term. I think one of the things that is
28:31
Speaker 4: problematic about our politics and so on is that you know,
28:35
Speaker 4: you'll get prime ministers or chances or whatever saying I'm
28:37
Speaker 4: going to make the economy grow next year, or know
28:40
Speaker 4: I'm going to transform the education system in three years,
28:42
Speaker 4: I'm going to level up in ten years, or have you.
28:44
Speaker 4: These things take decades. But government can make a big,
28:48
Speaker 4: big difference. I mean, part of the reason that our
28:51
Speaker 4: growth over the last fifteen years has been terrible has
28:53
Speaker 4: been down to government policy, quite clearly being down to
28:57
Speaker 4: a government policy. But they can't turn it around this year,
29:00
Speaker 4: possibly even within the term of a parliament. But if
29:02
Speaker 4: you get competition policy right, education policy right, infrastructure investment right,
29:08
Speaker 4: the planning policy, are you times three right? Then in
29:13
Speaker 4: ten years time will be a bit better off. There's
29:15
Speaker 4: this great quote which I don't know if some of
29:17
Speaker 4: you will have seen, that's done its rounds on social
29:21
Speaker 4: media from Nick Klegg back in twenty eleven saying there's
29:24
Speaker 4: no point investing in nuclear energy it will take until
29:27
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two before it's built. I think twenty twenty
29:31
Speaker 4: two is good.
29:32
Speaker 1: When we needed it, It was exactly when we needed it.
29:37
Speaker 1: Give us just you say that our growth has been
29:40
Speaker 1: stunted by government policy over the last forty years, and
29:43
Speaker 1: I think we'll all go yes, definitely, But what are
29:45
Speaker 1: the policies that you would point to that have really
29:47
Speaker 1: been the problem.
29:48
Speaker 4: Well, look, I mean you said not to about Brexit.
29:50
Speaker 4: It's clearly been a problem.
29:51
Speaker 1: That's absolutely, that's that's quite recent.
29:54
Speaker 3: The problem.
29:55
Speaker 1: I mean, if you really know about that, if you look.
29:56
Speaker 4: At the period between sort of the late seventies and
29:59
Speaker 4: twenty eight, wasn't too bad by international standard at all.
30:02
Speaker 4: If you look over appier since then and broader kind
30:05
Speaker 4: of issues. What are the one I agree very much
30:07
Speaker 4: about education, the focus we have. I think since twenty
30:12
Speaker 4: ten we're still spending less per it's in England rather
30:15
Speaker 4: than it's got actually less per pupil at school than
30:18
Speaker 4: we were in twenty ten. That's going to be bad
30:19
Speaker 4: our further education policy and I mean further and not
30:23
Speaker 4: higher education policy has been a catastrophe for decades. And
30:27
Speaker 4: you know we still have more higher fraction of our
30:31
Speaker 4: twenty one year olds illuterate and innumerate than in any
30:33
Speaker 4: other country in the OECD. That's not true at age fifteen,
30:37
Speaker 4: and this is because we essentially give up on half
30:39
Speaker 4: the population from age sixteen. Our planning policies are a catastrophe.
30:43
Speaker 4: And there's been stuffer in the ft actually by another
30:47
Speaker 4: think tank recently showing just it costs three four times
30:50
Speaker 4: as much to build anything here as it does in
30:53
Speaker 4: virtually this.
30:54
Speaker 1: Is not something you've have to explain to the residents
30:55
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh.
30:56
Speaker 4: Any other country. So put all of those together with
31:01
Speaker 4: a lack of government investment. Government invests less in infrastructure
31:05
Speaker 4: and capital than virtually any other AE city or European country.
31:09
Speaker 4: You put all of that together, and you've got you've
31:13
Speaker 4: got a recipe for lack of growth, and you've got Actually,
31:16
Speaker 4: what I'm basically saying is read my book because it
31:18
Speaker 4: tells you how to do all this.
31:21
Speaker 1: All good bookshops.
31:24
Speaker 4: When you've got all of those things, which are all
31:26
Speaker 4: long term policies and they matter in the long term.
31:29
Speaker 4: And because governments seem a tax system, I should have
31:32
Speaker 4: mensued the tax system is just hopeless, and it's going
31:34
Speaker 4: to be a taxes earnings more than it taxes unearned income.
31:38
Speaker 4: It taxes taxes housing in the most catastrophically disastrous way in.
31:43
Speaker 1: Terms of just tell me one thing. If you were
31:46
Speaker 1: prime minister, right before you're disappointed, when you're still optimistic,
31:50
Speaker 1: you walk through that door, first thing you were going
31:52
Speaker 1: to do you still believe that you can do things,
31:54
Speaker 1: By the way, what was the first thing you're going
31:55
Speaker 1: to do? God one sentence?
31:58
Speaker 4: Sort out planning policy?
32:00
Speaker 1: Okay, good one, Richard. If you were prime minister, and
32:02
Speaker 1: you should be, of course, if you were prime minister,
32:04
Speaker 1: walk through the door, you're not yet disappointed. What are
32:06
Speaker 1: you going to do? First thing? Sort out the education education?
32:10
Speaker 1: What would be few.
32:10
Speaker 3: Jim, I think everything comes back to incentives. So I
32:13
Speaker 3: would flatten the tax rate system immediately to people know
32:17
Speaker 3: what the tax rate is going to be.
32:20
Speaker 1: And they's sent across the boarder on everything.
32:21
Speaker 3: Well maybe twenty five possibly, and then you would have
32:27
Speaker 3: sort of flowers flourishing in the desert. And I point
32:30
Speaker 3: to I mean, people say, well, they're very small countries,
32:32
Speaker 3: but they work. Hong Kong, Singapore, even where I live
32:35
Speaker 3: in the Isle of Man, we have flat rate structures.
32:38
Speaker 3: And the Isle of Man, which you know in nineteen
32:40
Speaker 3: fifty had half the income ahead of the UK, now
32:43
Speaker 3: has three times the income ahead of the UK. And
32:44
Speaker 3: it's because everyone knows what their tax rate is and
32:47
Speaker 3: they run a budget surplus and it works. So we
32:50
Speaker 3: should do the same in this country. We should also
32:53
Speaker 3: compete with Ireland by lowering our corporation not raising our
32:55
Speaker 3: corporation tax. We should be at ten percent, not twenty
32:58
Speaker 3: five percent.
32:59
Speaker 1: Y gym for Primari. Who's with me?
33:02
Speaker 3: I hope.
33:06
Speaker 1: Please Simon, one quick sent is what would you do?
33:09
Speaker 2: Well? I agree with the tax things and it is
33:11
Speaker 2: ridiculous as as as Paul says that we tax earnings
33:14
Speaker 2: more than unearned wealth. That is obviously people have made
33:18
Speaker 2: certain decisions, and they need to have time to reverse
33:21
Speaker 2: those decisions if that were to change. But yeah, and
33:24
Speaker 2: planning does seem to be the other one that that
33:26
Speaker 2: is just catastrophic. I saw somebody suggest the other day
33:29
Speaker 2: that the way to overcome the cost of infrastructure building
33:33
Speaker 2: and so on is to abolish the common law, because
33:36
Speaker 2: apparently that's what gets in the well of the government
33:39
Speaker 2: trying to introduce statutes which would smooth things out. So
33:43
Speaker 2: perhaps we need something as fundamental as that. I don't know.
33:45
Speaker 2: It goes back to Henry the second, I think, isn't it,
33:47
Speaker 2: But it's probably overdue a re examination. Yeah, all right.
33:51
Speaker 1: All right, we've got to move on. Simon. We're going
33:53
Speaker 1: to need to have your quote.
33:55
Speaker 2: My quote with the greater part of rich people, the
33:58
Speaker 2: chief enjoyment of riches consists in the Parade of Riches.
34:03
Speaker 2: I picked that out because it's not unique in the
34:06
Speaker 2: Wealth of Nations. But it's one of a number of
34:09
Speaker 2: quotes which suggests that Smith was not quite the sort
34:12
Speaker 2: of red in tooth and claw proto capitalist that legend
34:16
Speaker 2: might have. He has sensibilities and sympathies perhaps with those
34:20
Speaker 2: who wanted to see greater equality, if not you know,
34:24
Speaker 2: equity or whatever the current term is in society. His
34:28
Speaker 2: name forever associated with the Adam Smith Institute, which is
34:31
Speaker 2: in its turn forever associated with fatterism, which in its
34:35
Speaker 2: turn is forever associated with Gordon Gecko and greedy is good.
34:38
Speaker 2: But clearly he had a slightly more fully rounded idea
34:42
Speaker 2: of what society, a good society might look like. And
34:44
Speaker 2: interesting Jim saying about, you know, tax creating incentives. Our
34:48
Speaker 2: good friend Dominic Frisbee wrote a great book about that,
34:51
Speaker 2: called Daylight Robbery. The extent to which tax coos have
34:55
Speaker 2: molded and shaped and diverted society's course over the years
34:58
Speaker 2: very interesting. And Smith seems to suggest that rich people,
35:02
Speaker 2: you know, don't particularly want to be rich. They want
35:05
Speaker 2: to be successful. They want to experience power. They love
35:07
Speaker 2: the feeling of becoming their full potential. But the Baubles,
35:12
Speaker 2: the Lamborghinis and their big houses and things could be
35:15
Speaker 2: a bon and perhaps there could be a way of
35:17
Speaker 2: restructuring society that would allow them to feel extraordinarily powerful
35:21
Speaker 2: and significant and like they'd won without like dominating. The
35:26
Speaker 2: purchasing power that they're winning has accumulated for them. It's alien,
35:30
Speaker 2: would just say It's quite interesting, I think in the
35:32
Speaker 2: last couple years watching Elon Musk, who was obviously a
35:34
Speaker 2: bit of an eccentric some people might say buffoon. There's
35:38
Speaker 2: a lot of arguments to whether he's been extraordinarily lucky
35:40
Speaker 2: over the years, or whether he has got some sort
35:42
Speaker 2: of hidden genius. He seems quite erratic, but he was
35:45
Speaker 2: at one point the world's wealthiest man, and he has
35:47
Speaker 2: clearly used that wealth to have a significant impact on
35:51
Speaker 2: American politics. His purchase of Twitter is probably the single
35:54
Speaker 2: most impactful thing on American politics not done by an
35:58
Speaker 2: American politician in the last ten years, is in my view,
36:01
Speaker 2: and that's the kind of thing that I think rich
36:03
Speaker 2: people actually like to do, rather than drive around in Lambaga.
36:05
Speaker 4: Isn't that exactly the problem? I mean, so, why are
36:09
Speaker 4: we worried about inequality to the extent that we are,
36:11
Speaker 4: or wealth inequality and so on. I mean, you can
36:14
Speaker 4: think of lots of reason. I think the thing that
36:15
Speaker 4: worries me most is exactly what do I don't care
36:18
Speaker 4: if someone's driving a Lamborghini, I really do care if
36:21
Speaker 4: someone just because they're rich has a much bigger impact
36:24
Speaker 4: on what's happening in government and I think that's one
36:26
Speaker 4: of the one of certainly what's happening with tech billionaires
36:29
Speaker 4: and so on in the US, so it.
36:31
Speaker 2: Wants to be already happening in Twitter under the previous ownership,
36:35
Speaker 2: albeit through a committee of like minded.
36:37
Speaker 4: In ire, respective of who the individuals are. If there's
36:41
Speaker 4: one reason I think to be worried about inequality, it's
36:43
Speaker 4: when it creates political inequality is when it creates actually
36:46
Speaker 4: a sense of some people being left behind, to coin
36:49
Speaker 4: a phrase, when it when you get a sense of
36:52
Speaker 4: some people aren't respected. And again Smith talks about this,
36:55
Speaker 4: if you're if you're behind, so that you don't feel
36:58
Speaker 4: respected in society, if you because of where you are economically,
37:01
Speaker 4: I think that's when economic inequalities becomes a problem. I
37:04
Speaker 4: think beyond that, it's hard to really pin where inequality
37:07
Speaker 4: as a post of poverty is a problem. But I
37:09
Speaker 4: think our economic inequality has led to this lack of
37:13
Speaker 4: respect that some people feel, or lack of power that
37:16
Speaker 4: some people feel. So as I say, in a way,
37:19
Speaker 4: have a lamborghiniing that's fine, but don't buy Parliament.
37:22
Speaker 1: But it's possible that, of course Adam Smith wouldn't have
37:24
Speaker 1: recognized what we live in right now as being the
37:27
Speaker 1: kind of capitalism that he ever talked about. I don't
37:29
Speaker 1: think he could have imagined the extent which very large
37:31
Speaker 1: companies have infiltrated governments. And he did talk a lot
37:35
Speaker 1: about how when you get a situation where a government
37:38
Speaker 1: is heavily influenced by business or by corporations, things will
37:41
Speaker 1: go horribly wrong.
37:42
Speaker 4: But of course he was living in a world of
37:44
Speaker 4: much greater inequality, where a small number of landowners who
37:47
Speaker 4: are gradually transforming into the sort of capitalist class. And
37:52
Speaker 4: in the US you got at the end of the
37:53
Speaker 4: ninety two, one hundred years after him, sort of the
37:56
Speaker 4: sort of age of where it was huge four tunes,
38:00
Speaker 4: where government actually was effective over that period in breaking
38:04
Speaker 4: up some of those fortunes that the Rockefellers and the
38:07
Speaker 4: railways again which we're not seeing achieved at the moment.
38:11
Speaker 4: And in the UK, of course, through the twentieth century
38:14
Speaker 4: you had so the first part of the Industrial Revolution
38:17
Speaker 4: was very disqualizing, as you've got this huge fortunes then
38:20
Speaker 4: became equalized to some extent because of social movements, but
38:24
Speaker 4: also because of union's and psalm government legislation.
38:27
Speaker 1: And doesn't it feel a little at the beginning of
38:30
Speaker 1: that part of the cycle, after the tech relation. Now,
38:33
Speaker 1: I mean it sort of feels to me like that's
38:34
Speaker 1: where we are socially and politically. We've had the great
38:37
Speaker 1: fortune making period, and now we're at the edge of
38:40
Speaker 1: a great turning point. Particularly the interest rates have risen, etcetera.
38:43
Speaker 1: In globalization reverse. All these things have brought us to
38:46
Speaker 1: a turning point where we might be exactly where we
38:48
Speaker 1: were then.
38:49
Speaker 4: Or certainly in a world where very right.
38:51
Speaker 1: The second you finishes this sentence, it's all.
38:53
Speaker 4: Certainly in a world where wealth in the importance of wealth.
38:58
Speaker 4: So what's happened to in equality of the last forty
39:00
Speaker 4: fifty years? He had a big increase in income inequality
39:02
Speaker 4: in the eighties, saying nothing has happened to income inequality
39:05
Speaker 4: in the last forty years. But wealth has become much
39:08
Speaker 4: much more important as a sort of part of what
39:11
Speaker 4: people's people have. Makes inheritance much more important. It's much
39:15
Speaker 4: more important to day who your parents were. Choose your
39:18
Speaker 4: parents is really important than it was fifty or sixty
39:21
Speaker 4: years ago, much more important, both because social mobility has fallen,
39:25
Speaker 4: so if your parents earn more, you'll learn more. But
39:27
Speaker 4: also because inheritance is a much bigger part of lifetime
39:31
Speaker 4: income for those who are lucky enough than it was.
39:33
Speaker 1: Again, it feels like an interest rate cycle thing. Richard, Sorry,
39:36
Speaker 1: just on.
39:36
Speaker 5: The on the point that Adams Smith wouldn't recognize it.
39:40
Speaker 5: You could argue that the East India Company had the
39:42
Speaker 5: bigger impact on politics than any other organization planet on
39:47
Speaker 5: planet Earth. Absolutely, and they literally owned India and a
39:52
Speaker 5: lot of the tradelines. And that was right. He almost
39:56
Speaker 5: worked on the commission to examine how that had gone
39:58
Speaker 5: a whole day wrong from a governance standpoint. So it's
40:00
Speaker 5: not new. You've got massive flows in concentration of wealth
40:05
Speaker 5: which occur. I mean, you've got a massive transfer of
40:07
Speaker 5: wealth from the state to individuals that took place in
40:10
Speaker 5: Russia just the day before yesterday. We've got massive increase
40:14
Speaker 5: in wealth in India concentrated in a various few hands,
40:18
Speaker 5: which for that that will result in the first trillionaires
40:22
Speaker 5: soon versus billionaires. So this is just we're wrestling with
40:26
Speaker 5: financial flows and economic flows today, which is of a
40:30
Speaker 5: different order. And they just moved faster and I concentrated
40:33
Speaker 5: more greatly.
40:34
Speaker 2: Huge concentration of that during COVID as well. I don't
40:39
Speaker 2: know how widely discussed that is, but that was I
40:41
Speaker 2: think horrifically extraordinary.
40:43
Speaker 1: Massive transfer of Coustum state company.
40:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and specific individuals in a very I find it
40:50
Speaker 2: completely understandable, frankly, how many people have lost their minds
40:52
Speaker 2: over COVID and believe it was planned or at least
40:55
Speaker 2: exploited to an unacceptable degree.
40:57
Speaker 5: And so you're arguing it wasn't well.
41:01
Speaker 1: Right, and nice to the editing. Back to the editing.
41:05
Speaker 5: Right.
41:07
Speaker 1: What I normally do at the end, because we are
41:08
Speaker 1: at the end, is ask everybody who's in the finance
41:11
Speaker 1: industry or investment industry and one way or another where
41:13
Speaker 1: they would invest now, so quick fire around. I've only
41:16
Speaker 1: got two people to ask that, Jim, quickly if one
41:20
Speaker 1: of these nice people here came to you and Zevill,
41:21
Speaker 1: I've got a big ball of money. Where should I
41:23
Speaker 1: put it?
41:23
Speaker 2: Now?
41:23
Speaker 1: This is not investment advice, by the way, It is
41:25
Speaker 1: simply a comment. What would you say?
41:27
Speaker 3: Well, I was talking to Sandy about it earlier on
41:30
Speaker 3: and I think the UK is the cheapest market in
41:32
Speaker 3: the world, and i'd buy UK investment trusts that are
41:34
Speaker 3: selling at a discount to their fundamental values. And one
41:38
Speaker 3: of the things that's not appreciated about the United Kingdom
41:41
Speaker 3: apart from and you made a very good point by
41:42
Speaker 3: the way, about the vulnerability of British companies being to
41:45
Speaker 3: take over. But we are also huge investors in other countries,
41:49
Speaker 3: so it works both ways. We're a much bigger creditor
41:52
Speaker 3: nation than we are a debtonnation. So you know that
41:54
Speaker 3: we have very large investments overseas, and particularly in our
41:57
Speaker 3: listed companies, which are i think the foot one hundred
42:01
Speaker 3: seventy five percent overseas revenues, which is fantastic. So invest
42:05
Speaker 3: in the UK and look, anyone who isn't mad, should
42:09
Speaker 3: it have something in gold or silver? Absolutely, in some
42:15
Speaker 3: relationship to gold and silver, you have to have something
42:17
Speaker 3: in there.
42:17
Speaker 1: Okay. I couldn't agree with you more on either of
42:19
Speaker 1: those things, which of course is not advice. Just to comment, Richard.
42:23
Speaker 5: So I agree with the UK being a long term market,
42:28
Speaker 5: but in the short run, with rates tightening as they are,
42:31
Speaker 5: and that at the sharp end of the credit cycle,
42:34
Speaker 5: I think we're going to see a lot of destruction
42:36
Speaker 5: in the next six to twelve months here. So my
42:40
Speaker 5: relative trade is India, with the macro. The macro position
42:44
Speaker 5: there in terms of population GDP growth, digitization with the
42:51
Speaker 5: swelling of the mass affluent class. There currently financial services,
42:57
Speaker 5: real estate, and digital technology in India gets.
42:59
Speaker 1: My Okay, thank you very much. Now at you too,
43:03
Speaker 1: Simon and Paul. I'm ask you one quick question. I'm
43:05
Speaker 1: not going to ask you about the lets.
43:06
Speaker 2: What were you going to say, a good pair of
43:08
Speaker 2: shoes like twelve years and camping.
43:13
Speaker 1: I'm going to Sandy might have something different to say
43:15
Speaker 1: about that shoes. I was going to ask you you both.
43:25
Speaker 1: I think think that that maybe the government does too much.
43:27
Speaker 1: Maybe government is much too expensive. If there was one
43:29
Speaker 1: thing you think the government should stop doing, what would
43:32
Speaker 1: it be? What does it do that's.
43:34
Speaker 4: Too much fiddling around? It's uh, you know, it has
43:38
Speaker 4: too many budgets. It changes changes policy far too often.
43:42
Speaker 4: So let's just go for one fiscal event a year
43:44
Speaker 4: rather than two or dozens as we've had recently.
43:47
Speaker 1: Okay, slightly cheaper? What would you what would you drop
43:49
Speaker 1: from the government?
43:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that. I remember Matthew Parris
43:51
Speaker 2: wrote a column slightly tongue in cheek a couple of
43:53
Speaker 2: years ago, just saying that you know, just the ser
43:56
Speaker 2: quantity of legislation just goes up and up and up,
43:58
Speaker 2: and none of it does any good. And it wouldn't
44:01
Speaker 2: be bad if you've got a new government and then
44:03
Speaker 2: they just had a moratorium on legislation for the first
44:05
Speaker 2: year and just waited to see what actually needed fixing.
44:07
Speaker 2: If you didn't continually, it's like perpetual warf of perpetual peace,
44:11
Speaker 2: but on a domestic front.
44:12
Speaker 1: So you'd like to make government cheaper by getting rid
44:14
Speaker 1: of government.
44:14
Speaker 2: Well, like I say, elect a government and then a moratorium,
44:18
Speaker 2: they're not allowed to do anything. They're just fluting.
44:20
Speaker 4: There fewer reshuffles as well, so ministers have a chance
44:26
Speaker 4: of actually getting on top of stuff and civil servants
44:29
Speaker 4: staying in place.
44:29
Speaker 2: So just let's moving around.
44:31
Speaker 1: We have to stop or people start leaving and that's
44:33
Speaker 1: always embarrassing, so we have to stop. Thank you all
44:35
Speaker 1: so much for coming. This is the last show that
44:37
Speaker 1: we are doing this year, but hopefully we will have
44:39
Speaker 1: more dates next year. But we hugely appreach you coming
44:41
Speaker 1: and thank you so much to all my guess, thank you,
44:43
Speaker 1: Simon Jim, thanks all. Thanks for listening to this week's
44:55
Speaker 1: Marrin Talks Money we'll be back next week. Catch our
44:58
Speaker 1: debrief on this week's conversation on the Larren Talks Money
45:01
Speaker 1: after show under the Apple subscription feed in the meantime.
45:04
Speaker 1: If you like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever
45:06
Speaker 1: you listen to your podcasts. This episode was hosted by
45:08
Speaker 1: me Maren Sunset Web. It was produced by some Asadi.
45:12
Speaker 1: Additional editing by Blake Maple. Special thanks to Jim Mellon,
45:15
Speaker 1: Richard Wilson, Paul Johnson, and Simon Evans for their appearance
45:19
Speaker 1: and participation, and of course, as ever to John Steppek.
45:22
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45:24
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