Concise

Quality over Quantity. The world is too complex for one tweet. Life is too busy for a whole book. So let's be Concise. One structured thread per week. Clear, useful ideas you can easily understand and apply. No noise. No filler.

This is now getting particularly ill-informed from you. We have an enormous amount of stuff around we inherited from the Romans, history is cumulative and goes back a LONG TIME. You don’t seem to appreciate this? Also, AI is a tool we all now have available for us to use, if you don’t use it, you’re simply making a bad decision and bad content. It’s like insisting on stitching clothes together by hand, after sewing machines were invented. Concise Note #19.

I did my post from memory. You had to look it up. I know what I’m talking about, you’re poorly regurgitating AI. The fundamentals of what I’m saying holds true. EIC was from 1600 and was a royal charter company that joined a bunch of feudal lords. Colonialism and mercantilism have as much to do with modern capitalism as Queen Victoria has to do with modern politics.

True. Capitalism has not killed 1.6b people. More likely around 100m. More here: x.com/i/status/20715…

@Th_Angelopoulos @DanNeidle Btw if anyone ever need a concise line of thought about what AI actually does, Concise Note #19: Moving Creativity. Dan doesn’t care about stuff like this. Who knows what Dan cares about.

😂 The mighty @DanNeidle has his hypothetical disproved, refuses to engage with the substance, resorts to "AI slop", and then blocks me. Calling it “AI slop” doesn’t make the argument wrong. If the points were bad, he could just disprove them. He didn't. He can't. Instead he blocked me because he has nothing to clapback. The fact is that a wealth tax would not deter FDI to the extent he claims.

@Th_Angelopoulos @DanielPriestley Also, @DanielPriestley this is coming today I believe? x.com/danielpriestle…

@DanielPriestley What are you on about, mate? x.com/Th_Angelopoulo…

The tax wealth campaigners in the UK are mostly mad about what is happening in the USA. A lot of their inequality data is based on the USA not the UK. The USA is a much more unequal society than the UK. For example the USA has double the average net worth but a lower media net worth of the UK: UK average - $293K USA average - $620K UK median - $125K USA median - $107K The official measure of wealth inequality is the Gini-Coefficient - it is WAY higher in the US compared to the UK (.82 vs .57). In the UK, top 10% earners make $90K vs $160K in the States. The top 1% of earners in the UK make less than $250K vs $650K+ in the US. The legal full time minimum wage in the UK is mandated at £24K vs £11.5K in the US. The income inequality in the USA is much wider than the Brits. The top 1% of wealth in the UK requires $4.5M and in the USA you’d need $13M.The wealthy in the US are much richer. All of this data points to the idea that the UK is a more equal society by historical standards and relative to the USA. I see wealth campaigners in the UK talking about Elon and Jeff as if we have anything to do with them. We don’t… the UK can’t put a wealth tax on US Billionaires! One thing these campaigners fail to mention is that the USA is a more unequal society but it’s also a growing economy with rising living standards and lower unemployment and more optimism. Long story short - the UK is not the USA. If you are British and you are outraged by the inequality in the USA nothing you do locally makes a difference to the way our US friends run their economy. Campaigning for wealth taxes in the UK is like getting a divorce because your neighbours wife cheated.

@DanNeidle @Th_Angelopoulos @garyseconomics Misleading. Again. France didn't abolish wealth taxation, it narrowed it. The ISF was replaced by the IFI, which still taxes high-value property. That's a significant difference. The irony is that a quick AI check would've caught that. I recommend you use it in the future.

@Th_Angelopoulos @garyseconomics The surprise isn't that you used an AI. It's that the AI doesn't realise France abolished its wealth tax years ago.

The @garyseconomics-@DanNeidle debate is stuck at the wrong level. Both are arguing whether one tax instrument raises a specific number. That is a legitimate technical question. It is not the question that decides whether British workers can afford housing, or whether the UK economy structurally under-invests in productive capacity. Neidle's paper (taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/22/uk-…) is a very rigorous critique of current UK wealth tax proposals in public circulation. On the terms it sets itself, most of its points hold. Existing wealth taxes in Spain, Norway, Switzerland, and France coexist with FDI, but do so through exemptions the current UK proposals lack. Spanish wealth tax revenue was €619m in 2023, roughly 0.04% of GDP, because private company holdings are exempt. Norway grants valuation discounts. Penn Wharton and Fuest et al modelling of zero-exemption wealth taxes projects 2% to 5% long-run GDP hits. The valuation, liquidity, and horizontal equity problems he identifies are real. On Stevenson's frame, Neidle wins the technical argument. A 2% annual wealth tax on wealth above £10m, with no exemptions, applied to a UK economy whose ownership structure is left otherwise untouched, will not raise the promised £24bn net of behavioural response. That is a defeat for Stevenson. But it is not a defeat for the case that concentrated wealth is a structural problem. Neither Stevenson nor Neidle is making a structural argument. Both treat one tax instrument in isolation from ownership structure. That is where both miss the ground. Compare the UK and France directly across the dimensions that actually determine outcomes. State ownership of strategic sectors. France operates a national strategic shareholder, the Agence des participations de l'État (APE), managing a portfolio of 85 to 86 companies with a total valuation approaching €200bn (economie.gouv.fr/files/files/di…). The 20 largest entities in the portfolio employ approximately 1.7 million people, around 9% of France's entire salaried workforce. Full state ownership: EDF (energy, renationalised in June 2023 through a €9.7bn public tender offer, supplying over 60% of French electricity through nuclear generation); SNCF (national rail); RATP (Paris urban transport); La Poste (postal service, held via CDC). Majority state control: ADP (50.6%, operator of Charles de Gaulle and Orly); Naval Group (62.25%, naval defence construction); Nexter (84.5%, armoured vehicles). Significant strategic minority: Engie (23.64%, gas and renewables); Thales (26.06%, defence electronics); Renault (~15%); Safran (11.23%, aerospace engines); Airbus (10.86%); Orange (telecoms); Alcatel Submarine Networks (80%, acquired 2024, one of three firms globally capable of manufacturing internet submarine cables). The UK equivalent portfolio does not exist. Royal Mail was privatised in 2013. British Gas was privatised in 1986. British Telecom in 1984. The electricity industry between 1990 and 1996. British Rail broken up between 1994 and 1997, with track and infrastructure now under Network Rail (public) and passenger operations across a mix of private franchises and recent public "operator of last resort" recoveries (LNER, TransPennine Express). Water was privatised in 1989 in England. British Steel privatised in 1988. British Aerospace privatised in 1981. The UK retains ownership of Channel 4 (broadcaster), some rail operators, and NatWest Group residual holdings from the 2008 financial crisis, but there is no strategic industrial shareholder analogous to APE with active portfolio management across energy, transport, defence, and communications infrastructure. Public sector employment. France's civil service (fonction publique) employed 5.9 million people at end 2024 (insee.fr/en/statistique…), approximately one in five workers. This figure excludes employees of SNCF, RATP, EDF, and La Poste, who work for state-owned enterprises rather than being civil servants; adding the ~1.7 million APE-portfolio employees brings the total in state-controlled entities to approximately 7.6 million, roughly 26% of the French workforce. The UK public sector employed 6.18 million people in September 2025 (ons.gov.uk/employmentandl…). Of these, 2.07 million were NHS, 1.97 million local government, 554,000 Civil Service, and only 161,000 public corporations. Against a UK workforce of around 33 million, this is approximately 19% in public sector employment, with negligible additional employment in state-owned commercial enterprises because there are so few. The proportional difference is substantial. In France, roughly one worker in four works either directly for the state or for a state-controlled enterprise. In the UK, roughly one worker in five works for the state, and almost none for state-controlled enterprises. Public spending. France's total public spending runs at 58.2% of GDP in 2022; the UK sits around 44% (ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-…). The tax burden is 45.4% of GDP in France against approximately 33% in the UK. Social spending alone runs at around 31% of GDP in France. Social housing. France holds 5.3 million HLM social housing units, roughly 17% of principal residences, housing around 11 million people (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ho…). The 2000 SRU Law requires eligible municipalities to maintain at least 20% social housing, raised to 25% by the Duflot Law of 2013, with financial penalties on non-compliant municipalities. Financing runs through the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, which provides below-market long-term loans (typically 20 to 80 years) accounting for around 70% of construction cost. Stock is growing, with 2.77 million households on waiting lists in 2024. England holds approximately 4.5 million social housing homes, roughly 17% of the total dwelling stock (gov.uk/government/new…). Only 1.6 million are held by local authorities; the remainder are held by private registered providers (housing associations). Council housing peaked at 32% of stock in 1980 and collapsed to around 6% today. Over 2 million council homes have been sold under Right to Buy since 1980, generating over £50bn in receipts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_ho…). 1.33 million households were on local authority waiting lists at March 2024, the highest since 2014. Both countries have roughly 17% of stock in social housing on paper. The similarity ends there. France has direct state provision at scale, growing stock through legal mandate and state-financed loans. The UK has a hollowed-out municipal sector with most stock transferred to housing associations that operate under increasing market discipline, and total council housing capacity reduced to about a fifth of its 1980 peak. Collective bargaining coverage. France's collective bargaining coverage runs at close to 98%, extended by statutory erga omnes mechanism across entire sectors regardless of individual union membership. UK collective bargaining coverage sits at around 26% (stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?Dat…), having collapsed from around 70% before Thatcher. Wage bargaining that covers 98% of a workforce produces different outcomes from wage bargaining that covers one worker in four. This is the mechanism by which French workers retain a materially larger share of the value they produce, before any tax question enters. Wealth taxation and capital taxation. France operates the Impôt sur la Fortune Immobilière (IFI), a real estate wealth tax on net assets above €1.3m at progressive rates from 0.5% to 1.5% (taxsummaries.pwc.com/france/individ…). Capital gains tax on securities runs at a flat 30% (rising to 31.4% in 2026). Top marginal income tax is 45% plus surtaxes for high earners. The OECD labour tax wedge for the average single worker was 47.2% in 2024, the third highest in the OECD. The UK has no wealth tax at any level. Capital gains tax on shares runs at 18% or 24% depending on income band, meaningfully below France. Top marginal income tax is 45%. The OECD labour tax wedge for the average single worker sits at approximately 29%. Foreign direct investment performance. France is Europe's leading destination for foreign direct investment for the seventh consecutive year, with 852 investment projects recorded in 2025, ahead of the United Kingdom (730) and Germany (548), according to the EY European Attractiveness Survey 2026 (en.media.businessfrance.fr/news/foreign-i…). France is Europe's leading destination for foreign industrial investment (354 projects in 2025), the leading European hub for foreign AI investment (up 26% year-on-year), and second in Europe for foreign headquarters relocations (up 17%). UK inward FDI stock fell by £75.4bn in 2024, from £2,203.0bn to £2,127.6bn (ons.gov.uk/economy/nation…). UK inward FDI project count fell 12% in 2024-25. Pull the picture together. Country with heavier public spending (58% vs 44% of GDP): France leads Europe on FDI. Country with active strategic state shareholder holding energy, rail, urban transport, airports, defence, and telecoms infrastructure: France leads Europe on FDI. Country with ~26% of workforce in state or state-controlled entities against 19% in the UK: France leads Europe on FDI. Country with mass state provision of social housing at scale, growing: France leads Europe on FDI. Country with 98% collective bargaining coverage against 26%: France leads Europe on FDI. Country with a real estate wealth tax, higher CGT, and higher labour tax wedge: France leads Europe on FDI. The Stevenson error is treating the wealth tax as the lever. Adding a 2% tax on wealth above £10m to a UK that has privatised its energy grid, its water, its railways, most of its social housing, and its postal service, and that operates collective bargaining across one worker in four, will not produce French outcomes. The tax cannot do the work that structure has to do. Neidle correctly diagnoses that within Stevenson's frame the tax will not raise the promised revenue net of behavioural response. The Neidle error is treating structure as invisible. His paper analyses a proposed tax against the existing UK economy, holds every other feature fixed, and concludes the tax will not raise the promised revenue. That is a correct technical conclusion within a fixed frame. It is also an argument for expanding the frame. His proposed alternatives, CGT reform, IHT reform, and land value taxation, are all tax instruments. None of them restores public ownership of the energy grid. None rebuilds mass council housing. None extends collective bargaining coverage from 26% to 98%. None re-establishes a strategic state shareholder capable of taking a controlling stake in the industries that matter. Reforming three tax instruments while leaving the structure of ownership intact does not produce the outcomes at stake. And it's the same mistake Stevenson makes. A serious materialist programme is not "tax the rich 2% on wealth above £10m." It is public ownership of energy generation and transmission, restored through renationalisation of the grid and generation capacity, on the EDF model. It is mass state provision of housing at scale, financed through a state investment vehicle equivalent to the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, providing below-market long-term loans to a rebuilt council housing sector, backed by legal mandates comparable to the SRU 25% rule. It is restoration of sectoral collective bargaining through statutory extension mechanisms, moving coverage from 26% toward continental European levels. It is universal childcare. It is a strategic state shareholder, functionally equivalent to APE, with an active portfolio in energy, transport, defence-critical industry, and communications infrastructure. And, alongside these, reformed capital gains tax, reformed inheritance tax, a land value tax, and a workable wealth tax. Within that programme, the wealth tax is not the point. It is a component. It becomes what it should always have been: a technical corrective within a coherent structural configuration, not a stand-alone lever expected to move outcomes it cannot move. France did not become Europe's leading destination for foreign direct investment for seven consecutive years despite its wealth tax, its heavier taxation, its state ownership of energy and rail, its mass social housing, and its 98% collective bargaining coverage. It became so through the coherent configuration of which these elements are parts. The strong claim that heavy taxation and interventionist state ownership repel foreign investment collapses on contact with the actual French record. Stevenson has misidentified what the tax can do. Neidle has correctly diagnosed that within Stevenson's frame the tax cannot do what Stevenson thinks. Neither has stepped up to the question that actually decides whether British workers can afford housing, whether the economy invests in productive capacity, and whether concentrated wealth continues to hold policy hostage. That question is structural. The answer is not a tax rate. It is who owns the grid, who owns the trains, who owns the housing, who bargains for wages, and what a state does with the fiscal capacity it commands. The UK debate has not caught.

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8/8 Before defeating a point, make sure it is the point actually being made.

Concise Note #23: Fabricate, Defeat, Celebrate The easiest argument to win is the one you invent aka "the Strawman". A Thread 🧵

That’s just trash talk. “Liar” is quite the strange accusation, given you know nothing of what I know. What have I knowingly said that’s false? Also, saying “if you can’t deal with the substance” is a loaded statement, what do we mean exactly by “deal with” and what do you have that shows I can’t? You can take the academic approach, but you’ll be engaging with people who hold those standards seriously.

@concise_msi @mattzarb @MatthewHitchmo3 @cjsnowdon @garyseconomics You're a liar. If you can't deal with the substance, then I have no interest in speaking to you.

This is the foreword @DanNeidle refers to in the clip with @garyseconomics — the report might say an annual wealth tax is a non-starter, but it says we should reform existing wealth taxes. Gus O’Donnell also says a “one off” wealth tax could raise more than £250bn over 5 years

@Th_Angelopoulos I wonder, could you point us to what you think is the best efforts are to address inequality? I am asking in good faith and will not challenge it, I genuinely would like to understand where we are in your view.

YES!

@DanNeidle @mattzarb @MatthewHitchmo3 @cjsnowdon @garyseconomics Your position is clear. The issue is how you argued for it. The way you presented the evidence was misleading, regardless of who edited the interview. The key word is misleading.

@mattzarb @MatthewHitchmo3 @cjsnowdon @garyseconomics Please stop saying this. I have already corrected you. I am not responsible for the editing of the interview, but my views on the one-off tax are clear. taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/22/uk-…

@mattzarb @DanNeidle @garyseconomics One could say Neidle was “misleading”. Concise Note #20.

@Fla_Mom @iamkylebalmer @DanielPriestley Thanks for having a look around! 🙂 The aim isn’t to exhaust a topic but to highlight its most important aspects. If it sparks further curiosity, readers already have a strong foundation from which to explore deeper. Have a nice Friday!

Concise, from the bits I've seen since going to look, prompted by this exchange, your "medium" posts are one sentence each, cumulatively about a paragraph per topic. Fine, feel free, but people interested in information don't rely on one paragraph's worth per topic. I worry for the young, since any complexity in writing is called out as AI, and denials of that by those of us who were taught to write are then called lies. Formerly great universities now report that what they think of as top students have never read a book. Homeschoolers will rule the world.

Socialists imagine a class struggle. In their made-up fantasy the CEO is in competition with low level workers, the wealthy entrepreneur is stealing from the underpaid nurse. In reality, workers do not compete vertically they compete horizontally. Entrepreneurs compete with entrepreneurs. Investors outbid each other. CEOs are benchmarked against other CEOs. Nurses are hired from a pool of nurses. Etc. The CEOs pay has no correlation to the entry level workers. The Football star on £300K a week isn’t linked to the person selling drinks in the stadium. A biotech entrepreneur raising VC capital isn’t paid relative to a cleaner. What is linked is the demand and supply dynamic of each role. If a company places an ad for a qualified truck driver and 150 people apply for the role, then the company knows it does not need to increase wages for that role. If the company has an open role for months, it is forced to look at the compensation package. Same for a CEO. A board representing shareholders would like to hire a CEO for a lot less if they could. Their dream scenario would be to hire a CEO who brings in institutional investors, attracts top executives, drives innovation and growth, keeps margins steady and is a good public face for the business even under pressure. It turns out there aren’t a lot of these people looking for work and if you want one you have to pay more than other companies are offering. The class struggle isn’t vertical it’s horizontal. CEOs are in competition with CEOs. Retail workers are in competition with retail workers. Demand and supply dynamics set the price. Sure you can say that a CEO want’s profitability and would like wages to be lower BUT it’s not up to the CEO - demand and supply tension sets the price of workers. An Airline like RyanAir would like free pilots if they could get them but they can’t… so they pay the market rate. The reason incomes are rising at the top and falling at the bottom is not class warfare. It’s technology and globalisation. Technology makes basic jobs simple, remote or fully automated. At the same time tech makes executive roles more leveraged, more important and more valuable. A CEO used to run a smaller organisation. Today a CEO who’s 2% better on a $5B company is generating $100M more. Seems sensible to try and pay a few million to get $100M. Globalisation has put workers from all over the world in completion with each other - downward pressure on wages. Globalisation has given CEOs more market opportunities to explore - upside opportunity to unlock. The rich are not very interested in buying houses that poor people own. The poor are not buying up the homes the rich want. They are separate groups living separate lives. Try finding the genuinely rich people whose strategy is to hoard normal residential homes - it barely exists as a thing. About 85% of landlords are people who own 1-4 properties. Super-landlords (100+ properties) are 0.2% of landlords and own a tiny fraction of the 30M homes in the UK… and they’re heavily taxed. Class warfare isn’t real. It’s an imagined war in the minds of socialists. Demand and supply dynamics are real. To the degree it is measured in class, it’s a horizontal competition not a vertical one.

@DanielPriestley Let’s leave it there. Good luck with the hustle and I hope rich people will invite you to their parties. I’ll let you have the last word, it’s only fair.

1. I do. It’s how I think. The fact that it is made public is a powerful dynamic to focus on. 2. Go look at my long posts… they are the ones with the most views… take all the time you need the data is there. 3. They don’t. They also don’t have to follow me. 4. Good for you. Enjoy the journey.