Pat Boyce

@jemmm85517813 It's a great place to live, great culture, fair legal system, stable, fair police, no guns, educated workforce, and you're free

What is the point of building a business in Britain?

@MelJStride Isn't loose regulation precisely what caused the financial crisis? And why your government didn't do this 2010-2024?

The reforms we have set out to financial regulation would free up vast amounts of private capital for our economy. Labour’s answer? As always, just more government, more borrowing, more spending and more debt.

@mikegardner_wb Total rubbish!

Labour despise self-employment. They hate the idea of people taking control of their own livelihoods. It’s the anti-thesis of socialist collectivism. They assume self-employed people don’t vote for them. So they want to punish us financially.

@AnonymousExTory That is really terrible advice!

I fully understand why wealthy people are preparing to leave and I would do the same if I was wealthy. I'd also extend this to the young. If you're planning on starting a business, I'd recommend doing it in a country that has a government that appreciates entrepreneurial spirit and won't want to steal your profits should you be successful. Or, alternatively, don't bother working and just claim Universal Credit in which case the government will love you.

@TonyWard867811 Did you use AI to write that?

Picture the bloke who rolled the dice. He worked nights. Skipped weekends with the kids. Missed holidays. Risked everything on an idea. Ten years later the business is a success and makes ten million profit. He thinks he made it. Then they come for him. Corporation tax. Dividend tax. And now they want wealth tax on the value he built. Seventy five percent of his profit gone. All that graft. All those years away from his family. Just so the state can hand it to people who never took a risk, never built anything, never contributed. Many of them not even British. This is not tax. This is punishment for success. Britain punishes the productive to reward the unproductive. Hard-working Brits get squeezed dry. Founders are already looking at the exit. This is how countries die. Opt out. Hold what they cannot tax.

@ContractorCalc It sounds like simple maths to me.

It’s difficult to argue against people when they prioritise their own beliefs of facts over actual documented evidenced facts.

@andrew_lilico What's your idea about how to get the UK back on track?

An actual economist reasons as follows. If you introduce an exit tax, then foreigners will become less likely to invest in your country because they will not be able to withdraw their funds. So if your country has large inflows or throughflows of capital it's a damaging idea.+

@banthebbc That's a bit extreme ban-the-BBC-mRNA-free Max!

This is really truly sick. Nothing will dissuade me that Socialism is anything more than a mental illness.

@banthebbc Have you left Max?

The message is clear: if you have any mobile wealth at all leave the UK and do it yesterday. Anti wealth and anti success attitudes and socialist tax policies aren’t going away. The sooner you all face reality the better.

@stuey_beef What do you do for living stuey beef?

Comments posted are my own personal views, and anything I repost I believe to be accurate and/or non inflammatory or incites hatred. I am deeply passionate and concerned for my country and support actions or views that are within the law. I believe in the right to protest but I do not in any way support or encourage violence

@brittas_strikes You are pathetic

He’s wearing shorts. Nothing more needs to be said.

@JohnHundeslit Gary's core claims are all correct. Ultra rich's wealth drive asset prices up. Governments have sold off assets. It's got harder for working people to buy assets. Governments are stuck: tax the middle, tax wealth, or cut the basics.

God, his whole argument really is just vibes, isn't it? Absolutely no attempt to seriously engage with the counterarguments put to him here at all. Stevenson wants a wealth tax because 'inequality', and that's as deep as his analysis seems to go.

@StuartMaggs The UK is a fantastic country. Just because something is cheap (low tax) doesn't mean that is high price can't flourish. Apple doesn't compete on price. Microsoft don't. GSK don't. You need to try competing in a market: there's a place for cheap - maybe that's you!

Imagine two countries starting from where we are. In one, IHT goes up to 50% along with the top rate of income tax, CGT goes up to the same rate and to stop capital flight they impose an exit tax so people are trapped in the UK tax net. In another, IHT goes down by 10%, CGT for entrepreneurs is put back to 10% and extended up to £10m of relief again. Which of these two countries would you want to build a business in? Which of them is more likely to flourish from domestic and international investment? Which of them is attractive to the most exciting, innovative and inspiring of our youth? If you have to trap people in your country to tax them, you’re probably doing it wrong.

@ChristianJMay Gary's core claims are all correct. Ultra rich's wealth drive asset prices up. Governments have sold off assets. It's got harder for working people to buy assets. Governments are stuck: tax the middle, tax wealth, or cut the basics.

On and on it goes. A wealth tax will lead to the wealthy leaving... "So let's have an exit tax." Right. And how does any of this make anyone wealthier?

@griffitha Liz Truss?

Higher taxes are the last thing the low-growth and over-indebted UK needs. Cut taxes, get building, drill our own oil, scrap red tape and attract wealth creators and the ambitious young back. That’s a proper plan!

@FunOfInvesting Gary Stevenson hasn't lost the plot: his analysis is correct. Your post explains why we need a very carefully designed wealth tax.

WHY WEALTH TAXES DON'T AND WILL NEVER WORK... Tired of socialist politicians and economists advocating for this. It's a populist publicity stunt and all it takes to see through it is a bit of logic and asking yourself about the incentives. I read Gary's book The Trading Game and genuinely enjoyed it. But the Gary in that book and the Gary debating Piers Morgan this week are two different people. Somewhere along the way he lost the plot. His diagnosis is right. It's Thomas Piketty in a nutshell (r > g) Returns on capital compound faster than wages, and as a result, the middle class erodes over time. That's a FEATURE of capitalism, not a bug. Here's a few issues with wealth taxes: 1. Paper isn't cash. Gary argues someone like Musk's net worth rises $150B per year passively (lets assume 15%/yr growth). Except, nobody paid him anything... the market repriced shares he's held for 20 years. No cash salary, no dividend. He is not out buying thousands of homes with this newfound "passive income." Gary's "billionaires earn 15% passive income" stat comes from ONE billionaire he interviewed. 2. Taxing unrealized gains forces annual selling. Who absorbs the sell pressure? Retail, pensions, your index fund. All other asset holders get hit. 3. Down years break this logic entirely. Musk lost ~$200B in 2022. Does the Treasury cut him a refund cheque or does it only work when the wealth is increasing? 4. Capital is the most mobile asset on earth. France bled an estimated 42,000 millionaires before scrapping its wealth tax. Norway hiked theirs in 2022 and triggered a record exodus to Switzerland. 5. Whoever stays, restructures. Trusts, holdcos, insurance wrappers. The ultra-wealthy operate across global jurisdictions. Even Gabriel Zucman, Gary's own favorite economist, admits every wealth tax ever tried has failed. A UK wealth tax would be a publicity stunt that exports capital. 6. Taxing billionaires builds ZERO houses. Housing is a supply and monetary policy problem. The government coming out and confiscating Musk's Tesla shares adds nothing to the market. 7. Gary's own stat: the UK government went from +100% of GDP in wealth to -100%. And the fix is handing that same government MORE capital to allocate? Private capital compounds. Government capital gets consumed (because there's no real accountability to unchecked government spending). In this whole narrative, Gary picked the wrong villain. A founder sitting passively on shares of a company he built isn't squeezing anyone out of a home. You know who is plowing billions of institutional capital into family homes, though? The Blackstones of the world. If asset hoarding is the crime, the tech founder holding his own equity is the least guilty party in the lineup. Making billionaires the enemy polls well. It's a publicity stunt. If you ACTUALLY want billionaires to pay tax, close the real loophole: buy-borrow-die. They never sell, they borrow against shares at 2% and live tax-free indefinitely. Make loans against securities a realization event. No valuation bureaucracy, no forced selling, no capital flight. And for everyone else: when Tesla appreciates, every pension and index fund holding it appreciates right alongside Musk. Wealth inequality isnt proof that the pie is being hoarded, its that not enough of society is contributing in having their own slice. Don't tax the rich into the middle class. Invest the middle class into wealth.

@7Kiwi Not so sure stripping out green levies will make energy cheap. Solar panels plus a battery makes energy cheap though.

If Labour really wants to deal with the cost of living, they should abandon Net Zero and make energy cheap again.

@_Unknown_D_ So you think the tax system should be rebalanced so that low earners and the poor pay more?

We have such a distorted tax system, I don’t think people really appreciate the extent to which the UK govt funds itself on disproportionately taxing higher earners and under taxing lower earners when compared with Europe.

@digitalchampi Ooh I'm enchanted!

@pgboyce It’s not sensible nor timely stupid man

Deluded guy, yeah, let's tax billionaires to oblivion in the UK and then receive no foreign direct investment in the UK, fewer jobs, less tax paid to the government, and create greater poverty. Inequality economist 🤡 Is this guy advocating for greater inequality in the UK 🥴

@MellonSdp6741 Gary's core claims are all correct. Ultra rich's wealth drive asset prices up. Governments have sold off assets. It's got harder for working people to buy assets. Governments are stuck: tax the middle, tax wealth, or cut the basics. You have no idea what you're talking about.

70% of the population are net recipients of state largesse so it’s unsurprising they want more of it. There are a double digit number of 747 jets that if filled with top rate taxpayers would leave The UK at the mercy of the bond market and the IMF. Then we’d see the same 70% of the population wishing they’d never heard of @garyseconomics