What does Elon Musk want?

okay welcome back to Gary's economics today we're going to talk about Elon Musk okay so for those of you who don't know Elon Musk is the world's richest man and he is the owner of Twitter and Tesla and he has recently made his big entry into politics supporting Donald Trump aggressively uh Donald Trump of course won the election uh it looks like he will give ELO musk and official role in the US government and he has started intervening quite aggressively in politics and a lot of countries including here in the UK but also all across

Europe generally supporting the anti-immigrant far right right-wing parties um and we're going to talk today about what we can learn from that from this uh this movement of Elon Musk into politics so I think the first thing which we can learn about this maneuver from Elon Musk is I think it's a really good demonstration of something which I've been trying to educate trying to illustrate a lot on this channel which is that when the Super Rich get really really rich that doesn't not affect you it has an impact on you on this channel we talk

a lot about the need to tax the rich more in order to protect living standards and we often get the push back that's the politics of envy you shouldn't tax the rich it doesn't matter if rich people get rich we should focus on getting rich ourselves the rich being rich doesn't affect us and this is a really good example of why the rich being super rich does affect you the rich getting richer and richer and richer and Ordinary People owning fewer and fewer assets that affects you because the rich are competing for the same resources

that you need there's only a certain amount of things in the economy only certain amount of housing only a certain amount of Education universities doctors dentists physical space in the cities as the rich get aggressively richer they start to consume more stuff and that means less stuff for you and the way that you normally see that is for example housing in the cities gets more expensive that's because the rich are consuming more the Richer richer they can pay more they push the prices up but it's not just housing right it's the same with for example

University education access to doctors access to dentists access to space in the cities you know you see here in London we see a lot of pubs closing down they're being replaced by generally housing whereas if you go into the center of the City luxury hotels luxury restaurants theaters they're booming they're doing better than ever what you're seeing here is the rich competing with you for space out competing with you and the result is you get less space and the way that you see that is generally the prices of things that you buy going up and

I think with this Elon Musk case we start to see another example of this which is the rich are also competing with you for essentially the ownership of your politics your politicians and your media and this has always been the case it's the case also for economists so I studied economics when I was a teenager at the London School of Economics which was which still is a big Elite University here in London and I got very good grades there and I had a choice when I went to graduate who do you want to work for

do I want to work for the government trying to help the economy trying to support the economy for ordinary people getting paid 40 50 60 Grand a year or do I want to work managing the money of the rich getting paid one or two million pound a year and it's not just Bankers right it's the same for dentists it's the same for doctors you know I went to a grammar school and a lot of my friends are dentists um and they can work in the NHS or they can do Botox rich people and they can

get paid three or four times as much right but it's it's also the same for politicians and I'm always reminded of David Cameron so I think the prime minister of the UK gets paid something like 150 Grand a year I think that's the salary David Cameron after he left office he went to work for a finance company called greensill and I think within the first year he made something like 10 million now I want you to ask yourself why does a finance company pay David cameron10 million one year after El's office is David Cameron an

excellent excellent Trader is he an excellent financial analyst if your politicians are getting paid 100 Grand a year 150 Grand a year by the people and they can also get paid 10 million pound a year to work for the rich who do you think the politicians really work for I'm also reminded of richy sunak right you know richy sunak is a really interesting example because his father-in-law is one of the richest people in the entire World he's a billionaire so his the money which Richard sun gets to be prime minister is absolutely totally irrelevant to

him but the money that his family will get from his father-in-law that that is clearly enormously his major financial interest right so you got to ask yourself then when somebody like Richie sunak is deciding things like how should we set tax policy how should we tax rich people do you think he speaks to his father-in-law when David Cameron knows that when he leaves office he's going to work for green and get paid £1 million p in one year when he's making his decisions do you think he speaks to the guys at greens seille who are

going to pay him £10 million so in the case of doctors dentists universities but also economists also politicians you are in a competition the politicians can make a certain amount of money working for you and they can make a certain amount of money working for the rich and when the rich are super super super super rich and your average taxpayer is increasingly poor it gets harder and harder and harder for you to compete with them and I think this is the reason why we saw for for a long long periods of time really high amounts

of corruption in poor countries because the local people of those countries can't afford to pay their politicians very much whereas extremely wealthy people in other countries can pay these politicians enormous amounts to basically give the resources of of those countries to these wealthy people and I think this thing which has been happening in in poor countries for a long time you know if you speak to people from subaran Africa Latin America a lot of places in Asia that they've been seeing this kind of corruption for a long time in the west we've been relatively protected

by that for a reasonable amount of time because we've had a wealthy taxpayer and we haven't had these super wealthy foreign billionaires who can influence our politics as inequality as increased the taxpayer ordinary families have become poorer the super rich have become richer and you have basically found yourself in the same situation that Latin Americans and Africans have been in for a long period of time you cannot compete anymore for ownership of your politicians with the super rich and I think this is this classic example of why inequality matters for you because if you allow

the super rich to get even richer and you allow the middle class to lose their assets they will increasingly out compete you for the things that you need and that includes your politicians and it includes your media as well it includes your media as well now if we consider the media if you work as a journalist you need to be paid most people need to be paid they got to pay their rent they got to pay their bills there's two ways you can be paid as a journalist right you can sell journalism sell news to

the people or you can sell your services to the rich and say if you pay me I will sell stories that promote the ideas that you want to promote you know if you are an American watching this channel you'll be very aware of where that ends up you end up with extremely biased media their job is not to tell you the truth their job is to sell a certain story for you because they get paid by very rich people who want you to believe certain things so this is the effect of inequality this is the

effect on inequality and this is this musk thing makes it really really clear how inequality affects you if you allow the rich to get really really rich to get really really powerful they outbid you for control of your politicians they outbid you for control of your media and they outbid you for access to your resources and then what you get is politicians who don't care about you media who lies to you and the inability to access resources which includes things like food and housing and where does that lead us as soon as Donald Trump won

the election Tesla stock price doubled Tesla stock price doubled why did Tesla stock price double When Donald Trump won the election because Traders think that Donald Trump is going to use taxpayer money your money if you're an American to give to Tesla and to give to Elon Musk that that is what inequality does inequality gives the rich the power to directly access your tax dollars that is the end result that is why you need to care about inequality that is why you need to care about the distribution of wealth that is why you need to

care about the distribution of power okay so that's my first point done Elon Musk makes it really clear that inequality affects you in a material way the second point I wanted to talk a little bit about Elon Musk support of far right parties across the world when I say far right what I mean is anti-immigration parties I know some people don't like the term far right why is Elon Musk supporting anti-immigration parties all around the world and to me this is it's really really obvious why it comes in and supports that and I want to

talk a little bit about it because I never hear this discussed really in the media so on this channel I talk a lot about and I have been talking a lot about for a long time the fact that the economy is going to keep getting worse uh living standards will keep falling it will be difficult for you to get financial security to get good quality housing to get good quality jobs and because inequality will keep Rising that will keep getting worse um and I think when I first started saying that you know and I first

started betting on this back in 2011 that was a really not popular opinion there was a general sort of consideration that the economy was getting better and it would recover and it would get better now as I say this in the beginning of 200 in the beginning of 2025 I think it's becoming increasingly obvious to people who are watching that that is what is happening the economy is on a structural downtrend things are going to get worse and worse and as that happens it creates an obvious tension in politics which is that people do not

want to accept a situation where their family gets poor every generation people don't want their kids to be poorer than they are people don't want their grandkids to live in poverty and people demand change in politics and I think whilst a lot of these kind of old school politicians cling on to this hope that we can keep going the way we're going it's becoming increasingly obvious to anybody kind of half smart that people are going to increasingly demand some kind of change what that means is we're kind of already in a situation now in our

society where there has to be a discussion and there is already a discussion about where do we go how do we change things and I think in the next 10 years probably maybe sooner you will see a significant change in the way our politics is run what politicians offer and what people demand and that is because the status qu is increasingly obviously not working for most people so if you're somebody like Elon Musk and you are the richest person in the entire world you're going to look at a changing world and you're going to look

at people that are demanding different things you're going to look at people who people like me who are demanding uh less inequality higher taxation of the rich lower taxation of ordinary workers and there's an obvious reflex reaction for somebody like Elon Musk where he says well I don't want to pay high taxes so I want to avoid this outcome of higher taxes on the rich so you need to sell a different story and I think it's it's it's already really clear what the big alternative stories are our story which is getting bigger the reason you're

getting poorer is because of the super rich you need to tax the super rich more but there's one story which is much bigger than that which is the reason your poor is because of immigrants the reason your poor is because of foreigners and if you are Elon Musk you're looking out there in the world of you know new alternative economic ideas which one of those ideas do you want to win um now I would like to make it clear I think a sensible billionaire would probably realize it's economically destabilizing to keep inequality growing more and

more but most billionaires don't think like that they just don't want to pay higher taxes they they want to keep getting richer they're kind of obsessed with it that's why they get rich so what you going to do you are going to financially support the idea that immigrants are the problem and I'm not I think sometimes people think that I'm some sort of super Pro immigration guy I'm not a super pro immigration guy I recognize that it is massively in the interest of the rich to tell you that the problem is immigrants because if you

don't think the problem is immigrants you might work out that the reason you're getting poor is because of the super rich and they don't want you to know that so this is the situation that Elon Musk is in he is going to support that and and it's the truth is and something that increasingly worries me it's not just Elon Musk who's going to support that you know other super rich people people are going to support this idea because they realize that hatred of foreigners and hatred of immigrants is the main thing standing between them and

high levels of Taxation and they don't want to pay more tax um so they're going to fund it they're going to fund these ideas um and more and more money is going to flood into that if inequality keeps increasing and keeps increasing and keeps increasing living standards will get worse and worse and worse and worse it will be extremely destabilizing and it will destabilize an economy which already provides unbelievable levels of luxury to the rich and the super rich I don't think this is the right thing for billionaires to do you know there's this story

I don't know how true it is that the reason that the French cut off the heads of the rich and the English didn't is because the English accepted the English Super Rich accepted they need to give a bit back and they gave a little bit back to ordinary people they increase living standards of ordinary people and apparently that's why we still have a royal family and the French royal family are all dead um I think a sensible billionaire would accept that if they stop inequality from increasing we can stabilize this forign living standards uh and

they can protect their own situation but the fact is most super rich don't think like that they very simplistically want to keep their taxes down I wanted to talk a little bit about where that puts these guys people like musk who are funding and increasingly funding anti-immigrant political parties anti-immigrant ideas because what is interesting is it is in their interests for people to hate foreigners and for people to hate migrants and for people to think that migration is the key problem but it is interestingly also in their interests to keep migration High because what these

guys Prim arily need is for you to hate migrants and for you to think migration is the problem and the best way for them to achieve that is to have loads of stuff in the media saying migrants are the problem and also to have really high levels of immigration because if immigration is really low first of all it would rapidly become clear that that didn't stop the economy from getting worse but secondly it's a lot easier to get people to take migrants when there's loads of migrants coming all the time and that is why you

see Trump in this really interesting situation where he's simultaneously funding anti-migrant parties and arguing that we need to have high levels of immigration in the US um and it really really reminds me of what the conservative did the conservatives did when they were in power so the conservatives and I think this is the smartest thing they did and I'm surprised in a way that they've got people smart enough to do this the conservatives really really fought hard to have a specific kind of Migrant kicked out of the country which was illegal migrants coming over in

small boats at the same time the conservatives did brexit um before brexit the UK has to accept EU migrants there's a degree to which the UK doesn't control the level of immigration of legal immigration after brexit the UK can choose how much legal immigration it has um so the conservative party basically had complete power over the vast majority of migration illegal migration is only I think 2 or 3% of overall immigration 97 98% is legal migration which they could have reduced but they didn't they did this really interesting thing of really aggressively trying to stop

this really small kind of immigration that they couldn't actually stop and massively increasing the number of visas which they gave legally to non-eu immigrants it was like super super smart they managed to simultaneously portray thems as the party of low migration what massively increasing non-eu migration to the country and I think this kind of shows you in a way what the correct tactical play is from the billionaires tell you to hate migrants and make sure there's tons of immigration because that makes you hate people that makes you hate immigrants and I think that the final

thing that we learn from Elon Musk is basically how important it is for billionaires that you guys hate each other so what I try to do on this channel is to make it clear to you that the reason you are getting poorer is because inequality is rapidly increasing if you don't stop inequality rapidly increasing you will keep getting poorer the only way you can really protect yourselves is by working together as a mass of not super rich people um and using that political power that only works if you guys don't hate each other um and

every week I put these videos out and I get people in the comments saying that's never going to work people never going to work together tell me how I can protect myself tell me what I can do give me trading tips Tell me how I can protect myself Rising inequality Rising top 1% inequality means more and more and more of you lose every year uh there's no way to change that other than stopping inequality from rising and I think what people like Elon Musk want is for you guys all to be living in this squid

game where you all think I don't care if only one of us will win and 99% of us will lose I want to fight the people around me to being that 1% you need to change the game you need to change the game you cannot play a game where every single year 95% of you lose 96% of you lose 97% of you lose and you keep hoping to be in that 1% you need to change the rules of the game and that means working together so to conclude Elon Musk is a great example of why

inequality is a danger for you and your family these guys are going to take the things that you need they're going to take your politicians your economists your media and ultimately your housing and your food that is what it means you need to fight inequality the only way to do that is to work together that's why these billionaires want you to hate each other if you hate each other they'll win if you work together you can win support the channel tax the rich cut tax and ordinary working people send this to your friend send this

to your mom thanks for your help good luck