{"id":712352,"date":"2026-07-26T18:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T18:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/712352\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T18:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T18:10:10","slug":"gary-stevenson-to-quit-youtube-channel-citing-health-concerns-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/712352\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Stevenson to quit YouTube channel, citing health concerns | Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City trader turned wealth tax campaigner Gary Stevenson has announced he is quitting the YouTube<\/a> channel that made his name, citing health concerns.<\/p>\n

His announcement, in a 48-minute address to camera, came after a mixed reaction to a televised documentary that brought him to a wider audience but drew some scepticism from left-leaning tax experts as well as more rightwing critics.<\/p>\n

Stevenson, whose weekly YouTube channel<\/a> Gary\u2019s Economics took off during the Covid pandemic<\/a> and grew to 1.64 million subscribers, posted an abridged 18-minute signoff on social media on Sunday morning entitled \u201cIt\u2019s time to say goodbye\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said it would be the last weekly video, saying they had become \u201charder and harder as he had got more tired\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The former City trader<\/a>, born in 1986 in east London, came to wider prominence through the channel and his published memoir, Trading Game, in which he described how he made millions as a Citibank employee in the years after the financial crisis.<\/p>\n

Retiring with burnout and disillusioned by the City, the self-styled anti-inequality campaigner argued for a 2% tax on individual wealth over \u00a310m, which he said would raise \u00a324bn a year for the Treasury.<\/p>\n

Stevenson has been an influential online voice in raising awareness of inequality and linking it to falling living standards, predicting the rises in the cost of living and warning about the danger to society of constant accumulation by the growing billionaire class.<\/p>\n

However, a Channel 4 documentary released last month, How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson, in which he took his arguments to those who would incur the tax, was poorly received.<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s Lucy Mangan wrote<\/a> that the presenter was \u201coutdone and undone by almost all of his interviewees \u2026 left floundering, without convincing comebacks\u201d, concluding that it was \u201ca faintly embarrassing waste of time\u201d.<\/p>\n

The expert tax lawyer and investigator Dan Neidle told Stevenson \u201cto separate your emotional reaction to inequality from a rational assessment of the best tools for it\u201d and described his plans as \u201cpopulist claptrap\u201d.<\/p>\n

A slightly more sympathetic review in the Telegraph said Stevenson had \u201call the traits of the self-aggrandising online influencer class \u2026 so used to addressing his followers straight down the camera that engaging in debate with people of differing views leaves him floundering\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite the reception to the documentary, Stevenson\u2019s proposal for a wealth tax is gaining traction. The new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is fielding growing calls to increase taxes on the ultra-rich.<\/p>\n

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A proposal to tax the 1,000 UK households with wealth of more than \u00a3100m could raise \u00a310bn, according to one recent study<\/a>. Last week ex-footballer Gary Lineker was among 120 other millionaires who wrote an open letter in favour of a wealth tax, urging Burnham to tax them more<\/a>, saying \u201cwe can afford it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stevenson gave some notice of his intentions in a Newsnight interview when the documentary aired earlier this month. He told the BBC he was quitting public conversation, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s tiring. I do this because I don\u2019t want this country to go down the toilet. Living standards are going to get worse \u2026 You cannot have a situation across [Britain and] the western world where the working class, the middle class and the government all very rapidly lose all of their wealth to 1% of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the valedictory video on Gary\u2019s Economics<\/a> suggested that, after a break in Japan, he might make a return to public life in some form. Stevenson said he was now looking at a podcast format and did not rule out doing more videos on a monthly basis.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe very richest people in the world are going to fight this \u2026 We need a big chunk of the population to understand that living standards are falling because of rising inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevenson ended by saying: \u201cI cannot be the only educator on this. We need to accept this will not be a short-term battle … And I need to rest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City trader turned wealth tax campaigner Gary Stevenson has announced he is quitting the YouTube channel that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-712352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}