Does Gary Stevenson understand economics?
A barrow-boy with a conscience?
This article was first published in UnHerd in late March. All articles published elsewhere are published free here; but for paywalled articles & postscripts, subscribe below.
What changes more often; Conservative Party leaders or the left’s favourite economist?
Over the last two decades, the left has had a string of infatuations with economists. Some of them - Thomas Piketty or Joseph Stiglitz, for example – were imports from abroad. But we have a strong domestic production line, too; Ann Pettifor, James Meadway and Grace Blakeley have all enjoyed moments in the sun.
The latest to add to the list is Gary Stevenson, a former City trader turned Youtuber, who presents Gary’s Economics, and has recently topped the bestseller lists with his book, The Trading Game.
Of anyone to trumpet left-wing economics, Stevenson would at first appear an odd choice; his branding relies heavily on his path as a ruthless trader, claiming that he was in fact ‘the best in the world’ in 2011 by betting that growing poverty would cause interest rates to stay low. Hardly an auspicious start; but then, every saint must have a past, and every sinner a future.
But his appeal is clearly divined. His delivery is punchy and self-assured, whilst he studiously cultivates the air of a normal person. Stevenson grew up in a single-income working class background, and money has not come with pretentions; he wears t-shirts instead of a tie, and is unapologetically unpolished, his thick MLE accent and the occasional (and largely tasteful) interspersing of fucks adds an air of credibility to the image of a barrow-boy with a conscience.
His popularity ultimately lies in his relentless focus on inequality. There are perfectly coherent arguments that inequality is economically damaging, including made by the left’s previous favourites; Piketty, Stiglitz and Pettifor argue that high inequality suppresses demand because poorer households have a higher marginal propensity to consume than the wealthy, so too high a concentration of wealth at the top therefore slows consumption. Blakeley argues that growing inequality forces ordinary people to rely on credit to maintain living standards, causing overexposure to asset bubbles, excessive debt, and instability. Meadway, meanwhile, argued that high inequality weakens productivity by trapping people in poverty, preventing talent from being fully utilised by limiting access to education, housing, and healthcare.
Stevenson, however, seems to rely on reheated Occupy-style assertions that the rich are stealing everyone’s money, and that growing inequality is bad because it further exacerbates inequality; inequality is itself self-evidently economic suicide, rather than any particular potential economic consequences. Rather than economics, Stevenson seems primarily focussed on politics; his favouritism appears to be the result of being able to repackage traditional left-wing anti-millionaire activism, rather than genuinely fresh economic ideas.
In the meantime, there seem to be questions about the credibility of the grandiose claims he makes about his trading history; an investigation by the Financial Times could not find any colleagues who thought his claim of being the best trader in the world was true. Likewise, his recent claim that ‘Economists have been all wrong about almost everything for 15 years now’ must raise questions about his economic knowledge, given how many of his predecessors as the left’s favourite economist have been discussing the problems of inequality. Given his project is more activism than analysis, it may matter little.