Monday 06 July 2026 11:04 am

Surely Gary Stevenson is smart enough to know a wealth tax won’t work?

By: Damian Pudner

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Britain’s self-styled greatest inequality economist, Gary Stevenson has proposed a two per cent annual levy above £10m to level the playing field. Surely he knows that won’t work, writes Damian Pudner

Gary Stevenson tells us he is “one of the best, if not the best, inequality economists in the world”. The argument, apparently, runs as follows. Britain had Tony Atkinson, but he is dead. Piketty and Zucman are in Paris. “So now it’s just me in this country.” One admires the confidence. Sadly, confidence is not enough to pass the smell test in the wealth tax debate.

Stevenson’s diagnosis is half right, but only half. Britain has seen an extraordinary transfer of wealth towards asset owners since 2009, and anyone who traded rates through that period knows where it came from. Stevenson did, profitably. The answer is the Bank of England.

Quantitative easing worked by driving up bond prices, crushing yields and pushing investors out the risk curve. It was always about inflating asset prices. £875bn of gilt purchases handed enormous windfalls to anyone who already owned property or equities, while wage earners and cash savers quietly picked up the bill. Layer on a planning regime that has rationed housing for decades and you have your inequality machine, built in Threadneedle Street and left running ever since.

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