September 1, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Merryn Talks Money, host Merryn Somerset Webb is joined by Bloomberg senior reporter John Stepek, author Dominic Frisby and Interactive Investor Chief Executive Officer Richard Wilson for a roundtable discussion at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The conversation takes place at Panmure House, the last home of economist and philosopher Adam Smith.
The panel share their favorite Adam Smith quotes and their relevance to our current economic and financial climate. They question how relevant the ideas of Adam Smith are today and the lessons we can learn from his writings.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Maren's Somerset Web.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hello, Maren Talks Money Listeners, It's Meren Sunset Web. Before
we get back to our regular programming in early September,
we are bringing you something very special, recordings of the
conversations I had at Pania House for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now,
for those of you who don't know, the Fringe is
a three week arts and culture festival that began in
nineteen forty seven and it takes place in Edinburgh and
Scotland every August. For the past few years I have
(00:44):
been hosting conversations about markets, economics and investing from one
of the most special locations in Edinburgh as part of
this festival. I do it from Panmia House, which is
the last home of Adam Smith, philosopher and father of
modern economics, is where he completed the last editions of
his best sellers, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The
Wealth of Nations. This year we did a three day
(01:06):
run to was the end of August, and we are
bringing you the slightly edited conversations from those three days.
The panel I hosted on the second day, featured again
Bloomberg senior reporter John Steppek, also Richard Wilson, CEO of
the UK second largest investment platform, Interactive Investor, and Dominic Frisbee,
author of the Flying Frisbee investment newsletter and also author
(01:28):
of a new book just out.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Called The Secret History of Gold.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I think we will probably go straight into the show
because you all know my jokes from last year already.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
There was no point in going through them again.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I have three excellent guests, and what we're going to
do is keep the format exactly as it has.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Been in the past.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Everyone's going to tell me their favorite Adam Smith quote.
Well it's not quite their favoritecause everyone's got quite a
lot of favorites. John, how many favorites have you got
at least haven? And then we're going to talk around
their quote. So we're going to The idea is to
make it a very open conversation between the panel.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So my guests on my right, I've got John Stappek.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Who lots of you probably know already. John writes the
Money Just Sold newsletter for Bloomberg. On my left of
Dominic Frisbee, who has just written a brilliant new book,
The Secret History of Gold, and you will know I
think it's brilliant because I say so on the back
of the book.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
You do say, you say it is possibly the best
timed book ever. What a lovely endorsement.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Thank you, my pleasure. Dominic also writes the frying, Frying,
Flying Frisbee newsletter.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And on my.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Far left we have Richard Wilson, who is the CEO
of Interactive Investor and the COO of Aberdeen Asset Management,
right right, the first quote is going to come from Richard.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And thank you very much for having me today, and
hello everybody.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
So my quote was.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Labor was the first price, the original purchase money that
was paid for all things. It was not by gold
or by silver, but by labor that all wealth of
the world was originally purchased. And I'll sit in there
obviously mulling over that and thinking about our current reflections
on technology and AI, and you've kind of have to
(03:14):
and there's I think there are two different views of
this story. There's a view of AI that it's a
life enriching thing that everyone will have, you know, their
roles will be enhanced and there will be time to
invest in the things that you enjoy.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
And then there's the sharp end that I work in, where.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
I have about a thousand people in I are working
very hard to make you fabulously wealthy and happy, and
every day we're trying to improve our efficiencies so we
can improve our experience and ultimately improve our price position.
But the raality is is that we have in our
(03:56):
company every year currently now we see you're probably twenty
five percent and improvement in productivity.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
This year as an.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Example, year to date this year versus last year, we're
twenty percent bigger than we were last year, thank you
very much.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
But we have ten percent less calls.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
That come into our contact center, and those calls are
handled about fifteen percent faster because of the tools that
are available.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Can I interrupt quickly to ask you when you say
there are fewer calls coming in?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Why are their fewer calls coming in?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Because people are finding the answer to their questions why
are the chabbot or something like that.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
So it's a great question, and we look at that
as if we're kind of we master all of our information.
And I think there are several factors, but one of
them is the experience is just better because you don't. Obviously,
customers call in to tell me how wonderful they think
I am. See if that's never happened.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
It will now.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
So they call in because they're.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Struggling to find the answer to a problem or a decision,
or they're not happy with something, and if your experience
is better, you have less reason to call. And theres
an example last year in terms of basic coding, nearly
two million lines of code was written by AI for us,
and we wouldn't put ourselves out to be particularly special,
(05:16):
so part of that is just the experience being learning
faster to help more people. So we've about half a
million customers, different age, demographic, behavior norms, context. The experience
needs to be something that works for each of those individuals,
and they don't. One person's simple is not the same
as somebody else's, so it needs to be adaptive and smart.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
So you've got that picture and a look more broadly.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
In the UK today we have about one point three
million people work in contact centers, ne hundred thousand people
are work in software development, four hundred thousand people are
taxi drivers, four hundred thousand people are in HGV or delivery,
and another six or one thousand in.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
Other those roles.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
As I look at what's happening to us, you can
see quite rapidly some of those roles simply disappearing because
the machine just does it fast.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
And my worry for us.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Is that I think today we've got some like thirty
three million people in employment in the UK that we're
going to see us in the next three four five
years a material shift which is going to challenge some
of the basic premise about what the price of the
value of labor is and the ability to reskill is
going to be very, very difficult. And it wouldn't surprise
(06:38):
me if we're talking about structure on employment which is
one two three million over the next three to five years,
which is very hard to deal with.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
But on the other hand, the very thing that you're
talking about is the great productivity revolution that we've been
waiting for for so long that could transform the way
that the economy works in general.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
But that's okay, there's that thesis.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Now you look at somewhere, if you're looking at somewhere
in the Midlands where the only employer in the town
is the contact center, and they have more than one
generation in the contact center, and the people who run
the local shop run because people of the contact center
spend their money there. The notion that skills are fungible
and or mobile and the ability to learn new skills
(07:26):
is a single generational thing. I think it's just made
up where I come from. When they close the opencast
minds and the textile mills, those jobs, that was a
two generation issue. If you took massive action to try
and fix it it, otherwise you created significant social and dislocation.
And I think my sense is that that's without massive action,
(07:47):
that's where we'll be. What kind of action you need
to have forced forestry skilling. You've got to have enormous
incentives to learn new skills, which have to be sponsored
at a state level, or you'll you'll end up with
the case in Dundee. We know that post the timeclosure,
thirty years of a structural social whole because you haven't
(08:10):
forced the community to move into new skills.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Okay, what are these new skills?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Because this is a question that I mean, we're talking
about questions right now, but you're all thinking when it
comes to question time, you're going to ask what are
my children learned?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
What skills are my children gap? What do they study.
What's going to be left?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Well, certainly, I mean from when I look at what
we're I mean, the health care is an enormous thing.
Data is an enormous thing. And data it's not going
to be simple data analysis because the machine will do
all that. This is data from a kind of a
neuroscience perspective, where you're learning how people's brains function, the
response to data so you can improve outcomes for them,
(08:47):
the ability to understand the structure of information. So data
health education they will be. And obviously today defense there
will be big things tomorrow, all these mechanical skills, coding, answering, phones,
doing accounting. Most accounting work is collating information or gone,
(09:08):
and god help us the self driving cars that shall
be emerging fairly soon.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You're saying that it sounds like all the lower end
jobs will be gone and only higher end jobs will remain.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yep, So you have a situation where you have and
you have a real situation because that gives you social unrest.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, gives you again as if income disparities, wealth disparities
and no end of problems, which might bring us back
to universal basic income, so we can return to in
a minute, except rhin. Now Dominic is desperate to say something.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, I just wanted to ask a question. Is like,
I can just see, you know a lot of people
just sinking into the welfare trap, the same welfare trap
that all the miners fell into in the in the eighties.
And you know, is welfare the answer?
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Well, it can't be the answer because it's unproductive. I mean,
where I came from, you had more than one generation
on welfare, so that was that became normalized, and that
that creates all sorts of side effects that we'll read
the stats about and drug abuse and various olids. So
you can't let that happen. You've got to You've got
to fire hose the skill set and force it out,
(10:11):
create incentives, push people to actually do things that choose
not to do because humans are pretty I am pretty lazy.
If you don't force it and force that people to
take those risks, you will end up with a welfare
trap which you can't get out of.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Now you're talking about massive changes to the welfare system
and changing the incentives built.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Into the world.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
You actually have to do that is.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
The kind of thing that won't happen for a long time.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
For those who don't take those actions and welfare you
have to frankly provide penalties if they don't take those actions.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's extraordinarily definitely cult a suppose
and then that is the whole point of it. Well,
and then what are the actually landin if the reate
at which EA is starting to suck the jobs out
of the market is that high? I mean, what was
the thing? Because I guess I always kind of go
(11:02):
back to the thing of but every time we say
technology is going to replace jobs and actually we do
end up being fine or having new ones. And you're right,
the local communities that are screwed over by these things
aren't fine, and we should find a solution to that.
But in terms of things like mass unemployment that robots
were going to cause, like twenty years ago, that kind
(11:25):
of thing hasn't happened to you. I mean, do you
think that AI really is the game changer on that
front or well?
Speaker 4 (11:31):
The answer of course is who knows. But I look
at what we're doing today, which is accelerating and it
I mean, the power of this stuff is extraordinary. It's
just extraordinary, and it moves not just what it does,
but the right it's learning is extraordinary. So we have
now you have a context where we'll receive ten thousand
(11:54):
bits of correspondence a day, and we have a bunch
of people whose job it is to ee all that,
put it in a file and send it to the
right person. The machine within sixty days had learned how
to do all that kind of ninety nine point four
percent accuracy and.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Just did it. And you're thinking, again, Okay, that's a
bit uncomfortable, but.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It also feels like in a world of falling fertility
and falling population growth, etc. This seems like a wonderful
thing in that we have fewer workers. We're going to
have many fewer workers going forward, and at the moment
we try and solve what turns out to be a
non existent problem with immigration, but possibly the.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Problem doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
We don't need a rising workforce, and so yours a
it seems like the solution to all the problems that
are running through air.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Right, although you have an aging population as well and
a pay as you go social system, so you bankrupt
yourself in the meantime because you can't who's going to
pay my bills in my eighties?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Because it's making it very difficult to make this conversation
go in an optimistic direction, really.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Doing the opportunity. But you have to skill up. This
is a thing. You can't sit back and when.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Wait, I'll say something, I sort of take up on
John's point that that I mean, I am absolutely captivated
by everything you say, but I sort of take up
on John's point that a lot of these things we
say it's going to happen, and then we find a
way of muddling through that said, I mean, having sat
in a self driving Tesla in Florida earlier in the
(13:29):
year and gone, this is a far better driver than
I am. And you know I'm an okay driver, and
but but you know, I just think I just think
driver's cars are pretty much inevitable. And the main barrier
is regulatory and so you know that's the government's choice
when they want to allow it, and you know they
(13:49):
can stop it happening, but you know, it just means
we'll lose because we'll be less productive. But in any case,
so that's you know, a million jobs, is it We're
going to lose a driver.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Or the tax hit drivers there are four hundred thousand,
and then there are three hundred thousand HTV drivers another
six hundred thousand delivery drivers.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, so according to Lama for so maybe so one
point three million driving jobs, it's going to go to
We're going to lose between half a million and a
million jobs, aren't we.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
That is a superb thing. I mean self driving cars
would be late.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
But the question is is not whether it's a wonderful
thing for the consumer. It's a great experience, and the
question is between that point and the next opportunity for
that community, how do you get there? And how much
is there is a is it a shock versus a transition?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
To ask you a question of you dominic that again,
I'm trying to I'm taking all your conscience in. I
know what you're thinking about, and you're thinking exactly what
I'm thinking, which is that when the roads are full
of self driving cars, surely nothing will ever move because
every teenager, I know, every teenager in Scotland will amuse
themselves by running up and down the road so that
all the cars constantly stop.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
So that's what self driving cars do.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Every time there's anything front of them, they immediately have
to stop because they must preserve life.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And if I was a.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Fifteen year old boy. I mean, I can already see myself. Yeah,
my life is spent.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
No, but because all trucks fill between nine pm and
three am, you won't see them anymore because they'll optimize
their their their No, they because they don't need to sleep.
They just manage and they don't need to be far apart.
You'll have convoys of aerodynamic vehicles three feet apart between
ten pm and three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Doesn't really answer my question, but I'll agree to move on.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
You said Merin that it was a low end job
thing like as those of you that know me, I
do about seventy three different jobs, and one of them
that I've done ever since I left drama school when
i was you know, fifty five, So this is a
long time ago. Very good, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Dominics does health tips, by the way, in his certain newsletters.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
But one of the ways i'n't my living is doing
voice shows. Now that has been kind of annihilated by AI,
and so that industry is thirty percent of what it was.
I write my finite flying Frisbee substack, but I use
AI all the time to get air to proof edit it.
(16:14):
For me. So what you used to do John at
a time you're out of a hand job, I get it.
It writes really good titles. It writes much better titles
than I do I use. I get the picture at
the top of the article designed by AI. So I'm
reducing work for graphic designers. But then at the same
time I would never have used a graphic designer. So
(16:35):
it's created something that I make my unacceptable music videos,
and the guy who I make the unacceptable music videos,
we both use AI like absolutely mad. So at the
same time as losing me work, it's also made me
more productive. And if you go back to Choices Canterbury Tales,
(16:56):
when however, any many people, each of varying walk to
Canterbury in whenever it was thirteen and eighty something. Of
those twenty nine or thirty jobs, I think twenty six
of those jobs still exist today. Now, obviously the nature
of those jobs has changed, but the job still exists.
(17:17):
And that's been through industrial revolutions, digital revolutions. Goodness knows what.
So I put it to you that while work will change,
there will still be most jobs, just the nature of
those jobs will change.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I think that's very fair every time there is a
big revolution, we assume that everyone will end up unemployed
and new jobs just sort of come out of the woodwork.
There's always something And if you think about the jobs
that many of our children do today, we can have
imagined them thirty years ago.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So that's a fair point.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
I think that's valid.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
But this is all about the transition speed because the
humans in evate will always be kind of learning new tricks.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
But it's how fast you can move which is the customer.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Before we leave AI, because we do like to all
well investments, John, should we be investing in AI related shocks?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (18:02):
I mean, honestly, I think the problem the only problem
with AI is the is the valuations, isn't it. And
I mean in the last couple of days even we've
had a bit of a drop and the big AI
stocks again now, I mean they've got the momentum behind them.
Everyone's spending an awful lot of money. My feeling is
(18:23):
that it's probably you know, a Capex bubble and it'll
pop and it's probably a wee bit late to start
buying in the video now. But at the same time,
you know it's you can't it's probably what's having a
bit of exposure and your way.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
To what Richard has said, then every stock is in
AI stock.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
Well except for the ones that go busts.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
If every company is going to massively enhance its productivity, yeah,
then we're gonna see profit imagines go up across the board.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And doesn't matter what you invest.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
In, don't that's not yeah, and I certainly these are
mass the valuable companies, but it's the valuations now which
for some they're they're so enormous. I mean, I want
you look at Palanteer as an example. The valuations are
so high that you're using that as a bubble trigger,
(19:13):
which says, Okay, I'll wait for that to come off
and I'll sell, but because you're expecting a shock.
Speaker 6 (19:19):
The US is currently about seventy percent of the MASCI wordldendix,
which is why you know, personally speaking, I think that's
too much. And it's not always been like that. I mean,
Japan at one point was something iculous but not quite
seventy bits high. And I think the MASCI seventy percent
of the US. And then the next one is Japan
(19:39):
we are about five, and the next one is the
UK We're about three and a half, So yeah, okay,
well that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
And about of our customers, so we've got about half
a million and in terms of single stocks about twenty
percent are non UK, eight UK and twenty percent are international,
of which ninety percent is US.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Okay, I say, we're gonna have to move on to
do another quote where we're already running out of quote time, John.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
I mean, this is sort of downstream you're talking about, Richard,
but this is Adam Smith talking about the state of
the public finances. And this is back and obviously when
malt Nations published seventeen seventy six in Great Britain, from
the time that we had first recourse to the ruin,
this expedient of perpetual funding, the reduction of the public
(20:28):
debt and time of peace has never borne any proportion
to its accumulation in time of war. So nothing's really nothing.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
To be changed, obviously.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
And I mean when you go back to the seventeen seventies,
so Adam Smith was talking about a time but you know,
there was a lot of war obviously, because you know
it was there's always a lot of war. When I
think about it, can hardly talk about you know, the
seventeen hundreds and not thinking well, the nineteen hundreds were
pretty bad as well. But so but over this period
of time, from about say the sixteen nineties onwards, we'd
(21:01):
gradually been working out different ways to fund the war
and raise new debt. So the Bank of England was
founded in sixteen ninety four, for example, which was all
about the kind of various wars that were going on
in Europe at the time. So it was like in
the Nine Years War, which was basically everyone against France,
and then there was a War of the Spanish Succession
which was basically everyone against France, and all of these
(21:22):
things kind of like led to various kind of the
evolution of various ways to kind of raise money for war.
And as Adam Smith says, the problem is that after that,
because I mean it's the same problem we faced just now.
You build up the debt during the time of crisis,
and during the time of crisis like COVID, the reason
for building up the debt is because there's an emergency.
(21:44):
The mergency is either war or nowadays it is a
thing like either two thousand and eight or COVID. But
the problem is that afterwards you don't I raised taxes
sufficiently because people objected paying taxes. I mean they objected
to paying taxes then too, and you so as a result,
by the time the next crisis comes around, you've built up.
(22:05):
You're building debt on top of debt. So COVID hit
when we were just starting to get over the hump
of the amount of mine we'd spent in two thousand
and eight. And so the question now, obviously is what
does Rachel Reeves do at the next budget, because really
she's kind of boxed herself in because the thing that
she actually needs to do is increase the tax base
(22:28):
across the board. But the Labor government has specifically said
that that is not what it's going to do. It's
not going to raise taxes on working people, which means
people at the lower end of the income.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Scale, the lower and the median worker.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Watually the median worker. Yeah, Actually, that's an interesting because
the median worker actually pays less as a proportion of
their income than they did I think it's even fifty
years ago.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The medium work worker in the UK has been fooling
for thirty fourty years, and the percentage being compaired by
the high end by the higher there has been rising
and rising and rising, and we pay the medium worker
in the UK pays significantly lower rate of income TAXT
than the medium worker across Europe.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
The funny dynamic.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
So if you want to now making you, if you
want to write a lot of money in the UK,
just lap beautiful points on income tax.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
Income tax is what you would need to raise I
make from because their tax base is very narrow. And
again that sort of means that the lay, you're vulnerable
to people at the top going somewhere else, But you're
also whacking productivity because obviously the higher, the higher up
the income ladder you go, the more your marginal pound
(23:38):
is tax. Now a lot of people have today graduates
in the room who have managed to you know, get
any well paid jobs. Then you know there's a point
at which for every once you earn over one hundred
thousand pounds, every extra pound g am, you're getting to
keep less than thirty pence of it actually if you're
paying the kind of graduate debt back as well. So
that's very much a kind of barrier to aspiration basically.
(24:03):
And then the top of that, because something I hadn't
really considered until actually read Adam Smith talking about the
tax side of things, just kind of very quickly, is
that we also have a very large number of people
on benefits who aren't paying any tax at all, and
you can sort of see that as actually, that's that's
the base of the untaxed pyramid. So you know, you
kind of need to somehow, you know, one way he
(24:25):
kind of reduced the amount of spending would be to
trim that bit. And at the you know, all the
things like the motibility payments and the personal independence payments
which are not necessarily actually going to the people who
need them, do need to be looked at. Now. Of course,
we don't have the time.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
One of my favorite stidoetics during the during the arguments
paut Pep was that there was something in the newspaper
about how if pips were if pips were bought down
to the level that that the government wanted to in
the last round, thirty percent of people and more than
that the but let's sake, woman, say, fifty percent of
people woul suffer financially, which maybe go, we'll hang on
(25:04):
the other fifty percent didn't need it in the first place, and.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
So we have a lot of that going on.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
But Let's assume let's play the tax game. Let's assume
that spending will not be cut, because it's not going
to be cut. We all know that, right, So new
taxes are required. Anyone got a really great idea for
a new tax?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Come on, That's not how it works.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's not how it works.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Anyone in a favorite of CDT on primary homes. I
am actually, yeah, idea you have to pay, won't any others?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah? And what.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, Okay, I don't think that's going to fly either,
And it's it's really all of this anything else for huh,
tax them, tax them already down all the substas of
falling anyway, yeah, sub season of falling electric cars, aren't they?
Speaker 6 (26:11):
I don't think you have to be a very low
road tax, be right. They are looking at reforming it
because which there was a country recently that's just changed it.
I think maybe in Norway because and it's now because
they went from saying, oh, yeah, we're not getting tax
road tax on kind of electric cars as much so
that you can all buy electric cars and that's so
good for the environment, and now they're sort of like
making the argument because there's so many more electric cars.
(26:32):
Oh no, I mean it's unfair when people who don't
use the car very often that they're not getting taxed.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
So but all these things imaginal, this is now a
lot of money. There is no way, no way to
raise large amount of money with that income tax.
Speaker 6 (26:45):
You need to raise one of the big four, you know,
you raise vat income tax NI or corporation tax and
all those four corporation tax raises the least and the
kind of the best thing to do would be either
expand vat just blanket make vat twenty percent on everything.
Then as opposed the older might dre exclusions. I mean,
think about them court team that's taking it complaining a bit,
(27:05):
but working it with a jaffa cakes or a cake
and a biscuit. I mean that kind of really, you know,
these some of these cases been going for years and
you're the same thing with complaining. We don't have enough
court capacity. So no, there's a lot of speeds to
simplify it. It's justically it's when I was and loser.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
The one thing we should probably worry about is pensions, right,
That's where that's where the money is.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
There's a lot of money there, right, Richard.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Thirteen trillion in property or trillion in pensions.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
They want it, they want it, but probably it's hard
to attacks everyone gets niggas in the West. You know
that the houses, But pensions is easier because most people
don't understand their pensions, so they don't know how much
money is being taken.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
So you can change the rules there very easily. You
nerverouspout that, Richard.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
It's not hard to go for the biggest pool. Yeah,
pensions number one income tax. So if you don't go
up the King of Come tax, you can't really make
it work. And they've just made a promise they shouldn't
have made.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
One about of Smith's canons of taxation is that the
tax should be easy to levy. Yes, and well, which
so well, that's the that's the problem that ragel Reeves has.
The other factor in all of this is that fifty
percent of government revenue comes from income tax and national
insurance roughly. But if we get Richard's mass unemployment scenario,
(28:15):
that a.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, but your AI should make the public sector so
much more productive.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
That opportunities for wealth creation. And I'm only talking about
a couple of million unemployed people long.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Work, and their workforce is not as big as it was.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Third quote, So my quote which I use in in
the book, in the new book, all money is a
matter of belief. And in the course of writing the book,
when I had somebody come in and fact check the
book at one point, and we discovered that Adam Smith
did not, in fact say all money is a matter
(28:57):
of belief, but it sort of goes along with much
of what he believed and much of what he's argued.
It's one of those attributed quotes. Now, the word belief
and the word credit, of course, have precisely the same roots.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
And if you look.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
At, you know, a pound note or a twenty pound note,
nobody uses hardly a something like ninety nine percent of
money is now digital and only one percent is cash.
But even that one percent that is cash, it says,
I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum
of twenty pounds. So even the cash notes that we
(29:35):
use are a promise, and as it turns out, they're
a promise of nothing, because once you would get your
pound of sterling silver, but now we don't even get that.
And the JP Morgan quote is credit is everything, and
everything is credit. Credit is an evidence of banking, but
it is not the money itself. Money is gold and
(29:59):
nothing thing else. And if we think about you know,
we've sort of gradually left gold since nineteen fourteen. We've
been leaving, leaving and leaving leaving gold, but gold and silver.
I have a gold I actually have a silver coin
in my pocket. I was going to carry a gold coin,
but because we live in a low trust society, I
(30:22):
felt it was stape.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
But here we haven't.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Here we have an old US dollar which was just
under an ounce of solid silver. And if I, you know,
pass that to one of you, which I'm not going
to do, the.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Value trust me if you trust me.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Of course, but the value of that money has now
immediately transferred to Merin because tells the silver and now
John and so it's a bear asset. Whoever holds the
money itself has the has the value. And that is
what money used to be. It is nobody else's liability.
But now today we live in the world now meren's
(31:00):
very reluctant to hand it back.
Speaker 5 (31:01):
It's nice.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
I was going to prove to you that we're a
high trust society by passing it around the audience and
sing if it came back.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Unfortunately your listenership, meren is not representative. But in any case,
the the we live in this system where obviously central
banks now still hold gold, and we have the role
of bitcoin, which is a digital bearer asset. In other words,
whoever has the bitcoin has the value. But everything else
(31:32):
in the world is somebody else's liability. It is credit,
it is belief. And when you suddenly look at the
money and the way that the financial world is built,
we just realize just how flimsy the whole thing is.
And that is what I'd like to highlight in my
little discourse.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Okay, so we all agree entirely with everything you have said. Right,
So if we are going to hold gold, how should
we hold it? And how much did we hold as
the centers of let's say our total wealth.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Well, I have a thing in the Flying Frisbee where
we have a thing called the doultch Fadniente portfolio, which
stands for the sweetness of doing nothing. And it's a
portfolio that you would put your money in and you
don't need to look at it every day, you don't
need to think about it. You reallocate maybe once or
twice a year, and we start off with a fifteen
(32:25):
percent allocation to gold and five percent to bitcoin. But
obviously you know this is many years ago, and so
those positions have grown outs, and you would say, and
a sensible portfolio manager would reallocate. But at the moment,
I just think all roads lead to gold and bitcoin.
So we're not reallocating, and we're just oversized. We have
(32:47):
a large section to to equities, but of which the
largest is the US equities, and we have twenty percent
in wealth preservation in bonds as a starting point, but
that's probably now maybe five percent or something because they
will be so rubbish. So but yes, I thought this
(33:09):
was an old Wall Street saying and I've used it
in my writing many many times, but it turns out
when you google it the person who said it is me. So,
but the saying is put five percent of your net
worth in gold and hope it doesn't go up. But
I think in this times you want to be you
want to be overweight gold and overweight bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And we do still hold more gold than bitcoin in
percentage terms.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I don't, but it's they.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Still hold you hold more bitcoin than gold. Yeah, in
percentage term.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
But the I find with bitcoin you tend to think
there's a sort of it's generational, and there are two
different things. One's a digital asset, one's an analog asset,
a physical asset, And you tend to five nineteen seventy
is about the dividing point, and anyone born after nineteen
seventy tends to be a bit more pro bitcoin. And
the further you go, and every time anyone born before
(34:01):
nineteen seventy tends to be less and more pro gold.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Okay, let's stick with from it. What about gold mining stocks?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I would recommend everyone to have zero percent of their
portfolio in gold mining stocks.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
They've got much trouble than they're worth.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Why would why would you even hold gold as opposed
to a gold ETN? Why hold the underline?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Well, because I mean, even though you can retrieve the
goal from the ETN, the point of holding gold is
the bearer asset, and so as soon as you add
an ETN to it becomes somebody else's liability.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
So if you're a purist, I mean.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Also isn't it it's the ultimate insurance and it's your
last resort asset. So if you are a gold believer,
Dominic and then I'm a gold believer. To if you're
a god believer, it makes surely logical sense to have
at least a small part of your gold held physically.
Not a new house, by the way, not in my house,
not buried in my garden. And you don't know where
I lived or where Dominic lives, but it makes sense
to hold some physical gold surely.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
Yeah, where it is? What about gold isn't the anti currency?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
It is an anti currency to say, yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
I suppose the thing is the physical thing is about
you know, if you have to get out of dodge quickly,
and that's the same bitcoin because the main although I've
always been not skeptical, just kind of agnostic, and bitcoin,
one of the things I can see it's useful for,
and actually better than gold for in some ways, is
if you are in an unstable regime like Venezuela, say,
(35:35):
and this happened, you can ship your mind. Well you
don't even need to ship, but you just need to
leave the country and then collect your bitcoin wherever you
end up. And if you've got gold coins, I mean,
my dad knew a guy who had to move out
of South Africa in a hurry, kind of like about
forty odd years ago, and he smuggled his wealth out
in gold coins, hitting down the back of the washing machine.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
Yeah, that is.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
Washing machines was anyway.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
So I don't think the reason to old own gold
is apocalypse. I just think if we just look at
what we were talking about tax and you know how
the government going to pay for everything, you can be
sure that one of the reasons whey is going to
pay for its currency debasement, and and so that's why
you own gold and.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
The Trump the anti currency.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Well, precisely, the US authorities have said we are going
to devalue the dollar. We need a cheaper dollar. The
dollar is not going to be the reserve currency of
the world in the way that it was because that
we need to get our balance of payments, we need
to reshore manufacturing, we go. The dollar is going to weaken,
the pound is going to weaken. All roads lead to
golden bitcoin. You need to own them. And it's it's
(36:42):
not just an apocalypse thing. It's it's a it's a
just a everyday practical thing.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Okay, all right, I tell you what we'll do.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Well end very quickly with asking O three panelers what
they would invest in. Now I didn't warm them know
about this, don.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
Okay, Well, as soon as I said, gorget, I can
take it up from dormantic. I think, yeah, UK stocks
because there among the cheapest ones in the developed market,
and I think that people the Americans organize on them.
That is we which at least is you know, slightly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Thanks John.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So, Dolly do you want? Do you want a general
thing or a racy stock on a racy stock tip? Okay,
my racy stock tip for you is a company called
comstock Load, which, oh my god, that's just the reaction
I want, which is doing two things. It has a
(37:36):
it's going to be America's largest recycler of solar panels
there is, and it's it's building various plants in Nevada
and in California. You can't put solar panels into landfill,
so they have to export them out of the state.
And it's building all these solar panel recycling sites on
(37:56):
the border with California next to the freeway, and and
extracting silver and aluminium. And it's a very cash generative business.
And it also has a business in sustainable aviation fuels
is one of its subsidiaries that is raising money for
at a billion pounds while it currently a billion dollars
while it currently only has a market cap of a
(38:18):
one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
That was racy and exciting, but it was not investment advice.
That was investment information.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
I saw you waggling your finger at me as I spoke,
and I was whitsterering.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
On too because you're whispering, and I figured they can
all go and look up the details later.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
But thank you for thatstic.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
I'm going for armaments and defense tech.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Okay, it's coming, which is effectively a social good exactly, sustainabilityability,
sustainability of life.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
We have to end it there.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Sorry, we've gone on a bit long, but thank you
so much for coming today. We really appreciate it, and
thank you to my brilliant panels today.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Thank you everyone, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
For listening to this week's Marrin Dog's Money. If you
like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever you listen
to podcasts. I keep sending questions or comments to Marrior
Money at Bloomberg dot net. You can also follow me
in John on Twitter or x I'm at Mariness w
and Johnny's John Underscore Stepec.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
This episode was.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Hosted by me Marin zumset Web. It's produced by Summersadi
Sound designed by Blake Maple's special thanks to my guests,
Blair Barrows and all the rest of the team at
Pamia House
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Maren's Somerset Web.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hello, Maren Talks Money Listeners, It's Meren Sunset Web. Before
we get back to our regular programming in early September,
we are bringing you something very special, recordings of the
conversations I had at Pania House for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now,
for those of you who don't know, the Fringe is
a three week arts and culture festival that began in
nineteen forty seven and it takes place in Edinburgh and
Scotland every August. For the past few years I have
(00:44):
been hosting conversations about markets, economics and investing from one
of the most special locations in Edinburgh as part of
this festival. I do it from Panmia House, which is
the last home of Adam Smith, philosopher and father of
modern economics, is where he completed the last editions of
his best sellers, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The
Wealth of Nations. This year we did a three day
(01:06):
run to was the end of August, and we are
bringing you the slightly edited conversations from those three days.
The panel I hosted on the second day, featured again
Bloomberg senior reporter John Steppek, also Richard Wilson, CEO of
the UK second largest investment platform, Interactive Investor, and Dominic Frisbee,
author of the Flying Frisbee investment newsletter and also author
(01:28):
of a new book just out.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Called The Secret History of Gold.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I think we will probably go straight into the show
because you all know my jokes from last year already.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
There was no point in going through them again.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I have three excellent guests, and what we're going to
do is keep the format exactly as it has.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Been in the past.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Everyone's going to tell me their favorite Adam Smith quote.
Well it's not quite their favoritecause everyone's got quite a
lot of favorites. John, how many favorites have you got
at least haven? And then we're going to talk around
their quote. So we're going to The idea is to
make it a very open conversation between the panel.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So my guests on my right, I've got John Stappek.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Who lots of you probably know already. John writes the
Money Just Sold newsletter for Bloomberg. On my left of
Dominic Frisbee, who has just written a brilliant new book,
The Secret History of Gold, and you will know I
think it's brilliant because I say so on the back
of the book.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
You do say, you say it is possibly the best
timed book ever. What a lovely endorsement.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Thank you, my pleasure. Dominic also writes the frying, Frying,
Flying Frisbee newsletter.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And on my.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Far left we have Richard Wilson, who is the CEO
of Interactive Investor and the COO of Aberdeen Asset Management,
right right, the first quote is going to come from Richard.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And thank you very much for having me today, and
hello everybody.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
So my quote was.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Labor was the first price, the original purchase money that
was paid for all things. It was not by gold
or by silver, but by labor that all wealth of
the world was originally purchased. And I'll sit in there
obviously mulling over that and thinking about our current reflections
on technology and AI, and you've kind of have to
(03:14):
and there's I think there are two different views of
this story. There's a view of AI that it's a
life enriching thing that everyone will have, you know, their
roles will be enhanced and there will be time to
invest in the things that you enjoy.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
And then there's the sharp end that I work in, where.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
I have about a thousand people in I are working
very hard to make you fabulously wealthy and happy, and
every day we're trying to improve our efficiencies so we
can improve our experience and ultimately improve our price position.
But the raality is is that we have in our
(03:56):
company every year currently now we see you're probably twenty
five percent and improvement in productivity.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
This year as an.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Example, year to date this year versus last year, we're
twenty percent bigger than we were last year, thank you
very much.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
But we have ten percent less calls.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
That come into our contact center, and those calls are
handled about fifteen percent faster because of the tools that
are available.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Can I interrupt quickly to ask you when you say
there are fewer calls coming in?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Why are their fewer calls coming in?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Because people are finding the answer to their questions why
are the chabbot or something like that.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
So it's a great question, and we look at that
as if we're kind of we master all of our information.
And I think there are several factors, but one of
them is the experience is just better because you don't. Obviously,
customers call in to tell me how wonderful they think
I am. See if that's never happened.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
It will now.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
So they call in because they're.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Struggling to find the answer to a problem or a decision,
or they're not happy with something, and if your experience
is better, you have less reason to call. And theres
an example last year in terms of basic coding, nearly
two million lines of code was written by AI for us,
and we wouldn't put ourselves out to be particularly special,
(05:16):
so part of that is just the experience being learning
faster to help more people. So we've about half a
million customers, different age, demographic, behavior norms, context. The experience
needs to be something that works for each of those individuals,
and they don't. One person's simple is not the same
as somebody else's, so it needs to be adaptive and smart.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
So you've got that picture and a look more broadly.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
In the UK today we have about one point three
million people work in contact centers, ne hundred thousand people
are work in software development, four hundred thousand people are
taxi drivers, four hundred thousand people are in HGV or delivery,
and another six or one thousand in.
Speaker 5 (05:59):
Other those roles.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
As I look at what's happening to us, you can
see quite rapidly some of those roles simply disappearing because
the machine just does it fast.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
And my worry for us.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Is that I think today we've got some like thirty
three million people in employment in the UK that we're
going to see us in the next three four five
years a material shift which is going to challenge some
of the basic premise about what the price of the
value of labor is and the ability to reskill is
going to be very, very difficult. And it wouldn't surprise
(06:38):
me if we're talking about structure on employment which is
one two three million over the next three to five years,
which is very hard to deal with.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
But on the other hand, the very thing that you're
talking about is the great productivity revolution that we've been
waiting for for so long that could transform the way
that the economy works in general.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
But that's okay, there's that thesis.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Now you look at somewhere, if you're looking at somewhere
in the Midlands where the only employer in the town
is the contact center, and they have more than one
generation in the contact center, and the people who run
the local shop run because people of the contact center
spend their money there. The notion that skills are fungible
and or mobile and the ability to learn new skills
(07:26):
is a single generational thing. I think it's just made
up where I come from. When they close the opencast
minds and the textile mills, those jobs, that was a
two generation issue. If you took massive action to try
and fix it it, otherwise you created significant social and dislocation.
And I think my sense is that that's without massive action,
(07:47):
that's where we'll be. What kind of action you need
to have forced forestry skilling. You've got to have enormous
incentives to learn new skills, which have to be sponsored
at a state level, or you'll you'll end up with
the case in Dundee. We know that post the timeclosure,
thirty years of a structural social whole because you haven't
(08:10):
forced the community to move into new skills.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Okay, what are these new skills?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Because this is a question that I mean, we're talking
about questions right now, but you're all thinking when it
comes to question time, you're going to ask what are
my children learned?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
What skills are my children gap? What do they study.
What's going to be left?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Well, certainly, I mean from when I look at what
we're I mean, the health care is an enormous thing.
Data is an enormous thing. And data it's not going
to be simple data analysis because the machine will do
all that. This is data from a kind of a
neuroscience perspective, where you're learning how people's brains function, the
response to data so you can improve outcomes for them,
(08:47):
the ability to understand the structure of information. So data
health education they will be. And obviously today defense there
will be big things tomorrow, all these mechanical skills, coding, answering, phones,
doing accounting. Most accounting work is collating information or gone,
(09:08):
and god help us the self driving cars that shall
be emerging fairly soon.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You're saying that it sounds like all the lower end
jobs will be gone and only higher end jobs will remain.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yep, So you have a situation where you have and
you have a real situation because that gives you social unrest.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, gives you again as if income disparities, wealth disparities
and no end of problems, which might bring us back
to universal basic income, so we can return to in
a minute, except rhin. Now Dominic is desperate to say something.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, I just wanted to ask a question. Is like,
I can just see, you know a lot of people
just sinking into the welfare trap, the same welfare trap
that all the miners fell into in the in the eighties.
And you know, is welfare the answer?
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Well, it can't be the answer because it's unproductive. I mean,
where I came from, you had more than one generation
on welfare, so that was that became normalized, and that
that creates all sorts of side effects that we'll read
the stats about and drug abuse and various olids. So
you can't let that happen. You've got to You've got
to fire hose the skill set and force it out,
(10:11):
create incentives, push people to actually do things that choose
not to do because humans are pretty I am pretty lazy.
If you don't force it and force that people to
take those risks, you will end up with a welfare
trap which you can't get out of.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Now you're talking about massive changes to the welfare system
and changing the incentives built.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Into the world.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
You actually have to do that is.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
The kind of thing that won't happen for a long time.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
For those who don't take those actions and welfare you
have to frankly provide penalties if they don't take those actions.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's extraordinarily definitely cult a suppose
and then that is the whole point of it. Well,
and then what are the actually landin if the reate
at which EA is starting to suck the jobs out
of the market is that high? I mean, what was
the thing? Because I guess I always kind of go
(11:02):
back to the thing of but every time we say
technology is going to replace jobs and actually we do
end up being fine or having new ones. And you're right,
the local communities that are screwed over by these things
aren't fine, and we should find a solution to that.
But in terms of things like mass unemployment that robots
were going to cause, like twenty years ago, that kind
(11:25):
of thing hasn't happened to you. I mean, do you
think that AI really is the game changer on that
front or well?
Speaker 4 (11:31):
The answer of course is who knows. But I look
at what we're doing today, which is accelerating and it
I mean, the power of this stuff is extraordinary. It's
just extraordinary, and it moves not just what it does,
but the right it's learning is extraordinary. So we have
now you have a context where we'll receive ten thousand
(11:54):
bits of correspondence a day, and we have a bunch
of people whose job it is to ee all that,
put it in a file and send it to the
right person. The machine within sixty days had learned how
to do all that kind of ninety nine point four
percent accuracy and.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Just did it. And you're thinking, again, Okay, that's a
bit uncomfortable, but.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It also feels like in a world of falling fertility
and falling population growth, etc. This seems like a wonderful
thing in that we have fewer workers. We're going to
have many fewer workers going forward, and at the moment
we try and solve what turns out to be a
non existent problem with immigration, but possibly the.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Problem doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
We don't need a rising workforce, and so yours a
it seems like the solution to all the problems that
are running through air.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Right, although you have an aging population as well and
a pay as you go social system, so you bankrupt
yourself in the meantime because you can't who's going to
pay my bills in my eighties?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Because it's making it very difficult to make this conversation
go in an optimistic direction, really.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Doing the opportunity. But you have to skill up. This
is a thing. You can't sit back and when.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Wait, I'll say something, I sort of take up on
John's point that that I mean, I am absolutely captivated
by everything you say, but I sort of take up
on John's point that a lot of these things we
say it's going to happen, and then we find a
way of muddling through that said, I mean, having sat
in a self driving Tesla in Florida earlier in the
(13:29):
year and gone, this is a far better driver than
I am. And you know I'm an okay driver, and
but but you know, I just think I just think
driver's cars are pretty much inevitable. And the main barrier
is regulatory and so you know that's the government's choice
when they want to allow it, and you know they
(13:49):
can stop it happening, but you know, it just means
we'll lose because we'll be less productive. But in any case,
so that's you know, a million jobs, is it We're
going to lose a driver.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Or the tax hit drivers there are four hundred thousand,
and then there are three hundred thousand HTV drivers another
six hundred thousand delivery drivers.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, so according to Lama for so maybe so one
point three million driving jobs, it's going to go to
We're going to lose between half a million and a
million jobs, aren't we.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
That is a superb thing. I mean self driving cars
would be late.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
But the question is is not whether it's a wonderful
thing for the consumer. It's a great experience, and the
question is between that point and the next opportunity for
that community, how do you get there? And how much
is there is a is it a shock versus a transition?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
To ask you a question of you dominic that again,
I'm trying to I'm taking all your conscience in. I
know what you're thinking about, and you're thinking exactly what
I'm thinking, which is that when the roads are full
of self driving cars, surely nothing will ever move because
every teenager, I know, every teenager in Scotland will amuse
themselves by running up and down the road so that
all the cars constantly stop.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
So that's what self driving cars do.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Every time there's anything front of them, they immediately have
to stop because they must preserve life.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And if I was a.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Fifteen year old boy. I mean, I can already see myself. Yeah,
my life is spent.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
No, but because all trucks fill between nine pm and
three am, you won't see them anymore because they'll optimize
their their their No, they because they don't need to sleep.
They just manage and they don't need to be far apart.
You'll have convoys of aerodynamic vehicles three feet apart between
ten pm and three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Doesn't really answer my question, but I'll agree to move on.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
You said Merin that it was a low end job
thing like as those of you that know me, I
do about seventy three different jobs, and one of them
that I've done ever since I left drama school when
i was you know, fifty five, So this is a
long time ago. Very good, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Dominics does health tips, by the way, in his certain newsletters.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
But one of the ways i'n't my living is doing
voice shows. Now that has been kind of annihilated by AI,
and so that industry is thirty percent of what it was.
I write my finite flying Frisbee substack, but I use
AI all the time to get air to proof edit it.
(16:14):
For me. So what you used to do John at
a time you're out of a hand job, I get it.
It writes really good titles. It writes much better titles
than I do I use. I get the picture at
the top of the article designed by AI. So I'm
reducing work for graphic designers. But then at the same
time I would never have used a graphic designer. So
(16:35):
it's created something that I make my unacceptable music videos,
and the guy who I make the unacceptable music videos,
we both use AI like absolutely mad. So at the
same time as losing me work, it's also made me
more productive. And if you go back to Choices Canterbury Tales,
(16:56):
when however, any many people, each of varying walk to
Canterbury in whenever it was thirteen and eighty something. Of
those twenty nine or thirty jobs, I think twenty six
of those jobs still exist today. Now, obviously the nature
of those jobs has changed, but the job still exists.
(17:17):
And that's been through industrial revolutions, digital revolutions. Goodness knows what.
So I put it to you that while work will change,
there will still be most jobs, just the nature of
those jobs will change.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I think that's very fair every time there is a
big revolution, we assume that everyone will end up unemployed
and new jobs just sort of come out of the woodwork.
There's always something And if you think about the jobs
that many of our children do today, we can have
imagined them thirty years ago.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So that's a fair point.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
I think that's valid.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
But this is all about the transition speed because the
humans in evate will always be kind of learning new tricks.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
But it's how fast you can move which is the customer.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Before we leave AI, because we do like to all
well investments, John, should we be investing in AI related shocks?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (18:02):
I mean, honestly, I think the problem the only problem
with AI is the is the valuations, isn't it. And
I mean in the last couple of days even we've
had a bit of a drop and the big AI
stocks again now, I mean they've got the momentum behind them.
Everyone's spending an awful lot of money. My feeling is
(18:23):
that it's probably you know, a Capex bubble and it'll
pop and it's probably a wee bit late to start
buying in the video now. But at the same time,
you know it's you can't it's probably what's having a
bit of exposure and your way.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
To what Richard has said, then every stock is in
AI stock.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
Well except for the ones that go busts.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
If every company is going to massively enhance its productivity, yeah,
then we're gonna see profit imagines go up across the board.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And doesn't matter what you invest.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
In, don't that's not yeah, and I certainly these are
mass the valuable companies, but it's the valuations now which
for some they're they're so enormous. I mean, I want
you look at Palanteer as an example. The valuations are
so high that you're using that as a bubble trigger,
(19:13):
which says, Okay, I'll wait for that to come off
and I'll sell, but because you're expecting a shock.
Speaker 6 (19:19):
The US is currently about seventy percent of the MASCI wordldendix,
which is why you know, personally speaking, I think that's
too much. And it's not always been like that. I mean,
Japan at one point was something iculous but not quite
seventy bits high. And I think the MASCI seventy percent
of the US. And then the next one is Japan
(19:39):
we are about five, and the next one is the
UK We're about three and a half, So yeah, okay,
well that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
And about of our customers, so we've got about half
a million and in terms of single stocks about twenty
percent are non UK, eight UK and twenty percent are international,
of which ninety percent is US.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Okay, I say, we're gonna have to move on to
do another quote where we're already running out of quote time, John.
Speaker 6 (20:07):
I mean, this is sort of downstream you're talking about, Richard,
but this is Adam Smith talking about the state of
the public finances. And this is back and obviously when
malt Nations published seventeen seventy six in Great Britain, from
the time that we had first recourse to the ruin,
this expedient of perpetual funding, the reduction of the public
(20:28):
debt and time of peace has never borne any proportion
to its accumulation in time of war. So nothing's really nothing.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
To be changed, obviously.
Speaker 6 (20:39):
And I mean when you go back to the seventeen seventies,
so Adam Smith was talking about a time but you know,
there was a lot of war obviously, because you know
it was there's always a lot of war. When I
think about it, can hardly talk about you know, the
seventeen hundreds and not thinking well, the nineteen hundreds were
pretty bad as well. But so but over this period
of time, from about say the sixteen nineties onwards, we'd
(21:01):
gradually been working out different ways to fund the war
and raise new debt. So the Bank of England was
founded in sixteen ninety four, for example, which was all
about the kind of various wars that were going on
in Europe at the time. So it was like in
the Nine Years War, which was basically everyone against France,
and then there was a War of the Spanish Succession
which was basically everyone against France, and all of these
(21:22):
things kind of like led to various kind of the
evolution of various ways to kind of raise money for war.
And as Adam Smith says, the problem is that after that,
because I mean it's the same problem we faced just now.
You build up the debt during the time of crisis,
and during the time of crisis like COVID, the reason
for building up the debt is because there's an emergency.
(21:44):
The mergency is either war or nowadays it is a
thing like either two thousand and eight or COVID. But
the problem is that afterwards you don't I raised taxes
sufficiently because people objected paying taxes. I mean they objected
to paying taxes then too, and you so as a result,
by the time the next crisis comes around, you've built up.
(22:05):
You're building debt on top of debt. So COVID hit
when we were just starting to get over the hump
of the amount of mine we'd spent in two thousand
and eight. And so the question now, obviously is what
does Rachel Reeves do at the next budget, because really
she's kind of boxed herself in because the thing that
she actually needs to do is increase the tax base
(22:28):
across the board. But the Labor government has specifically said
that that is not what it's going to do. It's
not going to raise taxes on working people, which means
people at the lower end of the income.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Scale, the lower and the median worker.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Watually the median worker. Yeah, Actually, that's an interesting because
the median worker actually pays less as a proportion of
their income than they did I think it's even fifty
years ago.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The medium work worker in the UK has been fooling
for thirty fourty years, and the percentage being compaired by
the high end by the higher there has been rising
and rising and rising, and we pay the medium worker
in the UK pays significantly lower rate of income TAXT
than the medium worker across Europe.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
The funny dynamic.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
So if you want to now making you, if you
want to write a lot of money in the UK,
just lap beautiful points on income tax.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
Income tax is what you would need to raise I
make from because their tax base is very narrow. And
again that sort of means that the lay, you're vulnerable
to people at the top going somewhere else, But you're
also whacking productivity because obviously the higher, the higher up
the income ladder you go, the more your marginal pound
(23:38):
is tax. Now a lot of people have today graduates
in the room who have managed to you know, get
any well paid jobs. Then you know there's a point
at which for every once you earn over one hundred
thousand pounds, every extra pound g am, you're getting to
keep less than thirty pence of it actually if you're
paying the kind of graduate debt back as well. So
that's very much a kind of barrier to aspiration basically.
(24:03):
And then the top of that, because something I hadn't
really considered until actually read Adam Smith talking about the
tax side of things, just kind of very quickly, is
that we also have a very large number of people
on benefits who aren't paying any tax at all, and
you can sort of see that as actually, that's that's
the base of the untaxed pyramid. So you know, you
kind of need to somehow, you know, one way he
(24:25):
kind of reduced the amount of spending would be to
trim that bit. And at the you know, all the
things like the motibility payments and the personal independence payments
which are not necessarily actually going to the people who
need them, do need to be looked at. Now. Of course,
we don't have the time.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
One of my favorite stidoetics during the during the arguments
paut Pep was that there was something in the newspaper
about how if pips were if pips were bought down
to the level that that the government wanted to in
the last round, thirty percent of people and more than
that the but let's sake, woman, say, fifty percent of
people woul suffer financially, which maybe go, we'll hang on
(25:04):
the other fifty percent didn't need it in the first place, and.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
So we have a lot of that going on.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
But Let's assume let's play the tax game. Let's assume
that spending will not be cut, because it's not going
to be cut. We all know that, right, So new
taxes are required. Anyone got a really great idea for
a new tax?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Come on, That's not how it works.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's not how it works.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Anyone in a favorite of CDT on primary homes. I
am actually, yeah, idea you have to pay, won't any others?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah? And what.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, Okay, I don't think that's going to fly either,
And it's it's really all of this anything else for huh,
tax them, tax them already down all the substas of
falling anyway, yeah, sub season of falling electric cars, aren't they?
Speaker 6 (26:11):
I don't think you have to be a very low
road tax, be right. They are looking at reforming it
because which there was a country recently that's just changed it.
I think maybe in Norway because and it's now because
they went from saying, oh, yeah, we're not getting tax
road tax on kind of electric cars as much so
that you can all buy electric cars and that's so
good for the environment, and now they're sort of like
making the argument because there's so many more electric cars.
(26:32):
Oh no, I mean it's unfair when people who don't
use the car very often that they're not getting taxed.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
So but all these things imaginal, this is now a
lot of money. There is no way, no way to
raise large amount of money with that income tax.
Speaker 6 (26:45):
You need to raise one of the big four, you know,
you raise vat income tax NI or corporation tax and
all those four corporation tax raises the least and the
kind of the best thing to do would be either
expand vat just blanket make vat twenty percent on everything.
Then as opposed the older might dre exclusions. I mean,
think about them court team that's taking it complaining a bit,
(27:05):
but working it with a jaffa cakes or a cake
and a biscuit. I mean that kind of really, you know,
these some of these cases been going for years and
you're the same thing with complaining. We don't have enough
court capacity. So no, there's a lot of speeds to
simplify it. It's justically it's when I was and loser.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
The one thing we should probably worry about is pensions, right,
That's where that's where the money is.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
There's a lot of money there, right, Richard.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Thirteen trillion in property or trillion in pensions.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
They want it, they want it, but probably it's hard
to attacks everyone gets niggas in the West. You know
that the houses, But pensions is easier because most people
don't understand their pensions, so they don't know how much
money is being taken.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
So you can change the rules there very easily. You
nerverouspout that, Richard.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
It's not hard to go for the biggest pool. Yeah,
pensions number one income tax. So if you don't go
up the King of Come tax, you can't really make
it work. And they've just made a promise they shouldn't
have made.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
One about of Smith's canons of taxation is that the
tax should be easy to levy. Yes, and well, which
so well, that's the that's the problem that ragel Reeves has.
The other factor in all of this is that fifty
percent of government revenue comes from income tax and national
insurance roughly. But if we get Richard's mass unemployment scenario,
(28:15):
that a.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, but your AI should make the public sector so
much more productive.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
That opportunities for wealth creation. And I'm only talking about
a couple of million unemployed people long.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Work, and their workforce is not as big as it was.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Third quote, So my quote which I use in in
the book, in the new book, all money is a
matter of belief. And in the course of writing the book,
when I had somebody come in and fact check the
book at one point, and we discovered that Adam Smith
did not, in fact say all money is a matter
(28:57):
of belief, but it sort of goes along with much
of what he believed and much of what he's argued.
It's one of those attributed quotes. Now, the word belief
and the word credit, of course, have precisely the same roots.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
And if you look.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
At, you know, a pound note or a twenty pound note,
nobody uses hardly a something like ninety nine percent of
money is now digital and only one percent is cash.
But even that one percent that is cash, it says,
I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum
of twenty pounds. So even the cash notes that we
(29:35):
use are a promise, and as it turns out, they're
a promise of nothing, because once you would get your
pound of sterling silver, but now we don't even get that.
And the JP Morgan quote is credit is everything, and
everything is credit. Credit is an evidence of banking, but
it is not the money itself. Money is gold and
(29:59):
nothing thing else. And if we think about you know,
we've sort of gradually left gold since nineteen fourteen. We've
been leaving, leaving and leaving leaving gold, but gold and silver.
I have a gold I actually have a silver coin
in my pocket. I was going to carry a gold coin,
but because we live in a low trust society, I
(30:22):
felt it was stape.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
But here we haven't.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Here we have an old US dollar which was just
under an ounce of solid silver. And if I, you know,
pass that to one of you, which I'm not going
to do, the.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Value trust me if you trust me.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Of course, but the value of that money has now
immediately transferred to Merin because tells the silver and now
John and so it's a bear asset. Whoever holds the
money itself has the has the value. And that is
what money used to be. It is nobody else's liability.
But now today we live in the world now meren's
(31:00):
very reluctant to hand it back.
Speaker 5 (31:01):
It's nice.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
I was going to prove to you that we're a
high trust society by passing it around the audience and
sing if it came back.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Unfortunately your listenership, meren is not representative. But in any case,
the the we live in this system where obviously central
banks now still hold gold, and we have the role
of bitcoin, which is a digital bearer asset. In other words,
whoever has the bitcoin has the value. But everything else
(31:32):
in the world is somebody else's liability. It is credit,
it is belief. And when you suddenly look at the
money and the way that the financial world is built,
we just realize just how flimsy the whole thing is.
And that is what I'd like to highlight in my
little discourse.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Okay, so we all agree entirely with everything you have said. Right,
So if we are going to hold gold, how should
we hold it? And how much did we hold as
the centers of let's say our total wealth.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Well, I have a thing in the Flying Frisbee where
we have a thing called the doultch Fadniente portfolio, which
stands for the sweetness of doing nothing. And it's a
portfolio that you would put your money in and you
don't need to look at it every day, you don't
need to think about it. You reallocate maybe once or
twice a year, and we start off with a fifteen
(32:25):
percent allocation to gold and five percent to bitcoin. But
obviously you know this is many years ago, and so
those positions have grown outs, and you would say, and
a sensible portfolio manager would reallocate. But at the moment,
I just think all roads lead to gold and bitcoin.
So we're not reallocating, and we're just oversized. We have
(32:47):
a large section to to equities, but of which the
largest is the US equities, and we have twenty percent
in wealth preservation in bonds as a starting point, but
that's probably now maybe five percent or something because they
will be so rubbish. So but yes, I thought this
(33:09):
was an old Wall Street saying and I've used it
in my writing many many times, but it turns out
when you google it the person who said it is me. So,
but the saying is put five percent of your net
worth in gold and hope it doesn't go up. But
I think in this times you want to be you
want to be overweight gold and overweight bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And we do still hold more gold than bitcoin in
percentage terms.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I don't, but it's they.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Still hold you hold more bitcoin than gold. Yeah, in
percentage term.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
But the I find with bitcoin you tend to think
there's a sort of it's generational, and there are two
different things. One's a digital asset, one's an analog asset,
a physical asset, And you tend to five nineteen seventy
is about the dividing point, and anyone born after nineteen
seventy tends to be a bit more pro bitcoin. And
the further you go, and every time anyone born before
(34:01):
nineteen seventy tends to be less and more pro gold.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Okay, let's stick with from it. What about gold mining stocks?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
I would recommend everyone to have zero percent of their
portfolio in gold mining stocks.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
They've got much trouble than they're worth.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Why would why would you even hold gold as opposed
to a gold ETN? Why hold the underline?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Well, because I mean, even though you can retrieve the
goal from the ETN, the point of holding gold is
the bearer asset, and so as soon as you add
an ETN to it becomes somebody else's liability.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
So if you're a purist, I mean.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Also isn't it it's the ultimate insurance and it's your
last resort asset. So if you are a gold believer,
Dominic and then I'm a gold believer. To if you're
a god believer, it makes surely logical sense to have
at least a small part of your gold held physically.
Not a new house, by the way, not in my house,
not buried in my garden. And you don't know where
I lived or where Dominic lives, but it makes sense
to hold some physical gold surely.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
Yeah, where it is? What about gold isn't the anti currency?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
It is an anti currency to say, yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
I suppose the thing is the physical thing is about
you know, if you have to get out of dodge quickly,
and that's the same bitcoin because the main although I've
always been not skeptical, just kind of agnostic, and bitcoin,
one of the things I can see it's useful for,
and actually better than gold for in some ways, is
if you are in an unstable regime like Venezuela, say,
(35:35):
and this happened, you can ship your mind. Well you
don't even need to ship, but you just need to
leave the country and then collect your bitcoin wherever you
end up. And if you've got gold coins, I mean,
my dad knew a guy who had to move out
of South Africa in a hurry, kind of like about
forty odd years ago, and he smuggled his wealth out
in gold coins, hitting down the back of the washing machine.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
Yeah, that is.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
Washing machines was anyway.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
So I don't think the reason to old own gold
is apocalypse. I just think if we just look at
what we were talking about tax and you know how
the government going to pay for everything, you can be
sure that one of the reasons whey is going to
pay for its currency debasement, and and so that's why
you own gold and.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
The Trump the anti currency.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Well, precisely, the US authorities have said we are going
to devalue the dollar. We need a cheaper dollar. The
dollar is not going to be the reserve currency of
the world in the way that it was because that
we need to get our balance of payments, we need
to reshore manufacturing, we go. The dollar is going to weaken,
the pound is going to weaken. All roads lead to
golden bitcoin. You need to own them. And it's it's
(36:42):
not just an apocalypse thing. It's it's a it's a
just a everyday practical thing.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Okay, all right, I tell you what we'll do.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Well end very quickly with asking O three panelers what
they would invest in. Now I didn't warm them know
about this, don.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
Okay, Well, as soon as I said, gorget, I can
take it up from dormantic. I think, yeah, UK stocks
because there among the cheapest ones in the developed market,
and I think that people the Americans organize on them.
That is we which at least is you know, slightly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Thanks John.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So, Dolly do you want? Do you want a general
thing or a racy stock on a racy stock tip? Okay,
my racy stock tip for you is a company called
comstock Load, which, oh my god, that's just the reaction
I want, which is doing two things. It has a
(37:36):
it's going to be America's largest recycler of solar panels
there is, and it's it's building various plants in Nevada
and in California. You can't put solar panels into landfill,
so they have to export them out of the state.
And it's building all these solar panel recycling sites on
(37:56):
the border with California next to the freeway, and and
extracting silver and aluminium. And it's a very cash generative business.
And it also has a business in sustainable aviation fuels
is one of its subsidiaries that is raising money for
at a billion pounds while it currently a billion dollars
while it currently only has a market cap of a
(38:18):
one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
That was racy and exciting, but it was not investment advice.
That was investment information.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
I saw you waggling your finger at me as I spoke,
and I was whitsterering.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
On too because you're whispering, and I figured they can
all go and look up the details later.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
But thank you for thatstic.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
I'm going for armaments and defense tech.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Okay, it's coming, which is effectively a social good exactly, sustainabilityability,
sustainability of life.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
We have to end it there.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Sorry, we've gone on a bit long, but thank you
so much for coming today. We really appreciate it, and
thank you to my brilliant panels today.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Thank you everyone, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
For listening to this week's Marrin Dog's Money. If you
like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever you listen
to podcasts. I keep sending questions or comments to Marrior
Money at Bloomberg dot net. You can also follow me
in John on Twitter or x I'm at Mariness w
and Johnny's John Underscore Stepec.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
This episode was.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Hosted by me Marin zumset Web. It's produced by Summersadi
Sound designed by Blake Maple's special thanks to my guests,
Blair Barrows and all the rest of the team at
Pamia House
Host
Merryn Somerset Webb
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