The wealth tax campaigner Gary Stevenson has announced he is quitting the YouTube channel that made his name, citing health concerns – a decision that follows a bruising reception to his recent television documentary.
Stevenson, whose weekly Gary’s Economics videos attracted 1.64 million subscribers after taking off during the Covid pandemic, posted a 48-minute address to camera announcing his departure. An abridged 18-minute signoff, entitled "It’s time to say goodbye", was shared on Sunday morning. He said it would be the last weekly video, as they had become "harder and harder as he had got more tired".
“Gary Stevenson quits YouTube channel after health concerns and backlash over his Channel 4 documentary.”
Born in 1986 in east London, Stevenson made millions as a Citibank employee in the years after the financial crisis before retiring with burnout and disillusionment. He became the self-styled anti-inequality campaigner arguing for a 2% tax on individual wealth over £10m, which he said would raise £24bn a year for the Treasury.
But his arguments faced scrutiny after a Channel 4 documentary, How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson, released last month. The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan wrote that the presenter was "outdone and undone by almost all of his interviewees … left floundering, without convincing comebacks", concluding it was "a faintly embarrassing waste of time". The tax lawyer Dan Neidle told Stevenson "to separate your emotional reaction to inequality from a rational assessment of the best tools for it" and described his plans as "populist claptrap". Even a more sympathetic review in the Telegraph said Stevenson had "all the traits of the self-aggrandising online influencer class … so used to addressing his followers straight down the camera that engaging in debate with people of differing views leaves him floundering".
The backlash appears to have taken its toll. The Telegraph reported that Stevenson cited burnout from content creation following criticism of the documentary.
Despite the reception to the documentary, Stevenson’s 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.