“Tax the rich.”

Initially just something AOC hollers when she orgasms, it’s now what every human being under the age of 30 is scrawling on the toilet walls of their Instagram bio.

It’s even become merch. A socialist slogan, slapped on shirts and hats like Coca Cola logos and Mickey Mouse’s ears. Buy this t-shirt, make rich, crew over the capitalist pigs oppressing yo-I mean, us.

We’ve all seen the podcasters. The streamers and the journos, sat in their ornate studios, talking in beautifully simple terms about how “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, megaphoning their ideas into the aether on a platform created by… err… billionaires.

Rather than everyone pointing out the blatant hypocrisy, these clips are met with likes and shares galore. And why not? It feels good to click that heart button, doesn’t it? It feels like you’ve done something.

Believe me, I get the anger. It’s easy to hate rich people when you’re struggling to pay this month’s rent, or when the only way to stay warm this winter is to become morbidly obese, safe inside an insulating layer of blubber at all times. If you have a better idea, I’d like ot hear it.

And frankly, I agree! Companies like Amazon, Google, Shell, Meta — they should be paying their fair share of corporation tax. We should be closing those tax loopholes until they’re airtight. That part isn’t controversial.

But let’s not call the whole thing evil. And if we must, then act like it. If you care that much about the local economy, go buy your crap from the high street. Those blue Amazon vans aren’t driving around your local area as a kind of IRL product placement. They’re there because we’re a nation of fat and lazy bastards who prioritise convenience over everything. We’ll whinge about the lack of good restaurants, sat on our fat arses waiting for an illegal immigrant to bike a pad thai to our front door. We want the billionaire’s head on a plate, but we’ll also have a tantrum if we don’t get that incredibly important kitchen roll holder at 8am tomorrow morning.

If you want to fix things, you can’t just shout: “Just tax the rich!”

I mean, in today’s political climate, you actually can. And you’ll quickly be one of the fastest-growing political parties in the UK. Chant it and pray nobody notices your demented policies on taxation, immigration, spending or the fact that it’s 2026 and the leader believes a woman can have a 12-inch dong.

Unfortunately, the UK actually runs on numbers. The progressive left don’t like this bit. They hate money. Seems a bit ‘Jewy’.

Numbers are facts and facts are boring and boring is reality. And reality is about as pleasant as the smell emanating from a toilet at a vegan restaurant.

So, let’s look at the boring, smelly, but very real numbers. The UK government spends roughly £1.3 trillion a year across all public services, welfare, pensions, healthcare, defence… illegal immigration—the whole machine. And it funds that mainly through taxation—about £1.1 trillion a year in total receipts. Income tax, VAT, national insurance, the rest.

They’re a mafia with U-turns.

1. You earn the money.
2. They spend it.

What a deal!

Here’s where we reach the problem.

£1.1 trillion is an eye-watering sum, but it’s a finite sum; you can’t extract infinite value from a fixed figure. Therefore, naturally, the system has a price-per-citizen. A numerical value they place on each other us. Take ~£1.1 trillion, divide it by ~68 million people, and you end up roughly in the neighbourhood of £15,000–£20,000 per-person-per-year. That’s what they’re able to spend on you. That’s what it takes, on average, to fund your NHS access, your pension, and to fix just enough potholes on your road to prevent you from becoming a domestic terrorist.

Now here’s where the comedy starts.

The full-time taxpayer in the UK pays something like £6,000–£13,000 per year in income tax and National Insurance combined. I’ve crunched the numbers, and after a series of rigorous sums, I’ve concluded that £6,000 is less than £15,000. How much less? Ask an expert.

The point is, most of us don’t fund ourselves. We get more than we pay in. In order for that to function, some have to get less. Much less. Our system is quietly dependent on a small number of high level wealth generators doing a disproportionate amount of heavy lifting. Who shoulders that burden?

The rich.

“We will find a tiny number of people and quietly ask them to replace a large chunk of the system’s funding.”

Which is fine… until the rich discover planes. Or accountants. When they do, they hide or leave. It’s already happening - so many have lef the UK, it’s starting to look like my pals’ group chat when I started Triggernometry.

Take Nik Storonsky, for example. He’s exactly the kind of guy politicians say they want more of. The man built Revolut - a massive company in the UK worth roughly £55 billion. But then, shocker, he starts shifting himself and his business elsewhere because he can get a better deal in Dubai. Everyone loses their shit and calls him “greedy”. Gee, it’s almost like business is about making as much money as possible.

Think about that. Nik would rather live next door to the Ayatollah than share a country with Keir Starmer. We’re more screwed than Bonnie Blue on a day trip to Rotherham.

If a high-contributor like Nik Storonsky, who generates tens of millions in tax, leaves, that’s no leftist victory. It’s seriously bad news. He isn’t just ‘one rich guy.’ He is thousands of average taxpayers rolled into one bloke. And you can’t replace that with a trending hashtag. I mean you can, and that’s the experiment we’re conducting at the moment in the UK. How do you think it’s going?

Britain is a dinner party where one person is paying 90% of the bill, another is ordering champagne, and the rest are loudly debating whether the olives are organic and if we should twin a London borough with Rafah.

Don’t shoot the messenger. This isn’t a moral argument. It’s reality.

You can absolutely tax them more. But you can’t pretend they already don’t contribute a significant amount of tax, that they’re not highly mobile, that they won’t leave, or that social engagement isn’t a like for like replacements. Likes and retweets are not currency. Believe me, I’ve tried.

So, how do we fix it?

The answer is, like the numbers, very boring. Stable tax design, policies that work, retention of high contributor, and a state that spends money responsibly. No wonder it doesn’t go viral.

But that’s just it. This is where the Gary’s Economics of the world fall apart. They talk about “wealth” as if it’s a physical pile of gold coins hidden under a billionaire’s mattress. It isn’t. It’s a highly liquid network of investments, and it can all be moved to Singapore, faster than you can say “guillotine”.

So sure, “Tax The Rich.” Say it, wear it, print it on a tote bag. But understand what it means in a £1.3 trillion economy. Understand that, when we lose a billionaire, we don’t get richer. When he leaves, he takes the funding for a small town’s primary school with him. If you want the rich to stay, consider not yelling at them.

And definitely, definitely, don’t eat them.

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