Grace gives us her well-versed socialist views on a range of topics including climate change and the Green New Deal, issues with government policies, economics vs. politics, why democracy is failing, and Andy's favourite, with much heated debate .. Tax. She also explains why posturing stakeholder capitalism qualifies for the big bin of bullshit in business.

BWB is powered by Oury Clark

businesswithoutbullshit.me

Uh, we ready?

Time for some action.

Um, hello and welcome to Business Without Bullshit.

I am Andy Orian.

Alongside me is the fabulous bit a start.

Hi, Andy.

Lovely.

And today we are joined by Grace Blakely.

Hello.

Is that right?

You have yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

Grace is an economics and politics commentator, columnist, journalist and author.

She's a writer for the Tribune, a panelist on talk tv and was previously the economics.

Commentator of the new statesman.

Very good.

Well, that's not a bad list.

Uh, so how are we doing?

Grace?

Welcome to the podcast.

I'm all good.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's good to be here.

No problem.

Um, so we always start with a very simple question, which is, uh, what's keeping you up at night, grace?

God, what isn't keeping me up at night at the moment?

I mean, I've just come back from quite a long holiday, so I feel like I've kind of stepped away from all of the chaos and had a bit of a relax.

But I think that's just the perennial worry of you can't really, as.

Gap it, of just what's happen happening to the climate.

I mean, there's news every day, I think, um, from various different parts of the world, just of very strange and unprecedented weather events and things.

It's getting a lot warmer and all that sort of stuff.

So I think that is, In the back of my mind, this kind of urgent thing that's always, you know, always there, really, and I think it's for a lot of people of my generation actually and younger.

Is there anything that will make people do anything about it?

It's hard really, because, you know, I think a big problem with the way we talk about climate change is it all comes down to kind of individual actions and individual responsibilities.

And that that's actually a narrative that the big fossil fuel companies work.

To push, you know, they were, BP created the idea of the, the carbon footprint to say, oh, please don't regulate us.

Just make sure people, you know, buy tote bags and don't use plastic straws and all that sort of stuff.

Whereas actually, you know, if we really wanna tackle climate change, you've gotta just change the whole structure of the economy, how we generate electricity, how we get around, how we produce things.

So it requires like a really big structural shift in the way that the economy works basically, rather than just people trying to be nice.

And so the Green New Deal, Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

What's the Green New Deal?

It actually came out of the uk.

Oh, did it?

Yeah.

The initial version of it came out after the financial crisis, which was this whole idea from, you know, a bunch of economists and politicians got together and said, we need a a stimulus package post-crisis that's gonna actually solve these climate problems.

Then it went over to the US where it was picked up by the squad, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, et cetera, and then kind of came back here.

But now it's been, it's been kind of squashed, I think in, in the labor manifesto.

Unfortunately.

It's basically all your kind of power should be.

Renewable green, like you should stop the FARC with coal mines and getting oil out of the North Sea and all that stuff.

Yeah.

Should be, we should be planning to get rid of it.

Yeah.

And it's also things like, you know, retrofitting housing stocks so that it's much more environmentally friendly, you know, investing in different forms of transportation, like renewable energy, all that electric coals.

Yeah.

I mean if you take the house one, having, having looked at it recently, you know, it's, it's.

It's a chicken and an egg situation.

You know, I, I went to an expert on it and, and I mean, immediately started telling me they were just sort of, you know, warning me how much it was gonna cost as much.

Well, you're gonna like, put insulation in your house or something.

You've got, you've gotta use the um, uh, heat exchanges, but then you've gotta actually completely rebuild your house, cuz it only works if you've got under floor heating with piping, which is, you know, major.

So, I mean, A quick examination suggested it might cost 60 to a hundred thousand pounds to sort my house out, which was more than we were gonna spend on an extension, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, this obviously would have to be something that would, you'd be supported by the government and the whole idea of it as part of this stimulus package, which is what the Green New Deal is supposed to be about, is that, you know, this is classic.

Keynesian economics is that you are investing in infrastructure that's gonna last for a long time and support, you know, sustainability as well as growth.

And you're creating jobs now in the context in in which they're needed.

It's a little bit more challenging.

Suggest now, given that we've got these high levels of inflation.

The whole idea was to do it.

Immediately after, at first the financial crisis, then the pandemic, when the economy needed a bit of a boost.

Arguably it still does now, but you have got these inflationary pressures, some of which by the way do come from the problems associated with climate change.

It's becoming increasingly difficult for us to feed ourselves in the environment in which we've created, and that's why a big part of why food prices have gone up so much actually.

So yeah, it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem in the sense we need to spend money.

In order to fix some of these problems, otherwise everything's gonna get more expensive.

Is it part of an issue that we've got a government where a lot of the government is both insulated from the problems that a lot of the rest of us have to deal with and also has vested interest on the other side?

Why's the government insulated from us?

I guess you've got people like Rishi Soak who really would've noticed.

He's gonna worry about it.

My salary, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's like his.

This is a man who we discovered last year, never used a credit card.

What I'm trying to say is we've got a lot of people in government who live very different lives to the rest of us.

You know, you've got Adam Sahari with his stables and his heating, his horses, and lots of them seem to have very different rarefied lives to us.

And you wonder how much they understand what the rest of us are living with, even if they didn't, you know, you've still got the problem of kind of political

donations and the influence that some of these big companies who have a vested interest in these issues not getting solved, have over the conservative party.

And I'm thinking, Particularly of landlords and property developers and also some fossil fuel companies who, you know, have often quite clearly, and I've had conversations actually with mps about how some of these interests have actually stood in the way of things like solving the housing crisis.

I mean, I, I, I'm just on a basic level, I'm like, we're talking about borrowing more money than I could even calculate so we can retrofit everyone's houses.

I don't, I don't think that's easy for any government to go and do.

Regardless, just because I have a big house, which by the way would cost me a fortune to, he, you know, cuz it's relative.

Yeah.

You know, you've got a big fucking house.

The bill is pretty fucking big right now.

So I dunno if that's connected to the fact that it might be Yeah, my frustration is actually the same thing.

Is that, that the, the short term isnt that we live in Yeah.

Whatever government we put in, no one is, and I can't get my head around.

We've discussed, I cannot get my head around why someone doesn't come forward and say, This is what I'm gonna do.

Yeah.

This is my 20 year plan to get Britain and it's gonna get worse.

By the way, it's almost, you know, Thatcher got lucky with Forland, and I know you hate her, but it's like, you know, at least it's like that you get the two terms and you gotta get lucky.

Well, I mean, Thatcher was the last person to really fundamentally transform our economy.

I think she did it in a really bad way, but you know, I.

It was a big shift.

Yeah.

As you say.

Yeah.

And that is really the scale of the change that we need again right now.

But nobody talks like that.

Nobody comes out and says, right, here's my 20 year plan.

You're gonna have to vote me in three times and it's gonna get really shit for 10 years.

A bit like, you know what?

It only happens like when South Korea goes through a war.

Mm.

Or Germany goes through a war and there's.

Starting from nothing.

Do they get to rebuild properly?

We, you know, the problem with Britain winning the Second World War, inverted commas and all these things, goodness, that was, we quickly got to the second World War.

No, but I mean, you always end up there.

No, but, but, but we, you know, the problem with being the victor is we didn't really ever rebuild anything.

Well, actually, I would kind of disagree with that because I was gonna say the last time that we borrowed a substantial amount of money, like huge, huge sums

of money, much, the public debt to d DP ratio is much larger than, It was, you know, even after Thelan crisis was World War ii and what do we do after that?

We didn't implement austerity.

We had, you know, the creation of the nhs.

We had a massive program of social health building.

We had, well, that was funded by the American Marshall Plan.

I mean, we Couldn have afford, well a little bit, but like ultimately over the long run we had this huge stock.

Death.

Death.

Well, disparity was enormous.

After the second World War For decades.

Decades, no, we had this, we had this huge stock of debt.

Yeah.

And we invest.

Did a huge amount in social, the house building in the nhs, and the creation of public services in education, in infrastructure.

And because the economy was growing, partly because of that investment, we were able to recoup it over the long run.

But surely this all comes down to, right, you are saying, why can't we look at things on a longer scale?

And you know, everybody always says is, does nobody think of the children thing?

Yeah.

You know, but it comes down to the fact that human beings right are just a little bit too selfish, really.

Like we all think of, oh my God, it's gonna be terrible for my, you know, I don't if kids, but it'd be terrible for my nieces.

It'll be terrible for the next generation, but I'm okay.

So I dunno.

I mean, I feel like we are encouraged to.

Think of ourselves and human beings and our society more broadly as selfish, but actually, you know, that kind of thinking almost creates the problem itself.

Cuz if you think, oh, everyone's selfish, I've just gotta look after myself, you're less likely to kind of, yeah.

Get involved in political campaigning or say join a a movement that's kind of pushing for change because you're like, oh, screw it.

None.

I'm just little old me.

Exactly.

What can I do?

What make a difference?

Yeah.

Blah, blah, blah.

No, exactly.

I think if we actually changed the narrative there and thought.

We broadly all want the same things.

You know, we want to be able to live happy, healthy, fulfilled lives where we're not working all the time, where we can afford the basics, where our children are gonna be better off than, than we are.

And you know, there are ways that we can work together to make that happen.

Are you an economist at heart?

Is that what you trained as?

I w I don't think of myself as an economist at heart.

I, I think of myself as in the vein of kind of lots of socialists as a critic of the whole idea of economics and of political economy.

And obviously to do that you have to be versed.

In a lot of the mainstream theory and stuff.

But when I look at the way that most economists describe their profession, the way that they think about and talk about the economy, I see it as really alien cuz, and the biggest thing for me is that we have this idea of economics.

It's completely divorced from politics, right?

So you can construct a very nice model that's very, you know, mathematically elegant and you can predict people's behavior and you can say, right, and.

These assumptions mean that the corporate tax rate needs to be X percent without ever really considering the wider political variables that are gonna feed into that.

So, you know, people say, right, we need to have lower corporate tax rates because otherwise all the corporations will leave and no one actually thinks about the political climate.

That, you know, determines whether or not that is the case, right?

Like what other laws and regulations do we have surrounding corporation tax to determine whether or not that's true.

So I see myself as kind of political economist really looking at the interaction between those two things.

How does economics affect politics?

How does politics affect economics?

Uh, which I think gives you much more holistic view.

Yeah, I think it's a nice way of putting it.

Do you ever heard of someone Steve Keen?

Yeah, I know Steve.

He's a great guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cuz he, he came on and he just said, The governments have got to stop listening to economists.

Yeah.

And they've gotta start listening to climate change people.

Do you agree with that philosophy?

I definitely agree that the government needs to stop listening to economists.

Um, you know, yeah.

I know a lot of economists and there are lots of great economists who, you know, I agree with who are progressive and like argue for policies that I broadly agree with.

But even then, I think this kind of narrow view of human beings that the.

Economics profession pushes and this narrow view of society, which is that everything can be broken down into micro little transactions.

Yeah.

We have needs or whatever.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And you know, you can, it's all about maximizing people's utilities, subject to that bullshit, budget constraint, bullshit.

It's all, it's just silly and it doesn't capture the complexity of our lives.

Obviously it's not supposed to, but it also generates like policy suggestions and they say it's neutral, no policy suggestions come out of it, but they know that it does, that are just wrong and, and quite frankly, unsuitable for the world in which we live.

So if we're trying to summarize, I mean, can you summarize your sort of the, the point that you are trying to make in terms of how.

Governments should, should change their approach.

What is it that they should do differently?

We should think more long term, but I'd love that.

But no one's doing it cuz they're voting in every four years.

And I, I mean, other than I always joked whether we could have a sort of, um, what is it when they all press the buzzer and the chairs turn around.

It's like you almost Yeah.

The voice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The forest always.

I've seen that.

Oh, I just wanted to government where you basically, you get in and until you get 80% of people hitting the buzzer you're in, you know?

You know what?

That is not far from what I think actually.

Because I think for me, like the biggest challenge that we face, even before all of these economic problems, is actually democracy isn't really working.

Mm-hmm.

Um, support for democracy is quite low.

And actually it's, you know, democracy in a lot of parts of the world is retreating.

This is after we were told, you know, End of the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy and capitalism are here.

That's it one.

Exactly.

It's the end of history.

Yeah, totally.

And now it seems like the legitimacy of our political economic system is on decline and people are blaming the democratic element of it without really seeing the economic side of it.

And for me, the reason that democracy's failing is because we have this very significant levels of inequality that mean that there's a kind of.

Governing class, largely, largely speaking, who make a lot of the decisions, run a lot of the corporations, and you don't really understand, as you were saying, many of the problems that affect most people's lives.

And most people feel, I would say, very powerless.

I think that's what Brexit was about.

I think that's what, I think that's what Trumpism is about.

I think people see that they are being governed without really feeling like they, they have a say in how that governing process is taking place.

And it's not good enough just to say, Vote in different politicians every four years, firstly, because you don't have a say over who you're voting for.

But secondly, because there are all sorts of sources of, uh, decision making in government that completely insulated from democratic accountability.

Democracy.

To me, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, there's some problems, like there was a problem because of international travel and the way the world's internationally works now that we're no longer dealing with the national system.

So a billionaire can live anywhere.

He doesn't need to pay tax.

And then you're like, oh.

All of the money is in these thousand people they own, they have 70% of the money and they're the people who don't pay any tax.

So there's just some, there's a tax person, there's some basic problems now of the fluidity of movement of people.

But I think we, you know, again, we talk ourselves into a bit of a corner on this issue because this has been the narrative for a really long time.

And this was a narrative that, um, a lot of people on the right really worked to push.

It was the, which, what was the narrative?

Sorry.

That you can't tax the rich, you can't tax corporations because they'll just leave.

Oh.

And actually we do have.

You know, especially as, uh, an economy as as large as we are and also, you know, potentially working with other wealthy economies as we were supposed to do through the O E C D, through the very nerdy base erosion and profit shifting, that sort of thing.

That never really came to anything.

But no, we do have some power to be able to raise tax rates and also clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion and to, you know, At least monitor, if not regulate the flows of, uh, of capital like across our borders.

We just choose not to, you know, we choose not to invest in tackling tax avoidance and evasions.

No, I love to get into the detail cuz I wanna solve some of these problems because here is the thing, a lot of anger is created, I think towards.

Wealth.

If, if so you are someone in the UK and you earn a million pounds a year and you've built a business and you employ 10 people fucking hate you.

Mm-hmm.

And yet you're putting half a million quid into the system.

You probably privately educate your kid kids, you probably use private healthcare.

Why are they the problem now for me, why they're, the problem is everyone's angry with the billionaires.

You know, I've gotta be clear on this.

If someone is resident, they live in this country, they go on holidays, but this is their home.

And there's lots of very wealthy people who choose to do that cuz they love this country and that's where they want to be or that's where their family is.

You pay a lot of tax internationally, you're at number 15 in the world of how much tax you pay.

It's only Japan and places that pay crazy.

Well, I mean, it really depends because we know that we lose huge amounts of money from tax avoidance.

So obviously if you look at it in terms of the statistics, and you would say if someone were to earn this much money and they were to pay all their tax, they would pay a high rate of tax.

But we know that we lose tons of money.

It's quite hard.

Tax avoidance and invasion every year.

If you are full, if you are full-blown UK citizen, tax avoidance, quite hard.

I have to say you could, you can be a fraudster.

That's what we're talking about.

You can be a, a fraud.

I dunno.

I mean it seems to happen.

I don't think it is.

It's quite easy.

We've recently had one member of the cabinet have to resign because of it.

Oh, you'd have to tell me exactly what, what, what, what they did.

I dunno what you did.

He again, it was international.

That was international.

If you're talking about, if you got.

If you've got international, if you are a foreigner, much more complicated, easy.

If you're a brick, set up a shell company in the Caman Islands, whatever.

No, it's not bollocks.

There's actually, there's laws against that.

Movement of assets abroad is really difficult to do, but you can create trusts and then know you can't anymore.

You can take beneficial ownership and all that.

You can't, the only trust you can do is every seven years you can put 325,000 pounds into a trust for your kids and that trust, you know, that's, that's it these days.

It is really hard in this country to, to, to avoid tax whether the rate is high enough, but 50% seems to be about the point internationally that people start saying, fuck this for a game of soldiers.

So there seems to be a sort of limit that once you start going above that, people think, well, I won't, it will demotivate me.

I don't mind losing half.

Okay.

So if you are foreigner and you've entered the uk, if you've got, if you are able to move and live between different countries, Completely different kettle of fish.

But if I'm sitting somewhere opposite someone, it doesn't matter if they've got a hundred million, if they live all of their life in here, they're gonna pay full tax.

You they, I am very annoyed that I don't have the statistic off the top of my head right now.

I should have looked up before.

I think the last time I checked it was something like 27 billion a year.

Lost in avoidance and invasion.

But don't quote me on that.

I think that was from Richard Murphy.

Who's written a very good book about tax avoidance, but you know, avoidance is not illegal.

Well, exactly.

That's the point I was making about No, but avoidance is just arranging your affairs that you, you in a right way.

And there aren't that many ways around it.

I sit in front of people every day who are like, what can I do?

There must be so, and I'm like, not much.

I mean, you could do this and that might lower that, but we should be arranging the tax system in such a way that it's quite difficult to do that because, you know, we're losing that amount of money We have.

I'm sorry.

We have, it's now a le, it's now basically avoidance is.

There are a whole set of rules.

They are incredibly complicated.

There are a million pages of tax law.

We have probably the most complicated and some of the most aggressive tax law in the world.

It's incredibly well thought out.

It's okay, Avvo.

We can't come in a world where we say avoidance is illegal.

Evasion is illegal.

Well, I mean, we know that, but we can rearrange the tax system such that avoidance doesn't happen as much or doesn't happen in such an inefficient way.

Yeah, I mean, I, I struggle if you are a full UK person, there's so few ways you can hide.

I'm mean a really few ways dividend.

So you could pay 38.1% rather than 45% if you arrange your stuff through a company, but has all these other impacts that mean tax goes up.

So I, you know, I just, the reason I stand up for this argument is because I think there is a narrative around avoidance that there, these are people, all bad people.

Avoidance is literally, Getting tax advice, which you should get.

And that's a very big industry, like, you know, as you, as you know, because it's, yeah, but, but we've got a million pay.

It's worth it.

Yeah.

But yet even how you're putting that is cynical.

You're putting it in a way of, oh, it's wrong to get tax advice.

Fucking, I'm not saying it's wrong to get tax advice, you're saying it's got this taste of like, oh, it's wrong.

I'm not saying I would never, I find it so boring when people speak about big political issues in terms of like individual responsibility.

Yeah.

Because ultimately, You know, we know that people will make the system work for them.

The question is, how do we design the system so that in trying to make the system work for them, we actually make it work for everyone.

It works for more people.

Yeah.

Like it's never gonna work for everyone, but we need a system that works for more of the population as a whole.

And this may be a difference, you're right, between let's say a middle class person with, you know, a million pound home and a good job and a billionaire.

Yeah.

And I think we often forget, as you say, the difference between a millionaire, a billionaire, A great stat that I like to, to tell people is it would take you 12 days to count the numbers to a million.

To count the numbers to a billion would take you 32 years.

Wow.

That's the difference of the scale between a million and a billion.

That's, that's the metric.

And um, you know, there are a lot of people with astonishing amounts of money.

Money that should be taxed who are, you know, avoiding tax in Panama and the Cayman eyes.

A lot of, actually, a lot of places that are British overseas territories or crown dependencies or whatever.

Oh yeah.

We're definitely, we definitely have a pass to play, but you've gotta understand those rules, those all, every time you see that it's because there was an ability to do it historically.

I mean, look, you definitely, it's definitely too complicated tax.

I mean, on enforcement, I, you know, the revenue are just like on it.

I mean, they're writing letters to people left, right, and center.

They use.

Psychologist, they, I mean, it's crazy what the sum of the shit they get up isn't.

Cause I know what you mean.

Like in the sense that it's quite easy to go after someone who.

I don't know as a, like got a small business and maybe is arranging their tax payers in such a way, but it like the people who, who we actually wanna go after it is, it seems like they're either less aggressive or they just don't know.

Or maybe these guys are so lawyered up that it just becomes so difficult for, to even engage with Hm.

R c Well, but, but, but we are, back to your point, that democracies a bit fucked right now.

Yeah.

And people like China are laughing at us and rightly.

So because they've got a hundred, 200 year plan and they're off on it, and I mean at least the Japanese have a longer term plan.

I think they seem to run their society in a much sort of longer term and, but you know, ultimately we're sitting here with our like three year plan wondering why we're gonna lease again.

Don't even have a three year plan.

Yeah, I mean, well we've got a year plan at the moment, at the current electoral cycle.

Then we've got a two year plan.

But was yours was your.

Proposal, go back to the 16th century in the divine right of kings and well democracy.

You, you, you know, it's back to the thing of the benevolent dictator might be, you know, it's like I was reading about Shaman Mount.

I've never really read it because, but I got, oh my God.

No, no, I'm not advocating him.

I mean a guy killed millions and millions of people.

But it's fascinating reading the legacy I was, I was reading Stalin the other day and you know, that guy had some resource things to my point cuz he's come from a rest history podcast cause they started talking about culture evidence.

My favorite podcast.

Anyway, so I read the Wikipedia and I'm like, I can't get my head around this guy.

And you go to the legacy of Chairman Matt, and it's incredibly divided.

But he was amazing for women.

He, he raised their life, he did all these incredible things for their society, but he did all four.

But have you heard their podcast on the cultural revolution?

Oh my fucking fucking God.

That's what I listened to.

That's scary.

But no, I mean, you're right.

Like when you have this form of basically centralized planning that they had in the U S S R in China to an extent and other places, there were a lot of achievements around, you know, housing and women's rights, all sort of stuff.

I say currently China is advancing in an oppressive way.

Yeah, exactly.

But there were also big drawbacks that stuff.

A lot of people had to die to make it work.

And also it's kind of unfeasible really, I think to suggest moving back to that level of centralization and bureaucratization and the kind of, Complex, modern society that we live in today.

Like I really think that the, the ideas that we have around democracy.

Which is that it's slow.

Nothing gets done.

It gets taken over by vested interests.

I think they're, they're wrong and they're outdated because there are ways that you can organize a society to make it more democratic.

That don't all just hinge on electoral politics.

It's things like, you know, Worker engagement in the organizations in which they work for.

It's things like, you know, community engagement.

Um, there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on at the moment at like just local council model that a bit more.

What do you, what do you think would shape would help?

So we're talking about, yeah.

One thing that I really think everyone should look into at the moment is something called the Preston model.

And this is based on the idea of community wealth building.

And this would've actually been a really interesting way to respond to some of these questions around, you know, places that have been in a vertical months left behind.

The idea is that there are anchor institutions in an area like the council, the NHS.

Uh, universities that they can't move, they have a certain procurement budget, um, and the way that they spend that budget can either make or break that community.

They can outsource everything to capita and all the money gets sucked out and goes to shareholders in London.

Or they can say, we are going to procure these services from a cooperative.

Or from a local business and, you know, use that collective power and that spatial planning, basically these organizations have to try and boost the community.

They did this in Preston.

It was an amazing success.

The labor council there, who's run by Matthew Brown, he's written a book about it, has just, you know, come on heaps and bounds from this very deprived area to actually really, um, you know, maintaining a lot of value in the community.

They're thinking about doing things like again, setting up their own cooperative, setting up local, local development banks, that sort of thing.

And they're engaging people in that process.

The whole way through.

And as a result, they've done really well in elections.

They've got really high approval ratings.

Like this is something, you know, arguably really simple.

It sounds good, and I mean, I wonder who, the leaders were impressed and they clearly weren't the SL council, but you know, you know, that's the thing local makes sense.

Again, as long as you've got good people running the business.

And now a quick word from our sponsor, business Without Bullshit is brought to you by URI Clark, straight Talking financial and legal advice since 1935.

You can find us@oriclark.com.

What do you think is bullshit in business or in your industry and why?

So I think in general, my answer to this question, and this might be controversial, there's this whole idea of kind of like stakeholder capitalism, right?

Which is that shareholder capitalism is very short term, which is true.

You know, we had the, the shareholder value revolution and it overcomes about maximizing, um, maximizing shareholder value over the very short term and profits distributed, or a, a good measure of the value that's created by a company.

So we need to move to this idea of stakeholder capitalism, which is basically where the shareholders of a business.

Get to acts in the interests of all of the stakeholders that are affected by that business.

And the idea is that this is supposed to be kind of voluntary.

So the shareholder's supposed to say, well, we have a broad interest in society working, so we are going to sacrifice some of our short term profits in order to.

Make you know the world better over the long term.

Enough enough.

Exactly.

And the most, you know, the maddest version of this is, uh, I've heard is that the big asset management companies, so like BlackRock for example, which own stakes in all of the, the biggest companies will start suddenly realizing that because they own stakes in all of the economy.

That it's in their interests, that climate change doesn't get too bad and that economic growth is good, and that there isn't too much inequality.

So they're gonna start pressuring, you know, these companies to, you know, be better on the climate or pay their employees more, or whatever.

This is something that people have actively theorized and suggested will happen.

And of course, that's not what's happened.

You know, Larry Thinkink is the head of BlackRock says, oh, we're gonna do lots of stuff on climate breakdown.

But then whenever a vote comes up on these issues, if it.

Impacts short term profitability.

They're not gonna do that.

And you know, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their people who are invested in that company.

So this is not gonna work on that basis.

It's not gonna work.

Cause the incentives don't align.

I like the idea of companies being more responsible.

I just don't think it's gonna happen from this voluntary shift that suddenly everyone realizes, oh, actually we don't care about profits that much.

So I think that's a bit of bullshit that people like to pedal.

It's a really curious one.

I think you have to sort of separate big, big business.

I mean, we, we've joked before, but you know, there's always this line about, oh, well, you know, everyone does it for the shareholders.

Most companies I know couldn't give two fucks about their shareholders.

Yes.

They don't even, you know, they're like, yeah, what?

Whatever.

You know, they are shareholders so they, you know, do they have a duty to make profits?

Like, look, try to make money here.

I want my salary to continue.

You know, I'm having to get a dividend one day, but the stakeholder thing is coming.

But it's this hugely complicated mechanism that needs accountants and auditors and everyone, and it's, and regulation, I would argue it's, it's coming.

Yeah.

All new audit regulations coming, but.

Yeah, it would take a while.

I do think people are thinking more like stakeholders and again, you, you think of every company I deal with in London, it's like, you know, it's rare that I meet, I meet one now.

Who doesn't give a crap if they can give a crap.

Yeah, but I mean this is the thing isn't it?

If they're struggling, which a lot of them are, and giving a crap's difficult, it's hard.

Just as it much as for an individual as a business.

I think this is really interesting actually, cuz kind of this holiday idea of stakeholder capitalism tends to come alongside.

Greater market concentration.

If you are a big market dominating monopoly or oligopoly, you can afford to be like, oh, well, you know, we'll give a bit here.

We'll, you know, do something nice there.

We'll invest in this particular scheme or whatever.

Whereas if you're in a very competitive industry where you know, costs are are tight, margins are tight, then um, it's gonna be much more difficult for you.

So actually it's not necessarily a good thing that we have this, these really now quite high in some sectors, levels of market concentration that.

Give some firms the flexibility to be able to say, I'm gonna do X or Y Z, it's, and part of our problem is what you really want them to do with these big, you know,

like the companies you don't serve are the money, like all the energy companies going, well, this is rather, you know, and, and, and so we get annoyed about that.

So you're like, well taxable.

Well, the problem is, is people don't really respect the taxation is being used that well.

You know, so companies would say, well, will you, we'll invest the money, we'll do better.

But they haven't, would they just roll out the shelves?

Yeah, exactly What you'd love to say to them.

Give them the ethical problem of saying, we are gonna put a 20% charitable tax on you and it's gonna go to these charities, becomes much harder for them to sit as shareholders and say, well, I just think it's outrageous, you know?

But then you get into what are the charities doing?

And I, well, I mean, just give it to the nhs.

Well, I like you.

Well, I like your, well, maybe, but I like your community idea that maybe a company could have a responsibility to its community and say, okay, you are super rich.

You've got offices in these.

Three counties each, you've gonna have to now make a donation to that county of 20% of your profits and they can't get upset about it.

And then all these great things happen in their community.

But with that mechanism, those sorts of mechanisms, they are very socialist, I guess.

They are.

They are, yes.

They're very like, Coming in.

No, but I'm, I'm into that shit.

I think a lot of people would be into that shit.

It's how, it's how you do it and that it's gotta be proportional.

Fair.

And that's the problem because then you get down to the mathematics.

But you, it would seem, you could just say, you know, yeah.

If you've made mega profits and all you do is really get oil out the ground, then fuck you.

Well, it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a rentier industry.

These people aren't creating value.

Fuck not fuck you.

Well done.

You and we are gonna give some of it to charity.

Okay.

You know, that's what we're gonna do.

You know?

And, and don't get upset about it.

Please, you know, Okay, so Grace, this is the five second rule.

Okay.

This is where we're gonna ask you, we're gonna chop it to three seconds, given we take too long.

Okay.

We've, this always happens to me, by the way.

I always go on for so long.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

Good though.

We're gonna ask you a list of questions to get to know you a little better.

Cool.

And you've got three seconds, five seconds, okay.

To answer each question.

Okay.

Dq, the music, what was your first job?

Waitress in a pub.

I was paid four pound 25 an hour.

Again.

What was your worst job?

Um, I worked at the builder bear workshop.

Oh, wow.

Until I had to dress up in as a bear and go outside and greet the kids.

You need a mirror to enjoy that all day.

Otherwise you're in a sweaty bear.

It was really hot.

Yeah, my brother was the killer whale at uh, Windsor Spago, and he used to squeeze the children really tight with his flippers cuz he was so hot and angry.

Oh my God.

Favorite subject of school history?

Mm, special skill.

Oh god.

Um, I dunno.

Guitar singing like that, I do do that.

Yeah.

I suppose that's the thing.

Well, we've be making music after this.

Great.

You can get your guitar out.

Well, we've got one somewhere.

Uh, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Um, initially a pop star, then a politician.

I have changed entirely.

I am, I, I, they're basically the same thing.

It's fantastic.

It's fantastic.

What did your parents want you to be when you grew up?

Just happy.

I think everyone says this.

I know, but my parents really meant it.

They were like, my mom was always like my mother, cuz she was the first family person in her family, goes to university, went to Cambridge, and her dad really wanted her to be the first female prime minister and she was like, I live with the weight of that my whole life.

I just want you to be happy.

I have no expectations for you.

So do you know what I mean?

Anyway, we'll come back to it.

Yeah.

What was your go-to karaoke song?

Oh God.

Oasis Champagne Soup?

No.

Oh, okay.

Which one?

Um, um, so they all fine.

Yeah, exactly.

Well beneath there something rather.

Look at that.

You've got the nice little singing voice.

Fuck off, uh, office dogs.

Where is he?

Uh, who's down there?

Business or bullshit?

I don't work in an office, but I mean, it sounds like that would be a nice thing to have in an office.

I always hated working at an office.

I mean, it was not really for me, I was a bit too much of a free spirit.

But if you're gonna be in an office, Have something to lighten the mood.

Definitely.

Sometimes they're good, sometimes there are pain in the, I can imagine.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Very Is he, he's just down here being very good as usual.

Usual as sometimes, uh, have you ever been fired?

Surprisingly, no.

I really feel like I've been expelled from school several times.

Really?

Youell.

You've never been fired?

Yeah, quite a lot.

I identify with when you were talking about how British people are rebellious.

I personally think that for the reason that I'm rebellious, that's why I'm left wing.

But that's a story for another day.

No, no.

We need to know about expulsion.

I don't.

Hang on.

Let's do the last one.

Be suspended.

What's your advice?

Oh God.

Probably surfing.

So cool.

That's very cool.

Wow.

You go down to Cornwall then?

Total corn.

Yeah.

Well I've been doing this now for a long time on my, on my holidays and it's expensive and time consuming and just a whole life consuming, so, oh, here, we have good stuff in the UK though, actually.

Yeah, no, it's, it's cold.

We have good, good stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

No, definitely.

Um, it just depends when it comes in.

Um.

The, the happy one.

I mean, everyone says it, but I just have to bring up my usual, which is it thankss to my dad.

His point when he is that happiness is a transient emotion, you know?

I agree.

And so his was like, don't you wanna progress?

He says, at times you're gonna feel sad.

At times, you're gonna feel happy.

Sometimes you're frustrated, sexy, whatever the fuck.

But you wanna progress.

So surely you know, everyone, everyone, almost everyone said my prayers wanted to be that happy.

And I wonder if that's really true or whether they just wanted you.

To build a good life, you know?

Or maybe it's, I want you to be content cuz you contents are better words.

Better words.

I think it might be a generational thing to be honest, because, uh, like my parents' generation, which would've been like on the cusp of Gen X and what would've been the cusp of boomers and Gen X would've been raised by like what, 1965 something?

Yeah.

59.

They were both born in.

Oh yeah.

So I think they absorbed all this stuff from their parents, which were like, you have to be successful.

You have to, you know, as I said, my granddad was this communist who was still like, you as my daughter, you got to Cambridge, still gonna be the first, you know, female prime minister.

And it made them really unhappy because they were constantly pushing, you know, through the eighties through this time where it was all about individualism and entrepreneurship to be successful.

Eighties were, hell yeah.

And then they realized, oh actually, you know, I have all this stuff and I'm not happy.

And I think they then, yeah.

Said to us, don't just make your whole life about, you know, achieving and success and all that sort of stuff.

Like think about what you actually want to do.

So when I said, right, I'm taking this bit a bit of a break from my career to go traveling for eight months at the age of 29, my mom was like, great.

I'm so supportive.

I've come back and I'm like, I'm gonna have to stay with you for a while because I've spent all of my money.

She's like, I don't care.

I'm so proud of you.

It's great that you've done that.

You know, you don't wanna be.

Stuck in 10 years time in a job that you don't like, whatever.

I think that's kind of what it means really.

It's about chasing what makes you, what makes you content nice rather than just success.

My dad said that I tried to move home for three months when I was doing my house up, and he, and he was like, I don't, I don't really want you here.

I mean, I love, you're terrible.

I was so shocked.

So I was like, what?

All right.

Yeah, but you know, uh, I might end up saying that to my son one day and then expulsion.

What did you get expelled from?

I was expelled, um, twice it sounded right.

Oh, no, sorry.

I was asked to leave one school.

This was an all girls school I went to in year seven and eight.

And that was because I had seven and eight is like, 12, 12.

12, 13.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd climbed on the roof and started smoking.

Um, so that was cigarettes.

That was what I got suspended for.

Yeah, just cigarettes at that time.

And then they were like, you're disruptive.

So I later found out I have a D H D, so I was very disruptive all the time, but I was quite smart.

So I'd finished all my work and then distract everyone else.

Eventually they were like, you have to leave because you're a nightmare.

Went to then boarding school for three years.

I got suspended.

Three times.

So I actually only got expelled twice if you count that suspended three times at that school for various different infractions.

Then they said, you've gotta leave, but you can sit your GCSEs.

And I was like, right, well this is a great excuse to have a, a big blowout party brought in loads of booze, like messed everything up.

And then they were like, right, okay, you're out properly now.

Did still get to sit my GCSEs, I just wasn't allowed back on the school premises.

And then I went to sixth form college for two years and I was only suspended once.

So, uh, you've got, uh, 30 seconds to pitch anything you'd like.

Um, follow me on Twitter at Grace Blakely.

Blakely has two e follow me on Instagram, same thing.

And yeah, look out for news about my book Vulture Capitalism, which is coming out next year.

So there you have it.

That was this week's episode of Business Without Bullshit.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you Dee.

Thank you Romeo ppa, God wonderful guest, grace.

And we'll be back with Bwb Extra on Thursday.