Matt and Chris' Economics...

In case you did not know, Matt and Chris grew up in hard-knock working-class circumstances. Chris was often forced to shovel coal in the winter months, ate a diet that consisted mostly of potatoes, and barely survived an oppressive sectarian conflict. Matt, while enjoying more hospitable weather and less paramilitary strife, was forced into young adult labour by a tyrannical father obsessed with stairs. After toiling for many years in the dog-eat-dog world of stair architecture and construction, Matt finally escaped, only to again find himself facing exploitation, this time in Japan, in the nascent AI industry.

Fortunately, both Matt and Chris were geniuses and so were able to escape their circumstances by going into academia. There, they were able to flourish, graduating from a variety of super-elite institutions, as they surpassed all the other entitled rich fat cat students using their hard-won street smarts.

In their spare time, they became successful world-class podcasters and unveiled the secret mysteries of the Gurus to a grateful public. Now that the guru problem has been completely solved, it is finally time that they unveil their true polymathic capabilities and take on the topic that THEY don't want them to talk about: Wealth Inequality. That's right, as we all know, you cannot trust the feckless economists, corrupt politicians, lying journalists, or anyone with relevant expertise. No, they are all bought into the system.

So ignore our inevitable detractors and get ready for an exciting foray as we...

Read some recent UK government reports on inequality/wealth in the UK and try not to gag on their (lying) graphs.

That's right, for the next Decoding Academia, we decided we would take a leaf out of Gary's book and focus on inequality and wealth, but unlike Gary, we will actually focus on looking at some relevant data by critically reviewing some recent UK government reports on the topic.

This is inspired by an upcoming return to the world of Gary in what was supposed to be a special episode but has ballooned into a full-length Decoding. The source material for that decoding episode is this interview...

#89 GARY STEVENSON - Economics, Trading, Inequality, Wealth, Populism, Tax, Depolarize

When doing basic research into some of Gary's claims, Chris came across two recent reports from the UK government's 'House of Commons Library', namely:

• Wealth in Great Britain Published Tuesday, 18 March, 2025

• Income Inequality in the UK Published Saturday, 12 April, 2025

Both are full of graphs, but are pretty short and easy to read. So we thought it might be interesting to take a non-expert but academically informed gander.

If you want to play along, both are attached to this post.