Christian, Husband, Father, Founder | CEO @ShareLogicApps
England, United Kingdom
Joined September 2010
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James Neale retweeted
I’m calling BS on these 120 millionaires calling to be taxed more.
Look closely at who signed. A retired footballer whose been paid millions by taxpayers. A retired trader who’s net worth is well under $5M. Retired musicians, film directors and some heirs. People who finished building years ago - half of them aren’t worth the $10M threshold they think needs the wealth tax. Their wealth sits in liquid portfolios. The tax they propose either doesn’t apply to them or they have liquidity to pay it.
Now picture a founder with a £50m biotech firm. Her wealth isn't in a bank account. It's based on a speculative VC round. To pay 2% she has to rip £800k a year out of her business or sell it down piece by piece until someone else owns it.
Or imagine the restauranteur whose chain is finally having a profitable year after a decade of losses. A PE deal to expand gives him a paper worth of £60M and he now has to find £1M a year, every year personally if he wants to grow.
Imagine the property developer couple who made a lifetime of delayed gratification and good decisions. Their portfolio makes £4M profit which is barely enough to cover the £2M in wealth taxes per year after they draw it from their company and pay the corporation tax - 100% essentially goes to tax.
The signatories aren't offering to pay a tax. They're volunteering someone else to. Someone who is still building, investing, growing, hiring.
HMRC already accepts voluntary payments. Any of these self-aggrandising millionaires could send extra money tomorrow. ALL of them benefited from lower tax rates and should pay the difference if they want to make a start. None of them will. They don't want to give more. They want a law that forces others to.
The wealth tax they propose won't work. It will backfire.
We don't need to guess. In 1990, twelve OECD countries had a wealth tax. Today it's three.
Sweden scrapped theirs. Germany suspended theirs. France tried it for decades, watched tens of thousands of wealthy families leave, collected a fraction of what was promised, and Macron repealed it because the country was losing more than it raised.
The £24bn projection assumes nobody changes their behaviour. Nobody has ever designed a tax where nobody changes their behaviour. Liquid wealth leaves. Illiquid wealth, the businesses and farms and employers, stays behind and gets squeezed.
The tax doesn't catch the guy with the yacht. It catches the guy with the factory.
It will end up hitting normal people.
Every tax "on the very richest" drifts downwards. Income tax started in 1799 as a temporary 3% levy on the richest 3% to fight Napoleon. Now workers are paying a 45% marginal rate. Inheritance tax was designed for stately homes and now catches three-bed semis in Surrey. VAT launched at 8%. It's now 20%.
When the wealth tax raises a fraction of what was promised, and it will, no Chancellor repeals it. They lower the threshold. £10m becomes £5m becomes £2m becomes your parents' house.
Here's what I'd say to the 120…
If you want your capital serving Britain, I'm with you. The best way is to back founders. Fund the startups and scale-ups on great terms like they do in the USA. Help build companies that scale here instead of selling early to America. Growing businesses already pour money into the Treasury through corporation tax, employer's NI and PAYE on every job they create. Back success and productivity. Stop rewarding fiscal deficits with good money after bad.
That's harder than signing a letter. You don’t get to look like a socialist super-hero. It's also the only version of "proud to pay" that's ever made a country richer.
Don't pretend to ask the government to tax you… or people twice as rich as you.
Invest in real growth and success.
James Neale retweeted
In the age of AI, this is what integrity looks like
James Neale retweeted
One of the best quality of life improvements is the simplest of all: Like more things.
James Neale retweeted
This is long but incredibly worth reading.
Socialists imagine a class struggle. In their made-up fantasy the CEO is in competition with low level workers, the wealthy entrepreneur is stealing from the underpaid nurse.
In reality, workers do not compete vertically they compete horizontally.
Entrepreneurs compete with entrepreneurs. Investors outbid each other. CEOs are benchmarked against other CEOs. Nurses are hired from a pool of nurses. Etc.
The CEOs pay has no correlation to the entry level workers. The Football star on £300K a week isn’t linked to the person selling drinks in the stadium. A biotech entrepreneur raising VC capital isn’t paid relative to a cleaner.
What is linked is the demand and supply dynamic of each role.
If a company places an ad for a qualified truck driver and 150 people apply for the role, then the company knows it does not need to increase wages for that role. If the company has an open role for months, it is forced to look at the compensation package.
Same for a CEO. A board representing shareholders would like to hire a CEO for a lot less if they could. Their dream scenario would be to hire a CEO who brings in institutional investors, attracts top executives, drives innovation and growth, keeps margins steady and is a good public face for the business even under pressure. It turns out there aren’t a lot of these people looking for work and if you want one you have to pay more than other companies are offering.
The class struggle isn’t vertical it’s horizontal. CEOs are in competition with CEOs. Retail workers are in competition with retail workers. Demand and supply dynamics set the price.
Sure you can say that a CEO want’s profitability and would like wages to be lower BUT it’s not up to the CEO - demand and supply tension sets the price of workers. An Airline like RyanAir would like free pilots if they could get them but they can’t… so they pay the market rate.
The reason incomes are rising at the top and falling at the bottom is not class warfare. It’s technology and globalisation.
Technology makes basic jobs simple, remote or fully automated. At the same time tech makes executive roles more leveraged, more important and more valuable.
A CEO used to run a smaller organisation. Today a CEO who’s 2% better on a $5B company is generating $100M more. Seems sensible to try and pay a few million to get $100M.
Globalisation has put workers from all over the world in completion with each other - downward pressure on wages. Globalisation has given CEOs more market opportunities to explore - upside opportunity to unlock.
The rich are not very interested in buying houses that poor people own. The poor are not buying up the homes the rich want. They are separate groups living separate lives. Try finding the genuinely rich people whose strategy is to hoard normal residential homes - it barely exists as a thing. About 85% of landlords are people who own 1-4 properties. Super-landlords (100+ properties) are 0.2% of landlords and own a tiny fraction of the 30M homes in the UK… and they’re heavily taxed.
Class warfare isn’t real. It’s an imagined war in the minds of socialists.
Demand and supply dynamics are real. To the degree it is measured in class, it’s a horizontal competition not a vertical one.
James Neale retweeted
The older I get, the more I realize how much of your life is shaped by the stories you tell yourself. I’m not ready. I’m too late. I’m bad at this. I never follow through. Be careful. You believe what you repeatedly rehearse. Tell better stories. Then prove them through action.
“Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?”
WARNING: Longer post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later).
Your life has seasons.
Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity.
But one reflection I've had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season.
To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season.
You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You're here today. You made it. You're alive. You're doing fine.
You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You'll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything.
The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible.
Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state.
I'm doing this now, so that I can have that later.
Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it's right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon.
You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes.
In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He's told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it's pulled, it can never be put back.
The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he's faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts.
As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life.
But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he's filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive.
How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future.
A mentor recently asked me this:
"Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?"
It hit me hard.
And to be honest, I haven't stopped replaying those words since he said them.
Why are you in such a rush?
The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.
In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.
In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.
Be in the season you're in. Don't romanticize the past, don't fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it.
Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do.
The good old days are happening, right now.
And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words:
Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?
James Neale retweeted
20 rules for young men:
1. Never date a friend’s ex
2. It’s ok to go to the movies by yourself
3. Hygiene is more important than you think
4. Know the different between love and lust
5. Stay informed on what’s going on. Don’t be a sheep
6. Have a sense of humor but don’t joke about your dreams and goals
7. Study the types of people who upset you and why
8. Stand up to bullies. You’ll only have to do it once.
9. Don’t bully people weaker than you
10. Learn how to tell stories
11. Don’t complain. 80% of people don’t care about your problems and 20% are glad you have them
12. Be impressed by the things that matter
13. When coming across a successful person, talk less, ask more.
14. Leave a lasting impression after people meet you
15. Don’t feel guilty for being too ambitious
16. Be mentally and emotionally ready to lose loved ones at some point of your life.
17. Always have some cash with you
18. Regardless of what you get paid per hour, give your best.
19. Avoid porn at all cost.
20. You never marry a girl, you marry her entire family.
Looking positive so far.
Worked, didn’t nap, ate fairly clean, bed at 10pm, slept 6 hours solid then another 3 hours or so.
Just got back from a trip to the USA. (It was great!)
Trying a new tactic to avoid jet lag by switching back to UK time the day I’m traveling rather than when I land.
For instance, flight leaves at 8pm EST and they serve food 90 mins in. Well it’s actually 1am so I ignore the food, water only, and just sleep (as best I can).
Will see how it goes for the next couple of days.
Just got back from a trip to the USA. (It was great!)
Trying a new tactic to avoid jet lag by switching back to UK time the day I’m traveling rather than when I land.
For instance, flight leaves at 8pm EST and they serve food 90 mins in. Well it’s actually 1am so I ignore the food, water only, and just sleep (as best I can).
Will see how it goes for the next couple of days.
I totally agree, but this is why it used to take me 2+hours to write a few lines in an email.
Now I just arrange a call instead.
James Neale retweeted
Marcus Aurelius wrote this over 1800 years ago:
“Until death, all defeat is psychological.”
James Neale retweeted
What’s the harshest truth every young man must eventually learn?
“Everyone is always rooting for you.
Your parents want you to be a great son.
Your wife wants you to be a great husband.
Your boss wants you to be a slam dunk hire.
Every first date you’ve ever been on they’ve been rooting for you to get laid.
Every time you started to tell a joke people hoped it would have a hilarious punch line.
Your proximity to anyone is a reflection of themselves, meaning the deck is never stacked against you, and your failures are completely your own.” — @AdemLuz
We had twin babies and a 2 year old.
The 2 year old decided to go sneak 100 through the nappy bin, pull out a poopy nappy, open it, then drag it over the walls and carpets around half the house.
He was so pleased with himself pointing at his custom art work.
I just had to laugh and cry at the same time - and more importantly film the perp and his carnage for future embarrassment before cracking on to clean it all up.
8 years later it still comes up in conversation with the kids with much hilarity.
I am potty training my son. He has been doing very good, we have been home the last week and he has been consistently using the toilet so I decided well let’s venture out to the playground.
Tell me why he decided to poop his pants go down the slide right after, his sister and his other brother all go after him, and so now the entire length of the slide is covered in poop, so is he and so are his siblings.
Poop everywhere.
we all walk back home covered in poop
A swarm of flies on our tail
James Neale retweeted
13 years ago, Rotherham, England turned 8 miles of mowed roadside grass into a "river of flowers." In 2021, they added even more miles.
The original scheme was commissioned by Rotherham Council in 2013, designed by Professor Nigel Dunnett at the University of Sheffield, and seeded with a 180-species wildflower mix along the central reservations of the town's main ring road. It replaced mowing that had been costing the council around £80,000 a year.
Since then: the wildflower verges have saved roughly £23,000 to £25,000 per two-year mowing cycle, increased pollinator abundance, and inspired similar programs in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Sheffield.
In 2021, Rotherham added 3.5 more miles across 12 new sites including Herringthorpe, Swinton, Harthill, and Maltby. They just keep expanding it.
The UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows in the last 100 years. Most of what was lost was paved, plowed, or mowed. The verges nobody was using anyway turned out to be one of the largest untapped habitats in the country.
Nah. I’m 40 this year and don’t think I’m midlife.
I see myself as 20 years into a 60ish (maybe 80!) year run.
20 years as a kid.
20 years of growth and family.
And the next 40-60 have so much opportunity - and I get to meet my grandkids!
The key is living with purpose!
