The Original ‘Avocado Toast’ Millionaire Is Back, And He Wants ‘Pain In the Economy’

Tim Gurner, a millionaire Australian developer of luxury homes who gained notoriety for a widely-mocked 2017 rant about millennials being unable to afford homes because they buy avocado toast that became an enduring meme, has returned to bless the world with the type of dystopian supervillainy he is best known for.

In a video from a conference held by the Australian publication Financial Review, Gurner earnestly suggests that governments around the world should raise the unemployment rate by “40, 50 percent,” in his view, and that workers need to be reminded of their place. 

Gurner Group founder Tim Gurner tells the Financial Review Property Summit workers have become "arrogant" since COVID and "We've got to kill that attitude." https://t.co/lcX3CCxGuj pic.twitter.com/f9HK2YZRRE

— Financial Review (@FinancialReview) September 12, 2023

“People have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity,” Gurner, donning slicked back hair and an unbuttoned white shirt, says in the video. “They have been paid a lot to do not too much.”

“We need to see unemployment rise,” Gurner said. “Unemployment needs to jump 40-50 percent in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around.” He then says that “hurting the economy” is what the whole world is trying to do.

High unemployment is generally associated with social unrest, high crime rates, and lower economic productivity. Gurner’s grasp of reality aside, the goal of increasing unemployment to lower worker wages is unfortunately embraced by many economists, including those at the Federal Reserve. In January, former treasury secretary Larry Summer was mocked for declaring that more people had to face unemployment for the economy to improve, while relaxing from a tropical beach.

Gurner first became a productive member of human society when he inadvertently created a meme, forever linking the words “avocado toast” and “millennial” and giving people a cartoon caricature of an out of touch millionaire to mock while they lamented that their wages had, for decades, decreased in relation to their cost of living. 

Gurner, who, somehow, is also a millennial, told 60 Minutes, “When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each.” In May 2017, a segment from the show went viral after being shared on 9News.com, according to Know Your Meme. For years, Gurner toiled in obscurity without another hit to his name, but his quest for 40-50 percent unemployment will surely accrue him new goodwill with his employees and service staff everywhere.