David Frost — ‘If you have half a mind to go into politics that's all you need.’
Just because the government reports that the economy is improving, it does not follow that the economy is actually improving. Rising house prices, low interest rates, excessive personal indebtedness and a spending boom fuelled by bank PPI pay-outs... these are not the foundation stones of economic recovery.
Just because the government says that unemployment is falling, it does not follow that there are more jobs or that more people are in full-time work. Offering people zero hours contracts or occasional, part-time jobs is not an indicator of falling unemployment, but a short-term measure designed to disguise the reality and comfort government supporters. The coalition has enough political nous to manipulate figures and statistics, but not enough understanding of basic economics to realise the medium- and long-term consequences of their actions. Or, if they do understand, they are brutally uncaring. Cosmetic adjustments are not structural improvements.
People out of work are unemployed. They may receive the JSA, but the government has found a number of spurious excuses to deny jobseekers the allowance, and to remove them from the unemployment register. As people become poorer and more desperate, unable to find work or keep up payments on their homes, they lose hope.
The hopeless people are not the people that Cameron, Osborne and Duncan Smith describe as ‘hard working people’. Therefore, they must be shirkers and worthless benefit claimants. They are not Conservative voters. In fact, they are increasingly unlikely to vote at all. They are effectively unrepresented. The government knows this. Their strategy is clear: to target their voters and to marginalise the non-voters. In the words of the American writer David Korten:
‘Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.’
The government focus has been to reduce the cost of unemployment and cut taxes for higher earners, with the crude assumption that this will lead to greater investment and growth. But it is a fallacy that, if the rich have their taxes cut, money will ‘trickle down’. So says Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest.
And how did we get into this predicament? What was the crash? By 2007, the West had reached the very high noon of unfettered resurgent capitalism. Deregulation created an epidemic of greed which, according to capitalism, was acceptable. Most recently, Boris Johnson repeated the assertion that avarice was what motivated people. It may be that is all he knows.
Beyond that cycle of greed and expansion, there was criminal behaviour by many bankers. Eventually, private debt incurred by the banks was passed to the public sector through a bailout — and is now being passed back to families. But let us not forget the Deficit Myth, peddled by Conservatives, which is that Labour created a global crash out of their profligacy — all caused by tax credits and soft-soaping the ‘skivers’ and ‘shirkers’.
Of course, it was all Labour’s fault that we had uninterrupted economic growth from 1997 to 2008 and the longest period of sustained low inflation since the 1960s.
The OECD says the income of the richest 10% of people in the UK is 12 times that of the lowest 10%. In Germany, Denmark and Sweden, that figure is 6 times.
‘How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics’ — Aneurin Bevan
In a social democracy, the role of any government is to collect taxes and spend them fairly, for the benefit of the greatest possible number: the many, not the few. Chief items of expenditure are health, education, welfare and security. In each of these areas, the government is resorting to market force theory and privatisation as the means to reduce the debt.
So, selling off the NHS, dismantling local education authorities, denying welfare payments, privatising police and military functions are all short-term measures designed to reduce national debt as fast as possible — and to ensue victory in the next election. After that, it will be each man for himself, each woman and child for themselves. Sink or swim. A grim prospect if you are young, old, poor, sick or simply unfortunate. This is the politics of social destruction. But, as the Africans say, if you are ugly, learn how to dance.
When EU officials castigate the government because its unemployment benefits and welfare payments are inadequate and drive families into poverty, what happens? The government uses the criticism as evidence of the unwelcome interference of Eurocrats, as though it were an improper assault on a sovereign nation. No matter that the Eurocrats are right and that welfare payments are about half what they need to be to sustain family life.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 4.7 million Britons are in deep poverty — in other words, they have ‘inadequate incomes’... http://www.cleardebt.co.uk/
What do you believe – truth or treacle?
‘A lie told often enough becomes truth’ — Joseph Goebbels
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