Okay - enough is enough.. Let’s have a chip at this. Most people are going to be aware of the upcoming strikes on the 30th November. On the one hand we have the unions up in arms over the pensions/retirement debacle and the significant overall impact of the austerity plans upon people’s wellbeing, and on the other hand we have a government stubbornly pushing on whilst trying to paint the union leaders as “rabble rousers” who are endangering the recovery process at a time when we should all be pulling together. Tut, tut.. anyone would think it was the late 70’s again. Well I agree with them both! We should ALL be pulling together, but I also have to side with the unions when they argue that the big plan is causing unnecessary hardship. Forget bouncing the public vs. private sector slagging matches.. it’s a smokescreen! Almost everyone is in the same mess. Personally I also see it as the thin end of a rather nasty wedge. Hmmm..
No one can be in doubt that we have to address the national debt – it cannot be allowed to continue unabated, but here we have our rose, with thorns intact. It seems to me that the united “pulling together” front bandied about by so many conservatives in their 11th hour moment of crisis seems to me to be a repackaging of their own unique brand of equality. That all too familiar echo pervaded 80’s society, which I seem to recall saw the Conservatives and all those about them brandishing their “go get ‘em” selfish attitudes with unashamed righteousness, everyone basically being equal, just more so in some cases than in others. Their current “solutions” are being imposed upon people who are already beset with issues, not all of them of their own making (the banks know who they are). Yes, at the end of the day we all need to take stock of our positions. It’s unreasonable to imagine that there wouldn’t be consequences upon daily life with the country facing a fiscal crisis. No one can expect to keep uncontrollably “putting it on the plastic” without a day of reckoning, BUT has anyone wondered whether we're at the tipping point where there may simply be too much money in too few hands these days? We’re so busy grumbling amongst ourselves that hardly anyone seems to have mentioned the distribution of UK wealth; businessmen, politicians, bankers, even lottery winners with experience of real life abound, all seem besieged by the same old “I’m all right Jack” 80’s status fever.
According to the Telegraph, in an article dated 30th Sept 2010, the UK has about 280,000 millionaires (1.1% of the population), with a sum wealth of £1.28 trillion. Well, that’s quite a lot of money right there.. Billionaires? Count them in too - Forbes listed the UK as being home to 32 of them in 2006. So, on the face of it things must either be unfeasibly, ridiculously bad or we should be in ruder health than we are. Well, (and it’s just a guess) maybe it’s because a lot of their money may not be in circulation in the UK, but instead locked away in tax havens and offshore projects. I don’t begrudge people who may have earned their right to lounge in luxury but the great god of Capitalism, as haphazard a thing as it usually is at best, must be appeased by the movement of money. As far as the system is concerned you can’t be rich and a hoarder. Capitalism doesn’t like that one bit. It shows every time the government struggles to tell all the savers that they need to spend. If the money doesn’t move in the right places at the right time, or doesn’t move at all, then it will create imbalances which need to be tolerated. If it all moves within totally different countries, with little or no benefit to the source country then we have a ticking timebomb scenario, particularly if we have no way to generate revenue – say, for example, a country dismantling its manufacturing infrastructure.. now what kind of a country would do that!? As for mishandling money, if you want someone to elaborate as to what happens there I suggest you ask a banker – they have a lot of experience of this.
I have a suggestion, which might seem quite unreasonable at first. We keep hearing a lot about people struggling at the bottom.. student debt, minimum wage, benefits, etc.. Since the larger argument is ostensibly about citizens sharing the pain, how about taking hold of the reins for once and creating an UPPER limit on personal wealth? That’s not to say a limit on how much a business can generate – that would be a self-defeating premise for entrepreneurial flow. What I propose is a ceiling on personal wealth, which would flex in accordance with the general overall wealth of the country in question – ie: what the country can afford. That way we might minimise any issues of playing with more money than we can owe ourselves. When the country is prospering, people can prosper a little more individually, and when things are tight the personal wealth factor would be somewhat restricted, understandably for the good of the whole. Or am I missing a trick? Is this how it is actually supposed to function, given that the individual wealth of the big players seems to be quantified/wrapped up in strange and mysterious (nebulous?) equities such as shares, stocks, bonds and so forth? Is this in fact all STILL ultimately pointing to an uncooperative banking system, too afraid of its own tools?
Before anyone thinks I’m only taking a philosophical stick to the wealthy, let’s look elsewhere too. I don’t like the idea of my taxes going into supporting NEET’s, or the unworthy as much as the next person but maybe the problem is also locked up in the (likely VAST) sums of money pushed in the direction of the defence budget, to fight the petty skirmishes we don’t seem to be able to resist dealing ourselves into. Has anyone sought to ascertain and truly, accurately declare these sums in the UK budget analysis? Given that the rants regarding NASA’s budget have been suitably discredited by the announcement that the total budget for their entire space exploration to date has amounted to about 1% of the US defence budget for one year, where does the UK stand on its own defence spending? I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a defence budget, more I’m simply illustrating the point that it seems to be possible to find almost any sum of moneywhen it’s convenient. So, to whom it may concern, before you start taking yet more liberties with the people least able to afford it all, maybe ALL the money needs counting? The Conservatives love encouraging the masses to take responsibility and “have a stake” in the future (it makes their life easier and more deniable), so how about another proposal whereby at the start of each financial year we state how we want our individual taxes to be distributed? You could fill in a form, a bit like an inverted tax return.. I have a feeling that concept might not be too popular with the taxman.
It’s perhaps best to reflect that there likely is no easy answer to any of this. Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, the worst part for me is concern that the government, as always, seems very quick to point the critical finger at Labour (which they thoroughly earned), are very quick to spin out a yarn or two in an attempt to placate/misdirect the collective frustrations of society (an old trick for them), and seem VERY reluctant to take an honest and hard look in the right places. I wonder whether the goodwill of the masses might even come close to the dizzy heights of the war time bonding between fellow strangers, if those same strangers could rest poorer, but emboldened by the knowledge that ALL of us are truly shouldering the burden.
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