Chip Off The Old Block

Who here remembers Thatcher?

Now I can't say as I do, but my parents do - distinctly. They lived through that era. They saw what it did to the country. My mother was lucky enough to have an office job, while my dad saw jobs literally vanish.

Now - who here remembers Cameron?

Just the other night I was thinking, and I started to see more and more similarities between the two of them. Or at least, between their respective terms as Prime Minister. Let's take a look at a couple.

Both of them were tough on Europe, or at least tried to be; "No, No, No," the iron lady was famed for saying in 1988, and - until recently - Cameron has touted a staunchly cynical angle (which he backs off from anytime UKIP become too popular).

They both had a habit of helping the wealthiest echelons of society, as well. Thatcher was a strong proponent of trickle-down policies - Reaganomics - that doubled the share of England's income for the top 1% of earners (7% to 14%), and the most recent round of tax breaks and economic legerdemain has helped the rich out a lot more than the poor in Cameron's government.

Wars; Syria and Falklands. Executed differently, approached differently, but equally distant. Equally draining and pointless to us, too. Posturing. Sabre-rattling. Like a reality TV star claiming they've slept with someone famous just to stay relevant in a world that doesn't need or want them.

Both of them studied at Oxford - Thatcher left with a bachelors in Chemistry, and Cameron with Philosophy, Politics and Economics (which was for some reason upgraded to a Masters for no apparent reason).

Their differences, however; they are interesting in and of themselves.

Cameron's only ever had one Chancellor, and that is George Osborne - a man with less economics education than your average twelve-year-old. (As a twelve-year-old I had precious little money of my own so I had to learn to save, a problem that Georgie Porgie has never had, probably.) Meanwhile, two of Thatcher's three Chancellors had educational backgrounds in economics, and one actually worked with money in the banking sector. That's right. John Major was boring because he knew a LOT about money.

Another key difference is that while we are reminded daily of the apparent threat of terrorism, it was Thatcher who was actually targetted by a terrorist attack. Five people died in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984. Yet more laws are passed today than in 1984 curtailing people's freedoms in the name of fighting said terrorism than ever were under the hostilities of the IRA.

Where does this lead me, I hear you ask?

Both of them sold out our industry.

We all know the old story of the miner's strike. It was cheaper for Thatcher to import German coal than it was for us to produce it ourselves, so - rather than bite the bullet and do right by the workers of the country - things went due south, very fast. So while the financial sector was enjoying something of a boom, your average person was seeing their real earnings vanish - if they had a job at all.

Right now the same thing is happening with our steel. It's easier and cheaper to let it go, and to let the workers bear the brunt, in an economy whose growth is a fart in the breeze. Even despite the increase in minimum wage, even despite the reduction in taxes for most - the cost of living is on the increase, and isn't getting any better.

What does this mean? Probably that it's still going to get worse before it gets better, people. If Cameron's little mob intends on following in the Iron Lady's foosteps, then it's us lower ninety per cent of earners that are going to suffer the most. Some folks just never learned the lessons from the past, and unfortunately, those folks are currently dictating economic policy.

Bet you won't vote for this same shower of bastards NEXT time.

Drowning In It

The UK government's projected deficit for the 2015/2016 budget is £69 billion.

Projected revenue is £673b - that is, the income the government takes. Meanwhile, the government's spending is projected to be £742b. The debt is owed toward a wide variety of individual funds, 35% of which are overseas; debt is an asset, and so it gets passed around and sold just like any other financial instrument.

Let's be real. These kind of numbers are big. They're not global-fiscal big but they are big nonetheless.

Government finances don't work the same as personal finances - something that a lot of people who advocate austerity and cuts don't realise.

You see, in your personal life, if your expenditure outweighs your income - then something has got to give, because no person has access to a near-limitless source of fiscal stimulus to buy themselves out of trouble. You reduce your expenditure, and you increase your income, and just like that - your deficit goes away. Therein is the acumen of austerity. Cut costs and increase income as best as possible.

Of course this is sometimes easier said than done. There's a certain amount of minimum spending that any human being has to do - guy's gotta eat. Just acquiring more income isn't that easy, either. As of right now the job market is still suffering, especially in my corner of these sceptered isles, and businesses (who are also still suffering) are trying to cut their costs as much as possible, so pay raises and extra hours aren't ten-a-penny.

If one could lay hands on a certain amount of resources, mind, then this would become easier - and not just in a sense of paying for bills that the income isn't covering. Many people have debts that can be paid off (and thus reduce monthly costs) - many people could make investments in business, especially those that are self employed (and thus increase monthly income). People just can't, very often, count on that cash injection.

As previously mentioned, however...government finances don't work the same as personal finances.

So perhaps I can forgive those that might think that austerity cuts are truly the best way to repair an economy. Perhaps. Up to a point. There are those that should know better - if they don't, they shouldn't be working where they are, or governing us.

This country's debt has been increasing steadily (as a percentage of our GDP) since 2001 - slowly and steadily until 2007, then rapidly and vastly increased by the global financial crisis. It is still increasing now, despite the savagery of the cuts that have already been doled out.

The fact of the matter is - just decreasing cost to make the deficit go away won't actually solve problems. A country's economy is an elastic thing, and it is a thing that can be nurtured as well as atrophied. We can emerge from this crisis with no deficit and an economy that is shot to hell, or we can look at our recovery as more long-term - and actually recover.

But that's just me.

Kraft und Macht, Wille und Geld

(For those of you reaching for Google Translate - the title literally translates as "Force and Power, Will and Money".)

To bring a Sesame Street theme to the blog - something I should perhaps do more often - today's blog is brought to you by the concepts of Will To Power, and Elite Panic, and the number 99.

First, a definition of each of these concepts:

Will To Power is a concept central to Nietzsche's philosophy. It states that the urge and ambition to reach the highest possible position in life, and thus control the environment that one is surrounded by, is the greatest driving force behind human nature.

Elite Panic is a notion I've only come across recently - it is best described by Astra Taylor in an interview with Rebecca Solnit, both fascinating and forward-thinking people:

One of the most interesting ideas in the book [A Paradise Built In Hell, by Solnit] is the concept of “elite panic”—the way that elites, during disasters and their aftermath, imagine that the public is not only in danger but also a source of danger. You show in case after case how elites respond in destructive ways, from withholding essential information, to blocking citizen relief efforts, to protecting property instead of people. As you write in the book, “there are grounds for fear of a coherent insurgent public, not just an overwrought, savage one.”

Having read more than a couple of articles related to the concepts in the book in recent days, I got to thinking about what it means. It does, at this point, bear mention that I have no formal education in any of this stuff. This is all just observation, opinion, and highly based on my own view of the world.

If we take as given that the will to power is indeed the primary driving force behind the human subconscious, then the acquisition of wealth is certainly easily explained as a means to achieve that end. The more currency one has at their disposal, the easier one can influence the world around them - as that world has been informed and constructed by those with a significant amount of currency.

Every stage of wealth obviates one from needing to worry about the concerns of the stage before, from extreme poverty all the way up to the mega-rich; I dare say nobody that lives above the poverty line really needs to worry about clean water, for example, nor would any HNWI (High Net Worth Individual) be troubled by their electricity bill.

The link between acquisition of wealth and one's will to acquire it is, in an anecdotal sense, very real. Popular thought envisages those who are self-made millionaires as being wilful, strong individuals that grasp for what they can and make the best of it. Brad Klontz states in an article here that if one associates money and its gain with evil or amorality, one is less likely to acquire it, simply through the basic psychology of aversion. (Whether or not becoming rich is actually amoral is a blog for another day.)

What this could engender, however, is the outlook that everyone sees the world in a similar way.

We tend to do this, as human beings. Our reference for other people's behaviour and mentality is our own behaviour and mentality. In the same way as how someone's own view of God is often a quite close reflection of their own personality, unless one recognises themselves as flawed, one imagines that all mentally "normal" and healthy people see the world in the same way as they do.

If this is true - this means that wealthy people assume that everyone wants to acquire wealth just as much as they do. Further, assuming the will to power is indeed our driving urge - then our initial assumption is actually true, in a very base way.

Which offers us a basic explanation as to why the wealthy would fear those less wealthy than they are. Of course the poor want the things the rich have. Of course they covet those things. It's what society wants us to do - the society so wonderfully constructed to be a trickle-up economy, so adroitly turned into a system for rewarding the pursuit of currency.

I found it quite hard to track down statistics for just how much money was taken or made via high-level financial fraud and tax evasion last year; also, what actually constitutes such a crime is a fairly muddy subject, as what is morally objectionable (foreclosing on people's homes, absurd rates charged on unscheduled overdrafts) is rarely illegal. A great example of this is the attempted re-branding of tax evasion as "tax efficiency". Tory peer Lord Fink - very appropriate name - even claims that literally everyone does it to some degree, which many families and individuals that try and make ends meet every month will probably find incredulously inaccurate.

Let's be real though. Those HNWIs we talked about earlier, they want to live in gated communities with each other - because while other HNWIs are the kind of people that are more likely to engage in such high-level theft, it's the poor folks that are coming to rob them in more direct crimes. I would be willing to place bets that the amount of money taken in physical theft pales in comparison to the amount taken via financial fraud and tax evasion, but as we all know, perception of crime is not necessarily informed by statistics or reality.

So of course, the elite are going to panic whenever it looks like those below them are getting riled. Lurid pictures of potential rioting and looting were painted during Katrina - pictures that were actually not that accurate. Protests about the unbalanced fiscal state of the world tend to be given very specific treatment in media owned by right-wing individuals and by police forces that are by their very nature right-leaning: downplay them if you can, contain them if you can't, and invalidate them if at all possible. The very reason this happens is because those who own the news media and those who inform the laws upheld by the police are terrified that those poor grubby people with dreadlocks and colourful clothes are coming for their material goods, because if the situation were reversed, it's what they would be doing.

As I have always said - almost every conspiracy theory isn't a conspiracy. The truth of the matter is easily explained, entirely obvious, statistically evident, and worse than the theory in the first place.

The Illuminati isn't a group of cackling evil millionaires that sit around a desk and have a secret handshake. There is no Illuminati. There doesn't need to be. It's the nature of the wealthy to wish to remain wealthy, to wish to increase their wealth, and to protect that wealth from those that would take it. Right or wrong, that's your conspiracy. Simple psychology.

Of course, the only real way to prevent people from wishing to correct a massive gulf between rich and poor (as presented here in the US and here in the UK) is to actually close that gulf somewhat. A decrease of overall poverty, and a subsequent decrease in wealth inequality, would probably go a long way to calming down us angry poor folks. It would also lead to increased spending, healthier economies, stronger growth, greater financial security in the markets, and the easing or curing of several global problems that only a reduction of poverty can provide. Malaria, for example.

Hence the number 99 mentioned at the beginning. If the gap between the 99% and the 1% was reduced, the 100% would have better lives.

If only we had the will to make that change.

Neitzsche talks about Kraft - force - as being something that every being possesses; a drive, an urge to control the environment around it. He talks about Macht - power - as being the proper and thoughtful application of that force in order to effect the changes necessary to achieve that control. In our little discussion, we see wealth, raw currency, as Kraft. It is force. A means to an end. With sufficient Macht, the elite would never need to panic ever again.

But hey...I highly doubt anyone that could begin that particular rich man's revolution reads my humble little blog, eh?