A Step too Far? What's the Story with Social Welfare?

Everything has a price tag these days, from politicians' expenses to the Olympics' opening ceremony. In any one day, on reading The Guardian alone, we are informed how much Barclay's has been fined (£290m) and how much in bonuses Bob Diamond will now forego as a result of the Barclay's shambles (£2.7m). We also know how much fuel duty Brits will no longer have to pay (3p), as George Osborne does a U-turn, and we're told how much this will cost the government (£550m). We are informed that London bus drivers are striking over Olympic bonuses, and told how much exactly these bonuses are (£500). The list goes on, from the cost of loan companies to how much the M&S Chief Executive is being paid; even how much BT Vision paid for 114 Premier League football matches (£738m).

Never before have people known so well the price of everything. When the cake gets smaller, we all start eyeing the crumbs.

No wonder then, that the welfare system is now being scrutinised under the analytical, economic eye of the public. And yet, how we look at the costs of the welfare system, and what story we pin these costs to, makes a great deal of difference in the world of politics.

Take, for example, the last few months and years, where a story has been slowly building around the welfare state, about how much it costs the UK and whether those who benefit from it actually deserve such benefits. A provocative story, no doubt; yet stories, however moving, can be very misleading. Compare, for example, the story that 'the government will pay out more in social security benefits than it raises from workers in income tax this year (2009)' to the story that 'the UK is ranked significantly below many other European nations in terms of how much it spends on welfare, including France, Germany, and Italy'.

Of course, we've been inundated with figures, the latest eye-watering figure to join this deluge of price tags being how much housing benefit for the under 25s costs the UK every year - coming in at £2bn. Add that to the total UK debt: £1tr (up £2.7bn in a year)

The analogy that's made, then, is of course the image of a family in debt. You can't borrow your way out of debt, you've got to cut back, right? Of course! And to do that, you've got to spend less, right? Duh!!

So, that's what the government is doing. Cutting back to pay off their debts, and the place they've chosen to do this is social welfare; the reason being that there are too many people dependant on the state. Social welfare gives the wrong impression, that you're better off on benefits than working for a living. This from Cameron:

'A couple will say, "We are engaged, we are both living with our parents, we are trying to save before we get married and have children and be good parents. But how does it make us feel, Mr Cameron, when we see someone who goes ahead, has the child, gets the council home, gets the help that isn't available to us?"

One is trapped in a welfare system that discourages them from working, the other is doing the right thing and getting no help.'

It's a provocative, and somehow alluring argument. It does indeed sound incredibly unfair!

In the face of the economic facts and figures, Cameron has focused on cutting back the welfare state in order to help pay off the UK's debts. Dependency on welfare, described here as the "welfare trap," needs to be tackled, and urgently. Cameron is not alone. The Telegraph, along with a great many middle-class couples living at home, not to mention a great many Tory donors, clearly supports the PM's agenda. Here, the story of a whole generation raised on a 'culture of entitlement,' looms large. A very alluring argument: blame it on the feckless young. Just look at them, listening to their terrible music and causing nothing but trouble!

But, let's take a step back for a minute. There is another way to tell this story.

In the hours and days immediately following the news that Cameron was setting his sights on removing housing benefit for the under 25s, a whole swathe of dissenting voices rang out, not least of which was Polly Toynbee's, who described Cameron as "stirring up those on quite low incomes against those on very low incomes". Here, writes Toynbee, Cameron is deliberately setting up a false dichotomy, dividing and ruling, by 'pitting "those who work hard and do the right thing" against those on benefits, all the time ignoring the fact that these are for the most part the very same people'. Polly confronts us with a whole new set of figures that Cameron has chosen to overlook:

For a start, the majority of people claiming benefits are not unemployed at all, they are the low-paid employed, the workers and cleaners, care-assistants and child-care workers, the people who clean our streets and who take care of our elderly loved ones, the people who mind our children. They are the 62% living below the poverty line who are employed but require benefits to survive. And as a counter-narrative for those who mean to suggest that this is a tidal wave of scroungers, 95% of the rise in housing benefits this year is paid to people in work. Only one in eight people who rely on housing benefit are out of work.

So, what the hell is going on then? What kind of story can we tell, if the problem of rapidly rising welfare costs can't be explained away solely by scapegoating a minority? How inconvenient, that we have to think a little harder.

Well, Owen Jones of The Independent, along with Polly Toynbee, attempts to explain the situation, not by blaming the inner psychological workings of the so-called undeserving poor, but by examining three external factors that feed in to this rapidly snowballing situation: low wages, high housing costs, and a dearth of job opportunities.

Regarding low wages, The Living Wage Foundation currently sets the living wage at £7.20/hr. With the national minimum wage set at £6.08 for those over 21 and £4.98 for those 18-20, we can see there's a bit of a deficit between what many are being paid on minimum wage and what is needed to survive in the UK. As such, people are relying on benefits to top-up their wages, not to scrounge. So, in this instance, taxes aren't primarily going to scroungers living off social welfare, they're subsidising big businesses who refuse to pay a living wage. Combine this with the rising cost of living and you might be tempted to think that it's not so much about cutting benefits, but increasing wages.

How about that for a twist in the tale?

The story doesn't end there, however. 95% of the increase in housing benefit is being paid to people in work who can no longer afford to pay their rent because their wages do not cover the costs. Housing costs have been rising far more than the minimum wage, and far more than the rate of inflation, three times more, to be exact. Again, then, instead of singling out a minority, and describing their apparent immoral inner workings, the temptation now might be to focus on reducing rents in the private sector, by, for example, imposing a cap on how much private landlords can charge, or maybe reducing the cost of buying a house, by investing in more social housing. After all, it's not so much that taxes are going towards maintaining feckless teenagers in the lap of luxury; they're going into the pockets of rich landlords who raise rents beyond affordability. Capping rents would mean all those people who are working on minimum wage might be able to afford their rents, or even get a mortgage, without having to rely on benefits in order to survive.

And finally, the elephant in the room, which doesn't require much more of my word count: How can you fit 2.5m unemployed people into 460,000 job vacancies?

In all this it's interesting to note that it is the so-called free-loading chav, the scrounger, who is the one deemed immoral, and not the big businesses who refuse to pay a living wage, or the private landlords who raise rents to impossible heights. Just as Jimmy Carr was scapegoated for the failure of the government to impose a fairer, more water-tight tax system, here too, the unemployed are singled out instead of the wider malaise, a system run by capitalist values, that is so out of control the government needs to subsidise it in order for it to survive, by paying housing benefit to the already employed, for example, not to mention bailing out banks.

Add to all this the final fact that we all intuitively know, that:

As each year passes, and the richest one per cent get richer still, the rest of the best-off ten per cent increasingly have a little more in common with the remaining nine-tenths of society, and less and less in common with those at the very top.

The only people gaining from all this are the richest of the rich, who have seen extraordinary rises in their wealth over the last few years.

[T]here has been a short, sharp entrenchment of inequality in the past two years. Last year, the earnings of FTSE 100 executives went up by 49%, while the annual pay of waiters and waitresses fell by 11% and those of cleaning staff by 3.4%. The average director at Britain's top 100 companies now earns 145 times more than their average worker.

We might note too, that a quarter of these people, the richest of the rich, are Tory donors.

So, now that we know the price of everything, which story do we want to tell?

Has the welfare state taken a step too far, encouraged a generation of entitled scroungers? Are we angry that our taxes are supporting this undeserving free-loader? On the other hand, has capitalism gone too far? Are we not angry that our taxes are subsidising big businesses who won't pay a living wage, and rich landlords who raise rents to unaffordable levels? Is David Cameron taking a step too far, by drawing back the welfare state in the wrong way at the wrong time, when to do so will only leave a rising number of people unable to cope? Is that the way we wish to end the tale? With rising homelessness, increased poverty, and a widening gap between the richest and the rest? Or do we want to create a different ending, by looking at establishing a living wage and investing in social housing, creating jobs, and laying the foundation of a good future for the next generation? Wouldn't that be a nice ending?

So, now that we have the figures, what's the story with social welfare? More to the point: which story do we want to tell?

Something Terrible

To see something terrible happening to a human being, click *here*.

A Funny Scapegoat: Jimmy Carr

This week the UK media decided to make Jimmy Carr the next victim of public condemnation, and our Mr. Cameron, PM, took it upon himself to add fuel to the flames by commenting directly upon Mr. Carr's nefarious financial affairs:

I think some of these schemes – and I think particularly of the Jimmy Carr scheme – I have had time to read about and I just think this is completely wrong.

People work hard, they pay their taxes, they save up to go to one of his shows. They buy the tickets. He is taking the money from those tickets and he, as far as I can see, is putting all of that into some very dodgy tax avoiding schemes.

That is wrong. There is nothing wrong with people planning their tax affairs to invest in their pension and plan for their retirement – that sort of tax management is fine. But some of these schemes we have seen are quite frankly morally wrong.

The government is acting by looking at a general anti-avoidance law but we do need to make progress on this. It is not fair on hardworking people who do the right thing and pay their taxes to see these sorts of scams taking place.

As is often the case these days, I came across the breaking news of Jimmy's "morally repugnant behaviour" on Twitter. As is also often the case, I found myself embroiled in a heated argument about it with a fellow twitterer, @tsdlee. This charming young man, arrested by the power of my intellectual prowess, has since blocked me. He was convinced that Jimmy was "greedy" and "morally wrong". He asserted that Jimmy should not be avoiding tax, especially if he earns more than £3m a year. Also, if he was intent on avoiding tax, he should at least give some of his many millions to charity. At the time, I found myself thouroughly infuriated by the man's magnanimous moralising.

On reflection, I can of course see Lee's point, but at the time I found Lee to be "judgemental, sanctimonious, hypocritical, and presumptuous," to quote myself. On asking Lee how much he gave to charity, he was reticient. It was 'as much as he could when he could'. I presumed this was, well, not often.

I asked Lee if he knew how much Jimmy gave to charity, and Lee replied:

I'm pretty sure he doesn't give 44% of his income to charity. I've never heard him give anything to charity.

I directed Lee to the following, found after a cursory Google search 'Jimmy Carr charity'. Jimmy clearly does give to charity, and probably a lot more than Lee.

I was getting angry now, because I felt Lee was simply using Jimmy Carr as a way to perpetuate Lee's favourite story, that rich people are evil, greedy sods who don't give to charity. (A story I too like to proliferate, on occasion, I must admit). Lee did all this even though he knew almost nothing about Carr, who he was using to perpetuate his story. That's when, obviously in following the link I had given him, Lee replied:

Ah good. Glad he's donating to charity and is getting relief on the 1% tax he actually does pay. Smart man.

I lost it, and posted:

You're a twat. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Lee, in my mind, had simply refused to change his story. Nothing was going to work. I was convinced this guy was the reason for all the ills of the world.

This personal exchange between Lee and I, and the event Jimmy found himself in, are not unrelated. Let me explain the connection I have in mind by going back to Jimmy for a moment:

Having found himself in the midst of a Cameron-induced twitterstorm, inflamed by the anonymous, yet somehow personal accusations of disgust flung in Carr's direction like detritus by a hoard of foaming tweeters, Mr. Carr had quickly offered up a public apology, removed himself from the noxious implications of this now infamous K2 scheme, and ducked his head below the media radar in the hope that, for the love of God, this tidal wave of public scorn would pass as quickly as it came. Lee, perhaps exasperated by my attempt to beat him down with my retorts, blocked me. Society had done to Jimmy what I had found myself doing to Lee.  In the midst of a system we all know to be based on greed and inequality, we had focused our attention on arbitrary individuals, and let loose.

Yes, that term is called scapegoating. Scapegoating is all too common in our society today. Like when the Tories say the UK economic crisis is the result of Labour 'leaving the country in a mess,' while Labour, with equal venom, say that the country's mess is a result of the Conservative's austerity agenda. Both are wrong, because, quite likely, both are right. They are wrong because they assume that whatever is the cause, someone else is to blame. What's certain, they believe, is that they are not responsible. After all, to even hint at taking responsibility in this society would lose a political party hundreds of thousands of votes. Taking responsibility as a politician is a sign of weakness, certainly political suicide. As a result, in this world, everyone's a victim, because everyone else is to blame.

The process of blame is no more apparent than when we scapegoat, but there is another element in scapegoating. We single out a target. It might be one political party, or one individual. They come to symbolise the problem that ails us. They become the cause of the sickness. Yes, they're the reason I'm in this mess. He's the reason me and my family are struggling. We overestimate the power one party or one person can have; a natural consequence of the culture of individualism in western society today. And so all our anger gets directed towards a solitary focal point, some poor bastard that never saw it coming. Like Jimmy Carr, or Lee, who suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by the irascible anger of people convinced that they are the reason the whole damn world has gone to pot.

So scapegoating is a natural consequence of the poison of extreme individualism mixing with the equally toxic venom of the blame culture we find ourselves living in today. It's as if we look around and see that all the fish in the pond are poisoned, but instead of trying to clean the pond, we single out an individual fish as the cause for the ills of all the rest. We then isolate this fish, ostractise it, and demand it somehow change, become well. If it doesn't it shall pay by being excluded, derided, rejected by the school. We don't notice that we, the accusers, and them, the accused, all swim and drink the same toxic water in equal quantities.

In sum, we direct our anger at individuals or groups, not contexts or systems. Maybe because it's easier, and feels more visceral. Maybe because we're so familiar with the context that it becomes invisible. We can see a single fish, with sickly scales and cloudy eyes. We can pick him out. We can't see the murky water. It's everywhere, far more unidentifiable.  

This is apparent in how we, inspired by Cameron, singled out Jimmy Carr. It's also apparent in how I singled out Lee. I didn't see Lee as one sick fish amongst many, all of us swimming in a poisoned pond. I saw him as a source of this poison. He wasn't swimming in judgemental waters, he was judgemental. He wasn't swimming in the poison of hate and resentment. He was being hateful and resentful. In doing this, I myself was falling prey to the poison's effects. 

In a sense Lee is of course a source of this poison: he transmits poisonous toxins via public forums into others, so that the pond becomes ever more saturated with toxic meaning. A vicious cycle becomes locked in, self-perpetuating: others agree, and retweet. A tidal wave of indignation ensues. I fell into that cycle and became a part of it too, scapegoating Lee just as much as Lee scapegoated Jimmy.

In another way, however, Lee isn't the source of this poison. Lee is actually being force-fed this toxic story about heroes and villains by the media and powerful people who have access to this story-telling machine, in this case Cameron, who sends his favourite stories out into the system as poison into our pond, to be learned by rote by the rest of us, like a song you hear so often you just can't get it out of your head. Just look around: Twitter-feeds and Facebook news-feeds are dominated by stories told by the powerful, through the mass media.  There are countless other stories not being told, because no-one powerful enough who has access to the media wants to tell them. You have to trawl twitter to find these alternative tales, these counter-cultural narratives.

The stories we are flooded with day by day are written by the powerful people in our society, people with their own, often political agendas. Lee, in a sense, had no choice but to get swept away by Cameron's tale. The same narrative was everywhere. On every online newspaper website. Every tweet with #JimmyCarr on it. He drank up this poison, poured out with such apparent non-chalance by newsgroups, Cameron, and tweeters, that, Yes! Jimmy was the villain we were looking for! 

There's a pay-off in all this too, a reward in scapegoating, and this is a feeling of belonging. Lee found  himself admitted into a large group of irate anonymous tweeters who were expressing similar views and feelings to him. For sure, I too felt a sense of pleasure when other tweeters seemed to agree with me against Lee, that Carr was not the problem but that the system in which he lived was to blame, a system that legalised, endorsed, and sold him the K2 scheme. I felt vilified, part of a larger group, when I saw they agreed with me. I felt right, not merely because I felt right in myself, but because others agreed with me. As such, I didn't just feel right, I felt righteous.
  
This is another poison that can motivate us to do terrible things: group think. The school of fish swims this way and that, so that we, mere individual fish, follow blindly, making sure we avoid becoming isolated, wishing to remain hidden in the crowd. It's interesting that scapegoating is the opposite to this desire to blend in, as it singles out and isolates an individual from the rest of us. So, even if the school is actually moving deeper into the most toxic parts of the pond, we'll follow, because we fear standing out. We don't even think about it. We merely follow. Even when we become more ill, we continue to follow. An example of such obedience, even when faced with having to perform evil acts, is no more evident than in Milgram's Experiment (obedience) and the Stanford Prison Experiment (group think).

In our case the poison is scapegoating, and it's poisonous because it violently singles out one man as if he's the cause of all our anger, when actually the problem is far bigger. To scapegoat only harms one man, potentially deeply, but it changes absolutely nothing. It's like witch-hunting because there's a plague killing your family. It's poisonous to us too, this scapegoating, because we think we're achieving something when we're not. We're simply wasting energy on the wrong thing. We get angry and stressed out at this scapegoat, yet remain totally ineffectual in the grand scheme of things. The system remains intact. And yet, we get swept away by the crowd again and again. We get irate along with the rest. The toxins seep into our system. We remain sick.  

So, what can we do about this? What's the alternative? What's the antidote?

Well, despite all our confidence that we were right, the problem is, we were all wrong: the tweeters who were against Jimmy, saying he was evil and greedy, and the tweeters who were defending Jimmy, saying he was merely doing what we would all do. Both sides we're wrong. But we weren't wrong because of what we were asserting. Our assertions were right. Jimmy was being greedy. But he was also only doing what we in the same position would do. Both sides were wrong because both sides were convinced the other side was wrong. Both sides were convinced that the other side was the poison. But this is patently wrong, because every one was right.

All must have prizes.

Part of the solution, then, is to stop isolating, or threatening to isolate individuals or groups, through scapegoating, and start looking at the system instead - ways we can all live together that don't involve poisoning the pond. For example, why does Jimmy get £1.5 million a year to tell jokes, when a nurse who saves lives and puts up with all manner of drunks and abuse on weekends, only gets £25,000? Is it because Jimmy is greedy and evil? No, Jimmy is taking what he's being offered, by society. Clearly, we as a society value entertainment more than we value carers; just look a footballers' salaries compared to mental health workers. Society, the pond, is sick with rotten values.

What Jimmy did was totally legal. What Jimmy did was very, very greedy. Jimmy, however, just like us, is swimming in this poisoned pond, our western society. This society is fuelled by the values of 'individualism,' 'capitalism,' and 'the need for more'. It values entertainment over care, popularity over character, growth over ecology, profit over ethical values. So, when his accountant suggested a way for him to save tax, Jimmy probably didn't look at the details. He just went along with it - it's legal right, so why not? Capitalism dictates that we have a right to make as much money as possible, as long as you remain within the law. Capitalism is not about thinking of others. Neither is individualism, where the only one person looking out for you, is you. So, you've got to take care of number one. It wasn't even that Jimmy "disregarded his responsibility to pay his fair share" - quite likely he didn't think about his responsibility at all. And why would he? Our society is not built on such values. Instead we have capitalism and competition - our society is based on capitalising on others, seeing them as commodities even, not helping them.

And as for responsibility, it is interesting to note how those who blame are equally guilty of neglecting their responsibility: Cameron and Lee walk on very shaky ground when it comes to the responsibilities they expected of Carr. Cameron's family was built on tax avoidance, for example. Lee only "gives when he can," which probably isn't often. Yet Cameron is morally repulsed, and Lee expects Carr to be charitable. And, again, wouldn't we all snap up the opportunity to pay only 1% tax on our income if given the chance, because more money in our pockets is, well, 'more'? And that's got to be good, hasn't it?

This is all very telling, because it suggests we are all poisoned, but that we only see the sickness in others.

So, perhaps we ought to reserve judgement of individuals and direct our attention towards changing the system. For example, the Robin Hood Tax scheme proposes putting a minor tax on financial transactions that could put billions into the public purse every year. 2020 Tax proposes simplifying the tax system so that tax avoidance becomes almost impossible. I'm not saying these proposals are perfect, I'm just saying they focus on changing the system, not scapegoating individuals, and that they may be a step in the right direction. It's interesting, though, that these two proposals remain significantly overlooked by a mass media which spends all its time scapegoating celebs, politicians and CEOs. Maybe because it's more entertaining for us to read the drama of a celeb being ripped to shreds. More entertaining than Richard Murphy, perhaps, who proposes other ways to reform, if not outright revolutionise, the UK tax system. Here is where real change can happen, not least of which through the narrowing of the gap between rich and poor. The question remains, though, if we as a society are ready to take things seriously? Or whether we are too intoxicated by the poison in the pond, so that we'd rather tear strips out celebs and CEOs than look at how we can change the system for the better, while all the time the pond continues to grow evermore saturated by the toxins that poison our bodies and cloud-up our minds.

Finally then, we need to stop singling out individuals. We need to see and change the bigger picture. Only then, with cleaner water and altered currents, will individuals begin to grow healthy and swim a different course. Only in this way can we hope to embrace the possibility of cleaning the poisoned pond.

Not Happy with your Lot? That's Rich.

I'm confused.

I've been having one of those self-flagellating mornings where I don't get on and do what I should be doing (studying for my exams), but rather immerse myself in the popular motifs of my society, the Zeitgeist, if you will, of the modern, western psyche.

It has not been an inspiring morning.

It all started with the interweb, as it usually does. More precisely, it started with two Yahoo articles. These articles, given their topics and their location on the web, provide me, I believe, with a fairly accurate sample of the average person in the UK today. Unfortunately, what this sample seems to suggest is that we are a bunch of ungrateful, thoroughly spoilt brats.

The first article I came across was a journo-tisement about RBS and NatWest. Today, they are unveiling a new piece of technology that allows people to use smart-phones to take out cash from ATMs. Not the most ground-breaking of news, but nothing that should inspire any great degree of malcontent either, right?

Well, wrong. As is their wont, along comes a rusty-hinge of moaners, with a plethora of complaints, ranging from how this will just be an other way for thieves to run off with our money, that this new technology won't catch on, that they should improve phone signals (which are terrible) first, that smart-phones are overpriced and pointless anyway, that phones should be for calls and texts only, that you'd need a forklift to take out your cash from an ATM these days...

The whinging went on and on and on.

Out of the first 18 comments, only one directly acknowledged that this technology might be a positive thing. The rest for the most part were critical and even paranoid. I moved on.

The second article asked: is it worth working? It compared the income of those on minimum wage with those on the median wage and went on to deduct the costs of working (including taxes, transport, and so on) from the gross median salary. This essentially reduces an hourly rate of £13.46 to £8.11, which is close to the hourly rate of minimum wage, which is £6.08. The suggestion was, why work if essentially your only getting £2.00 above minimum wage. Excuse me, sir, but is this the motif you were looking for?

Of course, there are massive holes in the article, such as factoring in that those on minimum wage also have travel expenses, and so on, so that their rate reduces too and the gap between minimum and median wage widens again. And then there's the idea that, if you don't have a job, you can expect that hourly rate (when you are on benefits) to be far, far lower. But, that is not our main concern here.

As with the first article, it was the comments that struck me the most, with outbursts such as:

"for sure it is not worthy going to work if you salary is close to minimum wage. MODERN DAY SLAVERY!!!!!- dont forget slavery has been on since the creation of societies."

- Fran, London

And:

"Factor in the interest paid to the bankers on your mortgage etc and you soon come to the conclusion that you are, always have been and always will be a slave, nothing more nothing less. A slave. Now go back to sleep and dream of winning the lottery you pathetic bunch of losers."

- A Yahoo User, Huddersfield

 And again:

"Slave labour is back and thriving"

- Martin, London

 The slavery theme came up repeatedly. I couldn't help replying:

To ya'll who are saying this is modern day slavery, have you lost your minds?

Because having a TV, microwave, laptop, hot water, drinking water, food around the corner, a home to live in, public transport, free healthcare, and so on is soooooo similar to being chained to a line of people with no house, no clothes, no freedom, no identity, no healthcare, or similar even to a person with no home, no food, no water, no healthcare, no future.

Yeah, because we are slaves of privilege, slaves of entitlement, slaves of ingratitude. We have no idea what we've got. We [are] all convinced [that] we are so deprived.

- Me

And that's it really, in a nutshell. At least, for me it is.

As a society, we've been spoilt rotten. We've been given everything, which has somehow led to us feeling as if we've got nothing. I mean, for someone living in the UK, employed or not, they will in almost all cases, have a home, running water, hot water, electricity, food, warmth, shelter from the rain, easily accessible food stores, public transport, a free, easily accessible healthcare system, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, an environment relatively free from the ravages of war and/or civil unrest, racism or ethnic cleansing... the list goes on! And yet, we focus on what we feel we've been deprived of, on what more we want but don't yet have. A big part of the problem, then, is that our wanting is out of control.

This is all part of the sickness of society, part of what I talked about a few days back. This is the poisoned pond, a place in which we all live and become intoxicated. Part of the poisoning is losing the capacity for gratitude, for recognising what we've got. We become ungrateful and entitled, and in the process, lose our capacity to feel any kind of happiness or contentment. In this way the cycle continues, as we repeatedly convince ourselves that we are being deprived, that we are "slaves" somehow, when perhaps we are merely slaves to our own, out-of-control desires and our inability to feel satisfied.

Part of the process of healing then, is remembering what we do have, and in the process, acknowledging that actually, if we have electricity, a laptop, free healthcare and so on, then we've got a lot more than most. Keeping a gratitude journal, a place to write down what we are grateful for, is a helpful antidote to the poison in the pond. For example, let's not forget that if you receive the minimum wage in Britain, you are still in the top 7% in terms of global wealth, and that already factors in the cost of living. Indeed, part of the  healing process is changing the story, from one of deprivation and entitlement, to one of gratitude and responsibility. In short, this is about no longer acting like a spoilt child. In short, this about growing up.










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The Toxic Pond

I've got my feet up on a make-shift chaise lounge here in Clifton, Bristol, listening to Leftfield as the cappuccino goes stale on my tongue. Bacon and eggs, sausages and tomatoes, churn in my bloated belly. An aura of satisfaction melds with the dappled golden light that plays on the carpet. I smile, Saturday morning middle-class contentment suffusing my being.

If only this satisfaction could be enjoyed in full - enjoyed, that is, without this slight but unmistakable element of dis-ease.

***

You see, nothing much has changed:

The room I reside in is in a house from the Victorian era. The basements of houses from around this time often housed the servants, where they used to work and live beneath the aristocratic upper class on the floors above. The world of the privileged was built on top of the world of the less privileged, the "under-class". Much luxury, and much leisure time, was only possible through the efforts of those who worked far harder, had less luxury, and less leisure time (a maid could work from 6am to midnight).

To be sure, it wasn't effort that earned you this freedom from toil. It was a birth right, a privilege handed down through the generations.

Nothing much has changed.

Just as it was difficult to move between these classes, back in the day, today it is likewise expected that you stay in the class you were born into, especially if you were born in the US or UK. Likewise today, the upper class's privileges are built on the backs of those below, except today "the class below" is not just the working classes, but also the generation behind, our children.

It seems self-evident really:

In a society of limited resources, the privileges I have today are only possible by depriving others of these same things. Not everyone can have exactly what I have (above minimum wage salary, a nice place to rent, a job), or more than this (a car, and house to buy, regular holidays abroad), because there isn't enough of this stuff for everyone. What I have today has not been earned, though it is very easy to imagine that it has. Actually, what I have has been granted to me by virtue of being born into a class of society - the middle-class. Had my mother not been middle-class, and had my third level education not been free, I would not be writing the way I am now. I would not speak as I do. I would not get the jobs I can get now. I would be decidedly less well off.

In short, it is those on minimum wage, and also, those to come, the next generation, who are being faced with the burden of this, our unsustainable extravagance, our credit-fuelled intoxication, our middle-class privileges. We need to face up to that, and take responsibility.

Our wealth was an illusion, credit-based, and now we are trying to maintain the illusion by making others pay. Now, faced with the prospect of withdrawal, we attempt to shift the burden of our lifestyles onto the most vulnerable people today, and tomorrow, by dismantling, piece by piece, the welfare state, and by unravelling free-education and creating massive student debts. We even try to make the old pay, by siphoning money out of pensions. So, we attempt to live on top of those with less than us. In the very same way as the even richer, the people on the second and third floors, attempt to live on top of us, the middle-class, so they can live a life of even more privilege.

We are not better than the stinking rich, who strive to siphon money away from us and into their own pockets through the banks, for we likewise attempt to ease the burden of the debts we owe by forcing those who do not have as much as us to have even less. For example, we are in the process of guaranteeing that our children will have less than us by dismantling free-education.  

***

Not a very palatable analysis of our humble middle-class lives. Not an easy pill to swallow. Not the treatment you were looking for, that would help you rest in peace.

A wise man once said:

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society"

As such, these words of mine are not designed to sooth. As I said, my movement towards a middle-class contentment is tainted, interrupted. But interrupted by what exactly? Having too much? No. Having too little? No. It is interrupted by having more than, for no other reason but because I was born into a certain class, a certain neighbourhood, a certain set of privileges.

That which my conscience cannot adjust to, that which disturbs me, is the unequal distribution of wealth in society. And I'm not the only one to feel uneasy.

The UK and the US not only have some of the poorest rates of social mobility, making it difficult to move beyond the class you were born into, but also, the the US and UK have some of the highest levels of wealth inequality. This is the profound sickness, the toxic pond if you will, in which we as fish both swim and breathe.

This is the reason why I feel dis-ease. This is the reason why the young and the less well off take to the streets. Such protesting and rioting are merely symptoms of the disease of inequality, the only cure for which is a more equal distribution of wealth. Until then, we all, rich and poor, must resign ourselves to swimming in poisoned water, and therefore, we must resign ourselves to feeling ill at ease, to feeling the dis-ease that is inherent in the make-up of our society.





Some Evidence:

A TED Talk on social mobility and the consequence of an unequal distribution of wealth in society:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/richard_wilkinson.html

Stats on social mobility across developed countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_comparison

Hunger

Revolution is a consequence of hunger. Without hunger, there is no need for revolution.

What then, of the current generation of youths? How hungry do you think they're going to get, when they're unemployed for one, two, three, five years?

How recognisable do you think they'll be, when you see them take to the streets, no longer looking for recognition or justice, but now demanding atonement? How afraid are you, you people in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, that a whole wave of youths are living with empty bellies and clenching fists? How aware are you, that they look upon you with hate? How aware are you of their reasons why? That you have left them with no jobs, a mountain of historical debt, a raped and dying ecology; that you take no responsibility for the destruction you have wrought, while they live with the legacy of your carelessness.

Hunger... hunger is the essential ingredient of revolution. You are not hungry, perhaps, in your job, with a comfortable apartment or house, with your free education and your secured futures, with your unsustainable pensions that take the money from your own child's future pockets, giving them a bill instead.

They are hungry... they are angry... and they blame you.