M – Money
In the past, people were encouraged to "save up" for the things they needed, or maybe something they didn’t need, like "a rainy day." Does saving for a rainy day mean that by expecting one, you are more likely to experience one? Over the last 30 years in the UK, the year with the greatest number of rainy days occurred in 2000, with 176. Last year (2022), there were 171.
Now, instead of saving, people are strongly encouraged to borrow, and a vast industry has developed around this, called Financial Services, though it might be more accurately described as Financial Disservices. The average debt for each UK household now stands at a record £65,000, including mortgages.
O – Oligarchs and Orwell
In 1973, the band Pink Floyd released a song about money called … "Money." A line in the song, spoken by someone who has come into a lot of money, expresses their thoughts about buying a football team. The lyric satirises how people who make lots of money sometimes spend it in questionable ways. This was strangely prophetic because, following the collapse of communism, Russian oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich did exactly that.
Communism, an ideology created by Karl Marx, was built on the notion that a utopian society could be achieved if wealth was shared. Everyone could be equal, free, and happy. It didn’t work, partly because it was achieved through violent revolution (never a good start) and partly because it failed to consider a flaw in human nature: greed. Some people appeared to support the idea but had hidden agendas.
George Orwell’s book Animal Farm describes this process brilliantly. The animals on a farm take it over, but the pigs, who wanted to be in control, start killing anyone who objects to their plans.
A friend of mine was a pig farmer in rural Bedfordshire until a few years ago. He had to close his farm because he couldn’t compete with cheaper, subsidised imports of pork from other EU countries such as Holland.
Some people still think that Communism, or a variation of it, could work.
Utopia means “not place” or “no such place,” i.e., it doesn’t exist. Pink Floyd went on to make a huge amount of money, and still do, from the album Dark Side of the Moon, which featured the song "Money."
N – Nothing
Some people work hard to earn a living and pay their way. Some people have high expectations of getting money for nothing and get into dire straits when this expectation is not fulfilled.
The band Dire Straits released a song in 1985 called "Money for Nothing." The lyrics focussed on an erroneous assumption that rock stars make lots of money for doing very little. Or was it?
The money you pay into your bank is treated by the bank as their own. They lend it out multiple times and make money out of nothing. They give nothing back to society (although some PR stunts might say otherwise). This concentrates an increasing amount of power in fewer and fewer hands and disadvantages the poorest in society, those with little or nothing.
E – Economies
Have we reached a point where the entire economic structures of the world are beginning to crumble? Some third-world countries are seeing their entire annual GDP being swallowed up simply in servicing their national debt. They must pay the interest on the loans they have received from world bankers. Then they must borrow huge sums from world bankers to pay the interest on the loans they have already received. How much longer can this go on?
You don't have to be a Marxist to see the truth in Marx's statement that “capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.”
Y - You or You?
You shouldn’t blame all the people on long-term benefits for their predicament. Their wide-screen TVs show them lots of desirable lifestyles but does not give them the opportunity to achieve such lifestyles. Although Marx was wrong about the solution, he was right about the problem. He called it alienation. Sociologists today call it anomie. This includes personal unrest and anxiety that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals.
If you are on low wages, the minimum wage or the living wage, or on benefits, you may feel that your only attachment is to a system you don't believe in or feel part of. So, for you, the system is broken.
Some people genuinely want to work but there are no jobs for them. Others, possibly due to anomie, have settled into a life of dependency.
This dichotomy has existed for decades as someone commented in 1931:
"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
Dr Adrian Rogers.
Some commentators say that there will be a redistribution of wealth soon as a Marxist / Communist ideology subjugates world political systems. Apparently, the World Economic Forum (WEF) are already preparing for this and, as part of persuading us that this will be beneficial, have claimed: “You will own nothing – but you’ll be happy”.
We all want to be happy, don’t we? So, it’s over to you, dear WEF!
Photo: Licence CC 2.0