The wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long. That is, until they all fall off and the bus goes over the cliff.
The bus in question is the UK economic and financial system, and with decades of neoliberal idealists being asleep at the wheel and 18 months propelling this fractured chassis forward with the Saturn 5 rocket boost that Rishi Sunak’s unqualified money printing and spending spree has given it, we are on the verge of experiencing and having no option but to live through what might be the worst economic crisis that the World has ever seen.
The risk to us all as we face this situation, is that the architects of the problem will hang on to power and continue to do everything that they can in the forlorn hope that they can find some magical way to get things back to how they were. All so that the system as it is today remains fundamentally the same.
By failing to recognise that any system that allows any Government to create money in the way that they have been doing with the value that they have attributed to it is fundamentally flawed. The system is mechanically broken, and politicians have driven our economy and financial system to a polar extreme where the deck and all the cards within it are stacked in favour of and continuing accumulation of ‘wealth’ for ‘the haves’, whilst either taking directly away from or devaluing everything for everyone else.
The system that we have, built upon the sands of neoliberalism and the myth that free markets look after everyone and not just those within, has existed on nothing more than a lie for 50 years.
Whether deliberate or through stupidity or ignorance alone, successive UK Governments on all sides of the existing political divide have behaved no better than confidence tricksters. Charlatans who have manipulated the reverence that we are brought up to have for those in positions of power, to benefit themselves and the people who are their paymasters. Meanwhile doing nothing but creating or storing up pain for everyone else.
Every part of the financial system and public sector has been tinkered with time and time again, just to benefit those with influence who have been looking for an easy ride.
With that whole system now set to break, it is imperative that we use the opportunity not to allow the same people to dream up any more self-serving quick fixes. We must reform, reshape and rejuvenate the entire system so that it works for people at the grassroots level first. Everything else that it does must be no more than an afterthought – which is the way that it should always have been.
The reality is that things are now so broken, there isn’t actually an alternative way.
Everyone has and is about to have their lives touched by the coming chaos. Everyone will rightly want to experience solutions that they believe will result for them in what will feel like a win.
That won’t happen if the way out of the mess continues to be only about those who have selfishly found their way into positions of power and influence at the top.
Adam Tugwell 