Right now, there is a cost-of-living crisis underway. You may well be one of those fortunate enough to have only been upset by the rising costs, rather than one of the growing number now going short.
But the misery for many is real. It is happening around us all today.
Sadly, this cost-of-living crisis, the inflation and the shortages contributing to it are going to get exponentially worse. So much worse, the cost-of-living crisis is going to contribute to a complete system collapse.
Whilst the ultimate responsibility for the responses to the events which are easy to blame for the cost-of-living crisis, such as Brexit, Covid and the War in Ukraine lie firmly at the feet of our politicians, there are other purely greed-driven influences at work too. Private interests that are exploiting the ineptitude and ignorance in government, to line their own pockets.
Profiteering, cynically hidden in plain sight, is helping to make what would always have been a very challenging time for many, a looming disaster that is going to affect us all.
Privately owned and corporate businesses, many of whom are some of the worst for putting out messages that tell us they are doing all they cant to help us and that they are the victims of price rises and shortages themselves, are the very worst when it comes to making massive profits on the basis that people will accept the rises because of Brexit, Covid or Ukraine, when what the real price inflation and what they are exploiting our good will to charge are nowhere near the same.
Everything that could has gone the way of big business, corporate interests and those who ‘know someone’ since the first Lockdown began in 2020, simply because our stupid and inept politicians have tried to deal with every single problem they were elected to solve by writing cheques.
This has led to many in the business world to believe that its ok to keep inflating prices of the goods and services they sell – being certain as they are, that government will have to step in and sure-up the price and the ability of everyone to keep on paying the bills.
Yet wholesale energy prices have come down, and so-called shortages that big retailers are using to justify the extraordinary levels of food price inflation simply don’t exist at the present time – even if they could do so very soon.
Just about every kind of product or service that each and every one of us are using every day, is shooting up in the retail price that we pay. Either that or the products we buy are being reduced in size or quality – which in real terms amounts to getting less whilst paying more.
We literally now have to buy even more of everything, just to stand still.
Yes, it is absolutely true that the very stupid people we have running the Country are responsible for creating the myth that no matter what happens, everyone will still continue to get paid.
But stupidity on the part of Government, legislators and regulators should not be a green light for businesses to keep charging more and then charge whatever they like.
Just because legislation doesn’t prevent profiteering, meaning that businesses can exploit any excuse that people will believe to do so, doesn’t make it right or necessary either.
Sadly, greed-driven, unethical businesses have been at the creative centre of the cost-of-living crisis, globalisation, and everything that has led to the situation that we now face, right from the very start. And that start wasn’t Brexit, Covid or Ukraine.
For decades, poor politicians have allowed businesses to plunder resources and exploit us all for profit and private gain.
Working within the law or regulations that exist doesn’t exclude any business or private interest from the moral and ethical responsibilities that they have to everyone and everything else. Especially when they are likely to have had the rules changed or created to allow them to do all this in the first place.
This Blog was originally published in May 2022 and then as part of the book ‘From Here to There Through Now’ in October 2022. It has been edited and updated by The Author.
Adam Tugwell 