Of all the points being missed by the political classes, probably the worst as well as the most troubling is the absence of any understanding or appreciation that life is now too expensive for anyone to pay for, working full time and on the minimum, basic or working wage.
Whilst it may be logical to believe that everyone is hardwired to work at and do whatever they can to earn money when they don’t have enough, the next of those points being missed is that if you cannot do the most basic of jobs and still not pay your own way without help, the rubicon has already been crossed when it comes to ‘helping ones self’.
For many, a lot of help or borrowing is the same thing as receiving just a little.
Why should anyone who doesn’t have enough even if they work a 50 hour week, struggle and destroy their life, if they cannot even then gain the benefit of being able to fully support themselves with the self-respect that it gives?
In a money obsessed society, where the politicians and elites are even more obsessed with what that means for them than most, it sadly stands to reason that government cannot think of any problem and therefore come up with any solution which isn’t itself derived in monetary terms.
On the face of it, focusing on getting people earning – and identifying that this can be achieved through the acquisition of new skills, does indeed sound like a genuinely good way to address a small element of truth that exists when answering the question of how to get more of the low paid back into work.
Yet many of the jobs that need to be filled don’t actually need or require people who are not being treated like the adults they are to have any additional skills beyond common sense, being motivated and to be genuinely happy with who they are.
The problem here is very much the difference between what it is when you are required to live to work, instead of being able to simply work to live.
Politicians will continue coming up with diversionary schemes to help themselves, that just make more and more people feel disillusioned with a life where the system doesn’t legislate to allow anyone who so chooses, just to simply exist. They will continue doing so until they and The System that they are promoting, supporting and facilitating is called out for the life, community, country, planet, values and humanity destroying lie that it all is.
When the lowest wage for a working week can pay for all of the basics in life that any person genuinely needs, and the way that government and governance works is to promote and maintain that standard in all things and all it does, pretty much all of the societal problems that are plaguing life and dividing people will quickly cease to exist.
Adam Tugwell 