We hear the term ‘growth’ coming from the mouths of politicians so often, the word really does sound like it’s all that government is about.
And yes, it IS true that growth today IS all that the government is about!
‘Great!’ say all the businesses and business owners. ‘The government are out to help us grow!’
And that’s exactly the kind of growth that most of us outside of Westminster think of and actually hear when politicians mention it. Rather than what ‘growth’ to the Politicians who are in the know, actually mean when they use this term.
GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
The growth that Politicians keep going on about IS NOT the kind of growth that most of us are thinking about when we hear them use that word.
Even though politicians and the people advising them are aware of what we are thinking and believing, as opposed to what they actually mean.
Growth for politicians doesn’t mean growth of business in the way that most of us think of it. Even though it includes the kind of growth that we think about it that meant a lot more to politicians in the past than it does now.
Growth for politicians is growth of Gross Domestic Product or GDP.
GDP is the size of the economy or the total amount of financial activity that has occurred across every form of ‘business’ or trading activity between businesses and customers that involves measurable financial transactions that are then recorded across the entire country from all the businesses and organisations that are being monitored by the Office for National Statistics.
‘Measurable’ is the important term here. Because it’s the process of measuring so much of everything in life ‘because it has a measurable financial value’ that has contributed so negatively through its influence in the way that we value every part of life in monetary terms.
The Devil is in the Detail
GDP is today critically important to politicians, because it is the benchmark figure that enables them to hide the true breadth and depth of public spending and public debt.
However, GDP is really about private sector or ‘commercial’ activity, rather than the financial activity of public sector organisations.
The public borrowing figures matter because of what we have been conditioned to believe is their direct relationship with the ‘economy’.
That is why they are always presented to us as a proportion or percentage of GDP.
Therefore, if GDP grows quickly or significantly, the true financial position of the UK becomes easier to hide.
Not only that, this way of applying ‘creative accounting’ can also be seen to devalue the amount of money that the government is spending, borrowing or creating.
This ‘sleight of hand’ works very well because the narratives we hear about the economy and economics from politicians and the media mean that public spending and public debt are always referenced today in terms of how ‘big’ the economy is, and how much the economy has ‘grown’.
Politicians and the money ‘creators’ are making our world unrecognisable whilst we are all being robbed
GDP is a very clever tool, and it was certainly meant to be. But it is also a two-edged sword.
A quick recap:
Politicians are able to hide or even extinguish public debt and ‘reduce’ the amount they are spending by ‘growing the economy’.
This is why politicians are obsessed with ‘Growth’.
‘Growing the economy’ in this sense means increasing the amount of financial activity or the total of money that is spent or transferred through measurable activities during any define period of time.
How ‘Growth’ works:
The politician’s ‘Growth’ is typically achieved through an increase in private sector financial transactions and the volume of money that is in circulation (Basically what all the money that can be found in every open bank account at any one moment in time would add up to).
Money is created by private banks and financial institutions. NOT by government.
Whilst each Pound is counted as it is created for the purposes of GDP figures, the real ‘magic’ or sleight of hand comes in the way that the same Pound will be counted again, each time it changes hands through a new financial transaction at each and every point in a supply chain.
Building houses is perhaps the very best example of a way for GDP and therefore ‘Growth’ to be increased so that large volumes of new money and the chain of financial transactions it will create in the associated supply chains can quickly be added to the UKs Balance Sheet.
A good example of ‘Growth’ – in the way politicians need it to be:
To build a house means private banks creating the money to lend to buy the land and then to pay for the process of building which will include the supply chains with all the different businesses that make house building products, the machinery that is used, the fuels, the specialist tradesmen, the surveyors.
Then the houses must be sold, which gives another private bank the opportunity to create the money for the mortgage, the mortgage lender to charge a fee, the removal company to get business, the landscaper to install a nice garden and so on.
Beyond this specific chain are the increasing requirements for the payment of council tax for each home that the local Councils automatically charge, the utilities accounts and requirement for bus companies, and the list goes on.
Each and every one of the businesses involved provide data to the Office of National Statistics about the performance and turnover of their business. And each set of figures is added to the Country’s ‘productivity’, no matter how many time the money which started off at the beginning has changed hands, meaning that its value in terms of GDP will be multiplied potentially many times over.
Things to bear in mind about The System
It is important to bear in mind that GDP works as the ‘credible’ measurement of economic activity that it does, because it hides the creation of money behind the walls of private banks and finance houses.
Most people still believe that banks and finance houses hold money for some people or business that they then lend to other people, businesses and governments in return for interest which they then share with whoever ‘banked’ the money with them.
Whilst this may have been in some ways true historically, money is created by private banks and finance houses today as simply as an employee entering digits into a spreadsheet, with all the rules that required these activities to be ‘regulated’ and kept within a framework either watered down or removed by ‘deregulation’ as part of ‘free markets’.
For The System to keep working, the amount of money available MUST keep growing and the number of recorded financial transactions MUST keep increasing.
This is why the use and increasing reliance on credit and now digital banking and therefore financial transaction tracking has become so important.
Cash transactions cannot be monitored or recorded in the same way that digital transactions can. This is one of the key reasons that cash is being phased out – because cash or any kind of non-digital transaction really is one of the keys to financial independence!
Private banks and finance houses also ‘buy’ the bonds that the government ‘sells’ when there is a requirement to ‘borrow’ money to pay for public policies and delivery through the public sector.
It is important to be aware that if the total amount of money in circulation were to remain fixed within this ‘FIAT’ based economic or financial system, the value of the transactions taking place would naturally fall.
The System was designed and operates on the basis that money ‘created’ by The System automatically flows into the pockets of the rich. From there it is invested in assets such as property, infrastructure and even business ownership, from where it is used to create even more ‘credit’ raising opportunities.
In the FIAT system, money flows back to its source and those who are already very rich – the bubble where it was all ‘created’.
Where our reality becomes VERY uncomfortable – just to support Politicians ‘Growth’
To counteract the perverse nature of an economic system deliberately created to enrich and benefit those who created, manage and understand it (The creators), it is therefore necessary for money to be created for new reasons and in an ever-increasing number of ways. So that money can keep flowing, ‘multiplying’ and being shown to result in ‘Growth’.
Deregulation allowed the same interests that create money to use more of that created money to buy up just about everything that they would not have been able to in any other way, because we have been duped into believing that the money they use is actually real.
Fake money has basically been used to buy up or gain control of everything that we recognise as being real, typically so that it can then be rented back to us, increasingly using more fake money that we have had to borrow and pay interest on.
Whilst the money used for public spending is ‘dead money’ because it typically pays wages and incomes, the government can no longer borrow enough to pay the existing bills because the UK has been stripped of its assets and ability to produce by the same interests that create the money.
More food for thought
Unfortunately for us, the creation of money for nothing doesn’t correspond in any way with the value of everything that people and businesses own and produce across the UK.
Our politicians have helped to make it this way, because the adoption of this system appeared to make life much easier for them.
This means that the real value of whatever money we possess, or we expect to receive in income each time even just a £Pound is ‘created’ by the Politicians or the Banks, the value of the £Pound in our pockets or in our bank accounts falls in proportion to all of the money that is in circulation.
The way that The System we have counteracts or addresses this fall in monetary value is through what we know as ‘Inflation’.
Inflation is the price or value rise that becomes essential for whoever owns or produces anything, so that they can keep up with how ‘growth’ is actually pushing the value of everything down.
How Inflation hurts us
Because we – the people and the consumers – are the end of the ‘supply chain’, we aren’t selling on what we buy to anyone else, and we are the ‘end user’.
This means we cannot recoup any of the losses which the government is racking up across the economy and therefore for us each day.
We are the end of all supply chains. And whereas every conceivable business activity should be about the end user – that’s us, or rather humankind, it is not.
EVERYTHING is about money, greed and profit and in real terms that don’t require too much further thought, we are experiencing loss in standards of living, because wages and incomes don’t (and cannot) go up, to match the deficit that GDP is creating for us at life level, in so many different ways.
Are we the victims of the biggest crime that mankind has inflicted upon itself?
If you can begin the process of unpicking the layers of the economic onion – which have been deliberately hidden and obscured by narratives that are designed to put the keen observer off, you will soon uncover just some of the uncomfortable truths that lie behind giant walls that have been hiding in plain sight.
The biggest of all is this:
The System can only function and deliver its rewards to the few by steadily impoverishing the masses. So that they become increasingly dependent upon every available form of credit, just so that they and the next people in the queue to become impoverished can continue to exist.
When MMT, neoliberal economics and the FIAT momentary system was conceived and implemented in the early 1970’s, it was inevitable even then, that people on the lowest levels of income would come to not be able to afford to live without help of some kind – which to benefit The System would always preferably be credit.
That credit or debt for the growing masses, would be the steady and growing supply of just more of the same fake money that those who created it and have increasingly used it to own and control everything then have then lent to us at interest, happily policing our credit worthiness – and therefore our growing compliance with The System – as they have done so.
That the government is being forced to instigate welfare reform now, in ways that go against the growing trend and an exploding welfare bill, isn’t a sign that any member of our society genuinely wants to enjoy a lifestyle that is paid for by either the taxpayer or the state.
The crisis that the government is now in tells us that the cracks are now appearing within this bogus economy and that the fissures have already parted to a level where it is no longer possible to keep creating ‘corporation friendly’ policies that bridge the gaps, give the same few the opportunity to create new credit lines where their greed can be hidden.
Although few trust the politicians we have got, most of us until have failed to agree upon why.
What we should all realise and understand is that whether deliberate or not, everything the politicians have been doing for the money ‘creators’ for a period of at least 5 decades, has slowly but surely led to the fabric of our society being destroyed.
All to the point where it is impossible for them to hide it now.
Originally published on 6 December 2024, this Blog was updated and republished online and for PDF download on 25 March 2025 – the day before The Spring Statement.
Adam Tugwell 
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