Newminimalists see this 2020 mess through different eyes to most people.
I recall writing articles in the mid 1980s about two things that have come to fruition in 2020. Sometimes such foresight is useful but in the main no one is listening to it and so it is only truly relevant to most when viewed with hindsight. So with 20/20 hindsight I offer this version of my foresights last Century.
Number one - government by interest groups.
I saw the danger of what I called "issues-based politics" which has now morphed into "identity politics". At the time I was energised about the likely "unintended consequences" from public policy settings that were being led by sectoral lobbyists and vested interests. I was sure this would lead to the misallocation, misuse, and fraudulent control of government spending. I was concerned that the national government budget would get carved up into allocations to sectoral interests in ways that decoupled such spending from the public revenue raising processes [taxes, tariffs, levies, etc]. Thus the only way that the expanded budget could be funded well into the future was either by borrowings [shifting the burden of these spending programs onto future generations of taxpayers] or by the massive printing of money [devaluing the currency].
Number two - reduced size of the middle class.
This issue was about the role that jobs played in a functional democracy. I had long believed [and have ever since] that jobs were a poor mechanism for the distribution of wealth and opportunities for wealth creation. However. Public policy professionals at the time were focussed on job creation scheme backed by public spending, training for jobs that were linked to a particular narrative for the future [again these programs were government backed], discounting the value of higher education by opening it to students who formerly did not qualify to attend such institutions, etc.
As new technologies emerged we saw many middle class jobs being ripped out of private and public sector organisations. Graduate qualifications became mandated for even low level jobs. Yet these jobs were set to garner lower and lower wages or remuneration because the productivity of labour was falling. In part this was due to the fiscal drag on the national economy led to lower GNP outcomes [we had a smaller national cake to distribute to those who had a job]. Also, at the time, the nation was crawling out of an extended period of Stagflation [high levels of unemployment together with high levels of inflation]. So in this period of the economic cycle for my nation those in the middle class were investing in real estate or more specifically in the family home. In other words the middle class was looking for new ways to create wealth through the acquisition of real estate and financial assets. These folks knew that their jobs had led them into a "poverty trap" and so they sought to keep finding ways to accumulate streams of revenue that were independent of their wages, salaries, or other means of compensation.
This 2020 global mess [apart from the Coronavirus pandemic] was inevitable. It was built into the narrative that supported the centralised control of government and business within a global system that was geared to decimate middle class jobs in nations all around the world. The interest groups [via lobbyists] took control of the agenda for C21st government. They promoted schemes that led public funds to flow into the global financial sector through one portal or another. Meanwhile, middle class jobs in all sectors of the economy were shipped off overseas because the modern idea was that the consumer benefitted from lower cost goods and service. The truth was they did not gain this benefit because they had no job or because they saw no rise in their remuneration.
BUT.... For the early years of C21st most of them used their mortgages as an ATM to withdraw cash. They could do this because the price of their only real asset [a house or apartment or farm or whatever] was rising and thus increasing their paper wealth. And so it goes......
Richard
You can contact me on minimal-you.com
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