Correct the Balance
By Maura Framrose
Image Credit: Serann
Take it on the chin... 'business as usual'... protect finance... herd immunity... what’s he saying? He [Boris Johnson] wants to 'cull elderly dependants' / reduce pension payouts / and continue trading while other countries are in lockdown. The UK government was clearly prioritising finance over health.
We do need the economy, it’s a fundamental reality of life. None of us are alone - a whole chain of people make life possible for each other and many of them have been seriously undervalued. We're dependent on each other, inter-relatedly bound up in spending. So much collective energy worldwide is directed into activities supporting finance, the financial system itself ought to be secondary to that. Would this be an opportunity to restructure the way we live? An opportunity for a rethink... how much we're giving - what we’re giving back... how much is being taken from us.
The paternalistic and measured approach of UK government as for two weeks it intravenously flushed public money (in future taxes) to private finance (at 5% interest) to ensure the health of property assets and capital - before any serious care was demonstrated for public wellbeing - reflect the attention of the electorate who voted them into power. The majority chose ‘economic security' over healthcare, demonstrating where concern has been trained to focus... and how risk has been normalised. The suggestion herd immunity would protect the market and if the market was protected, so would we, suggests as long as money is all right, even when that money is not being invested into healthcare - we are immune to risks taken on our behalf. We’ve lost sight of what really matters. Our health is in our own bodies - our lives have been systematically devalued and made secondary to economic activity - we have allowed public money to be spent on weapons which undermine the wellbeing of others, and to be speculated into tax havens instead of actively pressing for social equality and healthcare.
Many people for the first time, experienced the precarity and panic, the vulnerability of insecurity which for many, is a reality of daily life.
The politics of the capitalist right, non-intervention by the state (especially in financial markets) exploitation, extraction, and lack of concern for those at economic disadvantage - are the deeply flawed thinking patterns of a privileged elite. Who intervene only begrudgingly if you’re able to demonstrate reliance and co-dependency on their system for survival - and offer support if you’ve demonstrated adequate compliance with and complacency towards the structures of their control. Many people with vast personal wealth who do not require assistance, are receiving it while millions are falling through the net. To compensate for the market’s inadequacy and deal with inequalities for which it has no answer - we’re busy making nets to catch each other now which is a beautiful thing.. but….
..this preoccupation with finance - massively contributed in determining peoples' behaviours. With no clear message on public health because..politically there has been no real concern for public health - vague messaging, added as an afterthought open to interpretation, led many to ignore suggestions for social distancing, and others to fly into panic. 'It's coming, we need to protect (drastically underfunded) health facilities & the elderly' – would have been a more honest place to start but they don't think like that.. for them it's all about the money.
Countries discredited in our consciousness as ‘authoritarian’, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, suppressed the health crisis more effectively because elements of collective responsibility are built into their structures. Countries who model themselves on our socio-economic patterns, Chile and India, now lack access to our financial markets and are unable to guarantee anything near similar assurance to their people - many of whom are already going without food.
The preoccupation with self and ‘I’ required to maintain capitalism is inadequate as a collective response. ‘We’ are everyone, not an individual decision, not a consumer choice - we are a community and society, we are families and friends. We are only as safe as the most vulnerable among us and we’re all on the planet together. This crisis is a reminder of that.
In the UK, the emergent capitalist bail-out - maintains the reality of a financial ‘status quo’ where nurses hadn't had pay rises for 8 years, hospital cleaners’ work was outsourced to agencies on minimum wage without sick pay and hospitals are no longer public assets but since PFI initiatives of the late 1990s, are rented from the private sector.
The bail-out doesn't change any of that. It’s like receiving a ridiculously large birthday present from someone who’s abused you for years, while other people are still locked in a basement. Money can’t do everything, its interest in social welfare has been only to the degree in which those sectors could be financialised.
Financial valuation has a set of priorities which are fundamentally distorted. The idea the market will take care of everything is an abstraction. The market cares for its own security and ability to influence outcomes and represents only those with the privilege to participate in it. It also exploits crises so while our lives are on hold - money is working for profit. And that lies at the heart of the problem.
A society where most people can't afford to live on 94£ a week is failing!
When government wilfully refuse to see or act on this .. when they have us working for their money.. instead of making our money work for us! We have to realise!! We’re being exploited. Debt is slavery - wages have been slavery .. home ownership is debt and cycles of exploitation and wealth inequality continue. PEOPLE need the market to work for them…not the other way round.
Pay-outs in the UK being capped at £2,500 a month, suggest a maximum calculation for a 'living wage' - so why aren’t nurses, paramedics, ambulance drivers, bin men, cleaners, carers, postmen and teachers, essential workers - seeing anything like this kind of income while CEOs and asset managers, hedge fund traders take what they want?
Perhaps less money would be available if they weren’t trading it?
Personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to society. If speculation in derivatives and stock buy-backs is truly essential? And it can be argued, it’s not - it’s time we learned how they harness the surplus and demand regulation of the finance sector - to redirect privatised ‘profits’ back towards people we have discovered are of much greater value to society than they’ve ever been given credit for - and who create that value for us all in the first place. Not as a tranquillising shot in the arm from a benevolent venture philanthropist - but on socially agreed terms - negotiated by us.
When essential workers are given the dignity and respect we know they deserve and are validated for their contribution with decent pay-checks , we could recruit from the unemployed and make work pay.
It’s time, past time, we lived in a world where necessities were provided for and excess was shared. Truth is looking us straight in the face. So here's a pay-rise. We're going to use the money system to value things we need and stop being harmed and manipulated by agendas we don’t.
References
Campaign against the Arms Trade. End financing of weapons
Global Justice Now. Corona tax
Arundhati Roy. The Pandemic is a portal.
