Act now before it is too late

It is obvious: a stitch in time saves nine

The word that sets me off is ‘growth’.    It is not possible for growth to carry on indefinitely.  So what are we going to do about it?  The exponential curve makes it highly possible that the problem of no growth or even contraction will occur in my lifetime.  We need to prepare.  We are not.  I have an interest in this.

I hear much talk of ‘cuts’.  This is something definite: I will spend less.  I can use more precision: I will buy 20% less food, go to the cinema 10 fewer times in a year.  It is something that I can control.  So I can talk of reducing taxation.  I will cut the rate of tax.  I will cut the total tax take by…  Again it is something very specific.  The results are more difficult to predict – taking a higher rate of tax does not mean people will continue to work enough for you to get more tax coming in.  If I cut government jobs will it be cheaper to support those out of work on benefits?  What other unforeseen or unmeasured effect will there be.  I have cut though.  What of saving?  I will use any spare cash to pay off debts.  The consequences are much more difficult to predict.  Same for ‘good’ spending: the money I saved I will spend on hospitals, schools, road, bridges, wind-farms.  Specific actions but the results?

So what of being successful?  Go out and be successful.  I can’t do that.  I can do things that might make me successful.  There is a good chance that gaining rare and difficult skills will enable me to do well in a job provided I actually apply those skills.  I cannot guarantee being successful.  I can do something that I think will result in success.  What about ‘lucky’?  Even less chance of affecting that outcome.

If I turn to Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (and to many politicians in Europe) I see that they have to work on the other side of the equation.  “If you were to do X then we would get growth.”  The government could choose to do X, that is the certainty.  Growth however is not.  Indeed I wonder about the link in the specific case of the opposition.  Creating 200,000 apprenticeships does not have any connection to growth in the economy or to a single one of those apprentices getting a job.  That is only a statement that I will spend more.  The certainty is that my level of debt will increase.  Beyond that it is a guess.  Indeed that is where Labour is left, in summary, I will spend more so this will make things better and I will pay it all back out of the extra money gained from growth.  Bah!

The trouble is that we do not have a parallel universe to experiment in.  If you do not have the levers of power all you can do is jump and shout and stamp your feet.  You try to persuade the voters that the link between your promised actions and the desired result is sound.  Alas, it never is.  However if you can persuade enough people there is logic in there, people who will not question too deeply, then you have it – power.

We are lucky.  We can see where things are going.  We do not have a parallel universe, but we do have Greece, running about a year or so ahead of everyone else.  We have some good models like Iceland, Ireland, Canada, Sweden, and Argentina.  We can see the results of certain actions in specific situations.  So our politicians, not just UK, can choose their actions with good measures of the likely results.  What they can’t do is choose an outcome and work back to the required action.

Should they do anything?  A good question.

It is obvious: a stitch in time saves nine but you could just not bother wearing trousers

I don’t believe it

It is obvious: scepticism works

 

I worked on contract at Eurotunnel during the construction – programming not wielding a shovel.  I was there for 9 years.  I said to my wife several times that we should get into the car and go to Folkestone to see the second tunnel they were digging as the one they were describing in the media was not the one I was working on.  For example there were widely reported delays in digging the tunnels yet when they broke all tunnelling records and came in weeks ahead of schedule there was not a word in the press.

I have been lucky to work on several high visibility projects over the years.  I worked for a short time on ‘Big Bang’ at the Stock Exchange.  For such a large project I was impressed at how well it was run.  On the first morning of live operations I turned up to work early to soak up the atmosphere.  I saw groups of developers huddled round monitoring stations watching the opening trading.  The system crashed after about 15 minutes.  Everyone with a terminal had logged in, and when it reached about 5 times the designed load it gave up.  The system automatically re-started and ran without pause for the next many years.  I read a lot about the crash, but nothing about the robust system, its recovery and the subsequent performance.
Two weeks ago I saw a program on stroke victims.  It focused on one person and the theme was that they got 12 weeks of excellent care in the hospital and were then abandoned.  It is relevant to me as my friend Irene was admitted there last week with a stroke.  Also my sister-in-law works in the stroke unit.  I spoke to her and she said it was interesting that the person was complaining about a lack of care as she had been writing up his visit notes as an out-patient for the last 18 months at least.  She had regularly been writing up notes for people for 5 years and more.

On a simpler level I have seen the furore in the press in recent weeks about people working through their own company and dodging tax.  I have been doing it for 30 years and there are no tax-dodges to be had.  Still the press bangs that drum and government responds.  No mention that when you choose that mode of working you can be out in seconds with no redundancy, you are master of your own pension, you do not get paid for holidays or sickness, you do not qualify for any state benefits if you lose the contract, the employer does not have to pay any NIC which makes it cheaper for them to employ you.  No mention that should you avoid the one cost you can avoid, employees NIC, then you don’t get a state pension and in any case the Labour government brought in a regulation to close that loop hole (IR35) 10 years ago.

 

So it is that whenever I have an inside track to any story I see that the media (press and tv) have simply got it wrong.  It frightens me.  Do they get anything right?  I am inclined to think that the internet through blogs that are effectively well reviewed does a much better service than the media.  Why worry about the freedom of the press it is useless anyway.

I think I prefer the internet.  I can go and look at what I want to look at.  I do not have a vast range of things forced on me mixed in with inane comment from the man on the street that I am not interested in.
It is obvious: scepticism works especially with media comment

I had a dream

It is obvious: reality is tricky

Lucky that I did.  Most nights it is a nightmare.  In the dream I raced to sell everything against falling markets.  That is obviously anxiety.  If I did sell everything I would have money sitting around that could just as easily devalue as shares or bonds or just about anything.  So why bother.  I have got money sitting in other countries…it is just as vulnerable as money in this country.  I can’t eat gold or spend it.  I’m still stuck with investing in myself, turning my house into a fortress, buying 20 years of food and some serious weaponry.  I will only ever do the first of those.

So this is why I am different to a lot of people.  I have a stake in things.  I’ve got assets, broadly.  If I’m under thirty then it is likely that I have no stake in things.  Indeed I will probably be ‘under-water’.  So why should I play by society’s rules?  I could step outside them with no means of penalising me.  The only real penalty would be the removal of my liberty where the state would look after me and save me the effort which was probably what got me into prison in the first place.  People committing crimes for a roof over their head and food in their stomachs does happen and might happen more in future.  It used to be “two years in the army will sort them out”, but the armed forces are not recruiting at the moment.

As the ratio of stakeholders to non-stakeholders decreases the burden on the stakeholders grows.  So the only answer is to make sure that everyone does have a stake in society.  I have no idea how you might do that.  In Clockwork Orange they put them in the police force so they could use their skills keeping everyone in line.  It is what they do in China.

We are faced with a very few and diminishing number of people who are not retired, not young, employed, earning enough to pay tax.  As you work at it the stakeholder count reduces quite dramatically.  Demographics guarantee the ratio will get worse ignoring any other factors.  During the great depression in America as bad as things were, 1 in 5 people were unemployed.  So 4 in 5 people had jobs and things carried on.  In Spain those numbers are already 1 in 4 and 3 in 4 and it hasn’t stopped yet.

My dream reminds me of the Gilbert and Sullivan dream song: When you are lying awake.  It starts:

When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire – the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;

and in the middle you get:

The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing –
It also reminds me of the ‘Good Ship Venus’ which has a different meter but the words above match my dream.  I am further reminded of some of the games that I play for a hobby. I often get to the point where I have a commanding position and will rule the universe on the next move…but someone meets the winning criteria on the current move and I never quite grab the glory.

It is obvious: reality is tricky – why bother with it?