Dividing the Cake – the myth of economic growth

Dividing the Cake – the myth of economic growth

Mmmmmm - cut that cake

Rainforest - have YOU seen it anywhere?

The wisdom of nine year olds is a remarkable thing. For instance if you ask them what we breath, they will tell you oxygen. If you ask them where we get oxygen they will answer from trees, above all in the rain forest. If you ask them what happens when the rain forest is all gone……… well, suffice it to say that they are blessed with more wisdom than Obama, Putin, who ever rules China and India and the rest of the eejits allegedly in charge. They know. So do you. So do I. We choose to forget most of the time. The kids won’t have that luxury.

It’s the same with the cake; I like to think of it as a cake. If I was to tell a class of nine year olds to imagine a cake they would do it easily. If I ask them to divide it up, and it wouldn’t occur to them to do it other than equally, they would envision slices for all. Equal slices for all. If I then asked them that when the plate was empty was there any more cake they would all shout, “No!” Some might look at me as if I were a bit dim; a slice or two short of the full fruit cake. But the eejits in charge insist that there is more and more and more cake to be had.

What the fuck is that all about?!

Greed.

Plain and simple. Greed.

Good ol' days - Medieval Robber Barons

Here’s the thing; there’s more than enough to house, feed and clothe everyone, but if we do it equally the rich don’t get richer. Nothing’s changed. Tribal days; chiefy did good. Feudal days; robber barons and kings (if they stayed alive long enough) done good. Capitalism; capitalists do good. The poor do worse and worse. Kids get murdered for protesting child slavery; kids get abducted and sold into slavery, for organs, for prostitution; kids die of starvation, war-induced and self-induced; kids get killed in war zones. And that’s just kids.

All this is done in the name of “democracy” which is capitalist code for capitalism these days; or, really, it’s just the old concept of Empire updated. In tribal and feudal days it was plain old conquest, now it’s dressed up for popular consumption as economic growth. The bright ones among you will have spotted, as the bright ones (often those that think outside the box – like Hitler, Idi Amin, Uncle Joe Stalin) in class will spot, that if Mum just gets out some more ingredients, she can make another cake. What if the cupboard is bare? And the supermarket is closed? And it’s a Bank Holiday? What if the supermarket is open and the shelves are stocked but Mum doesn’t have any money …………

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Pete Townsend

The fact is that the supermarket is being robbed blind left right and centre – as ever, not by the man on the Clapham omnibus or Citizen Joe Smith or by the kids, but by the biggest Robber Barons yet known to man. To ensure growth in the biggest industry on the planet, weapons, we need wars – real and imaginary. Often the one leads to the other. So we are back in the Middle Ages with the Christians against the Saracens. To ensure growth in the drugs industry we need illnesses and new ones are being discovered and developed every day; older, cheaper methods of curing people with healing, herbs, and prevention, are falling by the wayside and in some cases being suppressed. Herbalists have been censured and imprisoned in the U.S. To ensure growth in petrochemicals we must have more cars, plastic and “trains and boats and planes” to quote the ol’ song. The biggest culprit is the infernal combustion engine, which pollutes the air we try to breathe, and cuts down the rain forest that renews the oxygen in that air; it’s hard to know which’ll get us first, the cars or the chainsaw.

But supermarkets are not giving out plastic bags any more, you say. When I was a boy there weren’t supermarkets and there wasn’t packaging and recycling was done by the rag and bone man and people simply re-using things. I remember going to the Greengrocer with a string bag, I remember the milk bottles on the doorstep and real newspaper wrapping your fish and chips. Please; don’t start me on fish and chips! There simply wasn’t plastic all thru’ the house. But now we have growth. We played football in the street ‘cos there weren’t cars parked all down both sides of it. Growth has seen that off! But I recycle my paper, you tell me. There is an argument that the chemical processes involved in paper recycling do more damage than they prevent; another goes that by recycling we are diminishing the demand for the Scandis to plant more forests up there in the rarified atmosphere of the deep dark land of the winter. The truth is simpler; if the price isn’t good enough all your recycling gets lobbed into the landfill anyway ‘cos no one will buy it. Job done. Economic growth environmental waste management style – way to go!

Come back to the kids a minute – they’re the inheritors; if you give 2 six year olds a stick to play with they’ll have a ball ……… by the time they’re nine, they’ll have learnt they need a Gameboy, an X-box and a Wii to be happy – Oh yeah, and a telly and a computer in their room. Teacher? Not me, I’m fighting a rearguard action. Advertising, capitalism’s vanguard.

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz,

  My friends all have Porches, I must make amends”

Janis Joplin.

Janis